A Passion for Pleasure

chapter Sixteen




If it weren’t for the gauze of clouds veiling the afternoon sun, the scene would be a repeat of the previous day’s. Pedestrians strolled into Belgrave Square Garden, birds splashed in a puddle, a boy rolled a hoop along one of the pathways. The meat-pie vendor was stationed at his stand, casting glances at Clara in between doling out his fragrant pies. Andrew and his tutor rounded the corner at half past three, taking the same path they’d walked yesterday.

Concealed within the cab’s interior, Clara again watched her son until he had vanished from her sights.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow she would take him and run.

She instructed the driver to return to Mount Street. After leaving her at Blake’s Museum that morning, Sebastian and his brother had gone to an appointment with the expectation that they would return before tea.

Well enough. Time for her to pack a few remaining articles while spooling her torment into a tight, unyielding ball.

Practical. Ruthless. Determined.

She could not afford sentiments of love and regret. She could not think about never seeing Sebastian again. She could not envision how this whole plan might ricochet to hurt him. All she could do was move forward and pray Sebastian didn’t shatter her brittle façade.

Clara spent the next hour readying herself for tea, shaping her appearance with care in order to conceal any trace of distress. She dressed in an emerald-green gown that fell in sweeping folds around her legs and summoned a maid to fix her hair into a smooth chignon laced with green ribbons. She pinched her cheeks in the hopes that the extra color would conceal the tension darkening her eyes.

Male voices rumbled from the foyer. Clara smoothed her skirts and turned, pressing a hand to her belly to try to quell the riot of anxiety. She forced expression to slide from her features like water washing over a rock as she descended the stairs to greet the brothers.

A tiny curl of softness eased past her defenses when she saw them, deep in conversation as they removed their greatcoats and hats. Like two sides of the same coin with their black hair and snapping dark eyes, those Slavic cheekbones arching down to hard-edged jaws. But Darius was a foil to his elder brother, striking in the precision of his appearance, the crisp dark morning coat and waistcoat deterring wrinkles rather than attracting them the way Sebastian’s did.

And Darius lacked Sebastian’s vital energy, the restless impulses that vibrated from his very bones, his essential compulsion, impervious to rumor or scandal, to live and do and be.

Only Sebastian possessed those qualities. Only Sebastian had a mouth curved at that beautiful angle. Only he had that single lock of hair determined to flop over his forehead no matter how often he pushed it back. Only his eyes contained that beguiling mixture of warmth and wickedness that made Clara’s blood run like hot, thick honey.

“You’re just in time for tea,” she said, descending the remainder of the stairs. “It’s an unusually warm afternoon out, isn’t it? Is autumn in St. Petersburg quite this lovely, Darius?”

“Often, yes, we too are blessed with a colorful autumn, though I consider St. Petersburg lovely any time of the year.”

“I should like to hear more about it, then.”

Clara didn’t know how much Sebastian had told his brother about the snarled mess of their circumstances, so she kept the conversation centered on Darius as they took tea and cake in the parlor. She quite liked the pragmatic young man, at once so different and yet so similar to Sebastian. His presence made Clara wish she could become acquainted with the rest of the Hall family.

And yet, God willing, that would never happen.

Suppressing pain at the thought, Clara made her excuses and left the brothers alone as she returned to her bedchamber. She occupied herself with useless tasks—repacking her belongings, unsnarling her ribbons from their tangle, considering and then dismissing the idea of writing Sebastian a letter of explanation. The less he knew, the better.

She then took supper in her room, sending down a claim of fatigue that she knew would not prevent Sebastian from coming to her later that night.

And so he did, a fire crackling in his gaze as he entered her room. “You’re not unwell?” he asked.

“Oh, no. I wanted to give you time with your brother. I…I look forward to one day meeting the rest of your family.”

“They’ll feel the same when Darius tells them of our marriage.” Sebastian tugged at the bonds of his cravat, drawing Clara’s eyes to the flex and pull of his long fingers.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow she would leave this man whom she loved and pray her flight kept him safe.

Blinking away the glitter of tears, she rose and approached him. She eased his hands aside and loosened the knot, allowing the silk to glide through her fingers before pulling it free. Crumpling the silk into her palm, she went to her dressing table where her box of ribbons still sat. She dropped the cravat beside the box and returned to Sebastian. She wound her arms around him, put her hand on the back of his neck, and guided his head down.

His mouth descended on hers, his hands smoothing over her sides to her hips. Their bodies pressed together like the pages of a closed book, tight and sealed. Clara parted her lips, drank in Sebastian’s murmur of pleasure, stroked her tongue over his lower lip. He moved his left hand to her hair, unfastening the pins and dropping them to the floor while he deepened the kiss to the color of emeralds.

Her eyes drifted closed as he pulled the tangles from her hair with gentle strokes, then cupped her face between his palms and kissed her cheeks, her forehead, her eyelids, the tip of her nose. She grasped his arms and urged him to the bed, wanting his weight on top of her one last time before she broke their world apart.

Sebastian spanned her waist with his hands, preventing her from sinking against the coverlet, and turned her back to him. He unfastened the buttons of her dress with the growing dexterity of his left hand, then divested her of her corset and let it fall to the floor.

Clara inhaled, her body softening with the release of her clothes, as Sebastian continued undressing her until the fire-warmed air caressed her naked skin. His hot eyes slipped over her, tracing the contours of her breasts and hips before he gathered her in his arms again and guided her to the bed.

She thrust her hands into his thick hair, gasping as he kissed a path from her lips to her throat and down to the taut peaks of her breasts. Pleasure bolted through her, pooling into the core of her body. He closed his lips around her nipple, and she arched against him, winding her legs around his thighs. Her skin surged with heat. She wanted this forever, wanted him forever.

Rising to her elbows, she watched as he pressed his mouth to the curve of her belly, his whiskers deliciously abrading a path, his tongue swirling into her navel. She closed her fingers around his shoulders, urging him back up the length of her body so that she could unfasten his shirt and ease the linen from his muscular shoulders.

Such a beautiful man. Clara stroked her hands over his arms, down his chest to his trousers.

“Take them off,” she whispered, uncertain if she spoke an order or a plea.

He pushed the trousers to the floor. Arousal coiled into her at the sight of his smooth, hard shaft, the empty place at her core aching. She pressed him onto his back and mapped his body with her hands and mouth, kissing and touching every plane and sinew of his chest. His skin burned beneath her lips, his chest rising and falling with the sound of his breaths. Clara traveled a path that she would be forced to leave behind forever while simultaneously wishing, with desperation, that she could traverse it again and again.

She curled her hand around his erection, perspiration dotting her brow as she pressed her thighs together to quell the throbbing ache. Sebastian grasped one of her thighs and urged her legs over his hips so that she straddled his body. A trace of unease lanced into her—this was the posture of a whore, surely—but Sebastian’s eyes blazed with such a combination of desire and heat that Clara trembled with the urge to indulge in this blatantly provocative act.

“Sebastian, I…”

He stopped her words with a tightening of his fingers. One guiding hand on the curve of her hip, he took his shaft in the other hand and poised himself at the entrance of her body. Chestnut hair falling in skeins over her shoulders, Clara braced her hands on the wall of his chest and stared down at him.

“I can’t…” She gasped, words falling away at the drenching knowledge that with one shift of her hips, she could plunge downward and savor that hard, delicious thrust of pleasure. The exquisite memory of how it had felt the last time she straddled his lap spilled through her mind.

“You can.” Cords tightened in his neck, his fingers flexing against the dip of her waist. “You will.”

She did. Tentative at first, she lowered her body until he glided halfway into her and then, with a moan, she sank farther until he was fully inside her. Hot. Hard. Pulsing.

Clara curled her fingers against his damp chest. Her heart pounded against her rib cage, her gasping breaths flowing down to mingle with his.

“Clara.” He shifted beneath her, pushing his hips upward to thrust into her with a force that wrung a cry from her throat. “You need to…”

Spurred by recently learned instincts, she lifted her body and lowered it again, soon meeting his upward thrusts with a rhythm that made her blood burn and her body sing. Her arousal spiraled tighter and tighter, winding into the center of her being. Sweat coursed down her spine, into the crevice between her breasts.

She gasped when Sebastian gripped her waist, this time preventing her downward glide. He twisted her onto her back, his body still locked with hers, and surged over her. Clara wound her arms around him, her panting moans hot against his bare shoulder as he pushed into her and drove them both into the sweet, churning storm of bliss.

Afterward, he clasped her in his arms and they lay still and silent as their breathing slowed. Clara pressed her lips to his chest and closed her eyes.

This was the end. With everything she was, she had to pray for the success of her escape. And while sorrow blackened the circumstances that had led her to such desperation, she could not regret a single moment she had spent with Sebastian. Indeed, a restive joy surged in Clara with the grace of a bird taking flight—and she believed she could live a lifetime of undiluted happiness and gratitude that she had known such a man.

She lifted herself to her elbow and looked at him. Heat kindled in Sebastian’s eyes along with something else, something more, an emotion that expanded the walls of Clara’s soul.

Her heart was still sealed. But with him inside. She had locked her heart well and truly—not to keep Sebastian Hall out but to ensure he remained within.



The only sounds in the morning room were the scrape of forks against plates and coffee cups clicking against saucers. Sebastian watched Clara, who sat with a rigid posture in utter contrast to her supple writhings of the previous night. Again that brittleness had encased her, a teacup lined with threadlike cracks.

“So.” She patted her lips with a napkin, although she hadn’t eaten a bite. “Where is your meeting taking place?”

“I’ve arranged for us to meet at the dining room of the Albion Hotel,” Darius said. “What are your plans for the day, Clara?”

“I thought I’d visit Mudie’s Library, then pay a visit to Uncle Granville.” She set her napkin beside her plate. “In fact, I’m running a bit late already, so if you’ll both excuse me, I’ll finish getting ready.”

Both Sebastian and Darius stood and watched her leave, then exchanged glances. Sebastian was not surprised that his brother sensed the odd tension threading the air. He shoved his chair back and headed upstairs. He found Clara in her bedchamber, closing the wooden box that contained her beloved tangle of ribbons.

Sebastian stopped in the doorway. “What is going on?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You look as if you’re close to breaking.” He approached her, disliking the utter paleness of her skin and that impassive veil that had once again descended over her expression. “We will deal with Fairfax, Clara, I promise you.”

Her throat worked with a swallow, her gaze darting to the scarred box. Just before her lashes lowered, a flash of something—disbelief? guilt?—appeared in her eyes. Sebastian reached out to take the box from her.

Clara started. “What—”

He flipped the lid open. Nestled amid the cobweb of ribbons was the cravat he’d worn yesterday. With a frown, he pulled the blue silk from the box, ribbons spilling away from it, and shifted his gaze to Clara.

Guilt. What the hell did she have to be guilty about? What was she hiding from him?

“It’s…ah, you know I keep the ribbons because they’re precious to me,” she said. “I wanted one of your cravats for the same reason. I hope that’s all right.”

“Of course it’s all right.” Disquieted by her reaction, he dropped the cravat back into the box and snapped the lid closed. “All you need do is ask. You shall have anything you want.”

Not until the words hovered between them did Sebastian realize he had not yet given her her heart’s desire. An oath broke through his mind.

“Come with me to this blasted meeting with my mother,” he said. “Since you’ve met her before, you ought to be there now.”

Clara shook her head. “This must be done between you and her. And what if Fairfax sends word about Andrew? Someone needs to be here.” She took his right hand and gently ran her fingers across his. “Go speak with your mother, please. I’ll be with Uncle Granville most of the day anyway. Everything will be fine.”

Her voice was certain, a cool shade of sapphire blue that belied the darkness shadowing her eyes. She lifted his hand to her lips and pressed a kiss against his wrist, on the fraction of skin below his sleeve. Heat shot through his arm.

He wrapped his other hand around her nape and pulled her to him, lowering his mouth to hers. Her soft gasp slid into his blood, settled in the middle of his chest. He kissed her deeply, driven by some unnamed desire to remind her she belonged to him.

“Sebastian.” Clara gripped his lapels, her violet eyes filled with a mixture of emotions that he could not begin to discern. “I want you to remember that you have always meant more to me than you will ever know.”

Sebastian frowned at the strange finality of her words. “For God’s sake, Clara, what are you doing? If you are thinking of approaching Fairfax alone—”

“Bastian.” A knock sounded at the closed door, followed by Darius’s voice. “Best be moving along.”

“Go,” Clara whispered.

With a muttered curse, Sebastian eased away from his wife. Troubled and not knowing how to unravel the source of his apprehension, he pushed his right hand into his pocket and went to the door.



She no longer looked like Catherine Hall, Countess of Rushton, the woman who wore her beauty like delicate armor, whose eyes were cool glass. His shoulders tense, Sebastian stopped in the doorway of the dining room at the Albion Hotel as his mother approached.

Her dress was elegant but simple, and she wore no jewelry. Her dark hair was pulled into a neat chignon, a few tendrils lacing her long neck. As she neared, he saw the silver threads streaking her hair and the thin lines radiating from the corners of her eyes. A tan had darkened her porcelain skin, and freckles dotted her nose.

Freckles.

His mother?

She stopped in front of him, lifting a hand as if she wanted to touch him and then letting it fall back to her side.

“Sebastian,” she whispered.

He cleared his throat, his nerves taut with unease over Clara’s behavior and now this meeting with a woman he hardly recognized. “Hello…Catherine.”

Beside him, Darius clamped a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Then he turned and left, leaving Sebastian alone with their mother.

Mustering a bit of chivalry, Sebastian went to pull a chair from one of the empty tables. “Have you had dinner yet?”

“Not yet, no.” She spoke English, though with a bit of hesitation and a more pronounced accent than Sebastian ever remembered hearing. “Thank you for agreeing to see me.”

“I didn’t want to.” Sebastian hadn’t intended the bitter tone, but it was there, coloring his words like the dark smear of a pencil. A thousand questions bubbled and popped in his mind.

As they sat, Sebastian noticed her hands tremble as she brushed a lock of hair from her forehead. She sat back and studied him, her dark gaze—so like his brothers’—both wary and hopeful. “Why did you change your mind?” she wanted to know.

“Clara.”

A smile tugged at her mouth. “I like her.”

“Why did you come back?” Sebastian asked, not wanting to discuss his wife with a woman who had severed her own marriage through infidelity.

“I came back to see you,” Catherine said.

“And I’m to be grateful for that?” Anger pierced Sebastian, and he leaned across the table to fix her with a glare. “For the love of God, you caused a scandal and ran away, leaving your family to clean up the mess. You forced the earl to divorce you. You left your daughter with all of society thinking she was no better than her dissolute mother. Did you not once think about what a wreckage you created?”

“Of course I thought about it.” Although regret weighted her words, Sebastian detected no trace of shame. His anger hardened at the notion that she would not be ashamed of what she had done.

“I thought about nothing else after it all came to light,” she said. “But what else could I have done but leave? If I’d returned to London, it would have made everything worse. I knew that if I fled, everyone would cast blame upon me and claim my children had fallen into misfortune because I was their mother. I hoped you would be spared any condemnation.”

“We weren’t,” Sebastian said bluntly. “But we might have withstood it if we’d known what happened.”

“Oh, Sebastian.” She looked down at her hands. Once soft and white, her hands were now browned and wrinkled. “I wish I could tell you it was a mistake. That I didn’t want it to happen. That I never meant for it to happen. But when it did, I felt like…I don’t know. Like something had broken inside me. Broken open.”

Like when I met Clara. Sebastian pushed the thought aside, not wanting to draw any more similarities between him and his mother.

“Catherine.” Sebastian tried to keep his voice level. “What did happen?”

“I fell in love.”

Bloody hell.

“I’d taken a trip back to St. Petersburg,” Catherine said. “Do you remember? My sister had an invitation to a Court ceremony for regimental troops. She didn’t want to attend, so I went in her stead. I met him there. Alexei. He was a captain in the army, younger than me by six years. He didn’t care. He was handsome, bright, courteous. He made me feel like the only woman in the room.”

“So you abandoned your family for him.”

She almost winced. “It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t…vulgar.”

“A married woman…a countess, for God’s sake, having an affair is the height of vulgarity, Catherine.”

“To you, perhaps. To society. Not to us. Do you have any idea what it was like being married to Rushton? We never loved each other, not really. I know he is not a cruel man, but he was so…rigid. So strict. He had no life inside him, no fire. Every day I felt as if I had to hold myself together so tightly or I’d otherwise break like glass. I didn’t even realize I felt like that until I met Alexei. In that moment, I knew I had to make a choice. I had to either plunge into a world of brilliant, dangerous colors that could shatter us all or return to a life in which I felt dead.”

“You didn’t think of us?”

“Of course I thought of you. But, Sebastian, you were all living your own lives. I rarely saw any of you, did you even realize that?”

“No, but how much did we ever see of you?”

“That didn’t mean I didn’t love you,” Catherine said. “I always loved hearing you play the piano, even when you were a child. Do you remember?”

He cleared his throat. “You used to play as well.”

Only when he had watched Catherine play the piano, her hands skimming with such grace over the keys, had she been real to him. Alive.

“I played more for myself than an audience,” Catherine said. “I so admired you when you began performing and earned such accolades. I wish I’d had such courage.” She traced a scratch on the table with her finger.

“You all grew up so quickly,” she continued. “And Alexander became busy with his company, Darius with his studies, you with your music. Even Talia spent all her time with friends and charities, and of course Rushton was never there. I drifted around his vast house like a ghost. Until I realized that it would be my tomb if I didn’t escape.”

Sebastian dragged his hand over his hair, hating the gleam of understanding that sparked to life within him. He knew well what it was like to feel as if you no longer had anything. And that if you didn’t do something about it, you would cease to exist. It was that urge, like a hammer striking a piano string, reverberating and echoing into his blood.

He looked up. She was watching him, concern and wariness etched into the face that both belonged at once to his mother and a stranger. He wondered if she would have made such a confession to Alexander or Nicholas. Or even to Talia.

“Do you still play the piano?” he asked.

She smiled. “I did. Especially for Alexei. He loved to hear me play.”

She didn’t have to say that Rushton never seemed to notice. She gestured for one of the servers to bring them more tea, and then she told Sebastian about the man who was apparently the love of her life, a solider who’d moved up in the army ranks through determination, strength of will, and proficiency in battle. She told Sebastian how she’d waited for him, withstood the disapproval of her family, and longed for Rushton’s divorce petition to free her.

She must have loved Alexei Leskov to distraction, Sebastian thought, to have followed the man into battle because she could not bear to be parted from him again. And him too, waiting, then returning to her, asking for her hand in marriage, while knowing he would never be welcomed into her family, that she wore the mantle of disgrace, that she would never bear his children.

They both had known they would be alone together. Just two. And for them, that had been enough.

“I’m sorry,” Sebastian finally said. He was still not able to comprehend how she could have cut her life in two with such irrevocability, but a faint understanding wove through him at her confession of overwhelming love.

“I loved Alexei deeply.” Sorrow flashed in Catherine’s dark eyes. “I was blessed to have known and loved him for as long as I did. I was blessed to have known him at all. You’d have liked him. He had a love of life that was not unlike yours.”

Sebastian’s hand clenched. Too late, he realized that the subtle movement drew his mother’s attention. She lifted a hand as if to cover his, then settled it on the tablecloth.

“And you?” she asked. “I knew the moment I heard about your departure from Weimar that something was wrong. Will you not tell me what happened?”

Realizing there was no reason not to, especially after her confession, Sebastian explained. He pushed his hand into his pocket and told her the entire truth of his disability and resignation. Tears spilled down her cheeks by the time he’d finished the unpleasant tale.

“I knew you wouldn’t have forsaken your patrons without a reason,” she said. “Did any of them know?”

Sebastian shook his head. Some part of him recognized that he had kept his secret just as she had kept hers, both to protect others and to protect himself. Oddly, the thought was fitting. He realized now that he and Catherine shared certain instincts—foremost the need to be free from the trappings of expectations. It had taken her thirty years of a stifling marriage to discover that.

He, at least, had always lived as he pleased, and his marriage to Clara had reminded him of the importance of such a desire.

Sebastian pushed to his feet. A strange but welcome sense of calm settled over the turmoil of his emotions. Catherine came around the table and took his hand in hers. He didn’t know if he would see her again, but at least now he finally had answers to the questions that had plagued them all.

“Will you try to see Talia?” he asked.

The light in Catherine’s eyes dimmed. “I don’t know. Darius refuses to facilitate a meeting with Talia. I fear she must despise me.”

Sebastian couldn’t reassure her otherwise. They would all impede Catherine’s access to Talia for no other reason than to protect their sister from further hurt.

“Where will you go now?” he asked.

“I’m staying with my sister in Kuskovo. Please know you can always contact me there.”

Sebastian nodded. After a moment’s hesitation, he bent and brushed his lips across her cheek. Then he turned and left, pulling his hand from his pocket and unclenching his fingers as he stepped back outside.