The following morning

Newbury’s got his eye on a new one.”

Sebastian Grey opened one eye to look at his cousin Edward, who was sitting across from him, eating a pie-like substance that even from across the room smelled revolting. His head was pounding—too much champagne the night before—and he decided he liked the room better dark.

He closed his eye.

“I think he’s serious this time,” Edward said.

“He was serious the last three times,” Sebastian replied, directing the comment to the insides of his eyelids.

“Hmm, yes,” came Edward’s voice. “Bad luck for him. Death, elopement, and what happened with the third?”

“Showed up at the altar with child.”

Edward chuckled. “Maybe he should have taken that one. At least he would have known she was fertile.”

“I suspect,” Sebastian replied, shifting his position to better accommodate his long legs on the sofa, “that even I am preferable to some other man’s bastard.” He gave up on trying to find a comfortable position and heaved both legs over the arm, letting his feet dangle over the side. “Difficult though it is to imagine.”

He thought about his uncle for a few moments, then attempted to thrust him from his mind. The Earl of Newbury always put him in a bad mood, and his head hurt enough already as it was. They’d always been at odds, uncle and nephew, but it hadn’t really mattered until a year and a half earlier, when Sebastian’s cousin Geoffrey had died. As soon as it had become apparent that Geoffrey’s widow was not increasing, and that Sebastian was the heir presumptive to the earldom, Newbury hurried himself off to London to search for a new bride, declaring that he would die before he allowed Sebastian to inherit.

The earl, apparently, had not noticed the logistical inconsistencies of such a statement.

Sebastian thus found himself in an odd and precarious position. If the earl could find a wife and sire another son—and, the Lord knew, he was trying—then Sebastian was nothing but another of London’s fashionable yet untitled gentlemen. If, on the other hand, Newbury did not manage to reproduce, or worse, managed only daughters, then Sebastian would inherit four houses, heaps of money, and the eighth most ancient earldom in the land.

All of this meant that no one knew quite what to do with him. Was he the marriage mart’s grandest catch or just another fortune hunter? It was impossible to know.

It was all just too amusing. To Sebastian’s mind, at least.

No one wanted to take a chance that he might not become the earl, and so he was invited everywhere, always an excellent circumstance for a man who liked good food, good music, and good conversation. The debutantes flittered and fluttered around him, providing endless entertainment. And as for the more mature ladies—the ones who were free to take their pleasure where they chose …

Well, more often than not, they chose him. That he was beautiful was a boon. That he was an excellent lover was delicious. That he might eventually become the Earl of Newbury …

That made him irresistible.

At present, however, with his aching head and queasy stomach, Sebastian was feeling exceedingly resistible. Or if not that, then resistant. Aphrodite herself could descend from the ceiling, floating on a bloody clamshell, naked but for a few well-placed flowers, and he’d likely puke at her feet.

No, no, she ought to be completely naked. If he was going to prove the existence of a goddess, right here in this room, she was damned well going to be naked.

He’d still puke on her feet, though.

He yawned, shifting his weight a little more onto his left hip. He wondered if he might fall asleep. He had not slept well the night before (champagne) or the night before that (nothing in particular), and his cousin’s sofa was as good a spot as any. The room wasn’t so bright as long as he kept his eyes closed, and the only sound was Edward’s chewing.

The chewing.

It was remarkable how loud it sounded, now that he’d stopped to think on it.

Not to mention the stench. Meat pie. Who ate meat pie in front of someone in his condition?

Sebastian let out a groan.

“Sorry?” Edward said.

“Your food,” Seb grunted.

“Do you want some?”

“God no.”

Sebastian kept his eyes closed, but he could practically hear his cousin give a shrug. There would be no tender mercies tossed in his direction this morning.

So Newbury was panting after another broodmare. Sebastian supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. Hell, he wasn’t surprised. It was just that—

It was just that—

Well, hell. He didn’t know what it was. But it wasn’t nothing.

“Who is it this time?” he asked, because it wasn’t as if he was completely uninterested.

There was a pause, presumably so that Edward could swallow his food, and then: “Vickers’s granddaughter.”

Sebastian considered that. Lord Vickers had several granddaughters. Which made sense, as he and Lady Vickers had had something approaching fifteen children of their own. “Well, good for her,” he grunted.

“Have you seen her?” Edward asked.

“Have you?” Seb countered. He’d arrived in town late for the season. If the girl was new this year, he wouldn’t know her.

“Country-bred, I’m told, and so fertile that birds sing when she draws near.”

Now that deserved an open eye. Two, as a matter of fact. “Birds,” Sebastian repeated in a flat voice. “Really.”

“I thought it was a clever turn of phrase,” Edward said, a touch defensively.

With a small groan, Sebastian heaved himself up into a sitting position. Well, something closer to a sitting position than he’d been in before. “And how, if the young lady is the snow-white virgin I’m sure Newbury insists upon, might one gauge her fecundity?”

Edward shrugged. “You can just tell. Her hips …” His hands made some sort of odd motion in the air, and his eyes began to acquire a glazed expression. “And her breasts …” At this he practically shuddered, and Sebastian wouldn’t have been surprised if the poor boy started to drool.

“Control yourself, Edward,” Sebastian said. “You are reclining on Olivia’s newly upholstered sofa, if you recall.”

Edward shot him a peevish look and went back to the food on his plate. They were sitting in the drawing room of Sir Harry and Lady Olivia Valentine, where the two men could frequently be found. Edward was Harry’s brother, and thus lived there. Sebastian had come over for breakfast. Harry’s cook had recently changed her recipe for coddled eggs, with delicious results. (More butter, Sebastian suspected; everything tasted better with more butter.) He hadn’t missed a breakfast at La Casa de Valentine for a week.

Besides, he liked the company.

Harry and Olivia—who, incidentally, were not Spanish; Sebastian simply enjoyed saying “La Casa de Valentine”—were off in the country for a fortnight, presumably in an attempt to escape Sebastian and Edward. The two men had immediately degenerated into their bachelor ways, sleeping past noon, bringing luncheon into the drawing room, and hanging a dartboard on the back of the door to the second guest bedroom.

Sebastian was currently ahead, fourteen games to three.

Sixteen games to one, actually. He’d felt sorry for Edward halfway through the tournament. And it had made things more interesting. It was harder to lose realistically than it was to win. But he’d managed. Edward hadn’t suspected a thing.

Game eighteen was to be held that evening. Sebastian would be there, of course. Really, he’d all but moved in. He told himself it was because someone had to keep an eye on young Edward, but the truth was …

Seb gave his head a mental shake. That was truth enough.

He yawned. Lord, he was tired. He didn’t know why he’d had so much to drink the night before. It had been ages since he’d done so. But he had gone to bed early, and then he couldn’t sleep, and then he got up, but he couldn’t write because—

No because. That had been damned irritating. He just couldn’t write. The words hadn’t been there even though he’d left his poor heroine hiding under a bed. With the hero in the bed. It was to be his most risqué scene yet. One would think it’d be easy, just from the novelty of it.

But no. Miss Spencer was still under the bed and her Scotsman was still on it, and Sebastian was no closer to the end of chapter twelve than he’d been last week.

After two hours of sitting at his desk staring at a blank sheet of paper, he’d finally given up. He couldn’t sleep and he couldn’t write, and so more out of spite than anything else he’d got back up, dressed, and headed out to his club.

There had been champagne. Someone had been celebrating something, and it would have been rude not to join in. There had been several very pretty girls, too, although why they had been at the club, Sebastian wasn’t quite sure.

Or maybe they hadn’t been at the club. Had he gone somewhere else afterward?

Good Lord, he was getting too old for this nonsense.

“Maybe she’ll say no,” Edward said. Seemingly out of nowhere.

“Eh?”

“The Vickers girl. Maybe she’ll say no to Newbury.”

Sebastian sat back, pressing his fingers into his temples. “She won’t say no.”

“I thought you didn’t know her.”

“I don’t. But Vickers will want the match with Newbury. They’re friends, and Newbury has money. Unless the girl has an extremely indulgent father, she’ll have to do what her grandfather says. Oh, wait.” He arched his brows, the accompanying furrow in his forehead meant to jog his currently sluggish mind. “If she’s the Fenniwick girl she’ll say no.”

“How do you know all this?”

Seb shrugged. “I know things.” Mostly, he observed. It was remarkable what one could tell about another human being simply by watching. And listening. And acting so bloody charming that people tended to forget he had a brain.

Sebastian was rarely taken seriously, and he rather liked it that way.

“No, wait again,” he said, picturing a wispy little thing in his mind, so thin she disappeared when she turned sideways. “It can’t be the Fenniwick girl. She has no breasts.”

Edward finished off the last of his meat pie. The smell, unfortunately, did not immediately dissipate. “I trust you do not speak from firsthand knowledge,” he said.

“I am an excellent judge of the female form, even from afar.” Sebastian glanced about the room, looking for something nonalcoholic to drink. Tea. Tea might help. His grandmother had always said it was the next best thing to vodka.

“Well,” Edward said, watching as Sebastian heaved himself off the sofa and crossed the room to ring for the butler, “if she accepts him, you’ve all but lost the earldom.”

Seb flopped back on the sofa. “It was never mine to begin with.”

“But it could be,” Edward said, leaning forward. “It could be yours. Me, I’m probably thirty-ninth in line for anything of note, but you … you could be Newbury.”

Sebastian pushed back the sour taste rising in his throat. Newbury was his uncle, huge and loud, with bad breath and a worse temper. It was difficult to imagine ever answering to the name. “Honestly, Edward,” he said, giving his cousin as frank a stare as he could muster, “I really don’t care one way or the other.”

“You can’t mean that.”

“And yet I do,” Seb murmured.

Edward stared at him as if he’d gone mad. Sebastian decided to respond to that by resuming his lengthwise position on the sofa. He closed his eyes, determined to keep them that way until the tea arrived. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t appreciate the accompanying conveniences,” he said, “but I’ve lived thirty years without it, and twenty-nine without even the prospect of it.”

“Conveniences,” Edward repeated, apparently latching onto the word. “Conveniences?”

Seb shrugged. “I would find the money extremely convenient.”

“Convenient,” Edward said with amazement. “Only you would call it convenient.”

Sebastian shrugged again and attempted to nap. He seemed to find most of his sleep this way, in little fits and bits, stolen on sofas, in chairs, anywhere, really, except for his own bed. But his mind proved stubborn, refusing to let go of this most recent gossip about his uncle.

He really didn’t care if he inherited the earldom. People tended to have difficulty believing this, but it was true. If his uncle married the Vickers girl and got a son off her … well, bully for him. So he wouldn’t get the title. Sebastian couldn’t be bothered to upset himself over the loss of something he’d never really had in the first place.

“Most people,” Sebastian said aloud, since it was only Edward in the room and he could sound like a bloviating buffoon with no consequences, “know if they are going to inherit an earldom. One is the heir apparent. Apparently, the heir. Unless someone manages to kill you first, you inherit.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“One could really rename the whole thing heir obvious,” Seb muttered.

“Do you always give vocabulary lessons when you’ve had too much to drink?”

“Whelp.” It was Seb’s favorite name for Edward, and as long as he kept it within the family, Edward didn’t seem to mind.

Edward chuckled.

“Monologue, interrupted,” Sebastian said, then continued: “With the heir presumptive, all is merely presumed.”

“Are you telling me something I don’t know?” Edward asked, not sarcastically. It was more of a query as to whether or not he needed to pay attention.

Sebastian ignored him. “One is presumed to be the heir, unless and of course, et cetera, et cetera, in my case, Newbury manages to foist himself on some poor young lady with fertile hips and large breasts.”

Edward sighed again.

“Shut up,” Seb said.

“If you saw them, you’d know what I mean.”

His tone was so full of lust that Sebastian had to open his eyes and look at him. “You need a woman.”

Edward shrugged. “Send one my way. I don’t mind your leavings.”

He deserved better than that, but Sebastian didn’t really feel like getting into it, not without sustenance. “I really need that tea.”

“I suspect you need something more than that.”

Seb quirked a brow.

“You seem rather annoyed with the tenuousness of your position,” Edward explained.

Sebastian considered that. “No, not annoyed. But I will go so far as mildly aggravated.”

Edward picked up the newspaper, and they fell into a companionable silence. Sebastian stared across the room and out the window. His eyesight had always been excellent, and he could see the pretty ladies promenading on the other side of the street. He watched for a while, happily thinking about nothing of import. Azure blue seemed to be the fashionable color this season. A good choice; it looked well on most people. He wasn’t so sure about the skirts; they seemed a bit stiffer and more conical. Attractive, yes, but much more difficult for the man with an eye toward raising them.

“Tea,” Edward called out, breaking into Sebastian’s thoughts. A maid deposited the tray on the table between them, and for a moment they just stared at it, two big men with big hands, staring at the dainty teapot.

“Where is our dear Olivia when we need her?” Sebastian said.

Edward grinned. “I shall be sure to tell her that you value her for her pouring skills.”

“It is quite possibly the most logical reason to get oneself a wife.” Sebastian leaned forward and examined the tray, looking for the small jug of milk. “Do you want some?”

Edward shook his head.

Sebastian splashed some milk into his cup and then decided he needed the tea far too much to wait for it to steep properly. He poured, inhaling the aroma as it steamed through the air. It was remarkable how far it went toward settling his stomach.

Maybe he should go to India. Land of promise. Land of tea.

He took a sip, the heat rolling down his throat to his belly. It was perfect, just perfect. “Have you ever thought about going to India?” he asked Edward.

Edward looked up with only slightly raised brows. It was an abrupt change of topic, but then again, he was far too used to Sebastian to be overly startled. “No,” he said. “Too hot.”

Seb considered that. “I expect you’re right.”

“And the malaria,” Edward added. “I met a man with malaria once.” He shuddered. “You wouldn’t want it.”

Sebastian had seen his share of malaria while fighting with the 18th Hussars in Portugal and Spain. You wouldn’t want it seemed a spectacular understatement.

Besides, it would be difficult to continue his clandestine writing career from abroad. His first novel, Miss Sainsbury and the Mysterious Colonel, had been a smashing success. So much so that Sebastian had gone on to write Miss Davenport and the Dark Marquis, Miss Truesdale and the Silent Gentleman, and the biggest best seller of them all—Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron.

All published pseudonymously, of course. If it got out that he was writing gothic novels …

He thought about this for a moment. What would happen if it got out? The starchier members of society would cut him, but that seemed more of a boon than anything else. The rest of the ton would find it delicious. He’d be fêted for weeks.

But there would be questions. And people asking him to write their stories. It would be so tedious.

He liked having a secret. Even his family didn’t know. If anyone wondered where he got his funds, they’d never inquired about it. Harry probably assumed he got a stipend from his mother. And that he cadged his breakfast every day as a means of economization.

Besides, Harry didn’t like his books. He was translating them into Russian (and was getting paid a fortune for it, possibly more than Sebastian got for writing the original in English), but he didn’t like them. He thought they were silly. He said so quite frequently. Sebastian didn’t have the heart to tell him that Sarah Gorely, author, was actually Sebastian Grey, cousin.

It would make Harry feel so uncomfortable.

Sebastian drank his tea and watched Edward read the newspaper. If he leaned forward, he might be able to read the page facing him. His eyesight had always been freakishly sharp.

But not, apparently, sharp enough. The London Times used ridiculously small print. Still, he tried. The headlines were legible, at least.

Edward set down the paper and gave him a look. “How bored are you?”

Seb drank the last of his tea. “Oh, terribly. And you?”

“Quite a lot, since I can’t read the newspaper with you staring at me.”

“I’m that distracting?” Seb smiled. “Excellent.”

Edward shook his head and held out the paper. “Do you want it for yourself?”

“Gad no. I was trapped into a conversation with Lord Worth last night, all about the new excise tax. Reading about it would be only slightly more pleasant than plucking out my toenails.”

Edward stared at him. “Your imagination borders on the macabre.”

“Only borders?” Seb murmured.

“I was trying to be polite.”

“Oh, you should never do that on my account.”

“Clearly.”

Seb paused for just long enough for Edward to think that he’d let go of the conversation, then said, “You’re getting quite dull in your old age, whelp.”

Edward quirked a brow. “Which makes you …”

“Ancient but interesting,” Sebastian answered with a grin. Whether it was the tea or the fun of baiting his young cousin, he was starting to feel better. His head still hurt but at least he didn’t think he was going to ruin the carpet. “Do you plan to attend Lady Trowbridge’s affair tonight?”

“Up in Hampstead?” Edward asked.

Seb nodded, pouring himself another tea.

“I think so. I haven’t anything better. And you?”

“I do believe I have an appointment with the lovely Lady Cellars on the heath.”

“On the heath?”

“I’ve always enjoyed the wilderness,” Sebastian murmured. “I just have to figure out a way to get a blanket into the party without anyone noticing.”

“Apparently you don’t enjoy the wilderness in all of its glory.”

“Just the bits about the fresh air and adventure. The twigs and grass burns I can do without.”

Edward stood. “Well, if anyone can manage it, it’s you.”

Seb looked up, surprised and perhaps a little bit disappointed. “Where are you going?”

“I have an appointment with Hoby.”

“Ah.” He couldn’t keep him, then. One did not disappoint Mr. Hoby, and one most certainly did not get between a gentleman and his boots.

“Will you be here when I return?” Edward asked from the doorway. “Or do you plan to go home?”

“I’ll probably still be here,” Sebastian replied, taking one last sip of his tea before lying back down on the sofa. It was barely noon, and he wouldn’t need to head home to get ready for the Ladies Trowbridge and Cellars for hours yet.

Edward gave a nod and departed. Sebastian closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but after ten minutes he gave up and grabbed the newspaper.

It was too damned hard to sleep when he was alone.