And Swim Your Sea (The Devil in Winter, Evie/Sebastian)
Title: And Swim Your Sea
Author: blithers
Fandom: "The Devil in Winter" by Lisa Kleypas
Pairing/Character: Evangeline Jenner/Sebastian St. Vincent
Rating: R
Word Count: 5269
Disclaimer: Very much not mine.
Also Posted At: AO3
Author's Note: Written for Tangerine for Yuletide 2011. Title is from the song "It's Only Time" by the Magnetic Fields. Thank you to my betas starry-starrrz and inforpenny!
Summary: He was tangled up in his wife in ways that were complicated and nerve-racking and wholly new, and he was still adjusting to the presence of her in his life. He sometimes felt that his love for her was a physical thing, residing in his chest and pushing aside other internals to make room; the sensation was both terrifying and fascinating.
Jenner's Club, Spring 1844
The day was young, and younger still for a gambling hall; the sun was high but the activity on the main floor below him was just beginning to stir for the day. The cleaning staff were clearing the tables and rubbing their own eyes blearily, and the clash of metal from the kitchen foreshadowed the warm smell of baking bread and long-simmering soups that would soon fill the building. Chairs were pushed back into tables and banisters were dusted and polished with wax and lemon oil. Two young girls, chatting in low voices, had their skirts knotted up around their knees as they scrubbed the wooden floor leading into one of the dining chambers.
Sebastian didn't hear his wife approach, but he felt her hand slip into his for a moment, her fingers tangling in his and squeezing them briefly, as she joined him in looking down at the club.
Evie wore a muslin gown dyed the pale green of tart apples, and her hair was pulled back in a thick braid, the brilliant red offset by the colour of the dress. She leaned her elbows on the banister next to his own, mimicking his posture, and propped her chin up in her hands as she gazed solemnly at her father's club. With her face scrubbed clean, her hair pulled back from her ears, and freckles scattered haphazardly across her pale skin, she looked far younger than her twenty three years.
She frowned a little as she surveyed the main hall underneath them, her brows knitted together in thought, and Sebastian wondered if any man had ever loved a woman as much as he loved the one standing beside him. It was a ridiculous, grandiose thought, but Sebastian had never been one to let a thing like that stop him. He was tangled up in his wife in ways that were complicated and nerve-racking and wholly new, and he was still adjusting to the presence of her in his life. He sometimes felt that his love for her was a physical thing, residing in his chest and pushing aside other internals to make room; the sensation was both terrifying and fascinating.
She smiled shyly as she looked over and caught him watching her. He kissed her hand, and the gold of her wedding ring was warm against his lips. "Good morning, love. Sleep well?"
She blushed a little at that, acutely aware that they were in public, and her silence spoke more eloquently than a coy reply would have.
"Me thinks the lady doth protest too much," he said mildly.
She shook her head, biting at her lip to hide a smile. She turned her attention back to the ground floor where the young house maids were laughing in girlish shrieks and speckling each other with drops of water from the bucket between them, and as she watched them she spun her wedding ring around her finger, the engraving on the band rotating in and out of his vision.
---
He skimmed the previous night's floor report with his boots on the desk, while Evie sat neat and straight in the chair across from him, tallying the housekeeping books. She bit the tip of her tongue as she did sums, double-checking the totals and reviewing the purchases made in the past month.
"Listen to this, pet. St. Vincent obliged to separate gentlemen; damages collected in duplicate; arrangement with Madame Bradshaw to the benefit of all."
"Mmhmm," she said, her eyes still on her work.
"Good man, billing in duplicate."
"Always," she agreed absently.
He put down the report and leaned back in the chair, arching his back in a cat stretch, and rolled his head around. Evie licked the point of her pencil before making a note in the margin of a column of needed kitchen supplies. Small wisps of corkscrewed hair were starting to escape from her braid, giving her an aura like a sunrise in the slanting afternoon light of his office.
"Evie, sweet, have I told you today how lovely you are?"
She looked up at him then, a small smile at the corner of her lips. "Yes."
Damn his younger self, punch-drunk in the early morning haze of lying abed with his wife. "You will simply have to bear to hear the sentiment twice, then. I am working to create a surplus to tide you over in my absence, so some repetition may occur."
Something softened in her eyes at that, and she said, quietly, "I'm going to miss you, Sebastian."
He was leaving the next day on business for Kingston, precipitated by an array of threats from his father ranging from thinly veiled to outright declarations of hostile action, and to say he was less than pleased about the trip was an understatement. He could no longer put his father off with ominously worded updates about his delicate state of health after being shot, as if the event was a mere inconvenience to the man. It was to be the first time he and Evie would be apart since being married, and the prospect unsettled him far more than he would have liked.
"Just think," he said, keeping his tone light, "you'll finally be free of me for a few days."
"I don't w-want you to go. I know you have to, but..."
"Trust me, love, I would prefer not to go as well."
She came around to him, leaning against the edge of the desk between his legs, and studied him with a solemn expression. She reached up to brush a lock of hair off his forehead, and he stilled under her touch, like she was a mythical fairy tale heroine and he was some damned shivering wilderness creature under her thrall.
"I remember when I first spoke with you." Evie's voice was low and dreamy, her fingers tangled in his hair. "I never would have guessed we would end up like this."
"And how is this?"
"Happy," she said simply.
"It surprises me as well, my dear."
She paused, and a teasing smile flitted across her lips. "Indeed, I believe you were drunk the first time we spoke, my lord."
He had indeed been in his cups the first night they spoke in his library, but not deeply so, and it surprised him that it should have been so obvious. "And what led you to believe this?" he asked, matching her tone.
"I believe it was the words I am drunk." She pronounced the three words with the thrill of a card player laying down her best hand for his inspection.
"That statement would be damning indeed." He leaned forward to tap her lightly on the nose. "However, I remember rather more from that night about financial terms and the unsettling stipulation that we were only to sleep together on our wedding night, and rather less bald assertions of fact concerning states of inebriation."
She stared at him. "I... I am not speaking of that night in London. I'm speaking of the night we conversed in Hampshire."
"...Hampshire?"
A stubborn flush began to work its way up her neck, and she chewed at the side of her mouth for a moment, staring at him with a vexed expression. "You d-d-don't remember?"
He sat back again from her, seeing her obvious consternation. "We met at Westcliff's estate?"
She nodded.
"I don't remember speaking to you during my stay there," he said, slowly. "The first time we spoke... it was when you came to my house in London and you had your way with me."
"When I proposed our engagement."
"One and the same."
"It's true, though. We spoke at Stony Creek Park, though only the once."
He racked his memory, but Evie was nothing more than a vague, awkward figure on the sidelines of his notice from that time. "What did we speak of? Beside my apparently obvious drunkenness."
She bit her lip and considered. "I'm afraid I don't remember at this point," she admitted finally, sounding frustrated both with her own memory and the resolution to the story.
"I must have astounded you with my wit if the only thing you remember is that I was in my cups."
"We only spoke for a few moments - it was in the hallway, early on, just outside of the main dining hall." She paused, and her voice sank lower. "I... I was wearing a perfume that night. Lillian had a scent that she said would make the man who was our tr-true love... well, it would make them notice you, and maybe drive them a little mad. The four of us all wore a little that evening."
Sebastian arched an eyebrow. "Do tell."
Evie laughed with sudden delight, still flushed pink. "Annabelle was carried off by Mr. Hunt at some point in the evening, and Lillian informed us that Lord Westcliff was very... well... focused. With his attentions. I always wondered - " she broke off, shaking her head, and Sebastian knew what she was asking. He tried to remember the night she was describing - he was sure now that he knew the evening Evie was talking about, as it was the only night he had drank to excess during that visit - but it was a soft blur in his memory. It had been almost a year ago, and the overriding memory he had of that visit, and of that night in particular, was of desperation and his focus on Lillian Bowman as the woman who would be his financial saviour. Slowly, he shook his head.
"I'm sorry, sweet. I don't remember. I wish I did."
"How very strange to think that I remember a conversation - the first time we spoke - and you do not."
"We will have to even the field somehow." He took her hand in his own and grazed a thumb across her knuckles, following the contours of bone and skin. "I believe that it is incumbent upon you, as a loving and dutiful wife, to addle yourself on wine some evening and then contrive not to remember the affair in the morning."
She laughed again. "We shall have to procure some of Lillian's perfume as well."
"Will I be the one to wear it, then?"
She raised his hand to her lips and kissed the back of it softly, in the manner of a gentleman greeting a lady. "Only if we are st-striving for accuracy in our recreation."
"I don't believe in doing a thing by half-measures," he said solemnly, invoking his best Westcliff.
"Now that doesn't sound like the man I married," she murmured.
"I don't believe in doing a worthwhile thing by half-measures."
She licked her lips, her gaze darting to his own, and he shifted in closer to her, moving his hands to her waist. "And what would you count as worthwhile, my lord?"
"I'm a selfish man, my love. That selfishness just encompasses you now, as well."
Her breath was coming faster, and this close her eyes were blue as the thick, wavy glass of an ink bottle. "I think..."
There was the sound of a muffled cough from the doorway, and Evie jumped back from him, her face flaming into scarlet. The man stood stoically in the doorway, staring fixedly at a spot approximately six inches above Sebastian head, and said, "Pardon me, my lord, but you mentioned that I should let you know when the building inspectors arrived."
"So I did," he said coolly. "Show them into the reading room and inform them that I'll be with them in a moment." The man bowed and fled the scene.
"How gauche to be interrupted while seducing one's own wife," he muttered as he collected his overcoat and hat, and Evie stifled a burst of laughter, bent over the account books again.
---
Sebastian made it a habit to be seen on the floor during the evenings he was in the club, both to keep an eye on the pace and tempo of the play, and to mingle with the club members who felt that a few words with the owner increased their cachet. His social standing had changed since marrying Evie, as both a man who took an interest in his investments and was publicly protective of his wife. He liked to think that the damage to his rakish reputation by his unstated devotion to Evie and his business was offset somewhat by implications found in running a gambling hall; he was just prosaic enough to realize that this was probably not the case, and indeed lent itself to another sort of reputation altogether.
The hall was up tempo tonight, though without the tremulous buzz of a truly hectic night, and Sebastian had found himself drifting from game to game, throwing a few rolls of the dice at one hazard table, making a single bet on behalf of a young blue blood at another, and currently sitting in on the play at one of the loo tables as Lord Sewell's partner. The cards were not falling in his favour, but as he preferred to play without overwhelming the odds of the table his current losing streak suited him fine.
The table was in its third deal when he saw Evie at the doorway of the card room, scanning faces. She had changed out of the muslin frock for a crimson evening dress, lashed tightly around her waist and emphasizing her ample curves. The blood red of the dress brought out the pale flush in her complexion and the dusting of freckles along the structure of her cheeks. Her hair was pinned up, studded with small, irregular Scotch pearls, gleaming a moonlight white against the pageant of colour. She smiled as she caught sight of him, and it was as if a great tension left her body.
She moved across the room with eyes only for him, and there were eddies of masculine murmurs in her wake.
"Sebastian," she said quietly, placing a hand on his arm. "I am sorry to interrupt, but Mr. Rohan needs a word with you." She looked up at the table and spoke a little louder, the words clear and careful. "Excuse us, gentlemen."
"Of course," he murmured, and pushed his cards toward the centre of the table. "Abnoth will take my place, I believe."
"Tend to your wife," Lord Sewell said genially, waving a hand. Sebastian's references listed the man as a widower who frequented the loo tables every evening, playing with a small but consistent pool of money that he tended carefully, known as a genial companion and well liked at the tables as a shrewd partner. Evie's opinion of the man was that he was kind to her, and lonely.
Sebastian nodded to the table, and took his leave. "Good evening, gentlemen." He tucked Evie's arm absently into his own as they left the small antechamber, escorting her around the perimeter of the main floor.
He snuck a glance at his wife as they walked together. "You look ravishing, darling," he told her pleasantly under his breath, and the only sign she gave that she had heard him was a slight tightening of her grip on his bent arm. "Positively delectable. That dress is doing rather astonishing things with your breasts."
"I think that is the p-point," she whispered back, and nodded slightly at several acquaintances at a nearby hazard table.
"What business does Rohan need me for? I've half a mind to pull you upstairs and to hell with the man. To hell with this club, when you're wearing that dress. It's delightfully sinful. You should wear it all the time."
Evie blushed pleasingly, lighting up the freckles that swept across her face from cheekbone to cheekbone like constellations, but only said in a mild tone, "We're needed in the reading room."
The reading room was empty when they arrived. Sebastian covered the distance to the back wall in long impatient strides and turned to find Evie beaming up at him from under his nose, the sedate mask she had been wearing dropped. He traced a hand wistfully down the slick fabric stretched taut over her hips, and glanced resentfully over his wife's head at the open door. "Where is the damned fool?" he asked, but the question came out with far less bite than he had intended.
She waved his question away. "Oh, Cam does need to speak with you, but not right now; it's about the books for last month. But I have to show you, Sebastian - I found something."
Evie wove her fingers into his at the curve of her waist, pressing their palms together, and pulled him toward the bookcase next to the fireplace. She cast a furtive glance over her shoulder at the open door, hit the edge of the bookcase with the palm of her hand, and yanked him into the passageway. The door closed behind them with a faint click, and the two of them were plunged into darkness.
"Evie," he said, "darling, you do realize-" and broke off when a body hit him full in the chest. Evie's hands clasped around the back of his neck, and her mouth hit the side of his with a blind, awkward kiss.
"I've wanted to kiss you all evening," she whispered, and he raked his hand up through her coifed hairstyle, scattering pearled pins at their feet and dragging tendrils of hair along with his fingertips.
"I pride myself on having more ambitious plans," he said in her ear.
He heard her take a deep breath and pull away from him slightly. "I... I have a surprise for you first."
"I have all manner of surprises for you, and we don't have to go anywhere else. But Evie, darling, I do know about this secret passage; I had Rohan take me through all the ins and outs of the building after taking ownership. So you're covered there, love." He bent to kiss her again, slowly this time, taking pleasure in the sheer physicality of the act.
He felt her reach up and lace her fingers through his again, and she broke away from the kiss at the same moment she started to tug him down the hallway. "Come on," she said, a little short of breath, "we can hurry."
---
Evie's hand firmly grasped his own as she pulled him forward. The passageway was dark but dimly lit with scratches of light shining through boards that did not quite fit together. Sebastian could see only flashes of blood red leading him forward - a glimmer of light in his wife's hair, the curve of her hip in that brilliant dress - but little else.
"...Cam found the original building records and the two of us have been combing though the plans, double-checking that there is nothing unknown between the two of us. I was measuring the reading room and the billiard room a couple days ago, and I n-n-noticed a difference in the size recorded in the plans. I was looking into it further this evening when I found," she paused as they came to an unremarkable bend in the passage, and dropped his hand to run her own over the seam between two boards to the right of them, "...this."
There was the groan of rusted metal, and part of the wall in front of them swung away into a small, dusty antechamber. It was insulated and bare of furniture, although a little better lit than the hall they had just been in due to a few air vents coming in from unknown sources. There was a muffled buzz of constant conversation in the room despite its emptiness. Evie put her finger to her lips as he stepped into the room, and she closed the door carefully behind them, wincing at the noise.
She gestured to him, and he came forward to where she stood next to a small flap on the wall, which swung around a loose, rusty nail. There were several other instances of the same contraption at a few other points along the wall, all around hip level. She pointed with exaggerated meaning to her eye and then to the wooden flap, and Sebastian crouched down obligingly and swung the panel up. He found himself looking into the club's smoking room from underneath a small tea table pushed up against the wall, and in the midst of a low conversation between Lords Stileson and Haldane about the proposed tax hikes facing the House of Lords.
He stood back up, wrapped his arms around his wife, and bent his lips to her ear. "Brilliant," he murmured.
She went to tiptoes and he ducked his head down to her. "I haven't told Cam yet," she whispered.
"Clever girl," he said, and bit her ear, pinning the unadorned lobe between his front teeth.
She breathed out hard, and tightened her grip around his waist.
"Was this your father's doing?"
"It must have been. With the dust so thick, I shouldn't think anybody has been here since he fell ill."
Voices drifted in and out of the room, fragments of what Sebastian was sure he would consider later to be very interesting conversations. "I agree," he said gently into her hair. "Also, I'm going to take you up against that wall right now. You'll have to be very quiet."
"I believe," said Evie, "that m-most people would consider you the more vocal of the two of us."
"I believe," he murmured, "that statement constitutes a challenge."
She started backing up to the wall, pulling him with her, a slow smile lighting up her face, and Sebastian wondered again how he could have ever thought her plain.
She pulled him flush to her against the wall, and he ran his hands down the slippery fabric of her dress, brushing the curves of her breasts and spanning his fingers along the line of her waist. She kissed him with a peculiar sort of intensity, and he kissed her back with preemptive loneliness, the weight of the upcoming nights he would spend in an empty, silent bed in his father's estate on his mind.
"Help me with my skirts," she said in a low voice, and he trailed a hand up the line of her leg, pooling heavy layers of fabric on his forearm until they had an armful of the stuff between the two of them. Her hands were at his waist, unbuttoning, as he dragged his tongue down the hollow of her collarbone.
He stooped his head to kiss her again, gnawing playfully at her bottom lip, when her hand guided him into her and the sensation made him see white, a waterfall of lights behind his eyes as he breathed, motionless, into her mouth. She squirmed a little and hooked a leg behind him, struggling for purchase against the wall, and he put a hand to her hips to steady and lift her a little, gasping at the motion.
"Christ," he said. "Don't..." Her hips bucked into his, and he groaned, hissing between his teeth.
"Sebastian," she half-said, the words stuck in the back of her throat as he started to move inside her.
He leaned over blindly and tried for a teasing note in his voice. "Shh, Evie. Quiet as a... as a dormouse."
His eyes were closed, screwed shut, and her voice was in his ear. "It doesn't m-matter. There's just us." She whispered it to him like it was a secret and a promise both. "They can't hear us. They'll n-never know."
A dim part of his mind that was still capable of reason worked to hold Evie steadily and minimize the noise any old boards might make behind them as he leaned his forehead unsteadily against her own. "Only us," he said finally, the words difficult and breathless.
He felt her angle her hips a little differently against him, arching her back, and she gasped, a small sound in the quiet room.
"O-only us... us," he heard her repeat shakily, her voice raspy and the letters stuttering on her tongue, and his orgasm blindsided him at the halting sound of her voice, overtaking him from out of nowhere. His muscles turned molten and traitorous, leaving only the bones of his skeleton to keep him upright. He retained just enough sense to blindly reach a hand down and bring her along with him, her tension like a piano wire under his fingers, and he bit at the side of his mouth as he felt her shuddering around what was left of him.
"Christ, Evie," he said after a moment, panting against the dampness at the skin of her neck.
She dragged her fingernails up the back of his scalp, and he shivered with sudden goose bumps.
"I know," she said softly.
---
Afterward, he helped her gather up the pins that had fallen from her hair, miming a silent triumph whenever he found one of the thin pearl-tipped clasps. Her hair was loose now in thick waves, the curls falling around her bare shoulders. He helped her to pull the front half back and twist it up into a reasonable approximation of style, sticking a few of the pins in here and there for greater effect, and swatted the dust from the back of her dress with commendable efficiency.
"It's clear now," she said after a moment of peering through a small peephole set in the wooden doorway, cleverly constructed with a magnifying lens, and pushed at the bookcase leading back into the reading room. They slipped through like thieves, closing the door behind them with a quiet click, and Sebastian found himself smiling like a fool infatuated schoolboy as he caught his wife's eye and they walked out of the double doors back into the world.
---
The club was quiet in the dim early morning, with only a thin rim of light on the horizon giving the windows a faint yellow glow and a few flickering oil lamps still lit in the main hall. The hazard and card tables were uncharacteristically empty, the chairs pushed back haphazardly and the dice forgotten on the tables, to be thrown out in a few short hours. Sebastian was leaning against the wooden door frame to the smoking saloon, his face solemn and half in shadow. The bottom corner of his lip stung gently where he had taken a stray punch in the alleyway while breaking up a minor fight, and the mass of scar tissue in his side ached where the bullet had cut through his abdomen months before.
He could not remember feeling more at peace with the world.
Evie slipped off her shoes and padded over to him on stockinged feet, her skirt brushing silently over the wooden floor. He felt as though he could hear his heart beating in the absolute quiet of early dawn, like a pebble disturbing the surface of a clear lake. He tucked an arm around her waist when she reached him, and they stood together silently, looking over the kingdom they had created.
"My lord," Evie said softly, half-turning to him as though to say more but instead finding that she had said all that she intended to say.
He kissed her, silently, pressing his lips to hers chastely, and the dim glow of rising sunlight illuminated the contours of the world around them.
---
Stony Creek Park, Hampshire, Summer 1843
Sebastian St. Vincent scowled, and made short work of a nearby glass of wine.
He could feel his chance at escaping the debtor's prison slipping maddeningly through his fingers, and the world continued to swirl around him without a care. The bright flashing of lady's skirts, the low self-satisfied laughter of the men talking amongst themselves, the women with their slow smiles and easy charms - the room mocked him with its gaiety. The whole world could go to hell. It seemed determined to send him there, at least, and so deserved to go with him.
He downed another glass of wine and made his escape, sidling toward the door to the back and slipping out into the dark. Westcliff's estate was a place of echoes, with ceilings too high to be cozy and furnishings too sparse to be anything but elegant. The heels of his shoes picked out an uneven tempo as he felt his way slowly down the hallway. His head was spinning unpleasantly, tilting the walls around him in a highly suspicious fashion.
He turned a corner and there was a woman's figure at the far end of the hall, a shawl wrapped tightly her shoulders and her body in silhouette against a large window. She started visibly as his foot hit the carved foot of a side table with a dull thud.
"W-who's there?" she called out, and her voice gave her away as Miss Jenner, one of Miss Bowman's coterie of friends and a poor, stuttering thing, always on the outskirts of the room. He struggled to remember more about the girl, but the only things that came to mind were an unfortunate mess of red hair and a perpetual downward gaze.
He swept her an over-elaborate bow, and nearly lost his balance as the motion made his head swim. "Lord St. Vincent, at your service."
"Oh," she said stupidly, and silence fell between them. He was just about to move past her when she spoke up again in a determinedly conversational tone, her tone carefully measured. "And how are you this evening, m-my lord?"
He considered. "Drunk. I am drunk, my pet."
She was silent again, and the darkness meant he could not see if the expression on her face was disgust or pity or polite shock or something more complicated than that. He felt frustration welling up in him again, and took a quick step toward the girl, in the mood to bait something (someone) he had no right to.
As he came closer to her, though, he caught a whiff of fragrance - it must be a perfume she wore, clinging to the air around her like static electricity, and the scent stopped him as though it were a physical barrier. It was a dark, almost masculine fragrance, with no floral overtones, and a surprising choice for any woman and a stuttering wallflower in particular. He took an uncertain step backward, instinctively, and the words he had intended to say fell off his tongue, but they lacked sharpness and instead sounded oddly distant and uncertain to his ears. "Life is tiresome," he heard himself say. "I find myself having little patience for it of late."
She was quiet again, but only for a moment this time. "Maybe things will get b-better," she stammered.
"How charmingly naive," he said flatly.
She moved defensively to draw the shawl more tightly around herself, and the motion shifted the mass of her hair, the strands disturbing the air and fragrance about her so that he could smell her again. There was a sweet, subtle note underneath the musky scent, like the clean smell of warm sugar tangled up in the darker taste of caramel, and for a moment he closed his eyes. He felt a wash of exhaustion pass through him, and his knees almost buckled.
He took another step backward from her, and took a deep clearing breath of the odourless, stale air in the dark hallway.
"Excuse me," he said shortly, and bowed to her again, much less elaborately. "Good night, my lady."
"O-of course," she said quietly. "Good night, Lord St. Vincent."
He left her in the hallway, still staring silently out the window at a midnight sky speckled with faint stars.
Author: blithers
Fandom: "The Devil in Winter" by Lisa Kleypas
Pairing/Character: Evangeline Jenner/Sebastian St. Vincent
Rating: R
Word Count: 5269
Disclaimer: Very much not mine.
Also Posted At: AO3
Author's Note: Written for Tangerine for Yuletide 2011. Title is from the song "It's Only Time" by the Magnetic Fields. Thank you to my betas starry-starrrz and inforpenny!
Summary: He was tangled up in his wife in ways that were complicated and nerve-racking and wholly new, and he was still adjusting to the presence of her in his life. He sometimes felt that his love for her was a physical thing, residing in his chest and pushing aside other internals to make room; the sensation was both terrifying and fascinating.
Jenner's Club, Spring 1844
The day was young, and younger still for a gambling hall; the sun was high but the activity on the main floor below him was just beginning to stir for the day. The cleaning staff were clearing the tables and rubbing their own eyes blearily, and the clash of metal from the kitchen foreshadowed the warm smell of baking bread and long-simmering soups that would soon fill the building. Chairs were pushed back into tables and banisters were dusted and polished with wax and lemon oil. Two young girls, chatting in low voices, had their skirts knotted up around their knees as they scrubbed the wooden floor leading into one of the dining chambers.
Sebastian didn't hear his wife approach, but he felt her hand slip into his for a moment, her fingers tangling in his and squeezing them briefly, as she joined him in looking down at the club.
Evie wore a muslin gown dyed the pale green of tart apples, and her hair was pulled back in a thick braid, the brilliant red offset by the colour of the dress. She leaned her elbows on the banister next to his own, mimicking his posture, and propped her chin up in her hands as she gazed solemnly at her father's club. With her face scrubbed clean, her hair pulled back from her ears, and freckles scattered haphazardly across her pale skin, she looked far younger than her twenty three years.
She frowned a little as she surveyed the main hall underneath them, her brows knitted together in thought, and Sebastian wondered if any man had ever loved a woman as much as he loved the one standing beside him. It was a ridiculous, grandiose thought, but Sebastian had never been one to let a thing like that stop him. He was tangled up in his wife in ways that were complicated and nerve-racking and wholly new, and he was still adjusting to the presence of her in his life. He sometimes felt that his love for her was a physical thing, residing in his chest and pushing aside other internals to make room; the sensation was both terrifying and fascinating.
She smiled shyly as she looked over and caught him watching her. He kissed her hand, and the gold of her wedding ring was warm against his lips. "Good morning, love. Sleep well?"
She blushed a little at that, acutely aware that they were in public, and her silence spoke more eloquently than a coy reply would have.
"Me thinks the lady doth protest too much," he said mildly.
She shook her head, biting at her lip to hide a smile. She turned her attention back to the ground floor where the young house maids were laughing in girlish shrieks and speckling each other with drops of water from the bucket between them, and as she watched them she spun her wedding ring around her finger, the engraving on the band rotating in and out of his vision.
---
He skimmed the previous night's floor report with his boots on the desk, while Evie sat neat and straight in the chair across from him, tallying the housekeeping books. She bit the tip of her tongue as she did sums, double-checking the totals and reviewing the purchases made in the past month.
"Listen to this, pet. St. Vincent obliged to separate gentlemen; damages collected in duplicate; arrangement with Madame Bradshaw to the benefit of all."
"Mmhmm," she said, her eyes still on her work.
"Good man, billing in duplicate."
"Always," she agreed absently.
He put down the report and leaned back in the chair, arching his back in a cat stretch, and rolled his head around. Evie licked the point of her pencil before making a note in the margin of a column of needed kitchen supplies. Small wisps of corkscrewed hair were starting to escape from her braid, giving her an aura like a sunrise in the slanting afternoon light of his office.
"Evie, sweet, have I told you today how lovely you are?"
She looked up at him then, a small smile at the corner of her lips. "Yes."
Damn his younger self, punch-drunk in the early morning haze of lying abed with his wife. "You will simply have to bear to hear the sentiment twice, then. I am working to create a surplus to tide you over in my absence, so some repetition may occur."
Something softened in her eyes at that, and she said, quietly, "I'm going to miss you, Sebastian."
He was leaving the next day on business for Kingston, precipitated by an array of threats from his father ranging from thinly veiled to outright declarations of hostile action, and to say he was less than pleased about the trip was an understatement. He could no longer put his father off with ominously worded updates about his delicate state of health after being shot, as if the event was a mere inconvenience to the man. It was to be the first time he and Evie would be apart since being married, and the prospect unsettled him far more than he would have liked.
"Just think," he said, keeping his tone light, "you'll finally be free of me for a few days."
"I don't w-want you to go. I know you have to, but..."
"Trust me, love, I would prefer not to go as well."
She came around to him, leaning against the edge of the desk between his legs, and studied him with a solemn expression. She reached up to brush a lock of hair off his forehead, and he stilled under her touch, like she was a mythical fairy tale heroine and he was some damned shivering wilderness creature under her thrall.
"I remember when I first spoke with you." Evie's voice was low and dreamy, her fingers tangled in his hair. "I never would have guessed we would end up like this."
"And how is this?"
"Happy," she said simply.
"It surprises me as well, my dear."
She paused, and a teasing smile flitted across her lips. "Indeed, I believe you were drunk the first time we spoke, my lord."
He had indeed been in his cups the first night they spoke in his library, but not deeply so, and it surprised him that it should have been so obvious. "And what led you to believe this?" he asked, matching her tone.
"I believe it was the words I am drunk." She pronounced the three words with the thrill of a card player laying down her best hand for his inspection.
"That statement would be damning indeed." He leaned forward to tap her lightly on the nose. "However, I remember rather more from that night about financial terms and the unsettling stipulation that we were only to sleep together on our wedding night, and rather less bald assertions of fact concerning states of inebriation."
She stared at him. "I... I am not speaking of that night in London. I'm speaking of the night we conversed in Hampshire."
"...Hampshire?"
A stubborn flush began to work its way up her neck, and she chewed at the side of her mouth for a moment, staring at him with a vexed expression. "You d-d-don't remember?"
He sat back again from her, seeing her obvious consternation. "We met at Westcliff's estate?"
She nodded.
"I don't remember speaking to you during my stay there," he said, slowly. "The first time we spoke... it was when you came to my house in London and you had your way with me."
"When I proposed our engagement."
"One and the same."
"It's true, though. We spoke at Stony Creek Park, though only the once."
He racked his memory, but Evie was nothing more than a vague, awkward figure on the sidelines of his notice from that time. "What did we speak of? Beside my apparently obvious drunkenness."
She bit her lip and considered. "I'm afraid I don't remember at this point," she admitted finally, sounding frustrated both with her own memory and the resolution to the story.
"I must have astounded you with my wit if the only thing you remember is that I was in my cups."
"We only spoke for a few moments - it was in the hallway, early on, just outside of the main dining hall." She paused, and her voice sank lower. "I... I was wearing a perfume that night. Lillian had a scent that she said would make the man who was our tr-true love... well, it would make them notice you, and maybe drive them a little mad. The four of us all wore a little that evening."
Sebastian arched an eyebrow. "Do tell."
Evie laughed with sudden delight, still flushed pink. "Annabelle was carried off by Mr. Hunt at some point in the evening, and Lillian informed us that Lord Westcliff was very... well... focused. With his attentions. I always wondered - " she broke off, shaking her head, and Sebastian knew what she was asking. He tried to remember the night she was describing - he was sure now that he knew the evening Evie was talking about, as it was the only night he had drank to excess during that visit - but it was a soft blur in his memory. It had been almost a year ago, and the overriding memory he had of that visit, and of that night in particular, was of desperation and his focus on Lillian Bowman as the woman who would be his financial saviour. Slowly, he shook his head.
"I'm sorry, sweet. I don't remember. I wish I did."
"How very strange to think that I remember a conversation - the first time we spoke - and you do not."
"We will have to even the field somehow." He took her hand in his own and grazed a thumb across her knuckles, following the contours of bone and skin. "I believe that it is incumbent upon you, as a loving and dutiful wife, to addle yourself on wine some evening and then contrive not to remember the affair in the morning."
She laughed again. "We shall have to procure some of Lillian's perfume as well."
"Will I be the one to wear it, then?"
She raised his hand to her lips and kissed the back of it softly, in the manner of a gentleman greeting a lady. "Only if we are st-striving for accuracy in our recreation."
"I don't believe in doing a thing by half-measures," he said solemnly, invoking his best Westcliff.
"Now that doesn't sound like the man I married," she murmured.
"I don't believe in doing a worthwhile thing by half-measures."
She licked her lips, her gaze darting to his own, and he shifted in closer to her, moving his hands to her waist. "And what would you count as worthwhile, my lord?"
"I'm a selfish man, my love. That selfishness just encompasses you now, as well."
Her breath was coming faster, and this close her eyes were blue as the thick, wavy glass of an ink bottle. "I think..."
There was the sound of a muffled cough from the doorway, and Evie jumped back from him, her face flaming into scarlet. The man stood stoically in the doorway, staring fixedly at a spot approximately six inches above Sebastian head, and said, "Pardon me, my lord, but you mentioned that I should let you know when the building inspectors arrived."
"So I did," he said coolly. "Show them into the reading room and inform them that I'll be with them in a moment." The man bowed and fled the scene.
"How gauche to be interrupted while seducing one's own wife," he muttered as he collected his overcoat and hat, and Evie stifled a burst of laughter, bent over the account books again.
---
Sebastian made it a habit to be seen on the floor during the evenings he was in the club, both to keep an eye on the pace and tempo of the play, and to mingle with the club members who felt that a few words with the owner increased their cachet. His social standing had changed since marrying Evie, as both a man who took an interest in his investments and was publicly protective of his wife. He liked to think that the damage to his rakish reputation by his unstated devotion to Evie and his business was offset somewhat by implications found in running a gambling hall; he was just prosaic enough to realize that this was probably not the case, and indeed lent itself to another sort of reputation altogether.
The hall was up tempo tonight, though without the tremulous buzz of a truly hectic night, and Sebastian had found himself drifting from game to game, throwing a few rolls of the dice at one hazard table, making a single bet on behalf of a young blue blood at another, and currently sitting in on the play at one of the loo tables as Lord Sewell's partner. The cards were not falling in his favour, but as he preferred to play without overwhelming the odds of the table his current losing streak suited him fine.
The table was in its third deal when he saw Evie at the doorway of the card room, scanning faces. She had changed out of the muslin frock for a crimson evening dress, lashed tightly around her waist and emphasizing her ample curves. The blood red of the dress brought out the pale flush in her complexion and the dusting of freckles along the structure of her cheeks. Her hair was pinned up, studded with small, irregular Scotch pearls, gleaming a moonlight white against the pageant of colour. She smiled as she caught sight of him, and it was as if a great tension left her body.
She moved across the room with eyes only for him, and there were eddies of masculine murmurs in her wake.
"Sebastian," she said quietly, placing a hand on his arm. "I am sorry to interrupt, but Mr. Rohan needs a word with you." She looked up at the table and spoke a little louder, the words clear and careful. "Excuse us, gentlemen."
"Of course," he murmured, and pushed his cards toward the centre of the table. "Abnoth will take my place, I believe."
"Tend to your wife," Lord Sewell said genially, waving a hand. Sebastian's references listed the man as a widower who frequented the loo tables every evening, playing with a small but consistent pool of money that he tended carefully, known as a genial companion and well liked at the tables as a shrewd partner. Evie's opinion of the man was that he was kind to her, and lonely.
Sebastian nodded to the table, and took his leave. "Good evening, gentlemen." He tucked Evie's arm absently into his own as they left the small antechamber, escorting her around the perimeter of the main floor.
He snuck a glance at his wife as they walked together. "You look ravishing, darling," he told her pleasantly under his breath, and the only sign she gave that she had heard him was a slight tightening of her grip on his bent arm. "Positively delectable. That dress is doing rather astonishing things with your breasts."
"I think that is the p-point," she whispered back, and nodded slightly at several acquaintances at a nearby hazard table.
"What business does Rohan need me for? I've half a mind to pull you upstairs and to hell with the man. To hell with this club, when you're wearing that dress. It's delightfully sinful. You should wear it all the time."
Evie blushed pleasingly, lighting up the freckles that swept across her face from cheekbone to cheekbone like constellations, but only said in a mild tone, "We're needed in the reading room."
The reading room was empty when they arrived. Sebastian covered the distance to the back wall in long impatient strides and turned to find Evie beaming up at him from under his nose, the sedate mask she had been wearing dropped. He traced a hand wistfully down the slick fabric stretched taut over her hips, and glanced resentfully over his wife's head at the open door. "Where is the damned fool?" he asked, but the question came out with far less bite than he had intended.
She waved his question away. "Oh, Cam does need to speak with you, but not right now; it's about the books for last month. But I have to show you, Sebastian - I found something."
Evie wove her fingers into his at the curve of her waist, pressing their palms together, and pulled him toward the bookcase next to the fireplace. She cast a furtive glance over her shoulder at the open door, hit the edge of the bookcase with the palm of her hand, and yanked him into the passageway. The door closed behind them with a faint click, and the two of them were plunged into darkness.
"Evie," he said, "darling, you do realize-" and broke off when a body hit him full in the chest. Evie's hands clasped around the back of his neck, and her mouth hit the side of his with a blind, awkward kiss.
"I've wanted to kiss you all evening," she whispered, and he raked his hand up through her coifed hairstyle, scattering pearled pins at their feet and dragging tendrils of hair along with his fingertips.
"I pride myself on having more ambitious plans," he said in her ear.
He heard her take a deep breath and pull away from him slightly. "I... I have a surprise for you first."
"I have all manner of surprises for you, and we don't have to go anywhere else. But Evie, darling, I do know about this secret passage; I had Rohan take me through all the ins and outs of the building after taking ownership. So you're covered there, love." He bent to kiss her again, slowly this time, taking pleasure in the sheer physicality of the act.
He felt her reach up and lace her fingers through his again, and she broke away from the kiss at the same moment she started to tug him down the hallway. "Come on," she said, a little short of breath, "we can hurry."
---
Evie's hand firmly grasped his own as she pulled him forward. The passageway was dark but dimly lit with scratches of light shining through boards that did not quite fit together. Sebastian could see only flashes of blood red leading him forward - a glimmer of light in his wife's hair, the curve of her hip in that brilliant dress - but little else.
"...Cam found the original building records and the two of us have been combing though the plans, double-checking that there is nothing unknown between the two of us. I was measuring the reading room and the billiard room a couple days ago, and I n-n-noticed a difference in the size recorded in the plans. I was looking into it further this evening when I found," she paused as they came to an unremarkable bend in the passage, and dropped his hand to run her own over the seam between two boards to the right of them, "...this."
There was the groan of rusted metal, and part of the wall in front of them swung away into a small, dusty antechamber. It was insulated and bare of furniture, although a little better lit than the hall they had just been in due to a few air vents coming in from unknown sources. There was a muffled buzz of constant conversation in the room despite its emptiness. Evie put her finger to her lips as he stepped into the room, and she closed the door carefully behind them, wincing at the noise.
She gestured to him, and he came forward to where she stood next to a small flap on the wall, which swung around a loose, rusty nail. There were several other instances of the same contraption at a few other points along the wall, all around hip level. She pointed with exaggerated meaning to her eye and then to the wooden flap, and Sebastian crouched down obligingly and swung the panel up. He found himself looking into the club's smoking room from underneath a small tea table pushed up against the wall, and in the midst of a low conversation between Lords Stileson and Haldane about the proposed tax hikes facing the House of Lords.
He stood back up, wrapped his arms around his wife, and bent his lips to her ear. "Brilliant," he murmured.
She went to tiptoes and he ducked his head down to her. "I haven't told Cam yet," she whispered.
"Clever girl," he said, and bit her ear, pinning the unadorned lobe between his front teeth.
She breathed out hard, and tightened her grip around his waist.
"Was this your father's doing?"
"It must have been. With the dust so thick, I shouldn't think anybody has been here since he fell ill."
Voices drifted in and out of the room, fragments of what Sebastian was sure he would consider later to be very interesting conversations. "I agree," he said gently into her hair. "Also, I'm going to take you up against that wall right now. You'll have to be very quiet."
"I believe," said Evie, "that m-most people would consider you the more vocal of the two of us."
"I believe," he murmured, "that statement constitutes a challenge."
She started backing up to the wall, pulling him with her, a slow smile lighting up her face, and Sebastian wondered again how he could have ever thought her plain.
She pulled him flush to her against the wall, and he ran his hands down the slippery fabric of her dress, brushing the curves of her breasts and spanning his fingers along the line of her waist. She kissed him with a peculiar sort of intensity, and he kissed her back with preemptive loneliness, the weight of the upcoming nights he would spend in an empty, silent bed in his father's estate on his mind.
"Help me with my skirts," she said in a low voice, and he trailed a hand up the line of her leg, pooling heavy layers of fabric on his forearm until they had an armful of the stuff between the two of them. Her hands were at his waist, unbuttoning, as he dragged his tongue down the hollow of her collarbone.
He stooped his head to kiss her again, gnawing playfully at her bottom lip, when her hand guided him into her and the sensation made him see white, a waterfall of lights behind his eyes as he breathed, motionless, into her mouth. She squirmed a little and hooked a leg behind him, struggling for purchase against the wall, and he put a hand to her hips to steady and lift her a little, gasping at the motion.
"Christ," he said. "Don't..." Her hips bucked into his, and he groaned, hissing between his teeth.
"Sebastian," she half-said, the words stuck in the back of her throat as he started to move inside her.
He leaned over blindly and tried for a teasing note in his voice. "Shh, Evie. Quiet as a... as a dormouse."
His eyes were closed, screwed shut, and her voice was in his ear. "It doesn't m-matter. There's just us." She whispered it to him like it was a secret and a promise both. "They can't hear us. They'll n-never know."
A dim part of his mind that was still capable of reason worked to hold Evie steadily and minimize the noise any old boards might make behind them as he leaned his forehead unsteadily against her own. "Only us," he said finally, the words difficult and breathless.
He felt her angle her hips a little differently against him, arching her back, and she gasped, a small sound in the quiet room.
"O-only us... us," he heard her repeat shakily, her voice raspy and the letters stuttering on her tongue, and his orgasm blindsided him at the halting sound of her voice, overtaking him from out of nowhere. His muscles turned molten and traitorous, leaving only the bones of his skeleton to keep him upright. He retained just enough sense to blindly reach a hand down and bring her along with him, her tension like a piano wire under his fingers, and he bit at the side of his mouth as he felt her shuddering around what was left of him.
"Christ, Evie," he said after a moment, panting against the dampness at the skin of her neck.
She dragged her fingernails up the back of his scalp, and he shivered with sudden goose bumps.
"I know," she said softly.
---
Afterward, he helped her gather up the pins that had fallen from her hair, miming a silent triumph whenever he found one of the thin pearl-tipped clasps. Her hair was loose now in thick waves, the curls falling around her bare shoulders. He helped her to pull the front half back and twist it up into a reasonable approximation of style, sticking a few of the pins in here and there for greater effect, and swatted the dust from the back of her dress with commendable efficiency.
"It's clear now," she said after a moment of peering through a small peephole set in the wooden doorway, cleverly constructed with a magnifying lens, and pushed at the bookcase leading back into the reading room. They slipped through like thieves, closing the door behind them with a quiet click, and Sebastian found himself smiling like a fool infatuated schoolboy as he caught his wife's eye and they walked out of the double doors back into the world.
---
The club was quiet in the dim early morning, with only a thin rim of light on the horizon giving the windows a faint yellow glow and a few flickering oil lamps still lit in the main hall. The hazard and card tables were uncharacteristically empty, the chairs pushed back haphazardly and the dice forgotten on the tables, to be thrown out in a few short hours. Sebastian was leaning against the wooden door frame to the smoking saloon, his face solemn and half in shadow. The bottom corner of his lip stung gently where he had taken a stray punch in the alleyway while breaking up a minor fight, and the mass of scar tissue in his side ached where the bullet had cut through his abdomen months before.
He could not remember feeling more at peace with the world.
Evie slipped off her shoes and padded over to him on stockinged feet, her skirt brushing silently over the wooden floor. He felt as though he could hear his heart beating in the absolute quiet of early dawn, like a pebble disturbing the surface of a clear lake. He tucked an arm around her waist when she reached him, and they stood together silently, looking over the kingdom they had created.
"My lord," Evie said softly, half-turning to him as though to say more but instead finding that she had said all that she intended to say.
He kissed her, silently, pressing his lips to hers chastely, and the dim glow of rising sunlight illuminated the contours of the world around them.
---
Stony Creek Park, Hampshire, Summer 1843
Sebastian St. Vincent scowled, and made short work of a nearby glass of wine.
He could feel his chance at escaping the debtor's prison slipping maddeningly through his fingers, and the world continued to swirl around him without a care. The bright flashing of lady's skirts, the low self-satisfied laughter of the men talking amongst themselves, the women with their slow smiles and easy charms - the room mocked him with its gaiety. The whole world could go to hell. It seemed determined to send him there, at least, and so deserved to go with him.
He downed another glass of wine and made his escape, sidling toward the door to the back and slipping out into the dark. Westcliff's estate was a place of echoes, with ceilings too high to be cozy and furnishings too sparse to be anything but elegant. The heels of his shoes picked out an uneven tempo as he felt his way slowly down the hallway. His head was spinning unpleasantly, tilting the walls around him in a highly suspicious fashion.
He turned a corner and there was a woman's figure at the far end of the hall, a shawl wrapped tightly her shoulders and her body in silhouette against a large window. She started visibly as his foot hit the carved foot of a side table with a dull thud.
"W-who's there?" she called out, and her voice gave her away as Miss Jenner, one of Miss Bowman's coterie of friends and a poor, stuttering thing, always on the outskirts of the room. He struggled to remember more about the girl, but the only things that came to mind were an unfortunate mess of red hair and a perpetual downward gaze.
He swept her an over-elaborate bow, and nearly lost his balance as the motion made his head swim. "Lord St. Vincent, at your service."
"Oh," she said stupidly, and silence fell between them. He was just about to move past her when she spoke up again in a determinedly conversational tone, her tone carefully measured. "And how are you this evening, m-my lord?"
He considered. "Drunk. I am drunk, my pet."
She was silent again, and the darkness meant he could not see if the expression on her face was disgust or pity or polite shock or something more complicated than that. He felt frustration welling up in him again, and took a quick step toward the girl, in the mood to bait something (someone) he had no right to.
As he came closer to her, though, he caught a whiff of fragrance - it must be a perfume she wore, clinging to the air around her like static electricity, and the scent stopped him as though it were a physical barrier. It was a dark, almost masculine fragrance, with no floral overtones, and a surprising choice for any woman and a stuttering wallflower in particular. He took an uncertain step backward, instinctively, and the words he had intended to say fell off his tongue, but they lacked sharpness and instead sounded oddly distant and uncertain to his ears. "Life is tiresome," he heard himself say. "I find myself having little patience for it of late."
She was quiet again, but only for a moment this time. "Maybe things will get b-better," she stammered.
"How charmingly naive," he said flatly.
She moved defensively to draw the shawl more tightly around herself, and the motion shifted the mass of her hair, the strands disturbing the air and fragrance about her so that he could smell her again. There was a sweet, subtle note underneath the musky scent, like the clean smell of warm sugar tangled up in the darker taste of caramel, and for a moment he closed his eyes. He felt a wash of exhaustion pass through him, and his knees almost buckled.
He took another step backward from her, and took a deep clearing breath of the odourless, stale air in the dark hallway.
"Excuse me," he said shortly, and bowed to her again, much less elaborately. "Good night, my lady."
"O-of course," she said quietly. "Good night, Lord St. Vincent."
He left her in the hallway, still staring silently out the window at a midnight sky speckled with faint stars.