had his control snap like that. Was it another symptom of shell shock—hauling unsuspecting women into scorching kisses? He didn’t think so, but losing control like that left him stunned.
Another knock. “Langford, open the door. It is Zoe and Julia. We want to make sure you haven’t beaten each other senseless.”
Both of them. At least it meant he wouldn’t be tempted to—
No. Hell, he would never be tempted to do that again.
He took his bag of ice from his eye and opened the door. Miss Gifford walked in, beautiful in a dark blue silk robe tied at her waist and frothing around her ankles. Feathers adorned the neckline and the cuffs. Julia wore a new robe of scarlet silk.
“You have quite a shiner, brother,” Julia observed. “I’ll go check on Sebastian.” She quietly went into their brother’s room.
Miss Gifford walked up to him with her arms folded over her chest. Her face was scrubbed free of makeup. Soft pink lips. Unusual purple eyes with long, gold lashes. Soft, ivory skin.
She was beautiful. Luminous.
Then her finger jabbed his chest. “Julia is afraid she has made you angry. She’s worried she hurt you. Don’t you think she’s grieved enough?” she asked in a quietly furious voice.
She always put him on the defensive. “Of course Julia has not made me angry,” he said. “And of course I want her to stop grieving.”
“Then tell her that. She can’t live in the past. She believes she won’t have a home to live in once you are married. She fears she will be displaced by your wife, and that if she is very lucky, she might be allowed to live in a cottage.” Miss Gifford’s voice vibrated with indignation, though it stayed low in tone. “If this is true,” she went on, “Julia’s only hope for a future is marriage. And she doesn’t want to marry because she is still in love with the man she lost. I can understand what that is like. But she needs to fall in love again, and she can’t if you insist she must act as though it is still 1914. You are like that madwoman in Dickens—Miss Havisham or whatever her name was. Let your sister brush off the cobwebs and take off her unused wedding dress and find love!”
He gazed into her snapping violet eyes. “Thank you.”
“What does that mean? Will you do something? Or are you going to tell her to drop her hems back below her knees this instant?”
“I will talk to her,” he said stiffly. Without the ice on his eye, it stung again.
“Then do it now.” Miss Gifford turned and walked out.
Damn it. All he wanted to do was kiss her. He slapped the bag against his black eye. The pain of doing that helped cool his ardor. Just barely.
Then Julia came out of Sebastian’s room. Cautiously, and that in itself broke his heart.
“Are you very angry? I shouldn’t have done it.” Julia sank down to the wing chair and she looked up at him with tear-filled eyes. “Is it very wrong to go dancing when Anthony never will?”
He didn’t want her to spend her life mourning. He felt like a wretch. She had been grieving, and he was making her worry about his reaction. “It’s not wrong to go on living. Miss Gifford is right about that.”
His little sister looked so different. She had always been elegant, even as a little girl. Now even the way she tilted her head looked lively. Her bouncing hair drew his gaze. She looked freer, lighter, and she glowed in relief from her worry.
“You are extraordinarily beautiful, Julia. You look even lovelier with bobbed hair.” And he meant it. “Do you want me to take you home tomorrow?”
Julia wiped away her barely fallen tears. She gave him a wobbly smile as she stood to return to her room. “No, Zoe will drive me. But we are going to leave you to bring Sebastian home.”
He closed the door after Julia, then lay down on the sofa. He must have slept, but he woke up shouting, bathed in sweat. Jerking upright, he listened, heart pounding. Soft snores came from his brother’s bedroom. His brother was in a deep, drink-induced sleep.
Nigel sank back in relief. He stayed awake until morning, staring at the ceiling. Then he went downstairs, had breakfast and walked into the Savoy’s smoking room.
A high-backed wing chair and a newspaper hid his view of the occupant, but long legs stuck out—shapely legs revealed by a short skirt. Nigel identified the legs at once with a deep sigh.
It was Zoe Gifford—a cigarette held between her fingers, a newspaper in her hands.
All around, elderly gentlemen were muttering. Who had let her in? What were the standards of the Savoy coming to? What was the world coming to?
For a moment, Nigel sympathized with Miss Gifford. A devastating war had killed millions, had recarved Europe, had torn wounds that might scar over but would never heal. And what shocked Englishmen was a woman in the smoking room in a short skirt with her legs crossed.
He took a seat across the room, facing the window, and opened his newspaper.
A shadow fell over him. He lowered the paper. Those legs were in front of him. Zoe blew a smoke ring. “I heard what you said to your sister.”
“You listened in on a private conversation?”
“I was closing the door. It wasn’t my fault you started speaking before you were sure I’d gone. Thank you for what you said to her. She was worried about your disapproval.” Her now-painted lips curved in a smile. “She recognizes she does not have to obey you, but she does not want to fight with you.”
“I told her the truth. Thank you for urging me to.” He cleared his throat. “About what happened outside Murray’s—”
“Don’t worry, Your Grace. You know what American girls are like. We meet a boy at a dance at eight, and we’re necking in a rumble seat with him by midnight.”
He dropped his newspaper. Smiling, Miss Gifford walked away, and he had to loosen his tie.
But she cared about Julia. In the light of morning, he saw she had done a wonderful thing for his sister.
* * *
Zoe took the elevator up to Sebastian’s room. She rapped on the door—repeatedly—until Sebastian threw it open.
His eyes were bloodshot, his golden hair a disheveled mess, his clothes rumpled. “Oh, it’s you, Zoe.” He leaned against the door frame. “I’m in here alone. You shouldn’t come in, angel. It’d be a scandal without a chaperone.”
“In the state you’re in, I doubt anything could happen. Your head must be pounding.”
He groaned. And let her in.
He sprawled in a silk-cushioned chair, long legs spread out in front of him. This time he held the monogrammed towel filled with ice against his head.
Blunt and honest. That was what a Gifford was. “Sebastian, our engagement is a ruse, and it can’t be anything more. I—I was in love with someone else, and I lost him, and I don’t plan on falling in love again. No matter what.”
Sebastian had changed. When she’d met him in New York, he’d oozed charm. Now he seemed to be smoldering with anger all the time. She felt it in his tension, his drinking, his wildness.
On a groan of pain, he got down on one knee before her to take her hand. “I know, Zoe. But I’m falling in love with you. And I can’t help it.”
He gazed up at her, looking hungover, but vulnerable and gorgeous. With his blond hair, long-lashed green eyes, full, pouty lips, Sebastian was breathtaking.
But she didn’t want to kiss Sebastian and she couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss with Langford.
She’d thought him icy? He had been filled with fiery desire. His kiss set all her nerves aflame. She’d almost turned into a puddle on the sidewalk,