She lifted her gaze to find Mr. Hall watching her, his eyes dark and hooded. Her face warmed.
“Sir, are you…are you ill?” she asked.
The frank question didn’t appear to disconcert him. Instead, a vague smile curved his mouth—a smile in which any trace of humor surrendered to wickedness. A faint power crackled around him, as if attempting to break through his crust of lassitude.
“Ill?” he repeated. “Yes, Miss Whitmore, I am ill indeed.”
“Oh, I—”
He took a step forward, his hands flexing at his sides. She stepped back. Her heart thumped a restive beat. She glanced at the door, suddenly wishing Tom would hurry and arrive.
“I am ill behaved,” Mr. Hall said, his advance so deliberate that Clara had the panicked thought that she would have nowhere to go should he keep moving toward her. Should he reach out and touch her. Her skin prickled with sudden yearning for the act that she had once imagined in her youthful dreams.
She swallowed hard and tried to suppress the memories, reminding herself that she could no longer afford such girlish fancies.
“Ill considered,” Mr. Hall continued. Another step. Two. “Ill content. Ill at ease. Ill favored. Ill fated—”
“Ill bred?” Clara snapped, forcing her spine to stiffen in denial of her unforeseen anticipation.
Sebastian stopped. Then he chuckled, humor creasing his eyes. An unwelcome fascination rose in Clara’s chest as the sound of his deep, rumbling laugh settled alongside the delicious mixture of scents that she knew, even now, she would forever associate with him.
“Ill bred,” he repeated, his head cocked to the side. A lock of hair fell across his forehead. “The second son of an earl oughtn’t be ill bred, but that’s a fair assessment. My elder brother received a more thorough education in social graces.” Amusement still glimmered in his expression. “Though I don’t suppose he’s done that education much justice himself.”
Clara had little idea what he was talking about, though she did recall that his elder brother had recently wed. She also knew the Earl of Rushton had petitioned for a divorce from his wife several years ago. Rumors whispered at the edges of her mind, but back then Clara had been too ensnared in her own marriage to be concerned about a scandal involving an earl.
She realized that she’d backed up clear across the room to the stage. Sebastian stopped inches from her, close enough that she could see how the unfastened buttons of his collar revealed an inverted triangle of his skin, the vulnerable hollow of his throat where his pulse tapped.
A prickle skimmed up her forearms, tingling and delicious.
Sebastian kept looking at her, then reached into his pocket and removed a silk handkerchief. “May I?”
She shook her head, not certain what he was asking. “I beg your pardon?”
“You have—” He gestured to her cheek. “Dirt or grease.”
Before she could turn away, the cloth touched her face. She startled, more from the sensation than the sheer intimacy of the act. Sebastian Hall’s fingers were warm, light, and gentle against her face. She wondered, with a suddenness that made her heart throb, what his fingers would feel like on her skin.
He moved closer, a crease of concentration appearing between his dark eyebrows as he wiped the marks from her face with the soft handkerchief. Clara’s breath tangled in the middle of her chest. She stared at the column of his throat, bronze against the pure white of his collar, the coarse stubble roughening the underside of his chin.
She didn’t dare raise her gaze high enough to look at his mouth, though she wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to. The urge made her fingers curl tight into her palms, made a strange yearning stretch through her chest.
The muscles of his throat worked as he swallowed, his hand falling to his side. He stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket.
With his attention turned away from her, Clara noticed the weariness etched into the corners of his eyes, the brackets around his mouth, the faintly desperate expression in his eyes that had nothing to do with drink and everything to do with fatigue.
Fatigue. That was it. Sebastian Hall was bone-deep exhausted.
He met her gaze.
No. The man was exhausted past his bones and right into his soul.
Why…?
Before she could speak, Sebastian stepped back, turning toward the front of the room. Tom pushed open the doors and maneuvered a trolley loaded with four crates. He glanced up, his face red with exertion. “Almost done.”
Clara hurried to meet him. They conferred briefly about how best to