A Wild Pursuit by Eloisa James Read Free Book Online Page B

respectable wife once we had a child. I can’t have one of Arabella’s scandalous parties in my house. I’m in confinement! All Arabella will say is that Marie Antoinette was dancing a minuet up to the moment she gave birth.”
    â€œWhy don’t you just accept my proposal? I’ll make an honest woman of you, and we’ll turn up our noses at the gossips.”
    Esme’s heart skipped a beat and then steadied. She scowled at him. “To begin with, I can’t marry you because you are even more scandalous than I am. Half the world believes you seduced your fiancée.”
    â€œ Former fiancée,” he put in.
    â€œBut that is nothing to the scandal if they discovered your current whereabouts. Arabella, for one, would instantly recognize you, and she’s invited any manner of persons, all of whom could also identify you.”
    â€œMmmmm.”
    He wasn’t paying attention. “I don’t understand why you consider my wishes to be so insignificant!” she said sharply, pushing his hand off her breast.
    He just grinned down at her, all thick golden hair and laughing eyes. “Because I’ve given up all that respectability you want so much, Esme. I don’t have it anymore. And I don’t give a damn. Do you know that I once actually scolded Gina for trying to kiss me in public?”
    Esme pursed her mouth. She didn’t like to think about Sebastian kissing his former fiancée, for all Gina was one of her closest friends. “That sounds just like you,” she observed. “Holy Willy, always standing on your consequence.”
    â€œI’d still have my Sir Sanctimonious credentials if I hadn’t gotten mixed up with you,” he observed. “My mother will likely faint when she hears of my new position.”
    â€œYou didn’t tell your mother!”
    He grinned. “No. But I’m going to visit her tomorrow, and I shall.”
    â€œNoooo,” Esme wailed. “You can’t. You absolutely cannot do that!” She tended to keep well away from the more stiff-rumped members of the ton, such as Marchioness Bonnington. Sebastian’s mother was one of those women who prided themselves on the fact that they needn’t be magnanimous to lesser mortals. And her son, at least before he’d become a gardener, had been an unexceptional successor to her manifold virtues.
    He shrugged. His hand was stealing up toward her breast, and his eyes had that look again.
    â€œIt will be a terrible shock for her,” Esme said, trying to find a shred of sympathy and instead finding an evil ray of pleasure in her heart. “Aren’t you rather old to be growing rebellious? I sowed my wild oats a good ten years ago.”
    Sebastian snorted. “And your mother still hasn’t recovered. She’s a bosom beau of my mother’s, you know.”
    â€œI wasn’t aware of their friendship.” Esme didn’t feel it necessary to add that she and her mother hadn’t spoken except in passing for three years. She had no idea who Fanny’s friends were. Her mother communicated only by letter, and that infrequently. “My mother has decided not to attend my confinement,” she admitted. Why on earth was she relating that pitiful fact? She hadn’t even told Helene.
    â€œYour mother is as foolish as mine, then,” he said, dropping a kiss on her nose.
    â€œFanny is not foolish,” Esme felt compelled to defend her. “She simply cares a great deal for her reputation. And I’ve—well, obviously, I’ve been a great disappointment to her. I am her only child.”
    â€œSo you are,” Sebastian said. “All the more fool she, not to be here when her grandchild is born.”
    â€œI’m afraid that my mother has…has quite discarded the idea of our further acquaintance.” It was absurd to find that she had a lump in her throat. She hadn’t even had a cup of tea