He would never control her, and she would never control him.
So where did that leave them?
As essentially equal partners, with different abilities and different strengths yet on a par with each other, as powerful as each other in this domain they were creating and shaping between them.
The landscape of their future, of the life they would share.
He stared unseeing at the ceiling. He had to admit there was temptation of a sort in that challenge.
For it would be a challenge—of that, he had no doubt.
He dipped his chin and glanced down at her. At the curve of her face he could see.
Resolution, determination, strength—much of what he recognized in her he knew also lived in him.
He’d lowered his arm. Caught in his web of contemplation—of her, of them—he ran a gentle finger down her nose. Like the rest of her, it was long, but in perfect proportion with the rest of her face.
He shifted his attention to one lithely muscled arm and traced its length with his palm.
He loved—
His mind froze.
After a moment, he tentatively considered, for once truly looked, then he shied away from the thought.
But he didn’t bury it—just left it, unaccepted but not dismissed.
He’d heard all the tales of Cynsters marrying only for love. Always for love. That any attempt to do otherwise—like his great-uncle Arthur’s first marriage—was doomed.
But…the stories of the grandes dames were just stories, weren’t they? What currency did they have in the modern world? In the world he and Antonia inhabited.
Another set of questions to which he didn’t have answers.
He didn’t need more frustrations.
Satiation still lay heavy in his veins. He closed his eyes, opened his awareness to the mind-numbing sensation, embraced the bone-deep glow, and surrendered to whatever dreams awaited him.
Chapter 13
Sebastian left Antonia’s room and returned to his as late as he dared, gaining his bed just before a footman crept in to lay and light the fire.
Once the footman had gone, Sebastian lay beneath the covers he’d artistically disarranged and weighed up competing compulsions. Should he make another—most likely futile—bid to somehow convince Antonia to remain in safety with the other ladies? Or should he acknowledge his newly recognized reality and accept that she would be riding out with him?
In the end, he realized that with a murderer among the guests, even with Sir Humphrey, Inspector Crawford, and the constables around the house, his inner self did not deem the company sufficiently safe for her, not without him by her side.
He wasn’t sure how to regard that conclusion—was it realization or rationalization? Regardless, with his way forward clarified, he rose, washed, and dressed, and was loitering in the archway leading to the gallery when Antonia emerged from her room.
She saw him and arched a faintly haughty brow, but made no other comment. That she’d donned her riding habit was a sufficient declaration of her expectations of the day.
They walked side by side through the gallery and down the stairs.
As they stepped onto the tiles of the front hall, she murmured, “It appears to be a good morning—given the lack of screams, it seems no one died in the night.”
He humphed.
A footman was passing, ferrying an empty dish back to the kitchen. Sebastian halted him and asked for a message to be relayed to the stables, to have the horses he and Antonia had ridden the previous day saddled and waiting in half an hour.
The footman bowed and retreated.
Antonia had halted and waited, listening. As Sebastian turned back to her, she bestowed an approving smile on him, then turned and walked on.
Schooling his features to impassivity, he followed her into the breakfast room. They greeted the other guests already present—all the younger crew except for the Featherstonehaughs—then helped themselves from the sideboard.
After piling several sausages onto a mound of kedgeree, Sebastian eyed the excellent spread laid out along the board. “With both master and mistress dead, who is running the household? Do you know?”
“I believe Blanchard and Mrs. Blanchard have stepped up to the mark, and Mrs. Parrish has offered to assist if needed.” A plate containing one slice of toast, a small mound of scrambled eggs, and one slice of ham in her hand, Antonia turned from the sideboard, surveyed the table, then elected to sit beside Claire and Melissa at one end.
Her friends eyed her riding habit with ill-concealed envy.
“Half your luck,” Claire grumbled as Antonia set down her plate and paused to allow Sebastian—who had, of course, followed at her heels—to draw out the chair beside Claire’s for her. Claire went on, “I take it you plan to ride out again today?”