To say nothing of Four: Sebastian was the one sporting a black eye and Five: he was also the one who’d had a drink thrown in his face, all because Six: she had not seen fit to tell him that she was being courted by his uncle despite the fact that Seven: she knew damn well of the connection, because Eight: she had nearly passed out from shock when he’d told her his name that night on the heath.

But perhaps he really ought to focus more on the second part of Olivia’s statement, the bit about his being the only person who could save Miss Winslow. Because Nine: he saw no reason why this might be the case, and Ten: he also didn’t see why he should care.

“Well?” Olivia demanded. “Do you have any thoughts on the matter?”

“Quite a few, actually,” he said equably. He went back to his food. After a few moments he looked back up. Olivia was gripping the table so hard her knuckles were turning white, and the look on her face…

“Careful there,” he murmured. “You’re going to curdle the milk.”

“Harry!” she fairly yelled.

Harry lowered the newspaper. “While I do appreciate your soliciting my opinion, I am quite certain I have nothing to offer this conversation. I doubt I’d even recognize Miss Winslow if I stumbled across her in the street.”

“You spent an entire evening in the opera box with her,” Olivia said in disbelief.

Harry considered this. “I suppose I might recognize the back of her head, were that the view she offered to me.”

Sebastian chuckled, then very quickly straightened his expression. Olivia was not amused. “Oh very well,” he said, holding his hands toward her in supplication. “Tell me how this is all my fault and what I may do to fix it.”

Olivia stared at him for one last endless second before saying quite primly, “I am glad you asked.”

Harry choked on something down the table. Probably his laughter. Sebastian hoped it was his tongue.

“Do you have any idea what people are saying about Miss Winslow?” Olivia asked.

As Sebastian had spent the last two days holed up in his rooms, working on getting the fictional Miss Spencer out from under her fictional Scotsman’s fictional bed, he did not, in fact, know what people were saying about Miss Winslow.

“Well?” Olivia demanded.

“I do not,” he admitted.

“They are saying”-she leaned forward here, and her expression was such that Sebastian just barely resisted the urge to lean back-“that it is only a matter of time before you seduce her.”

“She would not be the first lady about whom that has been said,” Seb pointed out.

“It’s different,” Olivia said between her teeth, “and you know that it is. Miss Winslow is not one of your merry widows.”

“I do love a good merry widow,” he murmured, just because he knew it would vex her.

“People are saying,” she ground out, “that you will ruin her just to thwart your uncle.”

“I am quite certain that is not my plan,” Sebastian said, “and I expect the rest of society will figure that out once they realize I have not even called upon her.”

And he did not intend to. Yes, he quite liked Miss Winslow, and yes, he’d spent far too much of his waking hours pondering the various ways he’d like to tie her to a bed, but he had absolutely no intention of following through on that particular fantasy. He might have forgiven her, but he had no plans for any further contact. As far as he was concerned, if Newbury wanted her, Newbury could have her.

Which was what he said to Olivia, although with perhaps a bit more delicacy. This, however, only earned him a furious glare, followed by, “Newbury doesn’t want her any longer. That is the problem.”

“For whom?” Seb asked suspiciously. “If I were Miss Winslow, I’d see that as something more akin to a solution.”

“You are not Miss Winslow, and furthermore, you are not a lady.”

“Thank God,” he said, with no small bit of feeling. Beside him, Harry rapped three times on the table.

Olivia scowled at both of them. “If you were a lady,” she said, “you would understand what a disaster this is. Lord Newbury has not called upon her even once since your altercation.”

Sebastian’s brows rose. “Really?”

“Really. Do you know who has called upon her?”

“I do not,” he replied, because it wasn’t as if she was going to withhold the information, anyway.

“Everyone else. Everyone!”

“Quite a busy drawing room,” he murmured.

“Sebastian! Do you know whom ‘everyone’ includes?”

He briefly considered a sarcastic answer, then decided, out of motives of pure self-preservation, that he ought to hold his tongue.

“Cressida Twombley,” Olivia fairly hissed. “And Basil Grimston. They have been there three times.”

“Three ti-How do you know this?”

“I know everything,” Olivia said dismissively.

This, he believed. If Olivia had been in town before she’d met Miss Winslow in the park, none of this would have happened. She would have known that Annabel Winslow was Lady Louisa’s cousin. She’d probably have known her birthday and favorite color as well. She certainly would have known that Miss Winslow was a Vickers granddaughter, and thus his uncle’s prey.

And Sebastian would have steered himself far far away. That kiss on the heath would be nothing but a dim (albeit delightful) memory. He certainly would not have accepted the invitation to the opera, and he would not have sat next to her, and he would not know that her eyes-such a clear, focused gray-took on a hint of green when she dressed in that color. He would not know that her sensibilities were remarkably like his, or that she caught the inside of her lower lip between her teeth when she was concentrating on something. Or that she was not terribly good at sitting still.

Or that she smelled faintly of violets.

If he had but known who she was, none of those pesky bits of information would be jiggling about in his brain, taking up useful space from something important. Like a thorough analysis of roundarm versus underarm bowling in cricket. Or the precise wording of Shakespeare’s sonnet “Alack! What poverty my Muse brings forth,” which he’d been misquoting in his head for at least a year now.

“Miss Winslow has become a laughingstock,” Olivia said, “and it is not fair. She did not do anything.”

“Neither did I,” Sebastian pointed out.

“But you have the power to fix things. She does not.”

“Alack, what poverty my Position brings forth,” he muttered.

“What?” Olivia said impatiently.

He waved his previous comment away. It wasn’t worth trying to explain. Instead, he gave her a direct look and asked, “What would you have me do?”

“Call upon her.”

Sebastian turned to Harry, who was still pretending to read his newspaper. “Didn’t she just say that all of London thinks I plan to seduce her?”

“She did,” Harry confirmed.

“Good God,” Olivia blasphemed, with enough force to cause both men to blink. “The two of you are so obtuse.”

They both stared at her, their very silence confirming her statement.

“Right now it looks as if both of you have abandoned her. The earl apparently does not want her, and by all appearances, neither do you. Heaven knows what the society ladies are tittering behind their hands.”

Sebastian could well imagine. Most would say that Miss Winslow overreached, and society loved nothing more than to watch an ambitious female brought low.

“Right now people are calling upon her out of curiosity,” Olivia said. “And,” she added with a meaningful narrowing of her eyes, “cruelty. But make no mistake, Sebastian. When all this is over, no one will have her. Not unless you do the right thing right now.”

“Please tell me the right thing does not involve a proposal of marriage,” he said. Because really, delightful though Miss Winslow was, he hardly thought he’d behaved in a fashion to warrant it.

“Of course not,” Olivia said. “You need merely to call upon her. Show society that you still find her delightful. And you must be all that is proper. If you do anything that even hints of seduction, she will be ruined.”

Sebastian started to make one of his usual flip comments, but a little jab of indignation began to uncurl within him, and by the time he opened his mouth it could not be denied. “Why is it,” he wanted to know, “that people-people, I might add, who have known me for several years, some even for decades-believe me the sort of person who might seduce an innocent young lady for revenge?”

He waited for a moment, but Olivia had no answer. And neither, apparently did Harry, who had given up all pretense of reading his newspaper.

“This is not an idle question,” Sebastian said angrily. “Have I ever behaved in a manner to suggest such a thing? Tell me what I have done to make myself out to be such a predatory villain. Because I must confess that I am at a loss. Do you know that I have never, not once, slept with a virgin?” He directed that comment at Olivia, mostly because he was in the mood to shock and offend. “Even when I was a virgin.”

“Sebastian, that’s enough,” Harry said quietly.

“No, I don’t think it is. What, I wonder, do people think I plan to do with Miss Winslow once I seduce her? Abandon her? Kill her and toss the body in the Thames?”

For a moment his cousins could do nothing but stare. It was the closest Sebastian had come to raising his voice since…

Since…

Since ever. Even Harry, who had known him since childhood, been through school and army with him, had never heard him raise his voice.

“Sebastian,” Olivia said gently. She reached across the table to place her hand on his, but he shook her off.