The Demure Miss Manning. Amanda McCabe

* *

      Sebastian knocked on the Mannings’ door again and listened to the hollow echo inside. He stepped back on the walkway and peered up at the house, his hat in one hand and a bouquet of roses in the other. It looked as if all the windows were shuttered, the doors locked.

      His heart sank. Where could they be? Surely it had only been last night he saw Mary at the ball and everything went so disastrously wrong. He had gone back to his lodgings and drank rather too much wine after he lost her in the crowd, but surely he had not lost that much time?

      Even the wine hadn’t been able to give him sleep. Just like so many other nights since he came back to England, he sat awake into the dawn hours, yet last night it wasn’t the haunting thoughts of battle that kept him up. It was the memory of Miss Manning’s eyes, the way she looked up at him just before she kissed him, so full of wonder that she made him feel it, too. Made the night seem new.

      And the shadow in those same eyes when she realised the truth. When she realised the damnable cad he had somehow become.

      The truth of what he had done, his appallingly ungentlemanly behaviour, had shocked him out of his hazy, pain-filled memories as nothing else could. He hated what he had become, how near he had come to hurting a sweet lady like Mary Manning.

      As soon as he had pulled back the curtains to let the light of day wash over his aching head and carry away the cobwebs of the night, he had known what he had to do. He had to go to Miss Manning immediately, apologise and beg for her forgiveness.

      Ask her to help him somehow find his way back into the world. After that kiss, the warm newness of it, he was sure she was the only one who could help him. And he had to erase those shadows he had created in her sweet, beautiful eyes.

      But how could he make amends if he couldn’t find her?

      He knocked on the door again, only to be greeted with the same—no answer. Some of his eager certainty turned chilly.

      The downstairs servants’ door to the house next door opened and a maid appeared on the front steps with a bucket and scrub brush. She gave him a curious glance.

      ‘Looking for the Mannings, are you, sir?’ she asked.

      He gave her a relieved smile. ‘Yes, indeed. Though it seems I must come back later, since the door knocker is off.’

      ‘Won’t do you any good, sir, as I think they left this morning.’

      ‘Left? For good?’

      ‘Oh, yes. Carts came and hauled off boxes and trunks before it was even light outside. That happened to the last people who lived there, too, but they ran off from the debt collectors. My master says the Mannings were just sent off to a new posting.’ She gave a doubtful frown under the frills of her cap.

      Off to a new posting. Already? How could that be? Sebastian felt the heat of an urgent need to find Miss Manning right away, before she left for good.

      He knew of one person who always seemed to know what was happening with the Foreign Office—his father. Sebastian quickly thanked the maid and hurried back to his phaeton, set on going to his parents’ house in Portman Square immediately. His father would be certain Sebastian had messed something up, again, and indeed he had.

      But then he had to find Miss Manning.

      * * *

      ‘It is good you are here, Sebastian,’ his father said, barely looking up from the papers scattered across his desk as Sebastian knocked at his library door.

      Sebastian was surprised and brought up short on his urgent errand. His father was seldom happy to see him at the family domicile. Even after he had returned from the battlefield and his father admitted that Sebastian’s Army life had been a credit to their family after all, his father had spoken of little but his own work at the Foreign Office. ‘Indeed?’

      ‘Yes. Henry has been ill this week and there is much work to be done. Several people have been sent to new, vital postings and I must see that these messages go to them immediately. You can deliver some of them, surely? Find out from Henry if he has messages to send, as well.’

      Sebastian was even more startled. ‘You want my help, Father?’

      His father looked up, blinking behind his spectacles, almost as if he just realised Sebastian was there. ‘You’re here, so of course you’ll do. I told you, Henry is ill and your eldest brother is still in the country looking after the estate. You can make yourself useful, for once.’

      Sebastian laughed wryly. That was all he could do, really, when it came to his family. Laugh—and go his own way. His world had been designated the dust and roar of battle long ago, far from the darker world of his father and Henry, the world of diplomacy.

      The world of Miss Manning and her father.

      He remembered his true errand at his father’s library, to find out what had happened to the Mannings, and he brushed away his irritation. ‘So your diplomatic friends are being shuffled off to new ports, are they?’

      His father glared at him. ‘You have never shown an interest in them before.’

      Sebastian shrugged. He had to keep up his careless façade; he could never let his father see that something mattered to him, especially if that something was a respectable young lady. ‘These are interesting times, are they not? One never knows when the Army will be called out next. I met your friends the Mannings at the Alnworth ball.’

      ‘Did you indeed? Sir William has been sent to Lisbon. That idiot Prince Joao has been wavering in his alliance and must be brought back most firmly to England’s side. The loss of Portuguese New World ports at this time would be disastrous. Sir William is the man for the job.’

      ‘To Portugal?’ Sebastian said, his mind racing. Mary Manning would be well on her journey now—too far out of the reach of his apologies. He had to find her somehow.

      His father waved him away and turned back to his papers. ‘I must finish this. Go see your brother and be on your way, Sebastian.’

      Sebastian hardly noticed his father’s curt dismissal, so accustomed was he to this behaviour. He thought perhaps Henry would know more of Miss Manning. They were rumoured to maybe make a match of it, after all, and Henry seemed much more the sort of man Sir William would want for his daughter—on the surface, anyway.

      He left his father’s library and made his way up the stairs to the corridor where Henry had his rooms. On the staircase, he was suddenly caught by the painted eyes of the ancestral portraits hung on the red-painted walls. A long line of them, all the way back to a Barrett who represented Charles I in Venice, who served England so well behind the scenes. Who excelled at saving their country time and again.

      When he was a child, he always thought they seemed to sniff at him disapprovingly. They didn’t seem to have changed much over the years.

      He dashed past them and knocked on Henry’s sitting-room door. ‘Come in!’ Henry ordered, and when he saw it was his brother rather than a servant, he merely added, ‘Oh. It is you.’

      ‘Your brother, home from the wars,’ Sebastian answered lightly. ‘Father is sending off messengers hither and yon, he wanted to see if you had anything to add.’

      ‘Just a moment, then.’ Henry turned back to his desk. Like their father, he was tall and slim, with curling hair and spectacles over his faraway blue eyes. But Sebastian noticed suddenly that Henry also seemed pale, a warm wrap closely tucked around his shoulders despite the sunny day. Sebastian wondered with a worried pang if his brother was indeed ill, but he knew Henry would welcome no such queries.

      ‘Father says all your diplomatic friends are scattering across the Continent, gathering in reluctant allies,’ Sebastian said.

      ‘I doubt he would put it quite like that,’ Henry muttered. ‘But, yes. We must all do our duty now.’

      ‘He said Sir William Manning has been sent to