“You shall be in the army?” Katarina said, turning to her nephew with surprise. “How grand.”

Sebastian shrugged.

“Surely you knew, Mother,” Harry said. Sebastian’s future had been decided several months earlier. Aunt Anna had been fretting that he needed a male influence ever since his father had died. And since Sebastian wasn’t likely to come into a title or a fortune, it was understood that he’d have to make his own way in the world.

No one, not even Sebastian’s mother, who thought the sun rose and set on her boy, had even suggested he consider the clergy.

Sebastian wasn’t overly excited about the prospect of spending the next decade or so fighting Napoleon, but as he’d said to Harry-what else could he do? His uncle, the Earl of Newbury, detested him and had made it clear that Sebastian could expect no perks, monetary or otherwise, from that connection.

“Maybe he’ll die,” Harry had suggested, with all the sensitivity and tact of a nineteen-year-old boy.

But then again, it was difficult to offend Sebastian, especially when it concerned his uncle. Or his uncle’s only son, the heir to Newbury. “My cousin’s even worse,” Sebastian replied. “Tried to give me the cut direct in London.”

Harry felt his brows rise with shock. It was one thing to abhor a family member; it was quite another to attempt public humiliation. “What did you do?”

Sebastian’s lips curled into a slow smile. “Seduced the girl he wanted to marry.”

Harry gave him a look that said he did not believe him for a second.

“Oh, very well,” Sebastian relented, “but I did seduce the girl at the pub he had his eye on.”

“And the girl he wants to marry?”

“Doesn’t want to marry him any longer!” Sebastian chortled.

“Good Lord, Seb, what did you do?”

“Oh, nothing permanent. Even I’m not foolish enough to tamper with the daughter of an earl. I just…turned her head, that’s all.”