She and Shelbourne took their leave of the nursery as Emily was happily building blocks with Johnston. Her hand was on his arm, only out of deference to their audience. The moment they were in the hall, Julianna released him, eager to increase their distance. He smelled of shaving soap and bay and the man she had once loved this morning, and she did not like it.
She could not allow her heart to be lulled into a false sense of security. Their marriage was one of convenience. Their attraction to each other could not be helped; it was as natural and ferocious now as it had been before. More potent, even, for the time they had spent apart. However, no good could come of it. Lust was not love, and Julianna had no intention of confusing one for the other ever again.
Shelbourne took note of her abrupt defection. He eyed her with amusement as they approached the stairs side by side. “Is something amiss, Lady Shelbourne?”
Everything was amiss.
She forced a bright smile. “Not at all, Lord Shelbourne. Everything is well with me. Thank you for your concern.”
“Good. I should hate to think what happened between us last night is the source of your morning pique.”
His quip earned him a glare. “I have no pique.”
“And yet your voice suggests otherwise.” He raised a brow. “As do your eyes. They are filled with hail storms today.”
Once upon a time, he had compared her eyes to the summer sky. She tamped down the memory.
“I am adjusting to my new life here at Cagney House,” she countered. “Surely that is to be expected and understood? You did not give me sufficient time to prepare myself.”
One day of warning, and then she had become his wife.
They made their way down the staircase.
“I gave you the time you needed,” he said, his tone mild, his expression unruffled.
Oh, how she wished she had his ability to be so cold, so distant and unfeeling. But he had hurt her, cut her more deeply than she had imagined another person could. And she could not forget the pain, try as she might. Nor could she forgive herself for giving in to her weakness last night. For consummating their marriage when she had promised herself she would not do so in haste.
Instead, haste had been had on the bedchamber floor.
“I hardly think one day is sufficient,” she muttered.
“Have you not moved all your belongings to Cagney House?” He smiled at her, and the divot in his chin was at its most charming. Though he had the same plum half moons beneath his eyes she had come to recognize, something about him seemed heartier this morning. He was more alert.
She, on the other hand, felt as frayed as a worn, soiled hem.
Julianna wondered if she could ignore him for the remainder of their walk to the breakfast table. Cagney House was not a massive edifice; indeed, it was rather modest, being an ancillary holding of the Marquess of Northampton. But for some reason, the journey to breakfast felt as if it were taking a century to pass.
“Are you not going to answer me, chérie?” he prodded with his silken baritone.
“I have precious few belongings here in London,” she snapped, nettled. “My life is not here. It has not been for two years.”
His jaw tensed. “Your life is here now.”
She wanted to argue the point with him. She had made a life for herself in New York, it was true, but it had never felt like home. No place had except him. But that had been nothing but a chimera. Her life in New York was hers in a way he had never been, and she would reclaim that life soon enough.
They reached the breakfast table at last. Servants were finishing laying out the sideboard with what appeared to be an excellent spread of fresh fruit, eggs, and bacon. Her traitorous stomach rumbled. At least she knew she would not go hungry at Cagney House.
“I will need to return to New York City,” she told Shelbourne then, because she longed to nettle him, and also because it was true.
She could not manage her business from across an ocean. She would need to be present. But he did not yet know about her business or her plans. And she was not certain when she wanted to tell him. Everything had happened with such haste. It was her last remaining secret. The sole part of her that remained hers.
What was left of her independence, such as it had ever been. The promise of freedom she had so briefly tasted. If she revealed too much, she risked the chance he would never approve of her leaving him as she hoped.
“That will be all,” Shelbourne clipped to the servants, prompting them to dutifully scatter and withdraw from the room.
The door had scarcely closed when he turned to her, his jaw hard. His countenance set in stone. “You will not be returning to New York City. I made that clear.”
His words set her on edge. Further opposition was not what she wanted, not what she needed. “You cannot make demands of me, Shelbourne. I am not yours to rule.”
“You are my wife.” He faced her, exuding a dangerous energy. “I may have been incapable of stopping you from running off to America two years ago, but everything changed yesterday and do not forget it.”
“As if you would have stopped me from leaving.” She let out a harsh laugh. “You were probably too busy with your mistress to notice I had gone.”
Drat. There went her wayward tongue and emotions again, getting the better of her. Revealing far too much.
He gave her a dark look. “You are not leaving me, Julianna. We are married, and I intend to make certain you uphold your part of our bargain.”
“Mayhap you accomplished your goal yesterday.” She skirted past him, intent upon filling her plate, eating, and then fleeing his presence.
Being near him was perilous to her calm and her heart both.
He followed her, however, plucking the plate she retrieved from her grasp. “Do not pretend you did not enjoy yourself last night, chérie. You came four times.”
Her face was scalding. “Shelbourne!”
“What? You dislike hearing the truth? You do possess an affinity for lies, I own.”
As if they were not feuding, he piled the plate with everything she ordinarily preferred for breakfast. Oeufs cocotte, hothouse fruit, a rasher of bacon. Drat his rotten, untrustworthy, handsome hide for thinking he knew her.
For knowing her.
For tearing down her every wall.
For making her love him.
For everything.
“I can fill my own plate,” she argued, reaching for the dish.
He moved it from her reach with fluid ease. “Of course you can.”
“Then kindly allow me to do it.”
“Oh, darling. You ought to know by now that there is nothing kind about me.” He slanted her a dark look. “Not one fucking thing.”
“Pray watch your language, Shelbourne.” She glowered at him, feeling equally vicious. “I will not have our daughter learning your despicable propensity for vulgarity.”
He puckered his lips and blew her a kiss. “You object to the word fuck? Or to the act of fucking? You did not seem to be burdened by any such qualms last night, I confess.”
He was being an utter cad.
And even her ears had gone up in flame. Because she was thinking of what had happened last night. And she was wanting more.
But she was stronger than that. She had succumbed to her desires once, but she would not do so again. There was her future, and Emily’s to consider, to say nothing of another child, should there be one.
She reached for a new plate, deciding to thwart him. But that plate too was summarily plucked from her hands. “Shelbourne!”
“Last night, you called me Sidney.” He sauntered to the table, depositing the plate he had filled for her at the table setting before returning to the sideboard and amassing his own breakfast.
“Last night was a mistake,” she said, deeply perturbed that there were only two plates and he had filled both of them.
“Four mistakes?” He slanted her a wicked look that was laden with sensual heat and memories.
&nbs
p; So many memories. Not just of what had happened last night but what had happened before. What would happen again and again if she did not take care and assemble her armor.
She ignored his taunt. “You are presumptuous.”
“Indeed?” He raised a brow, then turned his attention back to the bacon he was piling upon his plate.
“Thinking you should know what I want for breakfast. I am not the same girl I once was.”
More bacon. He topped off his plate with poached eggs. She wondered where in heaven’s name he could store so much food in his lean frame.
“You do not like pineapple?” he asked.
She loved it.
“That is not the point.”
He strode away from her, setting his own plate down and gesturing for her to join him at the table. “What is the point, Julianna?”
She was not entirely sure of that herself. He had her confused, wavering as he did between cool anger, potent sensuality, and gentlemanly consideration. How could he say such wicked things to her and then calmly fill a plate with everything she would have chosen for herself? How did he know her so well when she had been convinced he had never known her at all?
Why did she care?
She smoothed an imaginary wrinkle from her silken skirts. “The point is that I am perfectly capable of choosing my own breakfast. I do not need you to make decisions for me. You are my husband, not my jailer.”
His lips thinned with annoyance. “This is our first breakfast as husband and wife. I was attempting chivalry.”
His notion of chivalry was suspect. Julianna was reasonably certain most husbands did not speak of bedchamber matters at the sideboard. She supposed she could ask Hellie, but that discourse would undoubtedly prove awkward, given that Julianna’s husband was Hellie’s brother.
“Forgive me for failing to note how very gentlemanly you are.” She could not keep the sarcasm from her voice.
“Are you going to spend all breakfast frowning at me from the sideboard, or are you going to eat?”
Her stomach rumbled. Loudly enough for him to hear for the second time in as many days.
“You see?” He flashed her a grin that hit her in the heart. “Even your stomach thinks you are being a stubborn fool, chérie.”
She made a noncommittal noise and relented, joining him at the table. He held out her chair and she seated herself before the mouthwatering plate he had assembled for her. Not one thing she would not wish to eat on it.
He sat, his gaze searing her, and she wondered why they were seated so close together. Would not a great deal more distance between them be more civil? Mayhap she could sit at the opposite end of the table. Or in another room altogether. There was something potent, masculine, and maddening about him.
And she was still aching in all the places he had been last night. All the places she wanted him to revisit soon, drat her traitorous body.
“How is your toe?” she asked him, aiming for a safer subject.
One that did not involve lovemaking, hearts, or their painful past.
“If I tell you it is sore, will you offer to kiss it for me to ease the pain?”
She rolled her eyes. “No.”
“Pity. But then, there are other portions of my anatomy I would rather have you kiss.”
He was being a devil. Taunting her, tormenting her. Saying everything he knew would prod her until she snapped.
She smiled sweetly, thinking two could play at this game of his. “I am afraid you will be doomed to disappointment, my lord. I would sooner kiss a squirrel.”
“Hmm.” He drummed his fingers on the table, and she tried not to notice how long they were, how strong. “A squirrel, eh? You do know those little vagabonds can prove quite vicious, do you not?”
“Surely safer than lords from one’s past.”
“One’s present and future now,” he reminded her.
As if she required the aide-mémoire. “I remain firm on the choice of squirrel over viscount.”
Besides, said viscount would be in her past soon enough, if all went according to plan.
“We shall see about that, darling.”
It was almost as if he had heard her unspoken thoughts. Her gaze slipped once more to his hands, which she had always loved to watch and which she had loved even more when they had been on her. When those wicked fingers of his had been pleasuring her, inside her.
She forced herself to look away.
Heavens, was there a fire in the hearth? Why was she so dratted overheated? She resisted the urge to fan herself and hoped she was not perspiring. Her palms most certainly felt sticky. Was her forehead shining like a freshly polished parquet floor?
Oh, why did she care?
And why did the way he called her darling in that silky baritone make an ache blossom between her thighs?
Determined to ignore him, she tucked into the food awaiting her on her plate. The eggs were divine, the fruit ripened to perfection. It called to mind the tray he had sent her the night before, the matched sparrow pictures in her chamber.
One thing was certain.
Shelbourne was just as much a stranger to her now as he had been before. The devil she knew had fast proven himself to be the devil she didn’t know at all.
Chapter 12
Two years earlier
What is love? For years, I believed it the fodder of poets and writers. I thought it a fiction, a deception those with weaker constitutions perpetrated upon themselves. Surely there could be no other soul in this vast world who would make me feel as if I had found my purpose. There could be no one I longed for with a yearning that kept me awake at night, no one for whom I would happily sacrifice all my previously held notions. No one I could give my life to hold in my arms, to kiss her lips, make her mine. Nothing would make me sacrifice my honor so thoroughly. Nothing except one emotion, not so much an illusion after all. Nothing except one woman. Her name is Julianna, and I am hopelessly, foolishly in love with her.
~from the journal of Viscount Shelbourne, 1883
“Did you ever experience a moment where you knew everything had changed? Where this inexplicable feeling hit you, right in the heart, and you understood nothing would ever be the same?”
Julianna’s query cut through the stillness of the night. They had been meeting at midnight in the darkened corridors of Farnsworth Hall every evening for the last few days. As on previous occasions, they had made their way to the Palladian temple overlooking the lake.
They sat together on one of the cushioned benches lining the perimeter of the temple, Julianna’s stockinged feet in his lap. An afternoon spent playing lawn tennis had left her with sore soles, and he had been more than happy to offer his services. Since she had agreed to allow him to court her, he had not attempted any advance further than lifting her hem and untying her boots this evening.
He paused at her question, meeting her gaze through the flickering light of the decades-old oil lamps in the temple. “Have you ever experienced such a moment?” he parried back.
Because the truth was, he had experienced just such a moment. And she had been in it. But he had promised himself he would go slowly with her. Take his time. Properly woo and win her. Lady Julianna Somerset was too important to be rushed. Every moment mattered.
“That is hardly fair,” she said softly, tilting her head as if studying him with extra care. “I posed the question first. You cannot answer a question with another query.”
Her hair was unbound, which meant her beautiful red curls were tumbling around her shoulders and trailing down her back. He had envisioned planting his hand in those curls on more than one occasion. Plunging his fingers through the silken strands. Grasping a handful and tipping her head back so he could ravish her mouth.
He swallowed against a rising tide of desire. Damn it, he never should have offered to rub her feet. Who would have supposed that such a gesture could prove dangerously near to his undoing?
He swirled his thumbs over her insoles, rubbing the tensenes
s away. “How is it that you get to decide what is fair and what is not?”
“Infuriating man,” she said without heat. “That was yet another question.”
“So it was,” he observed wryly, still attempting to draw out the moment. To keep from indulging in heavier conversation. He felt too much for her, and the truth of it was, he was terrified by it. “Mayhap you should inform me of the rules, Lady Perfect.”
He watched her from beneath lowered lashes as he continued massaging her feet, gratified at the faintest hint of a pink flush in her cheeks. She was so damned beautiful. He wanted to kiss her again. To lay her down on this bench and make love to her until she was a quivering heap.
“Why do you insist upon referring to me thus? I am far from perfect, and we both know it.”
“On the contrary. You are utter perfection. From your feet to your hair. Every part of you.”
She frowned. “I have dreadful red hair.”
“It is bold and bright and beautiful, just as you are. The sun’s rays make it sparkle and shine with coppery glints.”
Oh, hell. Was he waxing poetic over a lady’s hair? How pathetic could he be? This was not him, this lovesick swain who held hands in the dark and spent hours merely talking and getting to know her better. Except, it was now. Julianna brought out a different person in him, one he had not previously realized he was capable of being. A person he liked, even.
She ran a hand through her curls now. “You truly like it?”
He frowned at her. “Who would not?”
“My mother told me it is too bright and garish, and that I ought to cover all my spots with pearl powder.”
“I bloody well adore your freckles.” Outrage speared him. “They are perfect as they are. Never hide any part of yourself, Julianna. You are glorious, and all the world deserves to know.”
His impassioned words fell between them, and he felt his own cheeks going hot, as if he were a callow youth instead of a man who had been intimate with his fair share of women. Perhaps he had gone too far. She was staring at him, not saying a word.
Lady Wicked: Notorious Ladies of London Book 4 Page 16
