“I understand why you left, Julianna.”
His words surprised her. She found her capacity to move at last, crossing the chamber until she found the chair not far from his and settled herself there.
“You do?” she asked, careful to keep her voice quiet, lest she wake Emily.
“If you had asked, I would have told you the truth. But I cannot blame you for leaping to conclusions after seeing another woman kissing me in the street.” His jaw clenched as he said the last. “I know how I reacted when I saw you with another man in New York City.”
“You are the only man I have ever kissed,” she said, and she did not know why.
But it was true.
“You are the only woman I want to kiss,” he returned. “Now and forever.”
Her breath caught. “Sidney.”
Those were dangerous words he had just uttered. Dangerous to her heart, dangerous to her ability to keep the walls between them in place. Her defenses had already started to crumble. He had been dismantling them all along, brick by brick, kiss by kiss. With the way he loved their daughter. In the way he was looking at Julianna now. Soon, the remnants of the wall would disintegrate altogether.
“Julianna,” he persisted, saying her name with feeling. “I mean those words. You are all I want. Hell, you are the only woman I have ever wanted.”
“Language,” she reminded him.
“Our angel is sleeping.” The ghost of a smile flitted over his lips. “She likes when Papa rocks her for her naps.”
“You are a good father,” she admitted. “Once, I would never have believed you could be, but you have proven me wrong.”
“I hope I can prove you wrong about some other misconceptions you have about me, darling.”
“Which misconceptions?” she asked.
“That I have ever been unfaithful to you while we have been together,” he said softly, his expression earnest and tense all at once. “From the time I was with you at Farnsworth Hall, I never touched another woman, aside from what you saw in the street that day. I did not initiate that kiss, and I ended it with all haste.”
Emotion rose, churning, turbulent as storm-tossed seas. “Think of it from my perspective then. The first woman you saw when you returned to London was her, and the first woman you kissed was also her. After everything we had shared at Farnsworth Hall, it was devastating.”
“But instead of confronting me, you clung to your pride,” he pointed out, without malice. “You believed the worst of me and told me to go to the devil, and then you sailed across a bloody ocean to get away from me.”
“I was frightened and heartsick. It is not an excuse, but I did what I thought best at the time.”
“And when I came chasing after you, I clung to my pride as well. I could kick myself now to think of what a colossal mistake I made. I should have gone to you, demanded answers, and to the devil with whatever American arsehole was squiring you about. I wanted to tear off his arms and beat him with them, you know.”
She winced. “Thank heavens our daughter is sleeping.”
“I am being honest. I can promise to temper my vulgar tongue if you promise not to leave me.”
His expression was solemn, almost bleak. He was breaking her heart, but the reason was different this time.
“Oh, Sidney. I have no intention of leaving you.” The urge to go to him, embrace him, was strong, but she denied it.
They needed to have this talk calmly and rationally. Without attraction interfering. She required a clear head.
“Do you swear it, Julianna?” he asked. “When you left this morning after everything that had happened, I was terrified you were going to take Emily and return to New York City despite our marriage contract. I could not bear that. I will do anything to keep you both here with me. I need her, and I need you.”
More of what she wanted to hear. Because she needed him too. Emily needed her father. Julianna needed the man she had loved for so long. The luster of leaving had dimmed. Instead, something else shimmered. Alluring. Just out of reach.
“I do not want to return to New York City,” she confessed, the simultaneous admission and realization taking the weight from her chest. “I had not realized how very much I missed London and everyone in it until I returned. This is my home.”
“What of your cold cream business?” he asked.
“I can run it from here, and there is always the possibility I can find a way of producing it in England as well.”
“Speaking of which, when you were gone, I met with Mr. Elijah Decker.”
He was Lady Jo Decker’s husband, the businessman and publisher.
She frowned at this sudden change of subject, failing to see the import. “Why should you meet with him?”
“I told him about your cold cream.” He flashed her a roguish grin that melted the ice around her heart. “I am deuced proud of you, you know. Mr. Decker would like to meet with us for supper, and the two of you can further discuss your plans. He is well-connected, and he owns a number of factories. It may be possible for one of them to produce your cold cream. Or he may know of a space you can lease as you begin production. Your uncle’s inheritance has been placed in an account that is in your name alone. The funds—and your business—are yours to do with as you like. I am merely the facilitator.”
She stared at him, trying to reconcile the doting father holding their sweet baby girl with the drunken reprobate she had met the first night she had confronted him upon her return. She could not. He had changed in the past few weeks. It was as if he had found a purpose.
And that purpose was being a father and a husband.
“You are proud of me?” she asked.
“So fucking proud,” he affirmed.
“Your language, husband.” But though she chastised him, her heart gave a pang.
He grinned. “My apologies. Our beloved angel is still, you will note, sleeping soundly. Nary a chance of her overhearing.”
“Nevertheless, ‘tis a dreadful habit.” She frowned at him, once more at sixes and sevens. It was easier to dwell upon his ill-mannered habits of speech than the rest of what he had said.
“I have had worse habits.” He was solemn once more.
“Drinking?” she guessed. “Hellie told me you have not been yourself these last two years. I paid a call to her at Wickley House.”
“She is not wrong. I have not been myself since you left. You took a part of me—the best part of me—with you. But I cannot be angry with you for that any longer, because you returned, and you brought me Emily. You brought me our daughter.”
He kissed their daughter’s head as he said the last, and more of Julianna’s resistance was melting. The walls had been destroyed. Nothing but rubble remained.
“I…” She paused, trying to think of what she wanted to say. “If I could go back and change what happened, I would. I never would have gone to New York City.”
“Mayhap it is for the best that it all unfolded as it has,” he said, surprising her. “My grandmother always said you cannot appreciate what you have—truly appreciate it—until it is almost taken from you.”
“Your grandmother was a wise woman.” Julianna offered a sad smile. “I wish I could have met her.”
“She would have loved you,” Sidney said.
Time fell away, and it was as if they were standing together at Farnsworth Hall once more, the day they had said their goodbyes. Their stares clung. Communication passed between them that was deeper than words.
“It was not a lie, what happened that summer?” The question was torn from her, almost against her will, and yet, she wanted the answer. Needed the answer from his lips. The reassurance.
“Not one bloody second of it was a lie,” he rasped.
And she believed him. He had no reason to charm her. No reason to woo her or mislead her. They were already married. He was free to carry on with half a dozen mistresses if he chose. To drown himself in wine. To go to sleep in a different bed every night.
&
nbsp; Instead, he had been here. With her. He was being a father, a husband. Working through their differences and the hurts they had dealt each other. But all this time, she had allowed fear to rule her.
That ended today.
This moment.
This next breath.
“I still have your handkerchief,” she told him. “The one you gave me when we said goodbye. I could never bear to part with it. That little square has crossed the ocean twice.”
And she knew what his middle initial stood for now thanks to their marriage ceremony. Edgar.
“Julianna.” There was a wealth of emotion in his eyes.
But she was not finished. Not yet.
“I was afraid,” she blurted. “My mother and father hate each other. They cannot bear the sight of one another. That terrible entrapment is not what I have ever wanted for myself. I saw how miserable it made the both of them, so wretched my mother ultimately left when I was a girl, and that…when she left, it cut me deeply. I felt as if I had lost the only person who could ever love me, and it was a terrible feeling. One day she was there, telling me to perfect my posture and giving me lavender-scented hugs, and the next day, she had gone to America.”
“She abandoned you,” he said.
“Yes.” Julianna bit her lip—to the devil with fretting over the habit and stifling it. “She abandoned me.”
“She has never loved you as you deserve to be loved, Julianna,” Sidney said vehemently. “Her love is for herself alone.”
Emily stirred at the menace in his tone, but he calmed her with ease, patting her bottom and rocking harder whilst whispering in her ear. “Hush now, little poppet. Papa has you. Papa shall always have you.”
A lump was rising in Julianna’s throat. An insurmountable lump, caused by his observation about her mother—true—and the way he was so effortlessly protective and loving toward their daughter. If only her own father and mother had been so protective, so loving. But they had not been, and she had suffered for it. Their own selfish actions had left her broken, afraid to trust when the first challenge arose.
And what had she done? She had fled, just as her mother had done.
Realization hit her. “I am just like her, am I not? I am my mother.”
“You are nothing like her,” Sidney bit out. “Not one whit. You are kindhearted and good. I will not have you compare yourself to her. What kind of a mother would abandon her own daughter, cross an entire ocean, without taking her with her?”
It was the question Julianna had never dared to ask herself.
Because the answer would hurt far too much. And the plain truth was, that even when she had finally joined her mother in New York City, Mama had only welcomed her for the chance it had given her to debut her daughter amongst the city’s elite. It had always—every decision Mama had ever made—been about herself.
“She is a selfish woman,” Julianna acknowledged, feeling sick. “But I am hardly any better. Look at what I have done with Emily, keeping you from her—”
“None of that,” he interrupted. “You did everything to keep Emily. Hell, you even crossed an ocean to marry the man you thought had betrayed you just to give her the life she deserved.”
“You did not betray me, did you?” she asked softly.
He met her gaze, unflinching. “Never. I love you, Julianna. I think I loved you from the moment we met in the library. You were too young. My sister’s friend. Had yet to make your debut. I did not dare indulge my interest or my feelings. I tamped it down. Pushed it away. But I could only do that for so long. When I saw you again at Farnsworth Hall, I knew I could no longer resist the pull between us, the way I felt for you.”
Her heart was full. So full. Tears burned her eyes.
“I love you too,” she managed past the emotion threatening to clog her throat. “I am sorry for everything that has kept us apart.”
“No tears, chérie.” Her husband smiled, but his emerald gaze was shimmering too. “Only happiness for us, from this moment on.”
“Only happiness.”
It seemed impossible, a dream. But she wanted it, with him. Wanted to leave the past behind. To move into the endless possibility of a future with Sidney.
To give him her heart wholly and without fear.
Emily shifted, stretching her arms over her head, and her eyes opened slowly. Her gaze settled on Julianna first, a sleepy smile curving her mouth.
“Mama,” she said, then shifted to see who was holding her.
The cheek which had been pressed against Sidney’s chest as Emily slept was rosy. Julianna’s heart was impossibly fuller. It was the first time Emily had said mama so clearly. And for it to be now…
“Very good, darling,” she praised, and this time a tear did slip down her cheek. Not a tear of sadness, but of a heart that was finally whole.
Emily grabbed Sidney’s nose. “Papa no.”
Sidney grinned. “Yes, that is Papa’s nose. Excellent work, poppet.”
“Mama, Papa!” Emily proclaimed, releasing her father’s much-abused nose.
“Come here, Mama,” Sidney said.
She eyed his lap and her cumbersome dress. “There is hardly room for me there.”
“On the contrary, my love. There is always room for you here.” He held out his arm.
And she went. She settled herself on his lap, taking care to sweep her voluminous skirts to the side, feeling silly and happy all at once. His arm slid around her, anchoring her there. Emily let out a gleeful sound and clapped her hands in approval.
“There you are,” Sidney said, so much tenderness in his voice and his expression that she could not look away. “Just where you belong.”
The last of the ice within her melted.
She wrapped her arms around the two people she loved most, a deep and abiding sense of contentment claiming her.
* * *
The stack of letters waiting for her in her chamber after dinner that evening, bound by a single ribbon, had taken Julianna by surprise. After dismissing Briggs, she sat in the chair by the hearth and untied the knot.
Sidney’s familiar, bold scrawl slanted over the page.
Dear Julianna,
I will never post this letter to you…
She read. One letter at a time, their story was revealed, in heartrending truth. All the love, the anguish, the bitterness, the longing. The distance, confusion, the sadness. Two years’ worth. The first letter was dated just after she had left for America, and they were ordered chronologically.
By the time she reached the last letter, she was furiously blinking the tears from her eyes to clear her vision. It was dated today, she realized. At some point after the revelations they had made to each other in the nursery, Sidney had written her one more letter.
Darling Julianna,
When you were gone, I dreamt of you. I wrote you letters I never intended for you to read. I tried to persuade myself I no longer loved you.
However, I never achieved success in that endeavor.
That long-ago day in the library at Farnsworth Hall, you claimed my heart. I did not realize it then—this hard head of mine required time to realize the truth, that I loved you. You with your bright eyes and fiery hair, all that loveliness and goodness. You thieved my heart with ease. I never even noticed it gone until it was too late.
But keep this heart, I beg you. It is battered and imperfect and scarred and yours. Always yours. I want to love you as you deserve to be loved, now and forever.
As Keats wrote, “Yourself—your soul—in pity give me all,
Withhold no atom’s atom or I die.”
Ever your most affectionate and devoted,
Sidney
P.S. I promise to do my utmost in keeping Emily—and all her siblings to come—from eating daisies, et alia, in the parterre. And I also vow to improve upon my vulgar tongue. Mayhap you have some other uses in mind?
As she read the postscript, Julianna pressed a shaking hand to her lips and laughed.
O
h Sidney, she thought. What fools we have been these last two years. All this time apart, longing for each other.
Never again, she vowed.
A knock sounded on her chamber door.
“Enter,” she called, already knowing who it was.
Him.
Sidney, the man who owned her heart. Husband. Shelbourne. Her love. Her home.
She was on her feet and halfway across the Axminster before he crossed the threshold. He opened his arms, and she did not hesitate in throwing herself into them.
This was where she belonged.
* * *
Sidney held Julianna tightly to him, burying his face in the riotous fall of her unbound curls. Her arms were around his neck. She was soft and warm, the lusciousness of her curves fitted perfectly against him.
“Did you read my letters?” he asked.
When he had decided to leave them in her chamber, he had been hesitant at first. The epistles had never been meant to be read. But he had realized they were as much a part of their story as anything, and that all his pent-up emotions—his love, fury, resentment, yearning, and fears—had been poured into those letters.
“Oh, Sidney. Of course I did.” She tilted her head back so her gaze could meet his. “I am so sorry for the time we spent apart.”
He pressed a finger to her lips when she would have said more. “Hush. No more talk of the past. We are here together now, and that is what matters most.”
She kissed his finger. “I love you.”
Gratitude blossomed in his chest. He traced the bow of her upper lip. “I love you, Julianna. I loved you while you were gone, and I have loved you every minute you have been back in my life. I love you so much it bloody well hurts.”
“You have me, my love,” she murmured, so much love shining in her eyes, he almost had to look away. “I give you every part of myself.”
Hell. These were words to tuck into his soul. Words written upon his heart. He would treasure them—and Julianna—always.
Lady Wicked: Notorious Ladies of London Book 4 Page 28
