Regency Romance: The Duke’s Ever Burning Passion (Fire and Smoke: CLEAN Historical Romance)

by Charlotte Stone

  He reached for her hand again but she was already turning away. “Julia.”

  “Leave me alone,” she snapped. “It is what I wish you would have done in the first place all those years ago. If you would have left me alone, I would be living a completely different life.” She paused for only a moment. “But I cannot lay all the blame at your feet because more than wishing you left me alone, I wish I never fell for any of it in the first place. The truth is I blame myself just as much as I blame you, but on this matter especially, on the matter of marrying the marquis, I am begging you…” Now her voice pleaded with him in a way he had never heard before. She sounded desperate and sad. “I am begging you to please leave me alone.”

  She stomped into the house, leaving him bereft. He kicked the gravel and loosened his cravat. How could he do as she asked? How could he when she was trapped because of him?

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  He had made his decision and

  now she would make hers. …

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  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Marquis and the Last Letter

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  The Marquis of Pomfrey was not a likable man, mostly because he did not try to be. His first wife had provided him a son, now at Eton. He rarely saw the child. There was talk of mistresses, particularly of the young and beautiful variety. His current mistress was a singer, and the gossipmongers claimed he provided her with magnificent jewelry whenever she pleased him. It was not that he did not understand propriety. It just appeared he cared little for it. He burped at the dinner table with no sense of decorum, and his skin was so oily it appeared greased. He lingered too long over the kiss on Julia’s hand when he arrived and seemed quite put out that Shep was there.

  A young, wealthy duke certainly did not please him. He was full enough of himself to consider the idea that anyone could be a rival for Julia’s affections an impossibility. Still, he showed his teeth in a grimace as he greeted Shep. “Ah, the Duke of Sermont. How good to see you, Your Grace.”

  Shep did not deign to reply. His green eyes flashed and he only nodded slightly and frostily.

  The dowager, however, fawned over the marquis, her eyes silently imploring Julia to help, but Julia just did not see the point. It was clear that at some point in the coming days, the marquis would propose and that she would accept and it would not matter if she pretended to like him or not. It would not matter that he burped at the table or that he had a mistress. It would not matter that she did not love him. It was like a boulder rolling downhill. The proposal was inevitable no matter how Julia treated him.

  While Shep exhibited his feelings in person, Ben made his own feelings abundantly clear when he did not come down out of his office to greet the marquis. Shep glared daggers at the man while Carlisle, the butler Julia had known since birth, seemed determined to use his body as a human shield for Julia. All of this happened within an hour of the man’s arrival.

  Later, when the marquis saw Cat with Baby George, he made the assumption, much to everyone’s horror, that she was the nanny.

  “This is my wife,” Ben stated firmly as he placed his hand on her shoulder. The show of support only drew the marquis’s eye to Cat’s scars, which he stared at openly and with quite a bit of disdain. “How interesting,” the marquis said at last, with a bit of a lisp. “It is just so odd to see… I expect a nanny to raise any children I might have.” Then he looked at Julia, who tried her hardest not to arch her brow in response and actually succeeded in keeping her expressive face placid. For the first time in her life, she was listening to her mother. “I heard you married, Lord Wembley,” the marquis went on. “I just did not expect…” He let the sentence trail off as his eyes spoke for him, staring at Cat’s scar on her neck and arm.

  Cat had grown a great deal since becoming Ben’s wife and it no longer bothered her when someone like the marquis chose to point out her injury. In fact, she had told herself to try and like him for her mother-in-law’s sake and so that she could be optimistic in the face of Julia’s pessimism on the match. Now, she had no reason to even try to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  Ben, who had never directly seen the way some people could look at her, except for overhearing gossip at a ball years ago, was enraged. When his eyes flashed to Julia’s, as if she was personally responsible for the marquis’ treatment of his wife, Julia only raised her brow toward their mother. Ben sighed deeply and nodded. Julia knew it was an apology. She could never hold how much he loved his wife against him.

  “My son brings me a great deal of joy,” Ben intoned, taking the baby into his arms and shocking the marquis even more.

  He stuttered at the sight of a man, of an earl, holding his own child.

  With another sharp glare from her mother, Julia tried to enter the conversation. “Did you not hold your son when he was born, Lord Jeisterby?” Julia asked with as much gentleness as she could bestow on such a horrific person.

  He looked slightly amused at the thought. “Perhaps once, when he was born. I do not remember,” he said after a moment. “I found that I much more enjoyed the process of making a son than the holding of one.” He smiled winningly at Julia, who could only grimace in the silence. It was an incredibly uncouth statement to make in mixed company, let alone with his intended present, but that didn’t seem to bother the marquis. Either he could not read a room or he did not care because he continued, “You are looking as enchanting as always, Lady Julia.”

  She tried not to grimace further as he took her hand. “You are too kind, my Lord.” She thought it a triumph that only a hint of sarcasm entered her voice.

  “To have the pleasure…” he paused for effect. “…of your company is quite a thrill.”

  “I hope you do not mind the rest of us,” Shep interrupted as he looked at Julia. His eyes beseeched her to do something, to say something, to this awful man her mother expected her to marry, who would not even allow her to raise any children they may have. After his recent time at Pritchford Place, he knew that Julia wanted to be a mother to children more than anything.

  His eyes begged her to remember their conversation in the garden, but Julia looked away from Shep because there was nothing she could do. Why did he find it impossible to understand that? It was quite clear to her, and it was crystal clear to her mother.

  “Carlisle will show you to your rooms before dinner, if you need to rest,” the dowager told him. Since her son, the earl, refused to take the reins as host, she would have to do it herself. Even the dowager could not quite blame Catherine for not speaking up. Even she had seen the disdain in the marquis’ eyes at the sight of Cat’s scars. Despite everything, the dowager did love her children and she had come to love and respect Catherine. Ben was a better man because of her and so it was not an easy thing to swallow the marquis’ poor treatment of her. But she would swallow it for the sake of Julia’s future. Someone had to.

  “I find that despite my age…” Now, he leered at Julia in the most unattractive way. “I do not need to rest. I am quite active.”

  Julia only shivered and turned away from Shep’s probing eyes.

  Shep could only imagine the awful things this man would say to her alone if this was how he spoke in mixed company to the family of the woman he hoped to marry.

  Julia could not meet Shep’s eyes the rest of the day. She wanted to tremble at the thought of marrying such a man but as she went up to change for dinner, she realized that this was her life. She must accept it. She must live in it. And so, before Smith arrived to help her change and do her hair, Julia rifled through the letters until she found the last one he ever wrote to her. She wanted to memorize each word. She wanted each one imprinted on her skin. The dream of Shep was long over, and it was time to fully close that chapter.

  27 February 1819 Oxford

  Dear Julia,

  I write to you
with a heavy heart. I wish I could avoid it, but that would be cowardly and unfair and I have tried, especially with you, to be neither of those things. I have never lied to you about my feelings and I will not start now. I meant every word when I told you how much you meant to me and what I hoped our future would be.

  But in the time since, I expected things to become more settled and less combustible between us. I thought once we realized we loved one another that we would no longer be at odds with each other. And then, when I realized things might never be easy between us, I thought: Well, I love her and so if this is what life is like with her then I will take it.

  You must believe me when I say how much I loved you and that every word spoken and every caress done in love was meant and felt wholeheartedly. But I have come to realize that no matter what I feel for you, an unsettled life is not one I am capable of living. The closer graduation comes and the closer the time comes when I decided I would make my official proposal to your father and to you, the more apparent it becomes that I cannot live a life like my parents have.

  No matter how much I love you, I cannot do it. I hope you can understand.

  Please know that I have never been untrue to you and that is why I write you these difficult words and the even more difficult words that must come next. I met someone else over the holiday and though nothing happened between us, so much so that I am positive that she will be completely shocked when I do ask to court her, I am going to ask her when I am finished with school.

  I hate myself for being the one to tell you, but I could not bear to have you hear it from Ben. I had to tell you myself.

  I hope, upon reflection, you see, as I do, that though we never lacked love, our relationship was never easy or peaceful. I hope that you see it in this light and understand my motivations. My deepest wish is that we find some way to remain friends after all of this, since you have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. But I am also well aware that you may never speak to me again.

  If you have read the whole of this letter, you may not believe me when I say this is the hardest decision I have ever made. Yet I know it is the right one. If you ever cared for me, I ask for your blessing in it.

  Shep

  He had made his decision and now Julia would make hers.

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  Why was it so difficult for them

  to be honest with one another? …

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  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Rescue

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  After dinner, when everyone had retired, Shep looked everywhere for Julia. He too had made a decision. In the end, when she was not in the library, he thought she must have gone up to bed without his notice. It was Carlisle, good old, quiet Carlisle, who casually suggested that if he was looking for Lady Julia, he ought to check the gardens. Maybe the butler had always known more than he let on.

  So Shep found Julia sitting on the bench in the gardens where she used to hide during games of hide and seek when they were younger. Later, it was one of their meeting places, when his whole body felt as if it would light on fire if he could not touch her, grasping her waist and bringing her close.

  Tonight though, he was not surprised to find her hiding. He should have thought of it without Carlisle’s help. The meal had been a disaster, with innuendo after innuendo from the marquis, the dowager trying to make peace over it, and the marquis making statements about the way his future wife would live, including her having nothing to do with the raising of the children. In the end, it was the absence of something that made the evening truly sad for everyone except for the marquis.

  Julia’s lack of sarcasm and biting tongue had been telling enough. That she did not speak made him want to stand up and yell on her behalf. It was as if she had given up completely. He had known she would flee as soon as she was able. And she had.

  But he was still surprised to hear her crying, the sound muffled by her elegant hands, as her body shook with sobs in her beautiful ivory dinner gown, which seemed to be a beacon of light in the dark. She had always been and would always be the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life, whether she was screaming at him in anger, raising her brow with cynicism, or weeping hopelessly as she was now. And she was weeping. This was not a few tears on her cheek. This was the type of sorrow that went bone deep.

  She had no idea he had come upon her, and he knew she would hate for him to witness what she would consider weakness, but his heart squeezed painfully in his chest. He could not stand by and not comfort her. After he had broken off their secret courtship by letter, she had never written him again. The next time he had truly seen her had been his wedding and she had been perfectly composed, even if his palms sweated at the thought of seeing her again in person after so long. If she had been as heartbroken as she claimed earlier, she had hidden it seamlessly. And of course she would hide it. What had that cost her? He had given up the privilege of knowing and seeing her true feelings when he broke things off.

  But he could not turn away from her, not now, and he thought perhaps he had never been able to truly turn away, and that was why he had cast her aside in the first place. His feelings for her had always been all consuming and therefore dangerous. In that way, they were not so very different at all, which may have been the problem all along.

  He sat beside her, barely making a sound. He expected her to jump up and deny her tears, to wipe them from her cheeks as she had previously during his visit. But it seemed as if her own sadness was too much to bear, even in this moment, and that his presence did not cause her to deny her feelings but only to cry harder.

  “Julia,” he murmured, pulling her into his embrace as she continued to weep, her tears falling on his loosened cravat. “Julia. It will be all right.” Her hands clung to his back and though a part of him was despondent over her tears, another part of him recognized how good it felt to hold her again. They had always fit. Why had he not seen that? How had he forgotten that?

  “How can you say that? How can it be true?” she asked brokenly. The question undid him because he was used to her anger, not such fragility. “I am marrying that man. And I thought… Oh, Shep. I thought that if I married him, at least I would have children to love. But he would deny me even that.” She pressed her face into his neck and continued to cry. He felt each tear, and it was tearing him into pieces.

  His hand rubbed her back as soothingly as possible and then her neck, where his hand tangled in the hair that had fallen during her weeping spell. He was suddenly nervous and cleared his throat. He had made a decision. “Do you know what your brother said to me recently?”

  She looked up at him, her dark chocolate eyes wet with emotion, lit by the moon, so confused by this non-sequitur. “What on earth does Ben have to do with any of this?”

  Shep touched her cheek briefly with his hand and his thumb came away wet. He could not believe what he was about to do and yet he could not stop himself from doing it either. “Your brother said he would do anything, pay any sum of money, sacrifice himself, if he could go back in time and save Cat the pain of the fire. If he could rescue her…” He paused as Julia looked at him searchingly, confused as to what all this had to do with her current predicament. Another tear fell, almost as an afterthought. She was so lovely in the moonlight, and he had never imagined that someone as strong as Julia could be sad.

  “Please do not cry,” he whispered before he kissed her, brushing his lips soothingly over hers. Her lips tasted of salt. This had not been a part of his plan but he could not seem to stop. “Please. I cannot stand to see you cry.” He kissed her again. He had to kiss her. This time, his hand traveled down her cheek, to her neck and down her arm until he reached her waist. Bringing their bodies closer, lost in the embrace, he ran his teeth along her lip before soothing it with his tongue.

  “Shep,” she murmured
against his lips, kissing him back before she eventually pulled away. “We must not.”

  “That is what I was getting to.” Her kisses had given him courage. There was still passion between them. There always would be. “Ben was unable to rescue Cat but perhaps I can rescue you.”

  She blinked at him, her head fuzzy from the crying jag and then from his drugging kisses. “I do not understand.”