Frozen in place by her thumping pulse, by the sudden fear that gripped her. Carmalina half expected a stone to be thrown, and then another and another until she lay dying in a bloodied mess on the ground.
“What is it?” Justin asked, concern warring with anticipation in his gaze.
“I can’t do this. We shouldn’t have come.” When she shook her head, a hairpin came loose and a curl fell over her ear. “I have to go.”
“I’ll get the carriage.”
She’d expected an argument. A fight. She’d expected Justin to expose her to the circling vultures but instead he put his arms around her and began picking a path through those surrounding them.
“Hoy, where are you off to?” A voice came from the right and Carmalina ducked her head lower.
“My wife is feeling ill.” Justin’s curt words and tone would have normally made any man shrink back and forget that he’d spoken. Not this one.
“Let’s get a peek first, ’ay? We’ve waited all night.”
“No.”
“I said I want to see.”
Where the mask sat warm against her cheeks and forehead, suddenly there was only frigid air, her scalp stinging as the man ripped the mask from her head and a good amount of hair with it.
“What have we here?”
Carmalina tried to keep her head down. Justin gripped her tighter but the stranger was obviously drunk and uncaring of his own strength as he grabbed her other wrist. Burying her head closer to Justin’s chest, she tried to break free of the stranger’s bruising grip. She wanted to be gone from there. Now.
“Let go.” Justin’s snarled command was quiet but no less deadly.
“Not until we see this little princess’s face.”
They were causing a scene. A chorus of agreement rang out in the night and suddenly everyone grew very, very quiet. Still she didn’t look. She squeezed her eyes shut so hard, her head hurt.
“I am taking my wife home. She is ill. If you do not release her, I will see you at dawn, Bradham.”
“That’s not fair. You know who I am but I still don’t know either of you.”
“And nor will you. Unhand her.”
“No.”
The last thing she needed was for Justin to be involved in any more scandals. Carmalina would be happy if she never thought of the word or said it again for the rest of her life. She would not be happy if he was killed on the dueling field over her suddenly newfound pride.
Gently, Carmalina pushed away from Justin and lifted her head to the man who still held her arm with a tight grip.
“Let. Me. Go,” she demanded.
It took only a second for Bradham to recognize who she was and drop her hand as though she carried a disease.
“She’s not your wife,” Bradham complained.
“Not yet,” came Justin’s growled reply.
It was just quiet enough, just breezy enough to carry his words over the silent crowd and beyond. Carmalina was horrified. Nothing was right. Flinching, she expected that first stone at any second.
“What the hell is going on here?”
“You brought your doxy?”
“Is that the whore?”
The questions kept coming until she wished the ground would fall out from beneath her.
“Justin?”
If Carmalina thought Justin was tense before, she was wrong. His body went hard next to hers and his grip tightened as a man emerged from the strangers in front of them.
He could be only one man.
* * *
“Billington.” Justin would never call him Father. He didn’t even want to acknowledge his sire but some manners were far too ingrained.
“Justin, what is going on?”
“I was escorting Mrs. Belluccini to my carriage when Bradham accosted her.”
His father’s gaze snapped from Justin’s face to flicker contemptuously over the woman at his side. The woman he’d just claimed, to all who heard, he was going to marry.
“What is she doing here?” the Earl of Billington asked his son.
“I invited her,” Justin replied. This was exactly the confrontation he’d wanted when he’d suggested coming to the masque but now that Carmalina trembled with fear against his side, he regretted his actions with every fiber of his being. They could have stayed in and enjoyed the night on their own. He never should have started any of it in the first place. He wished more than anything he’d never dragged her into the mess that was his life.
“She is not welcome here,” his father said as though Carmalina didn’t stand between them. As though if he ignored her, she wouldn’t exist either.
The sparks of his anger grew hotter. “Now that it is midnight, she is not welcome?”
“You shouldn’t have brought her,” a woman’s shrill voice shouted from the crowd.
“Why not?” Justin addressed the assembled gentry. “Why is she not welcome when most of the men here danced with her? The women talked to her. She looks no different from any of you.”
“Justin, this is not the right time or place.” He hadn’t seen the countess hiding behind the earl’s back.
“When is the right time and place?” he asked his mother.
“It is one thing to keep her in your house but to bring her here? It isn’t done.”
“It is now,” he drawled. He wondered how Carmalina was holding up. She still hadn’t said anything. Hadn’t moved. He didn’t think she’d even drawn breath.
“You need to leave. Now.”
Justin leveled a cold stare at his father. “Or what?”
“You will be thrown out,” George replied.
The words he’d wanted to hear. A thrill stole through him. “Thrown out? The gardens are a public place.”
“And this is a ton event. She is not one of us.”
“Not yet, but she will be.”
Gasps of outrage were followed by whispers and then silence again.
“I beg your pardon?” His mother stepped forward.
“I am going to marry her.”
“You can’t.” Finally. He’d shocked his father. The unshakeable man who’d rarely shown Justin any emotion other than ennui and the back of his hand. Not even shame or disappointment had ever been directed his way from his sire. Until now.
“I have a special license in my pocket,” Justin lied. “We are going to be married and there is nothing you can do about it.”
“You will not bring that cypriot into this family,” George told him with a slash of his hand through the air.
And now some anger. Interesting. He wondered how far he could push him.
“You know how to rectify that.”
“He can’t and he won’t,” the countess replied before the earl could open his mouth.
“And why not, Mother? I don’t want to be a part of this farce of a happy family.”
“You don’t get to decide that,” she replied, her voice rising.
“Who does?” Carmalina finally spoke up.
“You will not address me.”
“I will do what I want. You are not my mother and you—” She looked at Justin’s father, contempt plain on her face, in her voice, “—are a disgraceful excuse for a papa.”
Outrage flowed from every person in proximity. Tempers flared and someone was going to get hurt, yet Carmalina stepped from the circle of his arms and approached the Earl of Billington as though she would like to slap his face also.
“You assume too much, hussy.” The pitch of his mother’s shrieked words hurt his ears. He was seeing more emotion from his parents on this one night in full view of all London than he’d glimpsed in his whole life.
“Would you like me to slap you again?” Carmalina asked with a step in her direction, a menacing smile on her sweet lips. Once again she championed him in a way no other ever had.
“That won’t be necessary, bella. I believe Mother learned her lesson the first time she tangled with you.” Justin didn’t take his eyes off his father’s face. His teeth w
ere gritted and a vein throbbed in his jaw. He suddenly looked so old. And furious.
Moving toward his mistress, soon to be his wife, he slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her a safe distance away. Safe for who, he couldn’t know.
“I am the head of this family, dammit.”
“You lost the right to have a say in my actions a long time ago.”
“You will not marry her.” George’s voice cut through the tension as though his word was that of the Almighty issuing an edict.
“Her name is Carmalina. You had better get used to addressing her by name.”
“She will never be welcome as a Trentham,” George roared.
Justin stepped around her, sheltering Carmalina from his father’s rising fury. He had waited for this for so long. He was going to take as much as he could get. “Then she should fit right in,” he replied, his voice even, nonchalant.
“That’s what all this is about?”
Justin couldn’t believe the confusion in his sire’s eyes. “This is about me not giving a damn for your name.”
“I gave you my name!” George’s shouts grew louder and louder as his face turned redder and redder.
“How kind of you.” Justin sneered. “But I don’t want it.”
“I made a promise to care for you. You had everything you could have wished for.”
“Not everything,” Justin replied, his voice still low. He would not give his father the satisfaction of seeing his own anger but at the same time he was appalled. He’d never heard his father put his son’s existence on the planet so dispassionately. As though he were a puppy or a servant’s child.
“You are a man now. Why is love so damned important to you?”
“Why isn’t it important to you?”
“Justin.” The countess once again interrupted before the earl could open his mouth. “We are not going to discuss this any further tonight.”
“Scared of the scandal, Mother?”
“I’m tired of this conversation.” The earl turned and stepped back into the crowd.
“That’s right, Father,” Justin spat the word like a bad taste in his mouth. “Ignore the boy. He’ll go away eventually. Not this time!”
The earl stalked back and stood nose to nose, chest to chest with his third son, his chest heaving. “Are you threatening me?”
“Absolutely.” Justin bared his teeth.
Out of nowhere, pain exploded in his cheek and along his jaw. Had he been ready for it, he could have braced and punched back. His father had never hit him before with his fists. Justin wasn’t sure if he should cheer or fight back.
Stepping away from the earl’s red-faced anger, Justin rubbed a hand over his throbbing cheek and smiled at the man who would not for much longer be his father. “Name your seconds,” Justin told him.
“You can’t do that.” His mother stepped between them, sincere horror widening her mouth and eyes.
“There is no other way. If he won’t disown me, he will have to kill me.”
“I will not fight you,” the earl responded.
“Then you had better say the words I need to hear.”
“No.”
“Then I will see you at dawn.”
Justin turned to Carmalina, bowed low, murmured an apology about being interrupted and then asked if she was ready to leave.
Nodding, she tucked a hand over his arm with the dignity of the highest in the land. They strolled away, into the night, leaving behind incredulous people ready to start the gossip before letting out their pent-up breaths.
For once, Justin didn’t care about the gossip.
He cared about what would happen when he and his sire finally stared down the lengths of pistols at dawn.
His life would finally either begin, or end.
Chapter Seventeen
The wild night seemed to grow colder in an instant. The wind howled and whipped her skirts about her ankles as Justin handed her into the carriage. Carmalina didn’t really know what had just happened. When the Earl of Billington had struck his son, she’d wanted to jump on the bastardo and claw his eyes out. She very nearly had.
Why hadn’t Justin fought back? Why hadn’t he made more of his scene and brawled with his sire in front of the ton? Once and for all his scandal would be done with. A duel certainly wasn’t going to change much more other than one of them would win and the other would be in dire need of a coffin.
“Do you really have a special license in your pocket?” Carmalina asked. There were so many other thoughts vying for attention in the chaos of her mind but this one burned the brightest.
Justin settled back against the cushions opposite her and met her gaze, still rubbing a hand over his reddened cheek. “We could be married before the end of the week.”
Just when she thought her heart could return to a normal rhythm, he went and said something to alter it. “No thank you,” she replied, breaking eye contact to stare out into the pitch-black night.
“No to the end of the week or no to marrying me?”
She wasn’t sure. “At this rate, you will be dead by the end of the week.”
“You think I will lose?”
“Could you live with killing your father?”
“Don’t feel sorry for me, Carmalina. Or for him. His actions have led us to this day.”
“And yours have not?” She began to see he looked at his life from only one perspective. He had only one goal at the end of his tunnel and he ignored all other obstacles, people standing in the line of sight, just as he was ignored by his family.
“You still don’t understand.” His pained, quiet tone hurt her.
Carmalina pulled in a tight breath and turned on him. She shifted forward a little on the velvet-covered bench and let him know what she really thought. “You are being childish. Why can’t you see what you do is ridiculous? He will never disown you but he will never love you either. In the meantime you will drive away the one man who does care about you. Eventually your schemes and plots will become unbearable to those who want to show you love but you are too blinded by your immature ambition to see it. Revenge is not worth all of this heartbreak!”
“You are wrong. You just don’t understand.”
As the carriage came to a stop, Carmalina threw open the door and jumped down to the street without waiting for assistance. She stomped up the three stairs to the landing and then swiveled so she could stare down into his bewildered expression. “You are the one who is wrong. Open your eyes to other possibilities before they get up and walk out of your life. But for me, I don’t care anymore, signor. You will be miserable and alone and there are no words I can say to make you believe any different.”
“Are you finished?” he asked, hands on his hips.
“Si, I am done.” And with that she stomped up the last few steps, past Newberry’s startled expression and straight to her bedroom where she closed the door with a slam so loud the walls shook with the full force of her frustration.
* * *
An hour and half a decanter of whiskey later, Justin still hadn’t raised the nerve to climb the stairs and knock on Carmalina’s door. Instead he sat and stared through the amber liquid to the flames of the fire as he contemplated just how much more idiotic he could get.
When he’d referred to her using the W word, he’d simply wanted to get her out of an uncomfortable situation but Bradham had pushed and pushed.
Wife.
He wanted Carmalina for his wife but after her outburst earlier, he wondered if he’d lost her, or at the very least taken them back to the uneven ground they’d trod after their first meeting. He ran her words over and over in his mind but still his stubborn will refused to let the clear answer escape the fog.
He’d asked her if she was finished. He’d meant had she finished berating him like the child he was.
Was she done telling him off, or was she done? Come the morning, would she still be there? Would he? Life was so short and here he’d squandered it all away and for what
? A bruised cheek? An appointment at dawn with his worthless sire? Scandal after scandal that got him no further than feeling sorrier for himself and angrier at the world?
Why couldn’t he simply walk away from it all? Carmalina cared nothing for titles or society. She didn’t harbor aspirations of becoming a duchess or a leading member of the ton. She probably had never even heard of Almack’s or Sally Jersey, nor would she care.
He could take her far away and they could start over. They could be happy together; he knew it. If she would give him a second chance.
A soft knock at the door of the library startled him from his dreams of a better life and after one look at the expression on Newberry’s face, his plans for a happy future turned to ash before his very eyes.
“What is it?”
“It’s the master.” Newberry paused. Justin surged to his feet.
“Oliver?”
“He is…he…he fell. He’s asking for you.”
“A doctor?” Justin asked, walking past Newberry into the vestibule forgetting his hat, his coat. But he could not forget Carmalina’s words that he would lose the one person to ever truly love him.
“The doctor is there but nothing can be done.”
He skidded to a halt on the black-and-white tiles. “What do you mean, nothing?”
“He is not expected to make it through the night, milord. I’m sorry.”
Swearing vilely, Justin threw the front doors open and vaulted down the stairs and on to the street. He started to run; the dress shoes still on his feet beat a rhythm to match his pounding heart. Cutting through the park, the only sounds to reach his ears were his heavy breathing and his worries. He’d seen Oliver earlier, dancing with Carmalina. They’d spoken only briefly but he had seemed fine. Just fine. It must be a mistake. When he got there he would send for his own physician and get another opinion.
He burst through the line of trees, jumped a low fence without breaking stride, without losing breath. Two more blocks of darkened mansions whizzed by as he ran as fast as his legs would carry him.
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