The Rakehell Regency Romance Series Boxed Set 5

by MacMurrough, Sorcha

  He felt as though he had been traveling for years. In a sense he had, but in this tiny bright sunny bedroom painted white with the tiniest hyacinth accents which reminded him of her eyes, he was sure he had come home. He looked around the snug cottage, and determined then to redo every room in their house. Juliet could have whatever she liked.

  The white room reminded him of another chamber in another eon....

  He saw it now as clearly as if it were happening at that moment: his father fighting with his mother. Only this time....

  You mustn't ever tell. Never tell.

  And Lawrence, terrified of losing his father too, had remained silent.

  Except that murder would out, and his father's legacy, if not financial, had most certainly been a most lasting one.

  "Oh God, Juliet, I'm so sorry," he wept.

  "I'm not Juliet, I'm Miranda. I think you were having a nightmare, Lawrence."

  He sat up in the bed with a start. His wife's sister was poised to go out the door with a valise.

  "No, you're right. I know you're not her," he gasped, shaking his head in a vain attempt to clear it of the horrible visions which teemed within. "I was just thinking of her, that's all. No, you really aren't very much alike, now are you."

  She shook her head. "She's the clever one. Me the sociable one, and a moderately good homemaker, more by chance than by choice."

  "My mother was like you."

  "Thank you, I think."

  "Yes, sweet and gentle, like Juliet."

  "Juliet?" She laughed merrily. "You must be in love! Ma! Pa? Lawrence says Juliet's sweet and gentle."

  There was a guffaw from below.

  He was perplexed.

  Her foster-father came up now, and explained, "She could give the roughest French sailors a run for their money when it came to the trading, and swear and drink with the best of them in several languages. Smart as a whip, our girl. Perhaps not as ladylike as what you're accustomed to, but what's the point of having a high-stepper when a good workhorse will get you where you're going as well."

  "Pa, Juliet would be mortified to be compared with a horse!"

  "But you know what I mean. No use in airs and graces, now is there? Juliet has a good head on her shoulders, with the right man to bring her out of herself." The older man beamed with pride.

  "Which I evidently am not," he said with a sigh.

  "Oh, I don't know. She loves you, so I suppose you have to be."

  "What makes you say that?"

  "To continue the horse motif, wild horses couldn't get her to do anything she didn't want to do."

  Lawrence stared down at her. "What about fear?"

  "Fear?" Miranda laughed. "I've never seen her afraid. Turned a bull in a field once before it trammelled me to death."

  His head swam. She'd feared him, shrunk away from his anger. He really was his father's son. He thanked God he had never hit her, but the prospect of a child coming soon terrified him. What if he hit the infant the way he and his brother...

  Now he longed to see Juliet with every fibre of his being. He recalled Lady Pemberton's warning as well about not leaving Juliet on her own for too long. "Are we ready to leave?"

  "Aye, just about. Missus is just packing a few things and then we'll close up the house."

  "Do you mind if we press on until late tonight? I was up in London and have already been away longer than I ought," he asked, tugging at his suddenly too-tight collar.

  "Not at all. We can sleep in the carriage."

  Within half an hour they were all under way. One part of Lawrence was delighted to be making the acquaintance of such a lovely family. The other part of him couldn't wait to see his wife, hold her in his arms as though he would never let her go.

  The old couple sensed it, for as they neared Jerome Manor, her foster-mother said, "You go on up and see Juliet yourself first. We'll get settled in our rooms, get the dust off, and come along by and by."

  "Thank you."

  "Nothing like young love."

  There was nothing like it indeed, for one look at his wife's sparkling eyes as she heard him step into the room, and he was one his knees by the side of the bed. "Forgive me?"

  "Always. Come up here and let me look at you, kiss you."

  "Oh, no, I'm filthy and I don't want to hurt--"

  "I'm fine. Really. Come here. You have no idea how much I missed you."

  "Oh, I think I do," he said with a sheepish grin as his erection strained against the fabric of his trousers.

  She scooted to the edge of the bed and unbreeched him, caressing his huge length between her breasts, her hand massaging his satiny tip.

  "Oh, Juliet, no!"

  "It's fine, love, just relax."

  Within seconds it was over, and he groaned, "Worse than any schoolboy."

  "I don't mind. Blake says we need to be careful for a little while longer. I don't want you to suffer and be tempted to stray."

  He kissed her several times, on her eyelids, cheeks and mouth. "Stray? Never. What would be the point? You're perfection itself. My goddess. Why waste time with a pale copy when I can have all that is most divine in this world," he said tenderly as he sat beside her and cleaned her with his handkerchief.

  "Your goddess?" she said softly, thinking of Eswara's words about how to view herself as a woman. Her own inner power.

  "Always. I just wish I could be your hero. But I've been so awful to you. I've never been so ashamed in my life," Lawrence said, his tone so bleak she stroked his hair and hugged him to her tightly.

  "I did try to tell you," she said softly.

  "I know. I know. My only wonder is how you resisted the temptation to rip me to pieces with your tongue."

  She shrugged. "You were confused. Angry. I was just waiting for you to come to your senses."

  "My God, love, you waited long enough," he said with a rueful laugh.

  "But now the past is over, and we have a bright, shining future."

  "I'm not so sure about the past," he admitted. "There are some loose ends to tie up, and I don't want to lose all of it. There are some things worth keeping, remembering. Like that first marvelous night with you, and our first day in the swing."

  They both smiled warmly at the sultry memories.

  "But first I need to tell you--"

  She sat up and fluffed the pillows, and patted the bed for him to join her.

  He climbed in, put one arm around her shoulders, and took her hand. "The truth is, Juliet, well, I didn't understand love and passion, not really, until I met you. I've been so in awe of your beauty, your intelligence, I suppose I just couldn't believe my luck. Couldn't trust it to last. My parents--"

  She waited patiently for him to tell her his dark inner truth at last.

  Lawrence took a deep breath. "My parents started out happy. But my father became more and more jealous. There were dreadful scenes, him shouting, she pleading. From words it went to blows. From blows, to the final inevitable tragic ending." He shuddered.

  "She asked for a divorce, tried to separate from him. He would always ask her to come back, convince her that this time, things were going to be different. They'd be fine for a while, but the voices would start to raise again. Then there would come that horrible thudding sound."

  "Thudding sound?" she whispered, already knowing the answer to her question.

  He nodded once abruptly. "My brother was older than me, was always selfish, didn't care. But my mother was good, kind, affectionate. She didn't deserve the brutality. I tried to defend her. It was like David going up against Goliath. He hit me so hard once I can still remember the blow. I was laid up for weeks afterwards, and they thought I might never hear again.

  "My hearing did come back, but I never played music so well after that, though everyone was kind enough to try to pretend. I was hopeless at sports at school because I was so badly out of balance. It toughens you up, being seen as a weakling. You either become one or, well, overcompensate for your deficiencies by becoming aggressiv
e."

  He cradled her against him as he confessed, "I fought and bullied my way to the top of the class, the school, taking on all comers I knew I could beat one way or the other. I met my match in the Rakehells, and when I couldn't beat them, I tried to join them. I wanted to be a better man, really. Then, when I thought they had stolen from me, well, all bets were off. I saw them as hypocrites, and their actions as proof that I had been correct all along, that might really did make right. I know now that I was wrong."

  "You poor boy, what you must have suffered in such a house," she soothed, massaging his back and shoulders until he felt less tense. After a time she asked, "But your mother? What happened to her?"

  His next four words were devastating, and the last thing Juliet ever expected to hear. "My father murdered her."

  "Oh, Lawrence, I'm so sorry." She caressed his shoulder and face and held him close.

  He felt as though he were suffocating but forced himself to go on. "It was a bad fight. I was home from school for Christmas. They had been to a ball. She had talked to a man. More than talked. She was trying to get a divorce. Anything had to be better than what she'd tolerated for so many years. He punched her once, savagely. She flew down the stairs. Her neck snapped.

  "He told me to never tell anyone he had been there, and left for the north. Everyone assumed it had been an accident after he had left her to go away on business. By the time he came back, she had been buried. He'd left the arrangements to me and my brother. He couldn't even face what he had done. And I never told the authorities because it was bad enough losing one parent, let alone two."

  "And your brother?" she asked, unable to believe the enormity of what Lawrence must have suffered. What he had held inside for so many years.

  Lawrence's voice was scarcely audible. "He murdered his wife and killed himself."

  Her eyes flew wide. "No!"

  He nodded solemnly. "I can only guess what the boys have witnessed over the years. I had an inkling when they became upset that time I shouted. I should have guessed. Having seen nothing but violence, and being a violent man himself, it seems logical--" He heaved a huge sigh. "Which is why, my darling Juliet, I would like to offer you a chance to divorce me. Knowing what I am, can you really bear to run the risk of--"

  She squeezed his hand hard and leaned into his huge frame. "Divorce isn't going to solve the problem, Lawrence. It would only make you more bitter, lonely and angry."

  "If I had known all this about myself before, made the connections before we wed, I would never have done something so cruel as to marry you," Lawrence said, drawing away from her slightly, tempted almost beyond endurance by her softness.

  "Our marriage seems to have brought my whole horrid past rushing back to me. It's bad enough a man like me having a wife. A child on the way makes things even worse."

  She stared at him. "A man like you? Lawrence—"

  "I know you love me, darling, but you have to face the facts. You know what I did that night Parke attacked you. But there's worse, darling, far worse. What if I ever hit you or the baby? Sometimes my anger gets so, well, boiling, I don't know what to do."

  "You've never hit me," she insisted. "You shout sometimes, but you've never hurt me personally, not even when you thought I had betrayed you. Not even when I was completely naked and at your mercy. The only way to combat hate is with love."

  "But that's just it. My father and brother would have said they loved their wives!"

  She shook her head. "That wasn't love. It wasn't sharing, tenderness, trust. It was some sort of unhealthy obsession, a need to control. Perhaps even a need to hurt so they could feel like big men, as you said.

  "But love is kind, devoted and nurturing. Even when the boys have been at their worst you've never lost your temper."

  "They're children," he said, as if the thought had never occurred to him to be angry with them. "And I have to admit, seeing the way they had been treated at school, I vowed then and there that nothing they did could possibly ever warrant a whipping."

  She smiled up at him. "I'm glad. I agree. I was never hit as a child. I have no intention of doing it to any of our children." She opened her arms to try to get him to come back to bed, but he continued to pace up and down alongside the bed like a caged panther.

  "Oh, Lawrence, I'm so sorry you've been carrying this around inside you, all these memories for so many years."

  He ran the fingers of one hand through his thick black hair. "But that's just it. I never thought about it until, well, we married. Then you reminded me of my mother. Not in terms of appearance, but your gentle manner. I had, um, I suppose you'd call them sudden recollections. Visions."

  "What kind of visions," she whispered.

  He admitted, "Of my dead mother. Of me killing you."

  "Oh, no, Lawrence, no—"

  He nodded. "I saw you lying in bed draped in a sheet when Blake came after we had quarrelled, and I was terrified. You looked so like Mother in her shroud, I couldn't breathe. So I was trying to, well, drive you away I suppose, before I hurt you. Except that by some miracle you still keep forgiving me."

  "I do it because I love you." She reached over to kiss his hand. "So long as you know you have no reason whatsoever to be jealous of Ash. Thomas accused he and Charlotte of having an affair. Charlotte was having a difficult pregnancy. Thomas thought she had lost interest in him because of Ash. I have no idea what gave him the notion, and didn't understand the reasons for it at the time, but Ash asked me if I would tell Thomas the story of my parents. Once I did, he understood his own fears were groundless."

  "I'm glad you were able to help them. And Ash and Ellen too."

  "And us as well, I hope. You're not the only one with a tormented family background, darling. My father may never have hit my mother, but he destroyed her just as surely as your father did yours."

  "God, we are a right bloody pair, aren't we," he sighed, perching on the edge of the bed beside his wife.

  Juliet kissed him gently. "We don't have to be. I meant every word I said, Lawrence. I do love you. If we've managed to be happy even with all your fears and insecurities, just think how happy we can be if you just let them all go."

  "I'd like to believe that, my love, but it's such a huge risk."

  "Loving someone is all about risk. And it's too late. I can't stop loving you," she confessed. "Believe me, Lawrence, I've tried."

  He held her close, listening to the beating of her heart as it kept time with his own. "I'm so sorry. You're the most wonderful woman a man could ever have as a wife. You complete me, make me whole. If I had married Matilda, my life would have been hell. I'm sure I would have strangled her with my bare hands as soon as I found out what she was."

  "I don't think so. You would have just become more bitter and debauched."

  He shook his head. "Don't remind me. A visit to that brothel was enough to put me off wenching for the rest of my life."

  "Oh? What happened?" she asked, both worried and curious.

  "Never mind," he said with a long shiver. "The important thing is I wasn't the least bit tempted by any of the women there, or indeed, have ever been tempted by any other woman who has crossed my path since I met the love of my life, who happens to have the most rare pair of violet eyes."

  "Oh Lawrence, thank you."

  He cupped her cheek and planted a brief kiss on her lips. "But in that brothel, I did realise that you were a person, not just a receptacle for my lusts. And that that would be true even if you had been the biggest harlot in Christendom. And it had never been all lust anyway. I do remember asking you to marry me that morning before Matthew came barging in."

  "Ah, yes, Matthew," she said, sitting up further, steeling herself for a quarrel.

  To her surprise, his tone was truly repentant. "Yes, Matthew. He didn't cheat me. My own brother did. He knew if I had no money, my fiancee would give me up. I think she did care about me in her own fashion, but she was far too interested in worldly wealth and success. He was also trying t
o destroy my reputation, he envied me so.

  "I thought it was all Matthew's fault. And that the Rakehells were all in on it. Ironically, the one man I should have been able to trust above all was the one who cheated me. Because of my brother, I thought for a time that I had lost everything. So everything I did after that was motivated by a need to get even. To show everyone that I was down, but not out of the game. I drove myself twenty hours a day when I got to India. After I got off the ship and had a few weeks of madness, I didn't even touch a woman from one end of the year to the next. Only when I went to town would I raise the roof for one night. I'm not as bad as you think."