No one would hurt her. Not his Clara. No.
Without a moment’s hesitation, he threw himself into the door, shoulder first. Wood cracked. The door didn’t budge. Bracing himself, he summoned all the strength and unholy anger, the fierce urge to protect his wife, and slammed himself back into the portal. He’d break down the bloody door, and when he crossed the threshold, Lord have mercy on the bastard on the other side.
Because Julian was going to fucking kill him.
She woke to a heavy body pressing her to the mattress. As sleep left her and awareness returned, part of her knew something was wrong. The body atop hers was too heavy and bulky. The scent of him was all wrong too. He was breathing heavy, and the smell of spirits and smoke clung to him.
No, it was not Julian who had laid himself upon her above the bedclothes. It was a stranger. A large man. A man who intended to do her harm.
She let loose a scream but a hand clamped over her mouth and nose. She could scarcely breathe. She struggled to free her arms, but they were trapped beneath the bedclothes and her attacker’s weight. Dear God, he meant to kill her. Whoever had attacked Julian had come for her this time. And he was going to murder her in her bed.
Still fighting to breathe, she forced her mouth open and sank her teeth into the fleshy pads of her assailant’s fingers. She bit him as hard as she could. Until she tasted the copper tang of blood and heard him curse her.
“Damn it, you bitch.” His other hand snagged in her hair, gripping it so hard that tears ran down her cheek at the awful, wrenching pain.
But she was in a fight for her life, and if she had any say in the matter, her husband would not wake up in the morning to find her body, limp and broken lying in her bed. She would live for him, for herself, for the life they’d build together. She bit down harder, summoning up all the fury within her.
He released her hair. “Goddamn it.”
His fist connected with her cheek, gnashing her teeth together. White stars flew before her eyes in the inky darkness. In her shock, she released her grip on his finger, and he didn’t waste a moment in striking. His hands clamped on her neck, tightening.
“You’re going to die tonight, you little American bitch,” he growled.
Dear God. Perhaps she was. She choked, struggling to breathe in, but no air would find her lungs. His grip was so tight. And the blow to her head had made her weak. The lack of air made her weaker still. But she had to continue fighting. She thrashed her legs on the bed, thumping as hard as she could. Perhaps someone would hear. Her fingers clawed at her attacker’s manacle-like hands, scratching and scraping and trying to draw more blood, then to his face when she failed. He kneed her in the stomach, sending a fresh wall of pain crashing over her.
She couldn’t free herself. Her vision seemed hazy and indistinct now, even in the darkness. The stars returned, along with a buzzing in her ears. So this was it. She was going to die after all, she thought in grim horror. And she hadn’t even gotten the chance to tell Julian she loved him. To bear him children. To take away his sadness.
Life seemed to slip from her. She could feel it leaving. The darkness was there, beckoning, waiting to claim her. Another minute and it would all be over. She’d be gone. She wanted to fight, but her body, attacked and starved of air, wouldn’t cooperate.
Suddenly, her assailant released her throat and rolled away from her, his weight leaving her body. She gasped, the breath returning to her aching lungs a violent shock. Her hands went to her neck where just seconds before, her unseen attacker’s fingers hand been. She rubbed, trying to bring the life back, trying to erase the pain and the violence both.
A part of her processed the sound of her attacker cursing and then the quick, hefty thuds of his footfalls racing across her chamber. A second set of footfalls sounded. She braced herself, uncertain if they belonged to one of his confederates. Just as quickly, the footsteps hastened back to her side. Someone else was upon her then, and this time it was a welcome embrace, for she smelled his cologne, felt his arms around her in their familiar, beloved strength. His bristled cheek pressed to hers.
Julian, thank God.
“Clara!” His voice was hoarse, and he clasped her to his bare chest as though he could pull her inside himself and keep her there forever. “Jesus, Clara, are you hurt? Speak to me, love. Say something.”
“I’m alive,” she croaked in awe, her brain still stupid with lack of air and shock, still trying to process what had just occurred.
“Thank Christ. My God, what did he do to you? I’ll hunt him down and draw and quarter him myself.” There was a vicious, raw edge to his tone she’d never heard before.
When he would’ve left her and chased after her attacker, she clutched at his shoulders. “No, Julian, please. Don’t leave me.”
Terror, wide and deep and all-consuming, filled her chest at the thought of being alone in the dark again. What if whoever had tried to kill her would return? What if Julian wouldn’t be there to frighten him away and keep her safe? Her pistol had done her no good tonight, tucked into her reticule as it was and too far out of reach. She shook so badly that she knew she’d never have managed a good shot anyhow.
If she’d ever fancied herself invincible, that illusion had been thoroughly dashed. She’d never felt more desperate or helpless than she had with a stranger’s hands clamped around her throat and the life seeping from her body. A sob rose in her chest, and to her shame she couldn’t contain it.
“Hush, darling.” He caressed her hair, rained kisses all over her face. “I’ll not leave you. He won’t hurt you again. You have my word.”
His reassurance somehow helped to banish some of the horror that threatened to take hold of her. She continued to gulp air, and breathing—never before a luxury—felt better than it ever had. “Julian, he wanted to kill me. He told me I was going to die tonight.”
“Any man who dares try to hurt you will need to go through me. I’ll damn well kill him first,” Julian growled. “Listen to me, love. Whoever he is, he cannot come after you and expect to get away with it. I’ll hunt down the son-of-a-bitch myself and make him pay.”
If only his words could assuage her fears entirely. For tonight had made it painfully clear that whoever was determined to do him harm wouldn’t stop until he’d accomplished his evil task. Either that or meet his own end first. And now he’d come after Clara as well. A shiver tore through her. Her thoughts raced to Julian’s sisters next. “Do you think he’s still within the house? We need to find Lady Josephine and Lady Alexandra.”
He kissed her again before standing. “Stay here, love. I’m going to ring for the servants and turn up the lamps.”
Clara hugged herself, her body shaking with a combination of cold and shock. Her nightdress was only a thin impediment to the night air. Light flared to life, illuminating the chamber in a dull glow. Ordinarily, the sight of Julian clad in only trousers slung over his lean hips, his chest broad and bare, would have made her warm and wanton. But panic was beginning to set in now. She rubbed her neck where the stranger’s fingers had pressed. How much longer would it have been until he’d taken her life?
Never mind her own brush with death. There could still be a lunatic on the loose. Others could be in the selfsame danger while they lingered in her chamber. Clara summoned her wits, took a calming breath, and slid from her bed. “We must find your sisters, Julian,” she said again.
He was looking at her strangely, an inscrutable expression on his face, his gaze going from her neck to her throbbing cheek. “Jesus, Clara. Why didn’t you tell me he’d hit you?”
She shook her head. “It’s nothing. Lady Alexandra and Lady Josephine could be at peril even now.”
“The bastard ran for the stairs, not toward their chamber.” He held out a dressing gown for her, his jaw a hard, grim line. “Put this on, love. You can’t go running about the house like that.”
She allowed him to help her into the robe, and when she would have tightened the cord at her waist,
he gently brushed her away, doing it himself. “I could have managed it,” she told him.
“I know.” The words seemed torn from him. “But I wanted to. I—goddamn it Clara, I need to touch you. To know you’re still here.”
His tone held a note of incredulity, as though he could not believe he felt that way, much less confessed it aloud. Then he hauled her to him again, the gesture devoid of his usual seductive charm. The motion was jerky, nearly bringing their faces colliding together. His eyes roamed over her as his fingertips traced, gliding across her smarting cheek, past her lips, across the bruises she was sure had begun to mottle her throat. It was the closest he’d ever come to admitting he cared for her.
A sudden burst of love blossomed inside her chest, warm and altogether foreign, doing its part to chase away some of the lingering shadows. “I’m here,” she told him, kissing his cheek, his chin, every patch of his skin available to her. Finally, she settled on his mouth.
The kiss they shared was long and fierce and deep. It said more than either of them could as they rejoiced in their relief to be in each other’s arms, life still a vibrant creature of fragile possibility. For now, they had each other. They were safe. And it was enough.
With great reluctance, she drew away from him. “We must see to the rest of the household, Julian.”
“Of course. Forgive me. I’ve never…” He allowed the thought to trail off, as though thinking better of it, before catching her hand in his, their fingers tangling. “I’ll not let you out of my sight for the rest of the night.”
She tightened her grip on him. With Julian, she felt safe. She felt as though they could battle whatever menace sought to claim them and come out the victors. “I wouldn’t let you,” she assured him. “Not tonight or ever again.”
But as they ventured off together to find his sisters who, as it turned out, remained peacefully sleeping in their beds, having been unaware of any commotion at all, it occurred to Clara that he had remained troublingly silent.
ours later, Julian found himself in much the same position he’d been in before all hell had cut loose within the walls of his home. Nude in his bed, his cock rigid as ever. But this time, a beautiful woman, smelling of orange and musk, just as nude as he, curled her sweet body to his. Her cheek rested on his bare chest. His hand stroked over her glossy, fragrant curls. It wasn’t right to want her as much as he did now, not after all she’d been through. But his body wouldn’t heed his bloody mind, so he kept his lower half angled away from her, hoping like hell she hadn’t noticed what a depraved bastard he was.
Ah yes, much the same position indeed. Hungry for his wife. Unable to sleep. But beyond the physicality of it all, everything was different. Strange how in such a short amount of time, so much could change.
Everything could change.
He could have lost Clara tonight.
It had been a litany hammering through him the entire time he’d roused the servants, checked upon the safety of his sisters, and scoured the house for any signs of the intruder. In the end, they hadn’t found a damn thing. The police had been summoned, and they’d taken statements but had accomplished precious little. They certainly hadn’t discovered any clues as to who had attempted to murder Clara.
The mere juxtaposition of his wife’s name and murder in the same thought left him feeling as though all the air had been sucked from his lungs. As though the weight of a cartload of bricks sat upon him, as though his gut was tied in knots, his skin a bizarre blend of hot and cold, simultaneously numb and on fire. A world without Clara. He couldn’t fathom such a travesty. By God, there ought not to be a world at all without her in it.
He had not lost her, and he could thank the Lord for that a hundred thousand times and his gratitude would still never be adequately expressed. If indeed the Lord cared to listen to a sinner like him, that was. But not losing her wasn’t the point any longer, not now.
For he could have lost her. Had he been any slower to break down the door, had he been sleeping instead of awake and brooding, had she not been as strong and fierce a fighter as she was, he wouldn’t have her warm, lovely curves draped over him. She’d have been murdered in her bed, just next door, because of him. Because he had unwittingly brought danger into her life.
Whitney’s words echoed through his mind. How can you keep her safe? What would happen if the villain who assaulted you returns to finish the deed here in your home? What if Clara is in the way? And what had Julian done but mocked him? This isn’t war, he’d scoffed. But tonight had proved him wrong. Dead wrong. It was war. He’d tear out the throat of the man who’d dared to create such bruises on Clara’s tender skin, who’d dared to attempt to choke the life from her while she slept in her bed.
A hunger for retribution burned through him. A bloodlust. A desperation to right the wrongs of the night. Tonight, he’d done what he did best his entire life: he’d failed. He’d failed Clara, much as he’d failed at everything he’d ever tried. Being a good son, rescuing himself from debt without selling his soul, keeping his bloody wife safe.
Christ, it was his fault. Every bit of it. He could have left her alone. He could have taken the hundred thousand pounds and marched her off to the nearest ship for Virginia. Even today, he could have sent her to her father’s home, at least until he could be assured of her safety.
But he was a selfish fucking bastard. And he had wanted her from the moment he’d first seen her. He had seen her innocence, her brightness, her intelligence and beauty and daring, and he’d wanted to possess it all for himself.
He’d wanted to possess her.
Hell, yes. Everything could change. For now he knew that he needed to let her go. To rid her of him. To send her back to safety. Let her go to Virginia. By God, let her go anywhere else in the goddamn world, so long as she was away from him and safe. He couldn’t bear to be the cause of her death. To be the reason she was in grave danger. Until tonight, he’d thought he couldn’t bear to set her free.
Tonight, he’d realized his capacity to love hadn’t withered away entirely from his black soul. He loved Clara. Loved her more than he’d ever experienced. It terrified him. Terrified him as much as the notion of being responsible for her death did.
Because of his love for her, he knew he could no longer keep her tied to him. The danger surrounding them aside, she was too good for him. He’d been too caught up in his own needs to acknowledge it before, but he could damn well see the truth for what it was now. He didn’t deserve a woman like her.
And she didn’t deserve a man like him, a jaded bastard who’d manipulated her, seduced her, deceived her, and all because he had wanted her for himself. Because the good and the innocence in him had died the day he’d accepted Lady Esterly’s proposition. He’d become what he hated most, and if Clara remained his wife, he would only ruin her as surely as he had been ruined. The binds between them needed to be severed for her safety as much as for her own good.
And so, he would send her back to her papa by any means necessary. Anything to secure her safety, to give her the sort of future he could never provide. She was a stubborn woman, his little dove, and he knew she would not go easily. But go she would, for he loved her enough to make certain there would never be another day she suffered because of him.
For the moment, however, he couldn’t bear to push her away. He needed this precious time, needed the feeling of her wrapped around him, the luxurious strands of her hair beneath his palm, her even breathing, her lush breast pressed against him. He needed to drink in this one last night they would have together before he said goodbye to her forever.
“Thank you for chasing him away,” she said quietly into the stillness that had descended between them, disrupting the bleak turn of his thoughts at last.
He’d supposed she’d fallen asleep, worn out as she must be from the horrors of the attack she’d endured. He swallowed against a sudden thickness in his throat. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you sooner. I wish to God I’d been there before…”
He couldn’t bring himself to give voice to what had happened to her. That bastard’s hands on her throat. The purple fingerprints on her otherwise flawless skin. The angry bruise on her cheek. His fists clenched.
Her hand traveled over his chest in a tentative caress, almost soothing. “You came for me just when I needed you, Julian.”
Jesus, could it be that she was reassuring him? How utterly ridiculous. How thoroughly Clara. He trapped her wandering hand in his, stilling it. “Don’t fancy me a hero, little dove. I’m a man, weak-willed, selfish, and more flawed than you can imagine.”
His biggest flaw of all was being incapable of protecting the woman he loved. How helpless he’d felt, attempting to slam his way through the door, hearing the muffled sounds of the breath being choked from her. To think someone in the world felt such malice toward him that he’d intended to kill not only Julian but his wife as well was jarring indeed.
Even more jarring when one considered the pathetic fact that he hadn’t an inkling as to who would wish him such ill or why. He’d been of half a mind to suspect Whitney of hiring someone to remove him, blight that he was, from the earth. But Jesse Whitney loved his daughter, and he would never have consented to her being injured, which left Julian hopelessly adrift.
She pressed a kiss to his chest, sending a fresh arrow of heat to his groin and effectively cutting through the morose bent of his mind. “You are a good man, Julian, for all that you choose to believe you’re not. Besides, I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for you.”
Her drawl remained more pronounced than usual, and her voice felt like honey sliding slowly over him. He didn’t want to think about how near she’d come to death. Didn’t want to entertain for one more moment the knowledge that if anything had happened differently earlier, she would be forever gone. Gone from him he could bear because he loved her too much, but gone from the earth he could not.
Restless Rake (Heart's Temptation Book 5) Page 21
