Her voice caught his attention immediately, though from the frown marring his handsome face, she gathered he was not as pleased to see her as she was to see him.
“What are you doing here?” His demand was laced with surprise, fear, and quite a bit of anger.
Julia knew instantly what Lucifer had been about. “I imagine the same thing you are.”
Wolf’s right brow lifted. “You came here alone, to meet with him?”
He pointed at Lucifer, who sat smugly in his chair.
Annoyed with his overly imperious tone, Julia harrumphed. “Oh, do come and sit down. All this craning around the chair to look at you is giving my neck a spasm.”
Wolf grunted, but joined their little group, taking a seat in the empty chair. “I assume you sent her the same note I received?”
Lucifer offered a devious grin. “Indeed. It seems I timed the deliveries well. Now that I have received payment, I shall provide the information promised.”
Julia cast a glance at Wolf and noticed that his frown had gotten worse, the expression seeming to carve into his face where his brows drew together. And she imagined this was all part of Lucifer’s plan.
But why? Why have this little drama play out in such a fashion?
“I believe you were about to share the information we were summoned here to receive?”
“Of course.” Lucifer paused a moment, looked at a paper on his desk, and then back up at her. “Lord Wallthorpe has been here and a number of other establishments over the last few weeks. He has been playing deep and losing. With few exceptions, I’ve seen this type of behavior enough times,” he cast a speculative glance at her, “to know what the cause of it is. Considering he owes me one hundred thousand pounds, and that he owes Callaghan sixty thousand, I can only imagine his total debt is monstrous. I dug around after realizing the magnitude of his potential problems to see if he is as solvent as his gambling suggests.”
“He’s not,” Wolf replied, cutting in and causing her head to swivel in his direction.
Julia stared at him, waiting for more information.
Wolf lifted one shoulder at her unspoken question. “I was on my way over to tell you. Wallthorpe is in debt up to his ears, and on the verge of losing everything, including his family seat.”
“Just so,” Lucifer chimed back in. “I learned that the bank is close to coming for his property to satisfy the debt he currently owes. It seems he borrowed a large part of the stake he put into a shipping deal that fell apart when the ship went down.”
“You certainly seem to have better resources than even I do. I had not discovered the loan from the bank.”
Wolf tipped his head toward Lucifer.
“Yes, well, I discovered long ago that information could be as valuable as money. Sometimes more so.” He smiled a moment. “Well, I believe that satisfies our agreed-upon exchange, Lady Wallthorpe.”
“It certainly does. Thank you, Mr. Lucifer. I appreciate your awareness of the value I might place on this information.” She rose a heartbeat before both men. “Wolf, could I drop you somewhere on my way?”
As they turned to leave the spacious office, he turned to her. “I have my carriage, but thank you for the offer.”
“Ah, perhaps then you could drive me home, as I came via hackney. Having to elude my sister and her guard did not allow me to use my own vehicle.” She offered a conspiratorial smile to Mr. Lucifer.
“I imagine. Though we should discuss this new propensity for eluding your protectors.” Wolf’s reply suggested a reprisal was coming.
Chapter 23
Together, Julia and Wolf stepped outside of Lucifer’s club onto a much busier street than when she’d entered. All around them, people moved in various directions, creating a motion that resembled the heave and flow of the ocean. Curious, she watched as some split off from the steady stream to slip into one establishment or another. Then she noticed that Wolf was staring at a particular business.
“What is it?” she asked.
He remained silent while he watched two men stumble down the sidewalk on the opposite side of the road. As they drew abreast of them, Julia got a closer look and recognized Wolf’s friend, Arthur. His associate appeared to have an arm slung over his shoulders, as though they were close friends. Or maybe just inebriated friends. She moved to lift her arm to wave at him, but Wolf stopped her by grabbing her hand and dragging her down the sidewalk behind him.
“Hold on a moment!” He shushed her and kept moving until his carriage appeared.
Once inside, she looked at him in surprise. “What was that about?”
Wolf’s brows drew together as he pressed his lips tight. “A private matter amongst friends, and I’ll ask you to not say anything about seeing him.”
He acted strangely, but she trusted him more than she trusted anyone, so she simply nodded her acquiescence. In the end, she was grateful for the silence that enveloped them between Lucifer’s establishment and her home. While seeing his friend had distracted Wolf, she suspected it was merely a delay in the inevitable conversation they would have about her slipping out of the house.
On the one hand, she was well aware that Wolf and his friends were there to protect her. On the other, she had spent the last decade of her life taking care of herself more often than not.
Old habits were hard to break.
The carriage plodded along as Wolf sat staring out the window. Despite his silence, she could not miss the tension radiating from him. She shifted her skirts about in an effort to settle back against the squabs. His head snapped around to watch her until she ceased moving, and then he slowly returned to staring at the city that slipped past.
She repressed the sigh that welled up within and instead, held her tongue. All would come out when they arrived at her home. She doubted he could stay silent forever.
Not bothering to slip in the rear entrance since her escape had been well and truly discovered, they walked in the front door. She had only hesitated a moment when he dismissed his driver for the evening. One part of her was pleased to have him close, to know he would sleep beside her through the night. The other part railed against the fact that he assumed he would be staying the night, and that he felt at liberty to simply do as he wished.
Unfortunately, she seemed to be at war with herself quite a lot lately. She did not appreciate the inner quarrel.
Flint and Ros both stood up as they walked into the front salon.
Her sister rushed forward. “Julia! You’re home safe!”
“Of course I am. You should never have doubted it.” Julia hugged her sister, even as she accepted the disgruntled look from Flint, who hovered nearby. “I did leave you a note so you wouldn’t worry.”
Ros released her. “That did not equate with your remaining safe. It merely let us know you had left on your own, and were not somehow abducted from the premises.”
Then Ros shot her a look that Julia thought of as her sister’s mother-hen look. It was sternly affectionate, with a raised brow and a partial smile.
“Duly noted. I apologize if I distressed you, but we have learned quite a lot this evening.” She glanced back at Wolf, who stood stiff and unsmiling.
“Indeed, we have learned that your sister could always turn to burglary if her fortune was lost,” Wolf said, as he moved closer to her. “We also learned that Lucifer seems to have an affinity for Julia.”
She could not have missed the note of anger—or was it jealousy?—that laced his words. “An affinity for information perhaps. I was merely a source.”
He stilled and looked at her, questions in his eyes. “Information?”
“Yes.” She rolled her eyes at the overbearing man beside her and turned back toward her sister to watch the dark-haired, sharp-eyed man hovering next to Ros. “He was more than a little curious about you, Lord Flintshire.”
Flint blinked as his mouth opened slightly, as though he wished to say something, but nothing came out.
Shooting a pointed look at Wolf,
Julia continued on. “That was how I paid for the information on Wallthorpe.”
“It was?” Relief danced in Wolf’s gaze, which only sparked her fury.
She rounded on him, her body alive with outrage. “Just so. But clearly you had it in your mind that I had tendered some other form of payment.”
He winced. “Not tendered, but I would not have doubted that Lucifer would have asked. I assumed you would say no and offer him money instead. My fear was that you would overpay for information I had already acquired.”
She wasn’t sure she entirely believed him, but chose not to pursue the matter further—at least for the moment. Turning back to the still-shocked Flint, Julia asked him the question they all were mulling over internally. “Do you have any notion as to why he might’ve been asking about you?”
“I am at a loss. I’ve never even set foot in his establishment. Maybe he is planning to…” Flint let his thought trail off, but something seemed to be rattling about in his head.
Ros placed a soft hand on his arm. “What could it be? What might he be planning?”
Flint startled as he looked at Ros’ delicate features. Her big green eyes glittered with concern as she looked up at him. Something in his gaze shifted and shuttered in a way Julia had not noticed before, and it clearly caused her sister no end of distress.
Ros pulled her hand from his arm, took a step away from him, and refocused her gaze on Julia. “Yes, well, what did you learn of Wallthorpe?”
Finding it difficult to move on from the unspoken byplay, Julia tried to set her concern for her sister aside and gather her thoughts.
Wolf stepped into the breach. “Wallthorpe is in dire financial straits. In fact, he may be penniless.”
Julia filled them in from there. “It seems he has been gambling heavily, and the bank is about to foreclose on his family seat, which he put up as collateral for a loan to fund a shipping venture. The ship sank, and everything was lost.”
Flint’s upper lip curled in disgust. “So the man is desperate, and his only way out of hock is to marry.”
“Yes, he is the worst kind of fortune hunter. Add to that his long-held fixation with Julia, who now has a significant portion of what was his father’s money. And the only way to access those funds is to marry her.”
Wolf’s brow creased to the point that Julia worried it might turn into a permanent furrow.
She sighed. It was becoming more and more evident that the only way to thwart her stepson was to either give away her fortune, or to marry someone. What worried her was that she couldn’t be certain that giving the money away would solve the problem entirely. The man seemed inordinately focused on her, to the point he’d pursued her sister as leverage. If she were being forthcoming, she would acknowledge that he’d always seemed overly interested in her, even when she’d been a young debutante. Her stomach churned.
Wolf looked at her, concerned determination lurking in his dark gaze. “Jules, perhaps we should speak in private?”
“I see no reason to hide the nature of this discussion. Ros and Flint are both adults, and they’re aware of the situation I find myself in.”
For a moment, she was certain she would cast up her accounts, but then she looked at Wolf and allowed flashes of their time together to comfort her. The way he touched her, the pleasure he shared with her, and the way he looked at her all comforted her. Even now, the softness in his gaze made her heart stutter.
He drew a breath and jerked down on his vest. “Very well, Jules.” He stepped over to the chair nearest the door and produced a folio she’d not seen before. Then he pulled a sheet from the book and held it out to her. “You should read this.”
Warily, she walked over and took the document. The words on the page ran together until she adjusted to the handwriting, but then they jumped off the page. Reading the letter from her dead husband to his son took mere moments, and then she had to reread it.
All the blood drained from her face. “He’ll never stop, will he?”
Ros rushed to her side. “What are you talking about?”
Julia waved the correspondence in the air. “Wallthorpe. He’s been obsessed with me for years. It’s his fault his father married me.”
She shook with fear and an utter sadness that opened a great gaping hole in her chest. All her suffering and her year of misery had ensued because a father sought to keep his son from pursuing her. Because she was too lowbrow to bear the next generation. She’d been treated contemptibly by much of London’s upper crust during her coming out. She’d been reminded regularly that she was not one of them, but she could not have fathomed that she would be considered so inconsequential that a man might marry her in order to prevent his son from doing so.
And here she was, because of that same man, being forced into a second marriage. Her gut twisted as she realized that the tactic had worked once, and would likely work again. She’d all but made up her mind before Wolf had produced this letter, but now she knew there was no other choice. There would be no dissuading Wallthorpe with more scandalous behavior. Nothing short of murder or marriage would convince him that she was unavailable.
Wolf cleared his throat. “We must marry, and right away. The sooner you are my wife, the sooner you will be protected from him.” He paused then, a slight hesitation. “I know you’ve stated you do not want—”
“Yes.” She blurted the word before she could change her mind. Before the truth of what she’d read could sink in any further, and bring any more grief to the forefront of her thoughts. “I’ll marry you.”
He continued. “No, I’m serious. It’s the—”
She stepped up to him and placed her fingers to his lips. “I’ve agreed to marry you. You’re correct, it’s the only solution.”
Having said it a second time, a strange sense of relief and sadness swept over her. The constant, gnawing worry eased even as doubts about marrying him replaced them. But at least she and her sister would be safe. Or at least she hoped they would be.
Now she need only worry about protecting her heart.
Chapter 24
Wolf paced his library as he waited for the most important moment of his life to occur. Another hour should not have mattered when he’d waited three days—no, a lifetime—for her. Unbelievably, she had said yes…finally.
Not that he could fault her for her logic, and he certainly would have preferred that she marry him for love. But that simply wasn’t possible under the circumstances.
His heart squeezed.
They were friends. They were lovers. But they were not in love.
Or at least, she wasn’t. But now he had time—the rest of his life—to make her fall in love with him. To show her that he was worthy of her trust, and wouldn’t desert her again when she needed him most. That was something he could work with.
A knock on the door preceded Flint’s entrance. “The guests have all arrived.”
“Considering how small the affair is, that’s not hard to imagine.” Wolf grimaced.
He’d thought about delaying the ceremony in favor of a large wedding with all the pomp and circumstance to publicly solidify his claim on Julia. But she had argued—quite vociferously—in favor of an intimate gathering. One with just their friends and families. He’d finally conceded the point.
“How is the bride fairing?”
Flint’s smile was big, bordering on overbright. “She is just smashing, I hear.”
Wolf recognized the sardonic humor lurking behind Flint’s dark gaze. He knew Jules would be nervous, and possibly even having second thoughts about their union. He also knew she’d go through with it if for no other reason than to protect Ros. After all, once he and Jules were married, Ros would have his protection as well.
He ignored the feeling of having swallowed glass shards and tried to focus on the fact that he loved her. It would be enough for the moment. It simply had to be.
“How are you doing?” Flint’s inquiry was casual, too casual.
If Wolf weren�
�t so wrapped up in his own issues, he’d have noticed that his friend was on edge. “I’m as well as can be expected. How are you? I’ve been rather absorbed by my own issues of late.”
Flint made an obvious effort to remain relaxed, and even tried to smile. “Oh, not great, but not terrible. I could really use a trip down to the docks.”
He knew his friend visited the seedy underbelly of London regularly to let off whatever anger it was that continually built up inside of him. At times, he seemed like a powder keg about to blow, although there had been a few weeks there where he’d spent so much time with Ros that he had been more like the young man Wolf had once known. But it seemed whatever reprieve that had been granted had since faded.
“Well, I imagine after today, you shall find yourself with all sorts of free time.”
“Indeed,” Flint agreed, though he did not look as pleased about that prospect as he should.
Another knock at the door ended the conversation. Ros looked in the room. Her gaze sought Flint out unerringly. The two stared at each other for a moment, and then she looked over to Wolf. “We’re ready to start.”
Wondering what was going on between the two of them, but needing to take his place for the wedding, Wolf vowed to follow up with Flint as soon as possible. Maybe he could find a moment during the breakfast to have a few more words with his friend. Something more than the perfunctory conversation they’d just had.
With a nod, he made his way to where he had been instructed to wait for his bride. Excitement warred with his certainty that she did not love him, but regardless, this wedding would occur. So, he pushed the latter—unwanted—thought aside, and focused on the excitement, and the fact that he loved her. That was all that mattered.
Julia waited upstairs in Wolf’s town house. Well…their townhouse now. Or it would be shortly. The swirling in her gut reminded her of the time she’d eaten a bad egg as a girl. Shoving the unsavory thought aside, she focused on getting through the next several hours. She had vowed to never be so reliant on a man again, but here she was once more, shackling herself to one. Except she reminded herself that he was no ordinary man. He was her friend. Her lover. She had once been in love with him. Ugh. It was the same conversation—slightly varied—that she’d been having for the last three days as they’d planned their wedding.
His Scandalous Viscountess (Lustful Lords Series Book 3) Page 18
