A lifetime, it seemed.
But the lifetime had come and gone now, taking with it every trace of brightness, every bit of joy she’d brought him. He would never find another like her. The Lord wouldn’t dare make a copy, nor would Julian settle for one. He loved her so much he ached with it, need of her an agony so searing he didn’t think he’d ever recover. Forcing her away from him had nearly been his undoing.
As had revealing all the ugly truths about himself. For try as he might to forget about the sins of his past, he couldn’t erase the indelible marks they’d left upon him. The evidence of it was everywhere, in the whisky and glass-soaked floor he’d refused to allow the servants to clean, in the incessant thumping of his head, in the pain tearing through him, and most damning of all, in the plum finger marks bruising Clara’s delicate throat.
His self-hatred was raging like a hurricane, threatening to blow him apart. Perhaps he ought to make it easy for the bastard who wanted him dead and drink himself to death. The idea had merits.
Nothing mattered now that Clara was back at her father’s house and safe. Whitney had sent word that they’d stationed guards everywhere in an effort to protect Clara and his sisters. That and the fact that they were removed from Julian’s ambit ought to prove enough to keep them safe. The best news of all: Whitney had managed to secure passage for Clara back to her homeland as well.
Knowing he would never see her again felt akin to a knife stuck in his chest. Whenever he thought about it—which was every other breath—raw, unadulterated anguish paralyzed him. Understanding it was for the best didn’t mitigate the pain. But he loved her too much to try to keep her. Even if the bastard who wanted him dead was caught, Clara deserved far better than a jaded rake who’d diddled half the ladies of the ton to keep the roof over his head. She deserved the best, and nothing but happiness, a man worthy of basking in her brilliance.
Julian was not that man. Nor would he ever be.
He took another gulp of brandy. Damn it, if only he hadn’t thrown his entire decanter of whisky against the wall. He was nearly out of brandy and he had yet to find the stupor he sought.
A discreet knock sounded at the door, disrupting his black thoughts. Couldn’t his butler ever do as he was bloody well told and leave a man the hell alone? He’d been explicit that he didn’t want to be disturbed. No matter how much crashing or breaking glass might be heard from within. By God, if he wanted to tear the entire study from floors to rafters and leave it nothing but a pile of rubble, he would.
He would, if that’s what it took to expunge Clara from his blood.
“Damn it, Osgood,” he roared, “I told you not to interrupt me. Not even for the devil himself.”
“Forgive me, sir, but a very urgent note has arrived from the Whitney residence,” Osgood intoned from the other side of the door. “I thought perhaps you may excuse the interruption in such an event.”
His blood went cold. An urgent note from the Whitney residence. What the bloody hell could it mean? He shot to his feet and stalked across the chamber, trouncing through broken glass, books, and papers without a care. He wrenched open the door himself to find his butler wearing a strained expression, a silver salver bearing a single missive in his hands.
Julian snatched it up and tore it open, desperate for news, praying for the first time in his life. Please God. Don’t let anything have happened to her. Take me instead. But why would the heavens want to listen to a man whose sins far outnumbered his years?
He scanned the contents of the note, dread sinking into his gut with the heaviness of a boulder. “Bloody, bloody hell.”
The message was penned in Jesse Whitney’s bold scrawl. And the words were the very last in the world that he wanted to see.
Clara had disappeared. So too had a footman instructed to guard an exterior door. But there was more. A single gunshot had been heard just outside the home. A frantic search of her chamber had turned up nothing.
Jesus. Everything in him withered.
No. He refused to believe something had happened to her. Anything but that. His sweet, lovely, bold Virginian lass could not be gone. Taken from the world when he’d done everything in his power to see her safe.
No, goddamn it.
He must have said the words aloud without realizing it, for they echoed now in the eerie silence of the hall like a war cry. It was the same hall where he’d pinned her to the wall and kissed her senseless on the day of their wedding. He thought of her soft, full lips beneath his, how innocent and sweet she’d tasted. How badly he’d wanted her. She could not be gone. Not his Clara. Not his little dove.
“My lord?” Osgood was a steadfast presence at his side, predicting action would be required.
“Have a horse brought round at once, Osgood.” He hadn’t time for the encumbrance of a carriage. But he would find her. By God, he’d ride all over London, tear the city apart with his bare hands if he must. Whatever he needed to do, he’d do it. And gladly, if only it meant that he could make her safe. If only it meant she hadn’t been shot or worse. He stared at his butler, feeling as if the entire world had gone horribly off-kilter. “Lady Ravenscroft has…gone missing.”
Saying it aloud hit him as surely as a blow to the chest. The air rushed from his lungs. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe. Saying the words aloud made them real, and brought with them all their crushing depths of primeval fear.
“Yes, my lord. May God be with her.” Osgood hastened away from him.
“Amen,” Julian whispered to his butler’s departing back. By Christ, she’d even won old Osgood’s wizened heart.
* * *
Stealing away from her father’s house now that it was under rigid guard was simultaneously easier and riskier than Clara had supposed. Easier than she’d supposed for she’d managed to succeed when she’d feared she had not a hope of escaping unnoticed. Riskier because taking a hostage had been, as it turned out, necessary.
It hadn’t taken long for her to realize what she needed to do after her arrival back at her father’s home. Lady Josephine and Lady Alexandra had run off to settle in to their temporary lodgings with a grim acceptance as she faced an unwanted interview with her family. She’d endured her father’s smothering comfort and Lady Bella’s equally smothering attempts to console her—all out of a place of love, she knew, but nevertheless difficult for her to accept.
Clara’s eyes had been swollen from crying, her head ached, her throat throbbed, and her heart hurt. There was nothing in the world she wanted to do less at that moment than speak with anyone. Her husband had just rejected her. Sent her away from him. Told her he was incapable of love.
“Lord Ravenscroft was right to bring you and his sisters here,” her father had said on a frown as he patted her arm. “You’re safe with us, my darling girl. Lord only knows what manner of fiend he’s brought down upon himself after so many years of debauchery. You cannot think to put yourself in harm’s way because of his past sins.”
Her father’s words had done nothing to stem the flow of misery careening through her like a flooded river. “He is my husband,” she’d argued. “It’s my duty to stand at his side.”
“Just as it’s his duty to protect you, dear heart,” Bella had intervened then, unable to refrain from gazing upon Clara as she might a motherless kitten she’d found on the street. Perhaps it was her delicate condition that caused her every emotion to be written across her beautiful face. Whatever the case, Clara found herself feeling most unappreciative of her stepmother’s sweet kindness. She didn’t want to be told that Julian was right to send her away. She wanted to rail against his decision, his self-loathing, his fears. She wanted someone to tell her to run straight back to his arms and put up a damn fight like a true Virginian.
But no one had, and all at once, understanding had dawned on her.
She loved her father. She loved Lady Bella. But everything in her told her that this was not where she belonged. She belonged with Julian. And if he was in danger, then she would
face the danger with him. She would not, by all that was holy, cut stick and run, abandoning him to his fate.
No she would not. Virginia girls were made of sterner stuff.
The sternest stuff.
Naturally, her father had other ideas. He’d proved his usual obdurate self and had refused to allow her to leave, citing the recent attack on her as ample proof that being beneath Julian’s roof was dangerous. He’d even booked her passage to Virginia. But the victory she’d once fought for—the return to her homeland—was hollow now.
She knew where she was meant to be. She had one home, and it wasn’t a place.
As the hired hack she’d caught swayed through Belgravia, she kept her pistol trained on the brawny young footman she’d taken hostage. She rather pitied him, but her back had been pressed to the proverbial corner.
“You shot at me, my lady,” he said dumbly for what had to have been at least the third time since she’d made good her escape.
“I shot into the ground,” she corrected him gently. “And I’m sorry for it, but it was necessary. You weren’t listening to reason.”
She’d managed to convince the footman guarding her chamber door to allow her a visit to the library for a book. Once inside the library, she’d turned off the electric lights and made a run for it, knowing the layout of the house quite well. But upon reaching the side door she’d chosen for her exit, the footman guarding it had attempted to waylay her. When he’d begun shouting as she hailed a hack, she’d feared he would bring the entire household down upon them.
Clara had no wish to be discovered and forced back inside where she could spend the next several sleepless hours ruminating over why her husband had sent her away. And why she’d let him. No, sir. She had every intention of accomplishing what she’d set out to do. And so she’d raised the pistol hidden in the pocket of her skirts and shot.
Unfortunately, her action had not produced the desired effect, for the alarms had been raised in her father’s house. She’d decided at the last moment that perhaps bringing the lad along for her protection wouldn’t be a bad idea. And so, just as the front door had been thrown open, she’d disappeared into the hack with the footman, guiding him with the best incentive mankind had ever produced: the barrel of a firearm.
“Begging your pardon, but I think you’re mad, my lady.”
She frowned at him. “You aren’t precisely in a position to be tossing about insults, young man.”
But the footman was either too shocked or too simple to know when he ought to hold his tongue. “I’m sorry, my lady, I am. But why would you want to leave a house where you’re being kept safe to run out into the night? Only a madwoman would do such a foolish thing. Why, you’re merely asking for mischief, as my ma would say.”
Clara sighed. “Silence, if you please.”
The lad was likely not far from the truth. Fleeing her father’s home was, in hindsight, not the cleverest notion she’d ever entertained. But never let it be said that Clara Ravenscroft was afraid of taking a chance. And never let it be said that she wouldn’t do anything for the man she loved.
Even if it meant humbling herself before him. Even if it meant abducting a poor footman at gunpoint and galloping through town back to her husband. Even if it meant taking a stand against whoever or whatever evil threatened them.
For in the hours since she’d allowed herself to be evicted from her home and Julian’s life both, she’d discovered that she was stronger than she’d ever imagined. She was strong enough to face anything, to beat anything, to take a risk and feel the wind in her face. She was strong enough, which meant she would fight. She’d fight for Julian, fight for herself, fight for the life they were meant to live together.
The hack slowed as they reached the familiar neighborhood of Ravenscroft’s townhome. In the darkness with only the glow of the street lamps, it looked more imposing than it truthfully was. Her heart hammered in her breast. Home, she thought.
“We’re here,” she informed the hapless footman, waving her pistol at him. “You alight first. I’ve no desire to cause you harm, but if you attempt to stop me, consider this fair warning. I can shoot an apple off a man’s head from fifty paces.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d used that threat. Very likely, it wouldn’t be the last. The footman blanched and did her bidding, preceding her out of the conveyance. She paid the hack driver, a grinning fellow with more black space in his mouth than teeth. If the sight of a lady brandishing a weapon and forcing a servant inside his conveyance had alarmed him, he still didn’t show it. The coin she’d given him prior to their departure had certainly helped to ease any concerns he may have had.
She hurried to the front door. It was answered in two swift knocks. Osgood appeared, his ordinarily imperturbable countenance brightening into an expression of genuine relief. “My lady! You’re home.”
“Of course I am. Please see to it that this young man has a nice meal and a warm bath.” She gestured to the footman with her pistol, which she perhaps ought to have hidden, given the startled look that raced across the butler’s face. Belatedly recalling the trappings of civility, she tucked the small weapon back into the pocket in her skirts. “I’m afraid I’ve given him quite a fright this evening. Where is his lordship?”
The redoubtable butler frowned. “He isn’t with you, my lady? He left a short time ago. He’d had word from the Whitney residence that you’d disappeared. His lordship was extremely concerned, as you might imagine.”
“Oh dear.” Perhaps her escape plan hadn’t gone as well as she’d imagined after all. Firing the pistol had, in retrospect, been a grievous error. “Have you any idea where he was headed?”
“I’m afraid not, my lady,” Osgood said gently, apparently recovered from the sight of her waving a pistol about like a common street criminal. Much to his credit. “He didn’t advise as to his plans as he was in quite a rush.”
Well, this was certainly an unexpected predicament of her own foolish making. She could either go back into the night in search of Julian or await his return. She hadn’t intended to cause such a frenzy with her departure. It seemed she’d never cease landing herself in scrapes.
Rather than continue to chase her husband all over town, the best course of action would be to stay in one place, she reasoned. If he’d rushed out at word of her disappearance, then his destination was likely her father’s home. “Osgood, would you please have a note sent to the Whitney residence to let them know I’ve arrived here safely and that I’ll await Lord Ravenscroft’s return?”
“Of course, my lady,” reassured the competent butler. “And may I say that I’m heartily relieved your ladyship has returned to us?”
She smiled, touched by the thawing in his ordinarily frigid hauteur. “Thank you, Osgood. I’m equally relieved to be back.”
Now if only her husband’s welcome would be as warm. She made her way to his study, intending to wait for him in its comfortable confines. But she wasn’t prepared for the disaster that greeted her upon her entrance. Books had been flung, their spines cracked. Glass shards littered the worn carpet. The entire room smelled heavily of spirits. Several dark stains marred the faded wallpaper. Chairs were overturned.
Good Lord, it looked as though a regiment of marauding soldiers had ransacked the chamber.
“Oh Julian,” she whispered as she took in the evidence of how much it had devastated him to send her away. The door closed softly at her back and for the briefest flash, the sensation that she wasn’t alone overcame her.
Before she could react, a voice sounded behind her.
“Lady Ravenscroft, we meet again.”
Clara’s entire body froze, her skin going instantly clammy, her breath hitched and shallow, her mouth dry as sand. Fear curled around her chest in a crushing grip. The last time she’d heard that voice, there had been a pair of large hands wrapped around her neck.
* * *
By the time Julian returned to his home and was instructed by a relieved Osgood th
at Clara awaited him in his study, he felt as if he’d been to the bloody gates of hell. First, a paralyzing dread had snared him in its unforgiving maws as he’d raced to Whitney’s house, desperate for news, any clue as to what had happened or how he could possibly find Clara. He’d been conferring with an extremely tense Jesse Whitney when word had arrived that the wayward minx was alive, thank God, and safe, waiting for him at home. Relief had come next, swift and searing. Following closely in its wake had been an almost unholy rage as the remainder of the succinct message had been read aloud.
Lady Ravenscroft escaped of her own volition.
No one had abducted her. She hadn’t been shot. Hadn’t been killed. However, she had put her life in jeopardy. He’d done everything in his power to send her from him, had stripped his soul bare to secure her safety, and instead of seeing reason, she’d defied him and her father both. Not to mention that it appeared she’d somehow taken a servant along with her, after firing a shot at the poor fellow.
Julian had found himself torn equally between anger and reluctant admiration for the entirety of his ride back. One moment, his blood thundered through his veins, his temples throbbing with suppressed anger, that she would be so bloody foolish. That she would not stay where no one could harm her and seize her reprieve from marriage to him with both hands.
The next moment, he couldn’t help but appreciate her audacity and determination. Some lack-witted part of him, the part that loved his maddening wife to distraction, felt buoyed by hope that her actions carried a far greater significance than her mere willfulness. That she loved him, enough to foolishly risk all to stay with him.
Buffeted by his turbulent emotions as a ship in a storm-tossed sea, he crossed the threshold of his study, expecting to find his wife awaiting him, tucked into a wing chair. Or perhaps even standing, color staining her high cheekbones in her dudgeon. What he did not expect, as the door closed almost soundlessly at his back, was to see Clara, beautiful and stricken, her face wet with tears, trapped in his brother’s arms. The barrel of a gun was pressed to her golden curls.
Heart’s Temptation Series Books 4-6 Page 51