Before he had stopped loving her.
“God!” he suddenly roared, and sagged in the chair, bracing his forehead against his hand, tenting his eyes. Who was she? Who was this creature who tormented his dreams and his days and his heart? “What do you want? What in God’s name do you want of me?” he cried out.
“To love you,” the apparition whispered in a velvet voice.
Julian’s heart slammed hard against his ribs; her scent wafted over him, lavender filling his senses. He made no objection when the bottle of gin slid carefully from his fingers. His heart and lungs labored with her nearness, but he made no sound at all, did not open his eyes. He felt her fingers moving beneath his chin and jerked away, catching her wrist in a firm grip as he opened his eyes. Her face was just above his; he could see the flush of her pristine skin. Her blue-gray gaze penetrated the fog around his brain, gaining entry into his depths, scoring his very soul. A man could drown in her eyes, wander straight into them and slip beneath the surface, lost forever.
That was the sum of it, wasn’t it? He had been lost in her for so long, lost a little more of himself each time he was with her. And now he was hopelessly trying to kick his way free of her depths, but she had ensnared him, pulling him deeper still. He abruptly shoved her away; Claudia gracefully stepped back, moved from his reach, and knelt at his feet in a soft swoosh of lilac satin. “What do you think you are doing?” he demanded roughly.
She didn’t answer, but took his foot and put it in her lap, running one hand up his calf. Even through the leather of his boot he could feel the sensation of her touch and recoiled fiercely. But she held on, carefully working the boot from his leg until it was loose, then lifting his heel and pulling the boot from his leg.
Oh God, he did not have the strength to fight her. Indistinct little tingles ran up his leg and straight to his groin as she removed the other boot. “Why do you do this?” he demanded angrily. Bracing her hands on his thighs, she pulled herself up to her knees, then moved so that she was on the floor before him, between his legs, her hands moving along the tops of his thighs. She pinned him with a clear, steady gaze. “I know you despise me, Julian—”
“No. No, I do not despise you. I feel nothing for you,” he interjected, unwavering in the face of that enormous lie.
“All right then, you feel nothing. But I do. I would give my heart to you on a platter if that is what you wanted.”
“What I want,” he spat, “is for you to leave me be. Just leave me be!”
She shook her head; a wisp of dark hair came loose from her coiffure and floated to her shoulder. “That is the one thing I will not do,” she murmured silkily. “I will not leave you, not like this, not when you are hurting so.”
Something in him went wild with fury and despair, consuming all reason and torching every wicked desire, every carnal hunger within him. He pitched forward, hardly noticing Claudia’s small cry of alarm as he came out of the chair and toppled her onto her back in front of the hearth. Coming over her, he pinned her wrists on either side of her head. She lay beneath him, her breast rising and falling rapidly with the earnestness of her breath, her gaze steady on him, calm and sorrowful …
Julian squeezed his eyes shut. “You want me now, Claudia? After all these weeks of pushing me away, you want me now?” he breathed.
“Yes.”
The softly whispered response sent a wave of raw hunger crashing through him and obliterating everything in its wake. He was suddenly crushing his lips to hers, probing deeply between them with his tongue, savoring the sweetness of her breath. At some point he had let go of her, because her delicate hands were holding him tightly to her as she had never held him before, possessively, her hands searching his back, his shoulders, his neck, tangling in his hair, pushing the coat from his shoulders and arms.
She wanted him … for a moment? A day? A year? Did he bloody well care at the moment? He dragged his mouth across her chin to the swell of her breasts rising above the neckline of her gown and mouthed the succulent flesh. Her fingers raked through his hair, behind his ears, tracing tantalizing little paths to his shoulders. When he slipped his hands behind her back to unfasten her gown, she arched into him, pressing her breasts against him, burning him with a look of unadulterated sensual ardor. “Do you want me Claudia?” he asked, roughly shoving the gown from her shoulders to her waist.
“Yes,” she whispered again, gasping softly when he covered her breast with his mouth, nipping at the tip with his teeth.
Her hands drifted inside his shirt, to his bare chest, where her fingers danced lightly across his nipples, drawing them to a peak and churning the desire in his loins. He groaned, laved the other breast as his hands fought the satin of her skirts, dragging them up, his fingers skirting across the inside of her thighs where her smooth skin was moist and warm. He touched his lips to the column of her throat as his fingers trailed down to the apex of her thighs.
Her response was a low groan, the ragged drawing of breath into her lungs as he slipped a finger inside her, his thumb brushing the tiny pinnacle of her desire. Claudia clutched frantically at his arms, her fingernails digging into his skin beneath the wide sleeves of his shirt. Julian hardly noticed; he was bewitched by her eyes, captivated by the dark pools of longing beneath heavy lids. “Do you want me like this?” he asked hoarsely, and she sighed, biting her lower lip. The dam broke in him then; weeks of longing, of holding himself back, of denying his feelings for her crumbled into nothing. He moved swiftly, yanking her drawers from her hips so that he could bury his face between her legs and inhale the musky scent of woman. His tongue slipped between the folds, circling around and over the pinnacle that made her writhe beneath him, then down, deep inside her and back again. The scent and the feel of her filled his body through every pore, swirling around and around and pooling in his groin, burgeoning in his sex, straining to be free, to be in her.
The crescendo of her gasps turned to cries of pleasure as he sustained his desire on her body, licking and nipping and sucking her until he felt the violent shudder deep inside her, felt her thighs contract around his head, heard her cry out. He was throbbing painfully now, but still he lapped at her, fervently kissing the evidence of her passion from her thighs. When she at last stopped moving beneath him, he lifted his head. “Do you want me like this?” he uttered, his voice hoarse with passion.
Claudia came up, cupped his face in her hands and kissed him hard, her mouth searing him, drinking the remnants of her own flesh from his lips. Julian struggled with his trousers, at last freeing his aching erection, and fell to his side, taking Claudia with him, lifting her leg over his hip. She kissed him; Julian slid easily into her heat, too easily, his body yearning for instant gratification. Gritting his teeth, Julian tilted his head back, unwilling to spill his seed into her just yet, clinging to a thin thread of control left in him. He forced himself to go slowly, wanting to savor the moment, the moment she had at last come to him and said she wanted him. He would remember it all and forever, and deliberately kept his pace slow, prolonging his own agony.
Claudia’s breath and tongue flitted across his neck, inside his ear, along the crease of his lobe. “Is this what you wanted?” he asked her again, wanting to hear her say it, and drove into her. Claudia closed her eyes, lost in the throes of passion. “Is this why you have come?” he asked, thrusting hard.
“Oh, Julian,” she exhaled into his shoulder. “I have come because I love you!” she murmured, and tenderly kissed his cheek.
That simple utterance shattered his heart into a million shards. How he had longed to hear her say that, how he had dreamed of it, had wished for it a million times or more. He pushed her onto her back, lifted her leg and thrust harder, his blood raging with desire and confusion that those words would come now, when he was at his weakest, when she had hurt him so. He lengthened his strokes, bearing into her all the bewilderment and passion and hope he had carried inside these two long years. She moved beneath him, panting, her body tightenin
g around him, and when she cried out, his passion exploded furiously within her.
He collapsed on top of her, his mind awash in disbelief. He felt himself sliding out of her, the hardness of him deflated by his confused passion. In sheer frustration he shoved her away and rolled onto his back.
Claudia came up, bracing herself against the floor with one arm. “Julian! What is wrong?”
He looked to the fire and pushed himself up. “You may want me now, Claudia, but it is too late. Far too late.” The sound of her dismay only served to irritate him—he stumbled to his feet and clumsily fastened his trousers.
“How … how could you say that?” she asked as Julian stooped to retrieve his clothing. “You don’t believe me. You don’t believe that I love you!”
Those words burned. Why now? What did he do with those words now? Did he ignore the doubts in his heart? Did he allow wild hope to build again? How could she say that now, how could she ruin it all by declaring something he so desperately craved after he had depleted all he had to give?
Julian looked down at his wife. Her hair spilled wildly about her shoulders and she seemed unconscious of her nakedness. Her breasts, pale as the moon in the light from the hearth, rose softly with a breath that seemed to catch in her throat as she gazed up at him. Damn her allure all to hell. “Frankly, Claudia, I don’t know what to believe anymore,” he muttered helplessly, and stepped over her, pausing only to fetch his boots as he walked out of the salon.
In his rooms, he quickly dressed. He had to get out. He could not stay here with her, not like this. What a goddam fool he had been to think they could co-exist in one house! He stalked to the foyer and commanded a footman to fetch him a hack. As he waited, he realized with painful acuity that he had finally hit rock-bottom in his life, bouncing like an India rubber ball to be hit again and again. Ah, God, such was the quality of love!
It was hours later that he found himself standing across the way from Madame Farantino’s, leaning against the streetlamp with a cheroot dangling from his mouth. He really had no idea how he had come to be here. After leaving Kettering House, his head still fogged from the liquor, he had made the hack circle Hyde Park, and finally tiring of that, he had gotten off at Regent Street, wandering aimlessly about until he had, somehow, ended up here.
A footman across the way motioned him to come inside. Julian tipped his hat in acknowledgment, but settled against the lamppost and dragged on his cheroot. Certainly it had occurred to him to go inside; she had left him feeling a bit like a caged animal, anxious, strangely ravenous. Part of him was tempted to go inside and expend that anxiety on a woman who would demand nothing more than his sex and leave his heart and soul intact.
Julian flicked the cheroot to the cobblestone and ground it out with the heel of his boot. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he took one last look at Madame Farantino’s before turning toward the Tam O’Shanter. He never had any intention of crossing the threshold of Farantino’s, no matter what his body wanted to believe. Whatever he thought of Claudia, one thing remained, unfortunately for him, quite unchanged.
He still loved her.
Desperately so.
Twenty-One
JULIAN LEASED A small but well-appointed town house on South Audley Street for Sophie that was only a short walk to Hyde Park. Stanwood took residence there on a cold morning, but left early that afternoon to call upon a notoriously expensive haberdashery. Apparently, his wardrobe was not befitting his new residence, and he insisted Sophie accompany him, more, Julian thought, to keep her at a safe distance from her family than to seek her help.
That was one thing Stanwood did quite well. Julian faithfully called three times a week—more than that he believed made him seem desperate. Less than that made him quite desperate. He worried constantly about her; she had lost quite bit of weight since her elopement, perhaps as much as a stone. Dark circles shadowed her brown eyes, and although she smiled and spoke cheerfully when he called, he thought her cheerfulness forced, her smile painted on for his benefit. Sophie was miserable.
So was Julian. He was absolutely powerless to do anything for her within the confines of the law. There was nothing he could do, not one goddam thing to change this tragedy for her. Sophie’s loss of innocence weighed heavily on his heart; nothing could ever give that back to her. The only thing Julian seemed capable of doing at all was enduring his hatred for Stanwood, and that took every ounce of strength he had.
Even his attempts to at least set the bastard up in respectable employment had failed. Having convinced Arthur to take Stanwood on as a clerk in the Christian family law offices—no easy feat, that—Stanwood had declined with a sneer, saying that morning hours were not to his liking. That was plainly true—on more occasions than not, the toad met Julian in the afternoons still in his dressing gown. He drank heavily, too; the smell of liquor permeated the house.
But what infuriated Julian most was the way Stanwood spoke to Sophie, as if she was a child or a servant to be commanded to sit, to stand, to fetch for him. It seemed he treated everything she said as ridiculous, laughing in that condescending way of his. It was all Julian could do to keep from wringing his neck—and when Stanwood sensed that Julian was about to lose his temper, he would put his arm around Sophie with a sneer and remark upon the privileges of married life. The scoundrel knew exactly how powerless Julian was, and he delighted in it.
Worse, Stanwood began to borrow heavily against Sophie’s impending annuity. Julian had anticipated it, had advanced him one thousand pounds shortly after the couple’s return to London—but that sum was now twenty-five hundred pounds and growing weekly. It puzzled Julian—having arranged for the house, he knew the cost of letting it. He knew the approximate cost of the many new clothes Stanwood seemed to possess, and the few Sophie had been treated to. None of it added up to as much as even five hundred pounds. He strongly suspected Stanwood had begun to gamble away Sophie’s fortune, but as he was reportedly never seen at any reputable gaming hell, Julian wondered exactly where he was gambling so unsuccessfully. He would have a deuce of a time finding out.
Stanwood could not abide for her sisters to be alone with Sophie, and made it quite clear that he could scarcely tolerate even Julian’s presence. Unfortunately, Julian was his only means of income, and he could ill afford to ban him from his house. So Julian called three times a week, quite happy to let his mere presence perturb Stanwood, and hoped it would perturb him right to death.
But Julian could not accept how powerless he was. Worse yet, at the end of every day when he faced the fact that another twenty-four hours had passed in impotence, he was forced to endure the torment Claudia was putting him through.
Torment. Hell, yes, it was torment on every level, open and deep, and penetrating the darkest depths of his soul. It was nothing overt, really, but a million little things piled upon one another that threatened to smother him. As ludicrous as it seemed, Julian was convinced Claudia was attempting to kill him with kindness—and if he ever uttered that to another living soul, he was quite certain they would cart him off to Bedlam.
Nonetheless, the evidence certainly supported it. It was an unspoken fact that the two of them had called an uneasy truce. He supposed they had settled into the disquiet of their marriage, neither of them willing to push any farther. He had thought her reserved politeness a symbol of that truce … until her kindness began to affect him, little things designed—he thought—to comfort him.
For example, one evening Claudia surprised him by announcing Eugenie and Louis would join them for supper. That was odd; he was not in the habit of dining with Claudia of late—he could hardly look at her seated at his table, knowing what she had done to Sophie. Had done to him. So he therefore spent the unusual supper engaged in argument with Louis, first over the insidious little LeBeau—who apparently was still threatening to have Julian’s head—then over exactly when the Renaults would return to France.
The tactic worked. He and Louis were quite oblivious to the ladies, ha
rdly noticing when Claudia rose from her chair and went to the sideboard. But Julian did notice the frantic whispers with the footman and then the appearance of a silver tray on which sat four small wineglasses and a bottle of wine. Not just any wine, mind you—imported Madeira wine, sent for and received all the way from Portugal.
He would have thought nothing of it under normal circumstances. He certainly was not the only peer to have a special liking for the wine, and he certainly wasn’t the only one to have ordered it specially from Portugal on occasion. What was unusual was that he had depleted his stock, and had remarked one night—long before Sophie had run away—that he had been remiss in ordering the wine, and therefore, would be forced to wait months for it. He had not as yet put in his order.
When the footman served the wine, Claudia beamed at him as if she had just snared the fattest fish in the river. Julian looked at her with all due suspicion, but she very happily turned her attention to Eugenie. It was obvious the Demon’s Spawn had recalled his remark from weeks ago and had found the blasted wine somewhere. For him. She had actually thought of him, before Sophie had even gone, and nothing could convince him otherwise.
And if that wasn’t enough to convince him, the incident of the silk neckcloths certainly did. Tinley, damn him, had somehow managed to ruin a handful of fine silk neckcloths Julian had had tailored in Paris. They were scorched, as if someone had attempted to iron them. Bartholomew wailed his innocence. Not Tinley—he stated he was quite clearly at fault, but for the life of him, could not remember what he had thought to do with the neckcloths. Nor had he been particularly contrite about it. After some railing on Julian’s part, the expensive neckcloths had been discarded.
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