she did not admire the lady’s style. In fact, the longer she looked the clearer it became that this was no lady, but what the polite world termed “a fashionable impure.”
Julia, nearly reverting to Jewel in her mounting anger, could think of several more descriptive terms, but she refused to allow them to form in her mind. Instead she stared glassily at the oblivious pair as they laughed and chatted in the carriage ahead. As she watched, the lady squealed, and jumped to her feet to throw her arms around Sebastian’s neck in an obvious ecstasy of excited pleasure. Julia felt her muscles stiffen in outrage, and then her eyes grew huge with golden fire as Sebastian lowered his head to plant a quick kiss on the lady’s too full pink mouth. Spiraling anger fortunately strangled her, or she would have given vent to the curses that were in the heat of the moment forming themselves in her brain. But before she could say anything, another vehicle maneuvered between Sebastian’s carriage and their own. Strain as she might to see what happened next, she could not even catch so much as a glimpse.
“Damned rum-un,” muttered Lord Carlyle with loathing.
Julia, eyes glittering, glared at him for a second without really realizing who it was she was looking at. Then it dawned on her that he must have witnessed the same thing she had.
“A shame you had to see that,” he continued, apologizing as though it were somehow his fault that Sebastian had no more sense of what was proper than to make love to a harlot on a public thoroughfare. “It’s a crime, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, that a sweet young lady like yourself should be under the protection of one that I can only describe with repugnance as a cursed loose-screw. If you would only give me the right, I would see to it that you were removed from his influence as soon as may be. As my wife, you need never—”
“I will,” Julia said abruptly, still glaring. She was completely unaware of the militant expression on her face, or the way her hands were clenched into twin fists in her lap. Lord Carlyle stopped in mid-speech, looking shocked.
“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Stratham?”
“I said I will marry you,” she practically spat. “As soon as it may be arranged.”
Lord Carlyle still looked stunned, but as what she had said registered he began to smile. He said something about how she had made him the happiest of men, but Julia scarcely heard him. She was busy glaring at the weaving traffic ahead of them, searching for another glimpse of a gleaming black curricle.
XXVI
“You what?”
The following morning Julia sat in Sebastian’s study and with great relish watched the celestial blue eyes darken stormily as he absorbed the news of her coming nuptuals.
“Don’t be absurd,” he continued, lighting one of his everlasting cigars and leaning back in his chair to stare at her over its curling smoke. “Of course you are not going to marry Carlyle. If you think I’m enough of a flat to swallow that faradiddle—”
“I tell you, he asked me to marry him, and I said I would. He is coming to see you tomorrow to ask your permission, which I assured him was a mere formality, and to talk over settlements and whatever it is that gentlemen talk over at such a time.”
Julia took pleasure in investing the words with as much icy dignity as possible. Doing so required considerable restraint on her part. What she really wanted to do was scream at Sebastian, slap his maddeningly handsome face and rend his cheeks with her nails. She could still see him kissing that overblown trollop!
But, of course, he had no idea that she had witnessed that disgusting little scene, and she certainly wasn’t going to enlighten him. With his monstrous conceit he might very well assume her engagement was motivated by jealousy.
“You are asking me to believe that Carlyle sincerely wishes to marry you? You were not even acquainted with him until scarcely more than a month ago.”
Julia smiled sweetly, although underneath she was gritting her teeth with temper. She would not lose her dignity—with him she always seemed to revert to Jewel Combs. But never again, she vowed, never again.
“Do you have difficulty believing that a gentleman might wish to marry me?”
Sebastian’s eyes glinted with a sudden flash of deep blue light as he stared at her over the curling smoke of his cigar.
“You are serious, aren’t you? You’ve somehow got the prosy boor to propose to you.”
Julia’s lips tightened. “The prosy boor considers you a—a dashed loose-screw, for your information, my lord. And for your further information, Lord Carlyle is in love with me. He considers that I do him honor in consenting to be his wife.”
Sebastian snorted. “Carlyle fancies himself in love with Julia Stratham, my own. What are you going to do when he finds out about Jewel Combs?”
Julia glared at him. “How could he? I have put that part of my life very much behind me.”
Sebastian smiled slowly. It was not a nice smile. “Have you indeed? I can see traces of the guttersnipe in you very clearly—particularly at certain times. In bed, my love, you are no lady.”
Julia’s eyes flashed, and she half started out of her chair. “And you are no gentleman at any time!”
“Sit down.” Sebastian never raised his voice, but the cold authority which he could invoke whenever he chose had her sinking back into her seat before she realized what she was doing. It was not until she saw the satisfaction that glinted momentarily in his eyes that she realized that she had once again obeyed him like a scolded child. The thought incensed her, and she leapt to her feet, her eyes shooting golden sparks at him.
“I will not sit down!” she shouted, throwing dignity to the wind as she stood with arms akimbo glaring at him. Then, more moderately she added, “I am not a child you can order at your whim.”
His eyes measured her. She was dressed in a very becoming morning gown of cherry striped muslin with a wide silk sash in the same shade of cherry around her waist. With her flashing golden eyes and the angry flush tinting her cheeks to almost the same color as her dress, she looked both annoyingly beautiful and tempestuous. He despised tempestuous women, he told himself. The ebony haired little firebrand before him needed a few more lessons in the conduct becoming a lady.
“No, you are not a child,” he agreed dispassionately, still surveying her with that hooded expression she found so disconcerting. “And you are not marrying Carlyle either.” His voice was very quiet, but there was no mistaking the cold certainty of his words.
“You can’t stop me. I shall marry Lord Carlyle if I wish.”
“I can stop you, believe me.” His lips twisted in a chilling half-smile. His next words were very soft. “I have only to tell Carlyle the truth about your background—or to tell him that you’ve been my mistress.”
As the words penetrated, Julia’s temper exploded. Her face contorted with rage, and she leapt to grab something, anything that she could hurl at him. Her fingers closed on the glass paperweight on his desk—but he was quicker than she. His hands closed around hers, squeezing until they hurt and she was forced to drop her missile. But she was beside herself, clawing at his hands, hurling curses learned from a lifetime in the gutter at him. In her fury Julia Stratham was no more. It was Jewel Combs who screeched at him, Jewel Combs who writhed and kicked and spat as he yanked her around his desk and fell back into his chair with her, so that she was sitting in his lap with his arms locked around her waist, holding her so that her hands were useless, it was Jewel Combs who looked up into his face with loathing and saw it twisted with amusement, and it was Jewel Combs who twisted around to sink her teeth into his neck.
“You poisonous little bitch!” He yelled, jerking away—but still she wouldn’t quit, couldn’t quit, and her teeth went for his ear this time. He caught her jaw just in time, his fingers cruel as they bit into the soft flesh of her cheeks, his eyes alight with an anger to match her own as he glared down at her.
“Filthy bastard, no good—” She hissed at him, but before she could continue with the litany of abuse his fingers tightened on her j
aw until she was gasping with pain. Still, she stared at him, eyes bright with hatred and defiance.
“Shut up,” he said brutally, then crushed her mouth with his. It was a kiss designed to hurt her, to insult her, and she fought against it, struggling in his arms, refusing to open her mouth until he forced her to by the pressure of his fingers digging into her cheeks. Still, she refused to respond to the heated kiss as his tongue conquered her mouth with ferocious intensity. He kissed her with such force that her lower lip split and she tasted blood on her tongue, kissed her until she was whimpering with pain and limp in his arms. He kissed her until at last she could no longer fight the raging needs of her own body, kissed her until her arms were twining around his neck and her mouth was opening to his in a mindless passion that incinerated her anger and humiliation with the heat of its blaze.
He felt her sudden uncontrollable response, and for an instant his grip gentled. Then abruptly he jerked his head away. She lay quivering in his arms, looking up at him with her heart and her passion in her eyes. He returned that look for a long moment, his eyes brightly blue and burning, his mouth set in a taut line. Then even as she watched, his eyes froze over and his lips twisted into a sneer.
“You’re no more a lady than I am,” he said with contempt, and pushed her off his lap so that she fell in a heap on the floor.
She sat there for an instant amidst a cascade of cherry striped skirts and lacy white petticoats, her legs in their white stockings exposed from her knees to the toes of her small black slippers, her breasts heaving above the low cut neckline of her gown. Her eyes were bewildered as they met his; the cold insult and the cruelty she saw in his eyes left her stunned and shaken.
Slowly she gathered the tattered remnants of her pride about her and got to her feet. All her anger had drained from her now. She felt icy cold inside—as cold as his blue eyes. She looked down at him without expression as he lounged back in his chair, staring up at her as she stood, hands and knees shaking, beside him.
“You tell Carlyle that you’re not going to marry him,” Sebastian instructed harshly. “Or I will. And if I do it, I’ll take great pleasure in telling him the rest.”
Julia stared down at that beautiful face, at the silver-gilt hair and celestial blue eyes that weren’t angelic at all but cruel, at the perfectly carved mouth that was set in a hard bitter line, and felt anger such as she had never known boil up inside her. He was always so sure of himself, so in control. Even now he thought that all he had to do was threaten her, and she would meekly bow to his dictates.
Well, he was wrong. At her core was still the fighter that she had been all her life, the hungry unloved street urchin who had survived more deprivation and abuse than he would ever know. He had brought that fact home to her again, and suddenly she was no longer quite so ashamed of her origins. For all its lack, the way she had grown up had not left her more of an icy shell than a human being. She could laugh and cry and love while all he could do was hate. So who was the poorer really?
She had never actually meant to marry Lord Carlyle, and she had known it from the instant she had accepted his proposal. She had only wanted to use him to get back at Sebastian. But now Sebastian was looking at her in that dismissive way that told her that he considered the matter settled, that she would do as she was bid and that was all there was to it. Only this time he was wrong. She had knuckled down to him time after time, overawed by his autocratic manner and icy eyes, but not this time. It was blindingly clear to her now that Sebastian considered her rather in the nature of a prettily painted but not intrinsically valuable objet d’art—something that was nice to own but was not deemed costly enough to show off to one’s friends. To him she would always be the guttersnipe. While to Lord Carlyle she was a lady. And she liked being a lady, enjoyed being treated with gentleness and consideration and respect. Why, Lord Carlyle had never so much as kissed her cheek. While Sebastian had treated her as what he thought she was: a whore.
Her spine stiffened, and her knees quit shaking. With slow dignity she turned her back on him, and walked carefully to the door without a word. Then she turned to look at him.
He still lounged in his chair, his booted legs stretched out beside the desk, his broad shoulders resting comfortably back against the tufted leather while the thin brown cigar in his hand sent smoke curling around his perfectly sculpted head.
“You are as cold and cruel and unfeeling as your mother says, Sebastian,” she said quietly, looking him full in the eyes. “I feel sorry for you.”
She saw his white teeth clamp on the cigar, but before he could say a word, she turned on her heel and left him.
XXVII
She was going to marry Lord Carlyle—or, rather, Oliver, as he had told her to call him, just as he now called her Julia. She might not be in love with him, but then love was not a requirement for a successful marriage. He might not engender in her the soul searing passion that Sebastian managed to arouse with his slightest touch, but then that kind of passion was nothing on which to base a lifetime commitment.
Oliver was a kind, steady man who would take care of her; he was rich and well-born and could give her a good life. And, most of all, he respected her. At least he respected Julia Stratham. How he would feel if he found out about who she really was, she couldn’t begin to guess. Should she tell him? Her every instinct screamed no—except her instinct for fair play. And she determinedly squashed that. Would Sebastian tell him? That was another question entirely. He might very well—but then he, as well as his mother and Caroline, would be put in the interesting position of having foisted a fraud on Society. And Society was not likely to be very forgiving of a thing like that.
Fortunately she had time to think it all through before anything irrevocable happened. Sebastian had left London early on the morning after their confrontation, accompanied only by the long suffering Leister and bound for his estates in Suffolk where urgent business required his presence. He had been in a tightlipped rage when he left, according to Smathers. Julia was both relieved and strangely disappointed to hear of his going. Coward, she mentally castigated Sebastian. Running again, just as he had when she had frightened him by getting too close when he had first become her lover in the library at White Friars. Julia was beginning to suspect that this was the way he avoided having to deal with his emotions—he simply ran from them. Apparently her parting shot of the day before had had some effect. She hoped so. He had made her love him during those months at White Friars, she who had been more starved for affection than she had been for food. He had been like a great shining sun suddenly arising on the horizon of the dark sky that was her life, lighting up her world with a heat and intensity that had penetrated to her very soul. He had felt it, too, she knew he had. And it had scared him back into his icy shell.
But one day he was going to have to stop running and face himself. And his feelings. But by then it would be too late to regain what he had lost. She had loved him, truly loved him, but she was not fool enough to spend her life mooning over a man who underneath the fondness and passion and friendship secretly held her in contempt. It would kill her to be his mistress until he tired of her. Getting him to marry her was about as likely as having a carriage horse win at Ascot. She saw that now. In his mind he would forever be the lordly earl and she the nameless guttersnipe. A cat could look at a king, but a guttersnipe could never become a countess.
Sebastian had left with only one valise, which most likely meant that he would not be gone for more than a week or so. But, then, he had only taken one valise with him when he had first taken her to White Friars, and he had ended up staying for months. But those circumstances had been unusual. Julia rather expected to see him back in London before two weeks at the outside had passed. Which didn’t give her much time to decide what to do.
Apparently Sebastian was so confident of her obedience to him that he had not considered that she might not break her engagement to Lord Carlyle. But Sebastian’s word was no longer law to her and she was g
oing to marry Lord Carlyle—Oliver!—if for no other reason than to spite Sebastian. How he would hate seeing her as a real lady of the ton and another man’s wife! She hoped he would hate it. She wanted him to hate it. She wanted him to squirm every time he thought of it.
But to put him in that satisfying position, she first had to get Lord—Oliver!—to the altar. Unless Sebastian hated the idea of scandal more than he hated the idea of her becoming Lady Carlyle, that might be difficult to do. Julia did not fool herself in thinking that Oliver would marry her if he knew all that Sebastian threatened to reveal. Her lack of birth was a nearly insurmountable obstacle, and if Sebastian were to throw in the fact that she had been his mistress to boot—no, Oliver would not marry her. And Sebastian would have the last laugh.
The thought of Sebastian laughing goaded Julia as nothing else. He would not have the pleasure of seeing her rejected and humiliated! She would become Lady Carlyle, and as she thought about it she saw just how to do it. All she had to do was to persuade Oliver to marry her out-of-hand. If the deed were done before Sebastian returned to town, it would be too late to do anything about it. In all likelihood Sebastian would not even make good on his threat once he saw that it was too late to prevent the marriage. And if he did tell Oliver—well, she would be Lady Carlyle by then, and Oliver would not be able to do a thing about it without bringing down on himself the type of scandal that she instinctively knew he would go to any lengths to avoid. The difficulty was going to be getting him to agree to an over-the-anvil marriage. Oliver was very much a stickler for convention….
“Come, Julia, I know you are only funning, but I wish you would not do so about such a delicate subject. We will of course be married in St. James at the end of the proper three month period. Since you are not a girl but a widow, of course, the affair will be relatively quiet. But still, we will manage to do things up splendidly, you’ll see.”
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