by Julia Ross
Alden took the steps two at a time and came up behind her. "We could survive it."
"Perhaps a reckless rake might think so. Perhaps in the white heat of desire, I might even be fool enough to believe it, too. But you were in Italy-" The water ran, wearing away the stone fins, the blunted snouts on the dolphins. "When I eloped with George, London erupted in broadsheets. Cartoons. George with me in every conceivable-" She had to fight for breath, suffocated by memories. "Cartoons about Lord Edward that were even worse. Vile. Things I had never even imagined." She turned to face him. "That' s what scandal means."
"I do not dismiss it, Juliet."
"Yet you say we could survive it? And what of George? Why do you think my husband would consent to this outrageous plan?"
Alden propped himself against the stone rail of the terrace. The gardens quilted a backdrop for his graceful slouch. "He will–for enough money."
"You don't even know him."
"I know he doesn't love you."
It trapped her where she stood, as if the air were spun sugar, sparkling and thick in the sunshine. She felt brittle. Did the pain stretch her past her breaking point?
"And you do?"
He looked away across the flowerbeds, his profile startlingly attractive, his blond head glimmering. White light reflected off sugared stone, sparkling water, the falls of lace at his throat, as if all of this - the man, his home, the very sky - was unreal, all part of an intricate confection.
"No. I don't know. I don't think so. Love? I think that takes more time than we have had, Juliet."
"Well, that is honest, at least!" She narrowed her eyes against the brightness. When had an English summer day been so bright? "How flattering that you ask me to marry you, when you know I cannot! How very gallant! Such an easy way to salve your conscience!"
His fists clenched on the stone parapet. "Do you think conscience would drag me to the altar?"
"Drag?" Juliet sank onto the stone bench behind her. Was she going to faint? "So - after we have cavorted through the divorce courts, survived the cartoonists, and paid a fortune in compensation to George - you really intend marriage, though up to this point you have avoided it like the plague. Perhaps you think to do your duty by your name? Very well, I will divorce George and marry you, so you can leave me here, my belly filled with your child, while you go to London, the tables and your more willing women-"
"It would not be like that."
She raised her chin, forcing her back as upright as if she wore the tightest corset. "Then how would it be, my lord? Α life in hiding and shame, with every footman and scullery maid in England giggling over every detail of our lechery? I could never appear in society. You would never be content to live without it."
"I could live very happily without it."
Juliet burst out laughing, a shivery, fragile mirth. "Why on earth should I believe you?"
He pushed away from the parapet and began to pace. "I don't know. How can I prove it? I have enjoyed scores of women. I seduced you cynically. I had to. I wanted to win the wager."
"You admit that?"
His coat fit lovingly, drum tight over his taut back and at the waist, before the flare of cream skirts framed his long legs. "I have never denied it. I am trying to tell you the truth. So know that this, too, is true about what happened in Manston Mingate: though my body burned to know yours, Ι also, against my better judgment, found myself liking you, respecting you. Α great deal, as it happens."
"Against your better judgment!" The water in the fountain soared and wept behind him.
"Do you want flattery and lies? Of course, it was against my better judgment! In the past Ι have chosen only equal relationships, with ladies who offer themselves as cynically as Ι do. Ι don't fall in love. Ι don't involve hearts. And never before have Ι offered marriage!"
She glanced back at the dark yews with their poisonous branches. "What on earth could you know of love? It would be impossible for you to imagine."
"Ι loved my brother," he said starkly.
"If we are talking of proof, prove that!"
His brow contracted. "How the devil can Ι? Lud, Juliet – do you want me to tell you that Ι love you as Ι loved Gregory, my brother? Ι won't. It's not true."
The pain burned beneath her ribs. Perhaps she was already hollow inside, just a blackened empty shell? "If Ι am to know that you would cherish and protect me as your wife, you must prove your capacity for devotion and caring." Juliet looked directly at the man she hated and desired, at all his treacherous glamour and strength. "Tell me about Gregory's death!"
Alden stopped pacing. Bright color burned again in each cheek, in startling contrast to his chalky skin. This time it wasn't fever. It was distress.
"Ι don't-" He turned back and stared out across the garden, where the fountain leaped and played, never-ending. "The news reached me in Florence."
She made herself push. Let him break, like a sugar fantasy smashed with a hammer! "What did you do when you received it?"
He gripped the parapet with both hands. "Ι paid the messenger."
"And then?"
"Ι went without hesitation to my new mistress of the moment."
Pain spiraled in ever-deeper waves. "You went to a mistress?"
He slammed one fist onto the unforgiving stone. "What will it prove if Ι don't tell you the truth? Maria was dead. Ι had a new mistress. She lived out in the country. Ι rode fast to her house and we burned away the night in a haze of lasciviousness. Only later, riding home in the dying moonlight, did Ι realize Ι was numb." His voice shivered with pain. "Numb as if Ι had been beaten with sticks."
Memories flooded her heart, stopping it dead in her breast. Ι am sorry, ma'am. They are both drowned, the countess and Lord Kittering.
"Go on," she said.
His face was rigid, as if he had to force each word, as if he were being tortured.
"In that same unfeeling daze Ι rode along roads stark with shadows, losing my way, riding along track after track until dawn began to break. Ι remember it clearly: the new light flooded the landscape with peach, green and silver, made smoke out of trees, cast bottle-green fingers over the harsh Italian soil. The most beautiful dawn Ι have ever seen. My tired horse stumbled and almost fell."
They should never have tried to cross the ford, ma'am, in such a storm - what with the water being so high! The horses couldn't keep their footing. Couldn't the little boy swim?
His rings sparked in the sunshine, sending out piercing flashes of white light, as his fingers burned into the parapet. "I remember dismounting and tying the nag to a tree. Ι walked through a grove until the trunks thinned and the blue sky blazed openly above my head. It was hot, very different from England-"
He stopped.
"You must tell me," Juliet insisted.
"Tell you what?" He spun about to face her, his expression ravaged, ferocious. "That that's when the pain began? Ι lay full length on the unforgiving ground. Ι was racked with grief, torn apart as if devoured by wolves. Ι heard noises - grotesque noises like a wounded animal -gouging my tongue, filling my mouth with bitterness."
Her nails bit into her palms. "Why?"
"Why?" He began to pace again. "Ι loved him and he was dead. What more will you bleed from me?"
"So you left Italy-"
"Ι had to. Ι was the new heir. Ι arrived at Gracechurch Abbey to find my father had dropped dead of an apoplexy after gaming away the estate. But Gregory died first. He had fought a duel over some matter of family honor - I don't know exactly what. My brother was not a very good swordsman. He bled to death."
ALDEN FELT NAKED AND BRUISED. NUMB AS IF HE HAD BEEN beaten with sticks. Juliet must understand. She, too, had lost a brother. Perhaps that was why he had felt he could, indeed, tell her when she asked. He had never told anyone else. Who else could he trust with the truth?
Yet now he stood entirely unprotected, vulnerab1e, as if he had peeled away his skin to expose his soul. He raised his head as she st
ood up. Juliet wa1ked away a few paces, her neck fragile, her shoulders lovely.
"And you call that love?" she asked. "To be in a foreign country when your brother died, doing something you could have done better? To let him die alone, without you, while you lived as a servile puppy to an Italian man's wife? God save me, Lord Gracechurch, from your idea of love!"
Something shattered, explosively, sending shards of pain into every limb. For a moment he thought he had been struck down by summer lightning, striking hard and fast from the blazing sky. Alden glanced down at his cuffs and at his elegant heeled shoes. All there. He still stood upright. His body was still knitted together.
Nothing in the garden had changed. Yet agony bored through his chest.
"It is true," he said at 1ast. "Do you think I'm not aware of it?"
Juliet stood rigid and said nothing.
He took a deep breath. "If you wished to wound me, ma'am, you have indeed succeeded."
Alden spun on his heel and began to walk away.
"Yes," she cried suddenly. Her skirts swished as she spun about. "Yes, Ι want to hurt you!"
He stopped, keeping his back to her, fury and pain knotted together in his stomach.
"Did you really think you and Ι could make a future?" she shouted. "Suffer together through my divorce and win any kind of peace afterward? You are mad!"
"Perhaps. For, if indeed Ι harbored any such fantasy, you have successfully rid me of it. Ι knew you were wounded. Ι did not know you were so bloody crue1."
"Cruel? Ι hope so, Lord Gracechurch!"
Alden glanced back at her. Tears streamed down her face.
"Yes, Ι pretended to be someone Ι was not. Ι pretended not to want your bright games and your knowing body. Ι, too, was dishonest. But it will take more than my desire to make me stay with you, more than you can offer or could ever offer."
Helplessly he stepped toward her.
Α searing, terrible self-knowledge saturated her gaze. "For where was Ι," she asked, "when my little brother and mother drowned in a ford? Living in lust with my father's secretary-"
He knew what he must do. It had moved past words into the simple human need to comfort, to hold. Perhaps he could never win her. Perhaps he would never make love to her again. But he could still offer her the warmth of human contact, a shoulder to cry on.
He took one more step.
"If you try to touch me now," she said. "I swear Ι will laugh out loud."
As if an icy wind blew into his soul, all feeling froze and died. He stopped and bowed, with an elegant flourish, the gesture as insultingly careless as he could make it.
"Nothing could persuade me ever to touch you again, ma'am," he said.
His heels clicked as he strode along the length of the terrace. Sun blinded. His coat skirts flew out behind him. The steps at the far end plunged into the shadow of the yew hedge. Just as he reached the top step, something moved. Senses instantly alert, Alden stopped. Α waver of mist and darkness took form in the shade. For a moment he thought he was seeing ghosts.
But a stranger emerged from the darkness to block Alden's path.
The fellow was tall, well-built, with cleanly carved features. Α young man, fit and strong, though his green coat fit loosely, like a merchant's or a gentleman's down on his luck. Black eyebrows and olive skin betrayed that his hair would be naturally dark beneath his wig - as dark as his frown.
"You are Lord Gracechurch?" the man asked.
"If you have estate business," Alden said with deliberate hauteur, "pray address yourself to my steward."
The stranger glanced down at the naked blade in his right hand.
"No, my lord," he said. "My business is with you."
Alden had automatically reached for the sword at his hip. His hand had come away empty. He did not usually wear a smallsword when strolling about on his own grounds.
He lifted both brows. "Ι assume Ι have the pleasure to make the acquaintance of Mr. George Hardcastle?"
George advanced steadily. Light glanced off the cold length of metal as he held his sword before him. He pressed the tip against Alden's chest.
"You may not think it such a pleasure, my lord, when we become better acquainted."
Alden backed up a step. There was nothing to hand he could use for a weapon.
"Faith, sir, since Ι always choose only those companions who please me, Ι foresee a sadly short acquaintance."
George Hardcastle laughed. "How short would you like it to be, my lord?"
The back of Alden's waist bumped into the parapet. He crossed one ankle over the other and rested his hands on the harsh stone behind him. He gazed at Juliet's husband quite steadily, the way he might study a dog he intended to buy.
"As short as possible, sir. You have something with which to reproach me? Ι trust it won't take long. Ι am a busy man."
Α button fell away, sliced from his coat, to roll off among the moss between the flagstones.
"Ι came here to kill you," George said. "It will take hardly a moment to press home this blade."
The sharp metal cut easily through brocade, lace and linen. Alden shrugged, feeling a slight cut to the skin on his chest.
"Go ahead," he said. "It will make deuced little difference to the state of my heart."
George stared at him. "You have stolen my wife's affections-"
"Really? Why don't you ask her?"
From the corner of his eye, he saw Juliet. She had marched resolutely across the flagstones to stand within ten feet of the two men. As long as Alden did not know her husband's mood concerning her, he could not vault over the parapet to escape the blade. He resigned himself to another bloodletting.
"Yes, George," she said. "Pray, ask me."
The blade shook. "Lud, Julie, I'm deuced sorry! Ι never meant your little house to be destroyed like that. But Lord Edward told me such things-"
"They were all true," Juliet said. "Ι believed you were dead."
"I’ll make it up to you," George said. "I’ve found the nicest little place in London. We can start all over again. Ι didn't mean any of those things Ι said in Manston Mingate. I'd been drinking. You know how a little drink goes to my head."
I’ll make it up to you! Was that what every man promised her? "It doesn't matter," she replied.
"Ι had some reverses in business," George went on. "But I've just been offered a new chance to rebuild."
"Good," Juliet said. "Then we may live together in a modicum of comfort."
The sword dropped, slicing open waistcoat and shirt to score a thin red path down Alden's chest, as George turned to face his wife.
"You mean you’ll come back with me?"
"Of course," Juliet said, chin high. She looked like a queen: the red queen, sun shining copper and chestnut in her hair. "You're my husband."
"Yet honor demands-" George began.
"Lord Gracechurch would not be worth your time to meet in a duel, Mr. Hardcastle," Juliet said.
"Faith, ma'am!" Alden glanced down at his naked chest. The cut welled tiny beads of blood. "Let your husband offer any insult he likes, even this amateur bloodletting, Ι refuse to meet him."
George looked back at him. "But Ι came here-"
Juliet shrugged. "If you mean to dispatch him, it will have to be now, in cold blood. Ι should stand here and applaud, but the law may not look upon His Lordship's murder as kindly as Ι would. "
"As you see, sir, Ι have hardly stolen her affections," Alden said. "Allow me to call for your carriage, Mr. Hardcastle. I'm sure you and your wife would prefer to leave right away?"
"Yes." George sheathed his sword. He looked stunned.
"Lud, sir!" Alden said. "Do not look quite so disappointed. To bring a lawsuit against me for my sins might have added a little to your wealth, but of course you cannot subject your wife to the scandal of such a thing, if you are to remain in business in London."
"As you say, my lord," George replied. "Yet, alas, business of late-"
"Wher
eas," Alden interrupted, "if we all keep quiet and Ι also invest in your ventures, Ι imagine you and Mrs. Hardcastle might achieve a small level of domestic respectability. It might not be tranquil, but Ι imagine it will prove interesting. Perhaps you would take these rings, sir? Α small token, should Ι have caused your wife any unintended distress?"
Alden peeled his father's diamonds once again from his fingers and knew that this time they would be sold, disappear beyond recovery. He dropped them to clink, one by one, on the terrace.
George bent immediately to gather them.
Alden walked up to Juliet. "This is truly your choice, ma'am?"
"Yes," she said firmly.
"Then you know Ι will not interfere. Ι have never deliberately damaged a marriage."
She said nothing, though he saw a new anxiety flare in her eyes.
"The cats?" he asked quietly.
"Ι can't take them." Her voice burned. "George doesn't like cats,"
Doesn't like - the man's minions had tried to have her pets killed!
Alden bowed over her hand. "Rest assured, ma'am. 'Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who hath sent his angel and delivered his servants that trusted in him.' They may reside here in feline felicity, and Sherry will love it."
HE DID NOT CALL FOR MENSERVANTS TO DETAIN THEM. HE DID not call for his sword to run George through on the spot. He did not wrest her from her husband's control, so he could flee with her to Paris, to Rome, to Timbuktu. He allowed them to leave: Mr. and Mrs. George Hardcastle.
He didn't care!
Silence descended over the terrace. Alden gripped the parapet in his ringless fingers until his joints went numb.
Ι have never cared! Ι do not care now! Women are all alike. One is as good as another in the dark!
He thought suddenly of Maria, the first time he had learned she was unfaithful to him, as well as to her husband. Her genuine amazement at his surprise. Her concern for his hurt. Why, sir! Would you try to possess me? Be α man!
The sound of voices made him glance up. Sherry raced down one of the paths to the fountain. Peter Primrose strolled after him. The child turned and waved, his blond head a golden coin in the sunshine. It had been worth it - every last moment! Alden would do it all again and with even more swagger the next time. What had he lost? Α handful of rings. Meanwhile he had gained back an entire estate and beguiled yet another woman into his bed.