“Nearly naked?” he echoed. “Julia, we were naked! I woke up in your bed without a stitch on and your damned husband standing in the doorway! I don’t need you to refresh my memory about that part. And you were naked, too. I sure as hell didn’t dream it.”
She sagged in his hold, feeling all the fight go out of her. “You insisted on going home, and I said you were too drunk to ride a horse until you’d sobered up a little, so I made coffee. And in your cup, I put a dollop of laudanum.”
“Laudanum?” His voice rose instantly to a shout. “You drugged me?”
“I had to. Yardley was coming for me, and I couldn’t let you leave. You passed out from the laudanum, and my manservant, my maid, and I carried you upstairs and put you in my bed. I took off the rest of our clothes and waited for Yardley to come. I remembered all those years ago, when you told me how drink affects your memory, and I could only hope you wouldn’t remember calling a halt or realize afterward what I’d done with the coffee or remember that nothing really happened. When Yardley came, you had just woken up, and after he stalked out, you looked at me and said, ‘Oh, my God, I bedded another man’s wife.’ That confirmed what I’d hoped you would believe, and I let you continue to think it. So, even though kissing was as far as we got, all the rest of my plan worked like a charm. My luck finally changed, and things went right.”
“Right?” He let go of her and rubbed his hands over his face. “Merde,” he muttered.
Despite the awful circumstances, she almost laughed at that. “Only you, Aidan, would say obscene words in French because it’s more civilized.”
He didn’t seem to find that amusing. He lowered his hands and glared at her. “I refused you, so you drugged me?” He said it as if he still couldn’t quite believe it. “Of all the low-down, conniving—” He broke off, as if trying to regain his temper. “I wrote a statement that we were intimate that afternoon! I swore to its veracity in court! And it was a lie? I don’t suppose it ever occurred to you to tell me any of this sooner?”
“I couldn’t take the chance, not until my divorce decree was final. You’re so noble and honorable. I couldn’t risk that you would go to Yardley and confess the truth. He’d have had the divorce decree reversed. And as for telling you beforehand, that would never have worked. You have this hopelessly old-fashioned idea that marriage bonds are sacred and infidelity is wrong and truth is noble. You’d never have agreed to any sort of charade if you knew it was a charade.”
Tight-lipped, he looked away. “I’d like to think I could have found an honorable way to help you.”
“How? There were no honorable ways. Would you have colluded with a woman you barely knew and certainly didn’t like to stage an affair? Collusion is against the law. Would you have knowingly helped me stage a love nest and then lied about it in court?”
“I did lie about it in court!”
“You didn’t know you were lying.”
“And you think that justifies what you did?”
“I don’t give a damn about justifying anything!” she shouted, her own anger rising up. “Not to you, or a judge, or even before God!” Now it was her turn to be angry. “My husband was going to drag me back and force me to live with him again. I did what I did because I had no choice!”
“No choice? He was your husband, the man you married, the man you swore to honor and obey, the man with whom you were supposed to have sons.”
“Sons?” She spat the word. “I’d have spawned sons of the devil before I’d have given that man a son.” Now she didn’t have to be cold. Coldness was flowing through her veins like ice water. “I told you, I hated my husband, and there was no way in hell I was going back to him. You asked me a minute ago what I’d have done if you turned me down, and the answer is anything. I would have done anything! I’d have shot him with a gun, jumped off a cliff, or fucked the Archbishop of Canterbury, as long as it meant I didn’t have to go back to that man!”
He shook his head, staring at her in appalled bewilderment. “Why? What did he do to make you hate him so?”
Her anger melted into fear. Her throat closed up, and she couldn’t speak, couldn’t force words out. She could only stare back at him, helpless to explain.
Still, something of what she felt must have shown in her face—the sickening fear, the panic and dismay. Aidan’s expression changed, first to shock, then a dawning awareness. “My God,” he muttered. “I never understood. I thought your marriage was unhappy. I thought it was because you were having affairs and running away from your husband. But it wasn’t that at all, was it?”
She jerked her chin, looking away from the compassion in his eyes. “No.”
“Julia.” His hands cupped her cheeks, lifting her face so that she had to look at him again. “God, Julia, what did he do to you?”
How could she answer that question? How could she tell him the things Yardley had done to her? She hadn’t even been able to tell her own family. “What does it matter?” she cried. “Why should you care?”
“Because I do,” he said simply, his thumbs caressing her cheeks. “I care.”
She’d hurt him. Until this moment, she hadn’t appreciated that fact. Julia froze, staring up at him, dismayed. Most men wouldn’t have been hurt by her actions. Angry, yes, humiliated, perhaps. But she had not only roused Aidan’s anger and caused him humiliation, she had also inflicted pain. She hadn’t known she had the power to truly hurt him, not until now.
Yet, despite that, he was looking at her with tenderness, so much tenderness, she couldn’t bear it. “Don’t!” she said fiercely, bringing her hands up between his upraised arms, shoving his hands aside. “Don’t touch me! Don’t care about me. Don’t want me. Just leave me alone, Aidan. For God’s sake, leave me alone.”
She ducked past him, but his words followed her to the door. “That’s rather difficult now, Julia. You work for me.”
Work for him? Did he think she could continue that now? Manage his social engagements and guide him toward a suitable wife? Her hands were shaking, she realized. She clenched them at her sides and took a deep breath before she answered. “Considering what happened the other night, I think we both see that my continuing to work for you is impossible. Consider this Mrs. Boodle’s resignation.”
With that, she left, and this time he didn’t try to stop her. She ran out of the lavender house, away from the nightmare of her past, away from him, and most of all, away from the tenderness in his face when he looked at her. Running away, after all, was the thing she did best.
Chapter Eighteen
Aidan stared at the closed door Julia had slammed behind her, but it was not the door’s peeling paint that he saw, for fixed in his mind’s eye was the image of Julia’s face. Julia had a face that was expressive, vivid, and mobile, and he’d seen many emotions there before—mischief, reticence, disdain, amusement, desire, to name a few—but he’d never before seen fear.
She’d tried to hide it by running away, but it was too late for hiding. She had not only hated her husband, she’d been afraid of him, and the possible reasons for her fear sickened and enraged him. He wanted to find Yardley and kill the bastard for making her look like that.
What had he done to her? Had he beat her? Beatings would have given her grounds for divorce by cruelty, but proving that sort of thing was difficult. Still, he had the feeling this went far beyond purely physical abuse. In fact, he had the gut-wrenching feeling that it was even worse.
What sickened him almost as much as contemplating what she’d been through was his own willful blindness about it. Whatever her husband had done, it had made her life enough of a nightmare that she was driven to the most desperate measures to end it. He should have understood that long before now, but he had refused to see. He’d wanted to blame her for the collapse of her marriage, he’d wanted to paint her the villainess, the seductress, the adulteress. Putting her into that role made his lust for a married woman and his subsequent behavior easier for his conscience to live with.
Despite the fact that it was making him take a long, hard look in the mirror, Aidan was glad he’d caught the truth in her face. He was glad.
He thought about the other things she’d revealed to him. She’d drugged him, but strangely enough, he didn’t care. She’d lied to him, and to everyone, and he didn’t care about that either. Her actions had been compelled by her need to save herself, and though he didn’t know precisely why, he didn’t need to. The fear in her face had told him her reasons had been good ones. Perhaps he was hopelessly skirt-smitten, but he meant what he’d said earlier. Her reasons didn’t matter because he cared about her.
He wanted to help her overcome this. He wanted to help her heal.
That was such a chivalrous-sounding notion. Aidan’s mouth curved with both self-disparagement and a touch of humor. Julia had called him chivalrous, and he’d always liked to believe that about himself, but he knew now that his chivalry toward her was, and always had been, self-serving. If he helped her, he might be able to bed her. It was that simple.
No, Aidan was forced to admit, when it came to Julia, he wasn’t chivalrous at all.
Julia didn’t come down to dinner, pleading a headache, and Aidan was rather glad of it, for he didn’t think he could bear having her so tantalizingly close, not when she’d surely put on that witty, aloof mask she seemed able to don at will.
Everyone else gathered as usual in the drawing room for entertainments, but Aidan wanted to spare himself any conversations with Eileen McGill about her dear niece, or from any conversation at all, for that matter. Nor did he want to engage in the game of charades being organized by Geoff and Vivian. He took his single glass of port and walked over to Paul, who was reading a book. The other man looked up as Aidan halted by his chair.
“Feel up to a game of chess?”
Paul set the book aside at once, and the two men excused themselves from the others in the drawing room and went into Paul’s study, where the chessboard was always kept ready.
Paul opened the windows that gave onto the terrace to let in the cool, evening air, then they both sat down, and Paul reached for two of the pawns, one of each color. “Are you sure you want to play?” he asked, grinning at Aidan as he held the pawns behind his back. “I’ve been playing chess with Colonel Westholm all winter,” he added as he held out his closed fists, “because Westholm is one of the few men I know who can defeat you.”
Aidan chose the left one, and Paul began to laugh. “Black,” he said, opening his hand. “I start.”
Aidan shrugged, seeming unperturbed, and leaned back in his chair as his friend returned the chess pieces to their places on the board. “Having the opening move won’t help you, Paul. Nor will all your practicing with Westholm.”
Paul slid a pawn forward. “This could be just like our tennis game last month.”
“We’ll see.”
The game started at a rapid clip, but after two hours, it slowed to a crawl, and though Paul was an excellent player, the game wasn’t challenging enough to keep his mind away from the most fascinating woman he’d ever met. He studied her cousin across the chessboard, wondering how he might broach the topic, and he knew there was no civil, polite, gentlemanly way. “Paul?”
The other man slid his rook forward and looked up. “Hmm?”
“What happened to Julia?”
Reticence entered the other man’s expression, quite a proper reaction under the circumstances. “What do you mean?”
“This isn’t a time for discretion, Paul. If you know anything—”
“I don’t. Julie is a law unto herself, and she reveals only what she chooses to.”
Not always, he thought, remembering the way she’d blurted out the truth about Cornwall to him this afternoon. He suspected she’d never intended to tell him about it, that she’d meant to take the secret to her grave, along with the truth about her husband.
“It’s your move,” Paul prompted.
Aidan glanced at the board, and moved his knight, uninterested in thinking out chess strategy. “Did he beat her? Did he—” Aidan paused for a deep breath, rage flaring up in him as he forced himself to ask the question. “Did he rape her?”
Paul’s face revealed nothing. “A man can’t rape his wife,” he said coldly. “Don’t you know the law?”
“So he did rape her.” As he spoke, Aidan’s rage deepened. “That bastard.”
Paul moved his bishop, then leaned back, studying Aidan with a thoughtful frown. “Why all these questions about Julia? Why should it matter to you, now?”
His eyes met Paul’s across the chessboard. “It matters.”
Paul’s gaze raked over his face. “So it’s like that, is it?”
He knew what his friend meant. “Yes. It’s like that.”
Paul nodded slowly. “I wondered, after . . . Cornwall.” He paused, lowering his gaze to the board. “Her divorce is final now,” he reminded.
“I know. Why did she need one? That’s what I’m trying to understand.”
The other man rubbed four fingers across his forehead. “Look, Aidan, I don’t know what happened. I know Yardley was a bastard, I know Julia hated him. Beyond that, I can’t go because I genuinely don’t know. I do know it was all a nightmare for her, and I have certain theories, of course, but I have no intention of sharing them with you or anyone else. If you want to know about her marriage to Yardley, you’ll have to ask her.”
“I did. She wouldn’t tell me.”
Paul nodded, not looking surprised. “She’s never told any of us about Yardley, either, if that makes you feel better, except to say he was a brute. What that entailed, I can only imagine.”
“Couldn’t you have done something?” But even as Aidan asked it, he knew it was an unfair question.
“I tried, but—” Paul swallowed hard and looked away. “There’s not many ways out of a bad marriage.”
“No,” Aidan muttered, wretched. “I suppose not.”
He let it go at that. He supposed he didn’t need to know the sordid details; in fact, a part of him would rather never hear whatever awful secrets had impelled her to the actions she’d taken. What he really wanted, he realized, was for Julia to trust him enough to tell him. And he wanted her, damn it all, more than ever before.
She wanted him, too. He knew that. But he wanted more from her than just her desire. He wanted her to welcome it, revel in it, be made happy by it. That, he knew, was too much to expect of her right now, and that meant he had to do what she wanted and leave. If he stayed, he wouldn’t be able to resist pursuing her, and instead of bringing her closer to him, that might push her even further away.
“Checkmate,” he said, moving his bishop.
“Damn.” Paul fell back in his chair. “I didn’t even see that one coming.”
“You never see that one coming. It’s the one move you never see.”
With that, Aidan stood up. “I’m leaving in the morning, Paul. But,” he added, “if you think there’s any chance she might want to see me, I’ll be at Trathen Leagh.”
Paul nodded in understanding. “If you still want her, and she still wants you, all well and good. God knows she deserves some happiness, and you do as well. But she’s fragile, Aidan. She doesn’t see it, of course. If you hurt her in any way—I don’t mean physically,” he hastened to add. “I just mean in general, if you hurt her, she might break apart completely.”
“I know what you meant. Before I let that happen, I would kill myself.”
With that, Aidan left the study. He went upstairs and instructed Dawes to pack his things, then he went to the library, pulled out a current Bradshaw, and began looking up trains to St. Ives. She’d told him to leave her alone, and he was going to respect her wishes, but only for now. He wasn’t giving up, by any means. There were times, however, when a man had to make a strategic retreat to win the game.
* * *
Julia spent a restless night. She’d eaten dinner in her room, occupying her time and her mind by writing letters to fri
ends, but once she’d crawled into bed, she’d done nothing but toss and turn, unable to sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, she’d seen Aidan standing before her in the lavender house, his eyes filled with desire and tenderness and anger on her behalf, and it was a combination she’d never seen in any man’s eyes before.
Stephen had desired her, and he’d loved her, but it had never been tender. It had been giddying and breathless and wrenching, a passionate, desperate, immature love, a love doomed, she saw now, to eventually end. The fact that Stephen had died had only ended it sooner.
As for Yardley, the only other basis for her experience of men—well, tenderness was something he’d never displayed, not to her, not to his mother, not to anyone. She doubted he even knew what tenderness was.
Aidan, looking at her yesterday, had been so different. It hurt, yes, and it made her afraid, but that was because it was genuine and real, and it asked her to reciprocate, something she was terribly afraid she would never be able to do. She was brittle and hard—too hard for tenderness, too cold for lovemaking, too afraid of pain. And there would be pain. When it was over, when passion was sated and died, there was no future for her with him. She’d had enough pain already; she didn’t want the pain of heartbreak.
At last, Julia fell into a troubled sleep, but she woke before eight, unfreshened by her few hours of rest. But by the time she had bathed and dressed, she felt more like herself, more sure of her ground. She had done the right thing by resigning her post and ending any chance for a love affair with him before it could begin.
Still, she couldn’t spend the remainder of the week avoiding him. Deciding she had to face him sometime, she went downstairs for breakfast, but when she entered the dining room, she learned she wouldn’t have to face him at all.
“Trathen’s gone?” She stilled, one hand holding the cup of tea she’d just poured from the pot on the sideboard, her other hand on the back of the chair she’d just pulled out at the table. She stared at Paul, who had imparted this news quite casually between bites of kidneys and bacon. “Gone where?”
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