Julian stared at her, wishing he could see straight through her to the contents of her conscience. Of course, that was supposing she had one, and he was inclined to believe she didn’t. Even so, everything she said, her manner and affectation, the calmness of her tone, suggested that she spoke the truth.
“What of Ashburn?” he asked. “Has he anything to do with this?”
“Percy?” She wrinkled her nose. “The only thing Percy cares about is cunny, drink, and horses. He’s not the sort.”
He wondered where the duchess had gotten the mouth of a sailor. Perhaps it was the opium talking. Whatever the case, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d caught her with her guard down, in a state that would render it far more difficult for her to prevaricate. And everything she’d said held a glimmer of veracity.
“You swear that you know nothing of this, Lottie?” he demanded.
Not that he would take her at her word, damn it, but he was beginning to feel the fool for even having supposed that a woman more concerned with the next hard cock and vial of laudanum she could find than anything else would be capable of such a vicious plot. Looking at her now, pale and unaccountably relaxed by the potency of the opium she’d no doubt ingested, he couldn’t imagine her capable of much of anything, really.
She stretched her arms above her head and yawned like a sleepy cat. “I swear, Julian. If you want to find out who’s after you, perhaps you should look closer to home. Your brother doesn’t have many kind words to spare for you these days.”
“Edward?” His blood went cold at the unexpected mentioning of his brother. “He’s on the Continent. I haven’t had word from him in years.”
Hadn’t missed him either. Recalling the last time they’d spoken still filled him with acrimony. They had been young and stupid, Edward railing against him for the hedonistic lifestyle he’d adopted to save the estates from ruin. You’re a whore, Edward had sneered, just like our mother. Their mutual rancor had never been more poisonous, and it had led to an angry round of fisticuffs that day that ultimately resulted in his brother’s departure from the country.
“On the Continent? How strange.” Lottie attempted to flash him one of her rare smiles, but her ever growing stupor seemed to impede her. “I ran into him at the Duke of Rutherford’s soiree just the other day. Or was it the other week? Dear me, the days do seem to blend.”
Jesus. Edward was back in London? He hadn’t sent word. Not a single bloody word. A sharp surge of foreboding hit him then, starting at his spine and shooting straight through his body. He felt as if he were about to explode. “What did he say to you?”
But Lottie was fading. Her eyelids appeared to get heavier by the moment. “I don’t recall, darling. Only that it wasn’t pleasant. Have a care, won’t you? I shouldn’t like to see a man with such a beautiful face go to his rewards before his time. I always did love your face.” She yawned again. “Dear me. I do believe I’m due for my nap. See yourself out, won’t you?”
Before he could say another word, her eyes slid closed and she sighed, apparently succumbing to however much laudanum she’d consumed. For the first time since his entrance, he noted an empty vial and a drained teacup. Jesus, she must have drank it right before he’d entered. To hide a guilty conscience? He couldn’t be certain of anything or anyone, it seemed. Least of all his instincts.
Either way, further conversation with Lottie was a moot point. She had passed out on her settee. With a muttered curse, he fetched her butler, instructing the man to see to his mistress. He wouldn’t have her death on his shoulders, and he couldn’t be sure how much of the poison she’d taken.
He stalked back to his carriage, weighed down by more questions.
What the bloody hell was Edward doing back in London?
It seemed he would need to locate his brother and find out. But first, he needed to return to Clara. Before he did anything else, he needed to make certain that she was removed from all harm, by whatever means necessary.
Clara was waiting for Julian in his study when he returned. He strode in, his expression troubled, looking so unfairly virile and handsome that he made her ache despite the anger trapped inside her. She’d been pacing the threadbare carpet but halted at his entrance, every part of her body attuned to him with razor precision. The mere sight of him made heat sluice through her, pooling in a steady ache between her thighs.
But no. She mustn’t allow the way he made her feel to inhibit this audience. She wouldn’t allow him to send her away from his life. They could damn well face the danger together. She wanted to be by his side or nowhere else.
“My lady.” He came to her, taking her cold hands in his, that glacial blue gaze skating over her, lingering on the bruises that Anderson had taken pains to hide with a high-necked gown and some pearl powder. “How are you this morning?”
She knew he asked after her physical wellbeing, but bruises would heal far easier than hearts ever could. “Not well.”
His jaw tensed. “Are you in pain? What did Dr. Redcay say?”
“I didn’t see the doctor. My only interest was in seeing you.” Clara searched his gaze. “I’m not going back to my father’s house, Julian.”
“Yes, damn it, you are,” he growled. “You’re not safe here. That much was amply demonstrated last night.”
Her lips tightened. If he wanted to be stubborn, she could outmatch him any day. “I won’t leave you. Do whatever you must to ensure my safety here. I’ll keep my pistol beneath my pillow. Station a footman by my door. I don’t care. Only don’t send me away.”
“Listen to me.” His voice was low and intense, his face a mask of cold determination. “There is no way in hell I will allow you to be in further danger because of me. Someone is trying to kill me, and he’s so desperate to get to me that he targeted you as well. I’ve made arrangements with your father. You and my sisters will be going to him this afternoon. He’ll arrange passage for you to Virginia as soon as possible. And you’ll go, goddamn it. You’ll go and forget all about me.”
“Forget about you?” The anger swirling through her froze. Her stomach felt as if it bottomed out. “What are you saying, Julian?”
He released her hands and stalked away from her, going to a decanter and pouring himself an ample amount of whisky before tossing it back and pinning her with a dispassionate look. “It’s over, Clara. We’ll have the marriage annulled. You’ll be free to return to the land that you love unencumbered. I’ll transfer your dowry to you. You’ll want for nothing.”
His words tumbled through her, clawed at her insides along with the icy fingers of shock. It’s over. Annulled. Unencumbered. You’ll want for nothing. He didn’t just intend to send her to her father’s home for her safety. He meant to leave her. To force her to leave him.
She swallowed, her mouth suddenly going dry. “All that I want is you, Julian. I don’t want an annulment. I don’t even want to return to Virginia unless it’s with you by my side.”
He tossed back another swallow of liquor, staring at her. “I’m doing you a favor, little dove.” His tone gentled. “One day, you’ll thank me for it. You don’t belong here, and you don’t belong with someone like me. This is for the best.”
How utterly highhanded and wrong of him. She closed the distance between them, not liking the gulf it seemed to create, and didn’t stop until her skirts brushed his trousers and she could see the shadows beneath his eyes and the whiskers shading his cheeks. He wasn’t as unaffected as he pretended.
“You’re wrong,” she told him. “With you is precisely where I belong. I’m not going. Whatever danger there is lurking out there, we’ll face it together. We’ll find out who is responsible.”
He took another draught of whisky, draining the glass before depositing it on the side table with a loud clunk. “Ah, little dove. I warned you against mistaking lust for something more, did I not?”
It was as if the caring, passionate husband of last night had been replaced by a bloodless stranger. Her heart gave
a pang in her chest. “Don’t do this, Julian.” She was not above begging, not when it came to this man, the man she loved. “Don’t try to push me away in some misplaced sense of keeping me safe.”
“Don’t you see?” He skimmed his fingers over her jaw, down her throat. “We will never suit. I can’t give you my heart because I don’t bloody well have one, and a woman like you deserves nothing less. I brought all this on myself, and I’ll face it as I must. I won’t allow my darkness to sully you or put you in danger for one moment more.”
“No.” She shook her head, refusing to listen, refusing to give a modicum of credence to his words. “It is you who doesn’t see, Julian. I love you.”
If her revelation affected him, he didn’t show it. His gaze became shuttered. “I was fourteen years old when Lady Esterly propositioned me. My mother had passed on earlier in the year after giving birth to Josephine and my father had just died. I was only sorry for the death in that it saddled me with all his debts. He loved gambling, whoring, and drinking almost as much as he loved beating me, you see. Not much to be missed. Lady Esterly approached me at the old bastard’s funeral. Her husband, Lord Esterly, was one of my father’s friends. She wanted me to fuck her. Offered me money. Do you know what I did, Clara?”
Her heart ached for the young man he must have been. So terribly young. To have had a father who beat him instead of loving him and left him swimming in debt, to have felt he had no recourse other than sacrificing himself. “You don’t need to tell me this, Julian. You were just a boy, and that awful woman preyed on you, abusing your innocence and vulnerability. Regardless, your past doesn’t change the way I feel about you.”
“But I do need to tell you.” His face came closer to hers as he took her chin in his thumb and forefinger and held her there, trapped as any butterfly pressed to a pin board. “You need to hear this, to understand what I am. Who I am. I fucked her, Clara. I accepted the money. I became a whore that day. And that’s how I’ve lived my life ever since, servicing widows and unhappy wives for money. I’ve fucked so many women I lost count. I haven’t a bloody clue how many enemies I’ve made over the years. It could be any cuckolded man in London trying to kill me. Do you understand?”
He felt responsible for the attack. That was what she understood. And fear was making him build walls between them that should never exist. Her hand closed over his. “I understand more than you know.”
He tore his hand from hers. Anger emanated from him in almost tangible waves. “Then for Christ’s sake, don’t throw your love away on a man like me. I’m not worth it, goddamn you. Go to Virginia. You’ll be safe there. Find a good man, one who’ll make you a decent husband, one who’s deserving of you.”
“I don’t want another man. I want you.” She placed a hand on his arm, feeling the tenseness of his muscled flesh even through his coat. “I love you, Julian.”
He shrugged away from her touch and clamped his hands on her waist, setting her away from him as if she were a flame that had burned too near. “But I don’t want you. I don’t love you. I’m not capable.”
She didn’t believe him. “Everyone is capable of love.”
“Not me.” With a muffled curse, he reached for his empty glass and hurled it against the wall. It shattered on impact, shards raining to the carpet. “Leave, Clara. Get the hell out of here while you still can.”
Stricken, Clara looked from the broken glass to her husband’s grim countenance. “Please, Julian. Don’t do this.”
“Go. I don’t want you here.” He spun her around so that she faced the door, his touch unusually rough. “Leave me now. And don’t come back.”
Tears threatening her vision, she found herself numbly obeying him, walking from his study. Leaving him. What could she say in the face of his anger? She’d laid her heart bare before him, and he’d turned it down before smashing it beneath his boot heel. Something inside her splintered, leaving her fragmented and hopelessly adrift.
Perhaps he didn’t love her after all, at least not enough to fight for her. To fight for them and what they’d only begun to build. I don’t love you. I’m not capable. Don’t come back. The awful words echoed through her mind, a mocking litany. Pressing a hand over her mouth to muffle the sobs she couldn’t suppress, she rushed over the threshold.
More breaking glass sounded behind her just before she closed the door.
he had gone.
Thank the bloody Lord. Odd how life had a way of working in circles. Demented circles. For here he sat, alone in his study, going about the business of getting thoroughly soused. He tossed back the rest of his brandy, wishing it could obliterate everything with its heady burn. How long ago had it been that he’d sat in this very chair on a similar night, and Clara had upended his world?
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.”
Restless Rake (Heart's Temptation Book 5) Page 24