The Romantic (28 page)

Julian set down his walking stick. He strolled around the room, examining the appointments. He checked the bindings on the two books on the table, and ran his fingers along the carved edge of the upholstered chair. His
gaze swept over the mahogany bed and its white curtains and coverlet.

“I am sure that he will get many letters, Pen. The affair of convenience has done its job. The indiscretions of tonight will verify all gossip and suspicions.”

Something in his tone made her pause with her headdress in her hands.

“The world will make the assumptions we require, no matter what actually happens between us now.”

“What are you saying, Julian?”

“I am saying that accompanying you to this chamber was enough. The plan does not require anything else.”

He did not speak unkindly, but the cool distance he had shown all night had intensified. His manner raised a dreadful apprehension in her. Her soul sensed something terrible was about to happen.

“Of course, I would not want you to think you are obligated to play this role longer than necessary, Julian.”

“I am not speaking of my sense of obligation, but yours.”

“Is that what you think we have been sharing? I assure you, I am not nearly as
obliging
as you seem to think.”

“You misunderstand me.”

“Then explain, please. You are clearly displeased with something. Was it my little pique over Señora Perez? I am not accustomed to having such gauntlets thrown. I will be more sophisticated in the future.”

“It has nothing to do with that woman, I assure you.”

“Then what is the reason for your mood?”

He did not reply at once. She sensed him framing his thoughts into words. “I sat in the theater, watching the drama on stage, and I realized we played another in the
box. I do not mind that, I promise you. However, once this door closed behind us, the curtain fell. The audience has been satisfied, and our actual affair means we need not lie to a judge. There is no reason for this affair of convenience to actually continue.”

“This did not start as an affair of convenience, Julian.”

“No, it started as two friends killing the dragon for a night. Glasbury has never been far from any of it, has he?”

Sorrow churned her stomach. Her heart beat painfully, swollen by the sickening heaviness caused by the anticipation of loss.

“Are you throwing me over, Julian?”

She thought she would die when he did not answer right away.

He walked over to her. He reached out and touched her cheek, his fingertips just lying there in faint contact.

“Pen, you have accepted me as the old friend helping to fight the bad memories, and as your partner in the affair of convenience. I am explaining that if we make love again, there will be no good excuse left, except that I want you and you want me. If we do not make love, it will not affect our plan. It would not matter at all.”

Except to her. If this tender touch on her face should be the last touch of all, her heart would break. A vitality flowed to her through that gentle contact. It soothed her distress and stimulated her senses. It seduced her as a more blatant touch never could.

He stood an arm’s length from her, still contained and complete. His eyes hinted that the deepest currents were not so calm, however.

“Do you want me that way, Pen? With no good excuses?”

She wanted him any way she could have him. She would grieve if he never held her again.

Admitting that increased her vulnerability to him tenfold. It made her both euphoric and afraid.

“Yes. I want you in that way, with no excuses. Very much.”

“Then when we are here alone, and the curtain descends, it must be something apart from the public drama. I do not want him here with us. We will tend to all that by day, but at night it must be only you and me.”

He began undressing her. His slow, deliberate hands released her from her garments one by one. His manner was subtly different, as if he declared a new right to her as each item fell away. By the time he slid the lacings down her stays, she was thoroughly aroused.

She learned that no excuses meant no defenses. Everything was different. The way he looked at her when her chemise dropped to the floor. The way he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed. The way he commanded her passion after he undressed and joined her there.

She almost resisted the way it affected her. Her heart would not allow that. In admitting she could not lose him, she had exposed herself to a wondrous power. His warmth, his scent, his skin, his breath—her consciousness completely filled with his presence and reality, so much that even the pleasure was drenched with it.

She wanted him inside her long before she attained abandon. She longed for the intimacy more than she craved the ecstasy.

She touched his face and pressed his shoulder to let him know. He moved on top of her. It seemed that their
bodies fit perfectly tonight, as his strength nestled into her softness.

She trembled when he entered her. The fullness moved her so much she wanted to weep. She pulled him down against her breast and held him tightly, savoring the powerful emotion.

“It is different when there are no excuses,” she whispered.

He rose enough to look in her eyes. “Yes.”

“There may be no excuses, but there are good reasons. Happiness is a very good reason. So are desire and affection.”

He kissed her gently. “Those are excellent reasons.”

So is love.
Her heart forced the words into her mind before she comprehended what she was admitting.

Not the love for an old friend. One did not want to die at the mere thought of losing the touch of a friend. Only a heart that was in love would fear such loneliness and misery.

“This is really very astonishing, Julian.”

“We can be astonished together.”

She did not realize just how astonished. She had not guessed how admitting her love would change everything even more. Each touch and kiss and move became another bond, until she felt as linked to his soul as to her own.

He even dominated her abandon. Her cries carried his name. She submitted to the emotions that saturated her climax, so that moment of blind intensity was transformed. Afterward, as they lay entwined and exhausted, she did not move lest she disturb the beauty.

Eventually she had to relinquish him. A few hours later, he rose and began dressing.

She resented that this precious night had to end like this, with Julian sneaking out in the darkest hour. She wanted him to stay with her so they could greet the new day together.

He sat on the bed and angled down for a last kiss. She could not see his face in the dark that had claimed the chamber with the fire’s extinction, but that tender kiss revealed more than any expression or word could.

She touched his face. “I wish …”

He turned his head to kiss her palm. “What do you wish, my lady? I am yours to command.”

Her heart glowed at the playful allusion to their childhood games. Tonight had revised those old memories. They now were deep strong roots that supported this special love.

“It is a terrible thing to think, but … I wish he were gone, Julian. God help me, but I do. I wish we did not have to play out any long dramas on the world’s stage.”

His head hovered, close to hers. “He will be gone soon. It will be over very quickly, Pen. Now I must go, even if I would give up a year of my life to stay even one more hour.”

He rose and walked away, melting into the dark.

It was only much later, as her drowsy mind filled with the night’s memories, that she understood the other implications of her love.

The stakes in her battle with Glasbury had just been raised.

Julian slipped out the door of the vacant kitchen and passed through the garden.

Considering his euphoric peace, it was hard to believe the night had begun with such inner turbulence.

Sitting in the theater box, he had not minded the curious eyes turned on him, but he had resented like hell the ones that examined Pen. Señora Perez’s boldness, and Pen’s jealous pique, had only added to the feeling that he had a role in a farce.

His mind had turned stormy at how their game with Glasbury made their affair frivolous and cheap, and more a sham of reality than the play unfolding on the stage below. Their affair had been pleasurable and fun, sensual and friendly, but always a means to an end.

He had walked up those stairs to her chamber knowing he would not continue like that. He would see it all through for her, but he would not hold her again merely as part of a drama played out for society’s sake. He would not lie to himself that there was more, if in fact there was not.

She had amazed and awed him. Her words, her touch, the look in her eyes had left him with no defenses at all.

He had loved her for years, as much as his heart could love, but tonight had deepened that love so much that it shook his essence and preoccupied his consciousness.

Suddenly the real world crashed into his tranquil solitude. His instincts shouted a warning.

The dark had shifted. Two figures had emerged from the shadows to block his path in the alley. They did not approach. They merely waited for him to come to them.

He looked behind and saw another figure blocking his retreat.

Laclere had been right. The earl had other options besides divorce.

As Julian walked forward, he removed his gloves so his grasp on his walking stick would be firm.

“Have you been waiting for me all night in the damp? The earl is not very considerate of his servants.” He strode right up to them. One backed up a few paces, as if shocked by his boldness. “You are not his smartest men, however, nor very shrewd criminals. I have only to yell, and you will be in prison by daybreak.”

“They got to catch us first,” the braver one growled.

Julian sensed the arm swinging more than saw it. He ducked and swung his walking stick at the man’s knees.

An iron rod falling on paving stones makes its own sound. So does a bone cracking. The weapon clanged and the man sank. A barely swallowed howl sounded down the alley.

Bootsteps heralded the quick approach of the third man. Not waiting for another attack, Julian swung his stick again and sent the second man sprawling.

Julian stepped over both men and faced their final comrade. His companions’ moans caught him up short.

“Get them out of here, and bring them to the scoundrel who sent you,” Julian said. “Give Glasbury a message from me. Tell him I said it will not happen this way, in a dark alley. If he wants to see me dead, he will have to do it himself on the field of honor.”

The last man bent to help his crippled friend up on his good leg. Julian left them to find their way back to their master.

He tapped his stick on the paving stones as he walked down the silent street. At least tonight he had not been forced to use the sword hidden within it.

It was fortunate that Pen’s abductors were in gaol back in Lancashire. The earl had been forced to resort to more clumsy and cowardly criminals.

If Mr. Jones and Mr. Henley had been waiting in that alley, someone would probably be dead now.

chapter
21

W
omen talk about men’s talents all the time,” Dante said.

He spoke with great authority to the other members of the Dueling Society, who had gathered at White’s at Adrian Burchard’s invitation.

It was past time for one of their nights of cards and drink. However, Julian knew that this particular meeting had been arranged for a purpose. The men at this card table sought to show the world that a certain solicitor would not be cut or dropped by some of his influential friends and clients.

Others had not been so generous. Three days after returning to London, Julian arrived at his chambers to find the first letter from a patron explaining he was moving his legal affairs to another solicitor. In the past week, three more such letters had arrived.

“I am sure you are wrong, Dante,” Laclere said. “Ladies do not speak of such indelicate matters.”

Charlotte’s warning about “particulars” had come up
in the conversation. Dante had now obliged them with the least welcome explanation of what that meant.

Dante took a long puff on his cigar. “Believe what you want, but Fleur told me such things are discussed all the time. Openly. Even unmarried women hear it.”

“Fleur told you this?
Fleur?”
Laclere asked incredulously.

“That is astonishing,” St. John said.

“I was shocked, let me tell you. She told me this well before we married, by the way.”

“She was just goading you, Dante. Taunting you because of your amorous reputation,” Laclere said.

“I do not think she was only doing that. My impression was that she knew of what she spoke.”

“I regret to say that I have some reason to believe that Dante is correct, even with regard to unmarried women, although only those of some maturity,” Adrian said. “Before I married … well, let us just say that I had some evidence that I had been so discussed.”

A thoughtful silence fell on the group.

“Not that any man here has any concerns regarding his reputation in those matters,” St. John said.