Chapter Three #2
“Nothing,” she said. “Enjoy the rest of your breakfast.”
Head held high, Verity turned and strode away from him, eyes stinging. She felt his gaze on her with each step she took as she escaped the garden and sought the safety of her chamber.
How much time had passed since then? Enough that the sun was low in the sky. Enough that her maid had come, offering to light the candles, re-ignite the grate, and help her from her beautiful crystal encrusted dress.
Verity had shooed her away.
She started when a single, hard knock sounded on the adjoining door.
She turned to face it. The master’s bedchamber was on the other side, where Julian had taken up residence over the last few days.
Drawing herself upright, she prepared to do what she should have from the start—for Julian’s sake. “Come,” she said.
The door opened. Julian loomed in the threshold. Tall, broad, and dark as a shadow. He’d removed his elegant waistcoat and cravat. His white shirtsleeves were rolled to his elbows and he had undone several of the buttons near his throat.
He studied her with narrowed eyes, hooded under thick furrowed brows, evoking an air of forbidding-menace-meets-predatory-grace.
Everything in her went weak with desire. She batted it back for all she was worth.
After a taut silence, he sauntered in. Only then did she note the nearly empty snifter of amber liquid clutched in one hand.
He downed the remainder and deposited the glass on the chest of drawers with a click as he passed it en route to her.
“I’ve waited several hours on tenterhooks anticipating your final decree, madam.
Finally, I determined I’d rather face things like a man than cower like a prisoner on death row, awaiting his turn at the gallows.
So here I am.” He spread his arms wide and his shirt stretched over his muscled chest. “You might as well say it, Verity. Say it.”
She did not quite know what to make of Julian, sullen and caustic and clearly on the offensive. Not to mention she hadn’t a clue what he was going on about. “Say what?”
Glaring at her, he scrubbed a hand over the fine stubble shadowing his cheek, then stalked toward her bed, where he dropped to sit on the edge, long legs stretched out before him.
As miserable as she was after hours of grappling with what she had to do, seeing him in this disordered state hurt her more. She could not help but go to him.
She perched on the mattress beside him and tentatively touched his shoulder.
At the brush of her fingertips, a shudder went through him.
“Julian, I…don’t think this is going to work,” she forced herself to admit aloud.
He turned his gaze on her and her breath caught. Heat and longing burned in the ice-blue depths of his eyes. “Why not? Because you don’t want me?” he half-accused, his voice gruff.
She blinked rapidly. “No. No, that’s not…It’s you who…” She broke off as he dropped his face in his hands. “Julian, what is wrong? What has happened?”
He huffed out a laugh that held no humor. “What is wrong? Other than everything?”
She inched closer to him, as her need to soothe him outweighed all other considerations. She wrapped one arm around his broad shoulders, or attempted to. Her arm span did not reach from one of his shoulders to the other. “Tell me. I cannot bear to see you like this,” she urged.
He lowered his hands and angled his face to hers. That recalcitrant lock of hair had fallen over his brow again and without thinking, she reached to comb it back, lingering over the task, luxuriating in the silky texture of the thick, dark mass.
He shivered like a man in the grip of a fever, his eyes closing briefly. “Verity,” he breathed, her name almost a plea.
“I’m here,” she answered.
“Can I…” he began, reaching for her, his ice-blue eyes deep wells of misery that matched her own.
Without hesitation she twined her own arms around his neck in an answering embrace.
A groan sounded, deep in his throat as he pulled her across his lap and pressed his hot face into her neck.
Confusion, elation, tenderness and desire mingled within her.
“Why did you…” he broke off, swallowing audibly. “What did I say that made you…” He cursed, then drew back slightly to search her eyes. “I wanted everything to be perfect for you, as perfect as I could make it in the pitiful amount of time I allotted for our wedding. Obviously, I missed the mark.”
She sighed and cupped his cheek with one hand. “You did nothing wrong, Julian. You only admitted what I already knew.”
He looked baffled, then chagrined. “You worked it out, did you? I was going to admit everything before we…” His face took on a distinctly ruddy cast, and she realized he was referring to the marriage bed.
She felt her own cheeks heat, then shook her head, and gave him a chiding look. “I don’t believe you would have. You’d never hurt me like that.”
“I beg your pardon? Hurt you?”
“Your embarrassment about my age is hardly something you’d give voice to,” she murmured.
He stared at her. “Embarrassment? Your age?” He sounded dumbfounded and appeared half amused.
She was becoming annoyed by his feigned ignorance. “Yes, my age. As in how very much older than you I am. As if you would ever be…that is, ever see someone like me as…” She shook her head and attempted to disentangle herself from him.
Julian held her fast, his encircling arms unyielding. He no longer looked the least amused. “Someone like you,” he echoed as if working out a conundrum. “You think I’m ashamed of you, Verity?”
A wave of humiliation washed over her and she ducked her head, pressing it to his hard chest. “I know that you care for me. You’ve been an unfailingly good friend to me over the years. Naturally, you thought to salvage my living difficulties by offering marriage.”
When he said nothing, she peeked up at him.
Julian’s expression said he was unimpressed by her reasoning. Bored would not be putting too fine a point on it.
As a result, she straightened and continued, rapid-fire. “And, perhaps, at the time you offered, marriage to me seemed pragmatic. But then you considered the ramifications of informing our families and society in general, and then, the notion held much less appeal.”
“You worked all that out yourself, did you?”
She nodded, unsure of his tone.
“Because you’re certain I could never be attracted you. Is that it?”
“Well…er…”
“What if I told you, my hesitation in informing my mother had nothing to do with you, and everything to do with me?”
She slanted him a dubious look.
“What if I told you I wasn’t looking forward to the I told you so that was sure to follow our announcement? No one likes to hear I told you so.”
“No, I don’t suppose they do,” she agreed, wondering how it was she had lost the vein of the conversation.
Though one of his arms remained locked around her waist, he unwound his other to finger a tendril of her hair framing her face. He traced it with infinite care.
With effort, she resisted the shiver that threatened.
Eyes on his task, one corner of his mouth kicked upward in a half-grin.
“Verity, are you not the least curious as to what my know-it-all mother said to me all those years ago when I begged to accompany my father on his travels, specifically from the moment I learned he planned to call on dear Cousin Sylvester? What she, in fact, reiterated, at my father’s funeral? ”
“I suppose,” she drew out.
His knuckles glided over her jawline as his eyes locked with hers. “She said, ‘For heaven’s sake, Julian, I thought you’d gotten past your infatuation with Sylvester’s bride.’ I, of course, vehemently denied any such thing.”
“Well, of course you did,” she said, breathless thanks to his wandering fingers which now feathered the column of her neck.
“Of course you would. Obsessed with me—we’d never even met.
What a ridiculous notion.” She spoke with utter conviction, but something lurked in Julian’s eyes that hinted at details she didn’t know.
A smile flickered at his sculpted mouth. “No, we hadn’t. But I did attend your wedding. Do you recall seeing me there?”
She shook her head.
Much of her wedding day—her first wedding day—was a blur. The hastily exchanged vows said before a handful of family members on either side.
The long ride to Cornwall following the ceremony, sitting across from the somber-faced duke while he delineated her wifely duty to provide him an heir, she recalled in vivid detail.
“I thought not,” Julian murmured. “For your information, I was there at my father’s behest to witness Cousin Sylvester’s nuptials. I took one look at you and knew an angel had descended from Heaven to dwell among the mortals.”
She must’ve worn a shocked expression, because an indulgent smile spread over his face.
“You, in case you missed that, darling. I was instantly out of my head. My mother noticed immediately upon our return something had changed in me. Though I denied any such thing, Father was only too happy to share his observation that, indeed, I was utterly besotted.”
His smile faded. “And when I insisted upon joining my father in paying you and Penrose a visit, she accused me of wanting to go merely to see you again.” He broke off. “She was right.”
“That was a long time ago. You were a mere boy,” she said for lack of anything else to say.
Julian made himself comfortable, scooting back on the bed, Verity in his arms, to prop himself against her pillows and headboard.
She offered no resistance.
“From eighteen years of age, I was a captive man, unable to wipe thoughts of you from my mind. Unable to form an attachment with any other female. I thought, let me visit the duke and his duchess. Surely she will never measure up to the woman in my memory.
“But you were even more beautiful. What’s more, you were sweet and kind, funny and headstrong.”
A wobbly smile pulled at the corners of her mouth. “You’re just saying this, to make me feel better.”
He shook his head. “No. And you might as well hear the rest.”