Chapter 12
“I don’t conquer, I submit.”
Giacomon Casanova
After enjoying a hearty breakfast of freshly baked bread and eggs, they went to the library.
Patrick had removed the dust sheets from a couple rooms at Julius’s request so that they might make use of them, and Audrey had mentioned she had explored little of the stacks on earlier visits, unable to decipher how it was organized.
Julius was excited to show her Lord Hays’s fine collection.
Leading her through the stacks, he pointed out novels and volumes of poetry and pulled forth a volume of Byron’s poems.
“I noticed Casanova’s memoirs in your chamber. Does it belong to your uncle’s library?”
Julius grinned, shaking his head. “I own multiple copies. Anywhere I lay my head, you will find his memoirs. When I have trouble sleeping, I read about Giacomo’s brazen antics.”
Audrey smiled up at him, a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “Do they serve as inspiration?”
“Indubitably. I like to be unpredictable.” He laughed.
Audrey gave a little snort. Her eyes strayed briefly to his lips before darting away. “More like incorrigible.”
He smiled in response, warmth flickering in his gaze. The look made her blink, but he shifted the moment with grace. “Have you seen the portrait gallery?
Audrey shook her head. “I mostly spent time in the drawing rooms and library on my previous stays, although I have wandered the halls.”
Julius offered an arm. “Shall we?”
He led her to the gallery, where Audrey exclaimed with delight over the portrait of his aunt hung beside the entrance.
“She is so young!”
Indeed, Aunt Gertrude was dressed in the fashion of forty or fifty years earlier, her hair powdered and lifted with whatever odd contraptions they had used in the last century. Her moss-green eyes stared down, her face perfectly austere, as was characteristic of aristocratic portraiture.
Julius preferred the real-life version, being rather fond of his maternal great-aunt.
Countless times as a youth, he had escaped Lord Snarling’s grim lectures by sneaking into her home.
Rose, who helped in the kitchens when the family was in residence, made the best biscuits—warm from the oven—and despite being a traditional lady of the ton, Aunty Gertrude had always been kind to her unhappy nephew.
They walked together down the length of the gallery, stopping to view each of the family portraits that recorded the history of the Hays family until they reached the far end.
“What is this?” asked Audrey, pausing at the end of the gallery.
Julius sauntered after her, finding she was staring up at a recent portrait of Lord Hays mounted above a display case covered with a dust sheet.
His great-uncle was attired in the style that had been adopted in London of late—that of a Highland lord, with a box-pleated kilt of red, green, and yellow.
The artist had been generous, filling out Lord Hays’s aged figure to make him appear far more robust than he had truly been at the time of the sitting.
“Lord Hays holds a minor title in Scotland that he inherited through his mother, which is why he belongs to the Highland Society of London. They took it into their heads to collect the patterns of tartans. Something about preserving the clan histories. I think they might be deluded about the whole thing, but it has become quite fashionable amongst those who hold Scottish titles to claim these … vanity tartans, if you will.”
Audrey pointed up at the kilt. “So this is meant to be the tartan of the clan that he is from?”
“That is the theory. My valet has family from Scotland, and he tells me it is all a bit of fanciful propaganda, and that there were no official clan tartans until this recent obsession took hold.”
Julius leaned down to grab the edge of the sheet, yanking it back to reveal the ornate enamel and glass display case beneath.
He tapped a fingernail on the glass, his hands still bare from breakfast. Beneath the polished surface lay a catalogue. “See, there is Bannockburn’s key pattern book, published a few years ago, a collection of tartans the lairds have submitted as belonging to their clans.”
Audrey peered down, tilting her head, her brow drawn in concentration. “May I look at the pattern book?”
Julius raised a brow in surprise but acquiesced, feeling about for the latch and swinging the lid up. He reached in and withdrew the book, placing it gently atop the case before closing the lid.
Audrey leafed through, silent, her fingers grazing the old paper as though it were a sacred text. She nibbled at her lip, always a sign she was troubled. Julius stood quietly, watching her, resisting the urge to reach out and smooth the crease between her brows.
She stopped on a page featuring a green-and-blue tartan, leaning in, then drawing back, her gaze shifting as if the pattern might rearrange itself.
“I have seen this worn by a Scottish regiment,” he offered softly, hoping to draw her thoughts into the open.
Her eyes lifted to his, shadowed by something unspoken. “The blackguard who attacked you in the street … I glimpsed this pattern. What does that mean? That he is part of a regiment?”
Julius frowned, shifting his gaze to the page and the caption. “Perhaps. Or he might be connected to Clan Campbell.”
“Does that mean something?”
His thumb found the edge of his signet ring, turning it absently. A memory stirred at the edge of his thoughts, indistinct and elusive. “I do not know.”
“Is it a clue?”
He closed the book gently, as though not to disturb the memory too much. “It might be. If Campbells are connected to one of the suspects. Or it could be nothing, merely that the attacker himself has Campbell blood. Or simply liked the pattern and purchased it. Do you know what it was you saw?”
Audrey shook her head. “It could have been a scarf, or lining, even a coat. I just saw a great overcoat and a hat, but when he moved, I caught sight of this somewhere in the vicinity of his collar.”
Julius replaced the book and drew the sheet back over the case. “I will inform the others when they return. I cannot say what it means, but it is more than we knew until now. It is shameful that I missed it.”
She laughed, the sound lifting his spirits, her blonde lashes sweeping down to the curve of her cheek.
“That may have had something to do with fighting off a knife attack with only a walking stick to protect you.”
The glow of her laughter lingered in the space between them, tender and fleeting, like sunlight caught in glass.
Julius did not hear what she said at first, for something in the way the light caught her hair had rendered him utterly still.
Her flaxen locks had begun to tumble loose from their pins, as they often did, and the temptation to reach forward, to catch a single strand between his fingers, left him breathless.
A part of him longed to see her hair fall fully, to watch it spill like sunlight down her back.
Audrey looked up, alerted by his silence. Her gaze met his, and in that heartbeat, the air between them seemed to still. He could not look away.
The soft lines of her face, the way her lips parted as if to speak and yet no words came arrested him entirely. His heart beat louder, unsteady in his chest, and he became acutely aware of how near she was.
She trusts me. She came here to help me. And here I stand, too full of things I cannot say aloud.
She had tended him through pain, through fever and blood. And now, in the quiet aftermath, he found himself utterly undone by the way she simply stood there, looking at him as though she saw every part of him and did not turn away.
Audrey’s gaze drifted lower, to his lips, just as he moistened them unconsciously, and he realized her breathing had quickened.
This cannot happen. If I fall for her—
He dragged in a breath, heavy with restraint, and struggled to calm the thoughts clamoring in his mind.
From the hallway, the sound of approaching footsteps fractured the spell. They both blinked, as though waking from a reverie.
Audrey swallowed hard. “Patrick, I think.”
“Aye.” Julius rubbed the back of his neck, grateful that the servant’s timely arrival had provided a reprieve.
Audrey affected his composure more than anyone ever had.
And though he might never admit it aloud, she had become the one person in the world capable of unmaking him with nothing more than a look.
Later that evening, Audrey sat once more at Julius’s bedside.
She tucked the end of the fresh bandage, her eyes drifting to the sculpted lines of his chest, the evidence of strength beneath the wounds.
A quiet stillness fell between them, broken only by the soft rustle of fabric as she adjusted the bandage.
Then, she faltered, unable to name the ache within her, the fear of time slipping away before she could name it.
Julius reached for her wrist, his fingers warm and steady. Slowly, he lifted her hand to his lips and placed a kiss at the delicate skin just beneath her palm. Audrey gasped softly, not from surprise, but from the way the tenderness of that gesture fractured something deep within her.
“Can I stay here with you?” Audrey gestured at the empty place on the bed. “I will sleep above the counterpane. She was not ready to be parted. Time was running out and she just wanted to be near him a little longer. Near the man she loved.
The man I love!
The thought startled her with its own force. Julius Trafford’s looks and singular charm might have ensnared many a heart, but it was his constancy and the quiet way he accepted her that had drawn her, helpless as a moth to a candle.
Audrey waited, biting her lip, second-guessing herself. Perhaps she had been too bold, too presumptuous. But even uncertainty could not quell the overwhelming ache in her chest, the inexplicable yearning to spend a bit more time in his company.
“Audrey,” he breathed, “if I were a better man, I would tell you to leave. But I am not. And I cannot.”
He reached for her hand, curling his fingers gently over hers and tugging her over to the bed so she might lie down. He rose and quickly pulled on a nightshirt and then insisted it was he that would sleep above the counterpane.
Through the sheets, Julius gathered her into his arms and held her.
There were no words, no expectations—only quiet, suspended time as he held her close.
And in that moment, with the night settling around them, Audrey understood that this was love.
The precious, fragile thread of trust woven between two wounded souls.
The candle on the dressing table flickered, its golden light painting a warm halo around them as they fell asleep.