Chapter 2
Chapter
They did not speak much on the ride back to Chester House but Julianna could see Fred’s mind was awhirl. She didn’t press this time. The Baroness’s words, that boy, from the modiste’s shop kept ringing in her ears.
Whatever had happened between them had been harmful to him. That was obvious enough. And she would support him as well as she could until he was ready to speak with her about it, if he ever was.
In the meantime, her body still hummed with the residue of Rotten Row that wasn’t just the Baroness.
There had been other stares, other sharp words.
And Fred had stood with her because she’d asked him to, even though it was clear that he’d hated being there, even before they’d run into that abominable woman.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to him. “That I asked you to come today.”
He reached for her hand and squeezed it. “I’m not.”
“But, Fred.” She paused, thinking carefully through what she wanted to say. “It was awful. And probably a very poor idea for which I take full responsibility. I can tell that you’re upset and that is my fault and I truly am sorry for it.”
He peered at her, intense blue eyes in that stupidly handsome face. She was nearly sorry for it, all his beauty. Because his life might have been better, easier, had he been plain. She appreciated his face certainly, but she’d have loved him without it. Because she loved his heart.
“It was always going to be awful, dearheart,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean it was the wrong decision. And—” He paused as if he too wanted to be thoughtful about his words. “It was instructive.”
“Harold?” she asked.
He nodded. “I saw myself in him. And I—I felt for him.”
“I did too.” She paused. “How old were you when you first had a relationship with the Baroness?”
“Fifteen,” he said and his voice was hoarse.
So young. She breathed in deeply and turned, taking his face in her hands. “You do know that it wasn’t your fault, don’t you? What she did?”
He looked away from her, unable to keep her gaze. “Not until today I didn’t. But then I saw him, that child behind her, and I…saw myself in him.”
She drew him closer and he leaned into her embrace. “You’d never seen it like that before, I suppose. That you might have been—” she hesitated over the word victim because she didn’t think he would appreciate it. “Injured by her?”
“I’d always blamed myself.”
“No,” she whispered, kissing the top of his head. “No. The fault, the original sin, has always lain with her. Always.”
When the carriage halted in front of Chester House, he exited first. She gathered the blue folds of her gown around her and hardly looked up as she made her way across the squabs to the carriage block, reaching out for the coachman’s hand that always presented itself.
This time though, it was her husband whose hand she grasped. She felt the difference in his touch immediately—how his hand engulfed hers, warm and strong and unmistakably Fred’s. She looked up quickly to find her husband’s blue eyes staring at her.
“My lady,” he said and she could almost understand the Baroness’s anger today. To have had a man like Fred and then to have lost him? She’d be furious too. The idea was untenable.
Not her actions, of course. The Baroness’s actions were abominable. But the thought of ever losing Fred made her chest ache.
“My lord,” she replied, keeping her hand in his as he helped her down.
He didn’t let her go, even as her feet touched the solid ground. He simply slid his hand around her waist and guided her to the door.
“I’d rather,” he said, leaning down so his voice was nothing so much as a whisper, “that you call me Fred.”
“Yes. Yes, I’d rather that too.”
Inside the house, the servants melted away.
It was late afternoon, time for tea. Or to retire to their individual dressing rooms, but Julianna could not countenance that.
She could not stand another moment of being alone when what she wanted was to be together.
With her husband, in whatever way he felt comfortable.
She wanted to hold him. To love him, if he’d let her.
“Will you come with me,” she murmured, their hats and gloves discarded by the front door.
“Anywhere,” he said and she believed that he meant it.
She navigated the hallways of Chester House, with all their gilded ornamentation, but could have scarcely cared less.
All she cared about was the sound of his boots on the floorboards behind her, muffled by the thick, Aubusson carpeting.
That he was there with her, a tangible presence both utterly new and confoundingly familiar in her life.
He was her husband now of course, but if she let herself cast her thoughts back, Fred had always been there.
It had been Fred who’d carved her a little wooden statue of a pony after she’d been so enamored with the horses he rode at Sedgewick Manor and declared she wanted one of her own.
Fred, who had always known she was trailing behind him and her brother as they traipsed through the woods, but said nothing of it.
Fred who, once her presence had been discovered, winked and placed his fingers across his lips to shush her before Tom noticed her there and made her turn back.
And now this man. Her Fred. She didn’t know him entirely, not yet. There were still layers to uncover beyond the cold, arch Chester. Secrets he hadn’t revealed about the man who hid himself away whenever she drew too near.
She still hated secrets, but she could see—could sense—her Fred beneath all of those others. The one he was at his center, who had walked by her side all morning. Who had been so terribly hurt and had had no one to protect him.
My husband.
She entered the sitting room outside her bedchamber. She didn’t want to lead him there—a bedchamber seemed much too much given what she could guess about the Baroness and Fred’s relationship after today. She only wanted to go somewhere quiet where they could be alone.
Inside the sitting room she turned and wrapped her arms around him. His blue eyes widened for just a moment and his golden curls tumbled around his face as she ducked her head into his chest and held him close. That was enough.
“Dearheart,” he said and there was a ferocity in his voice she’d never heard before. “I want to kiss you.”
She started, unsure what to say. What she finally managed was, “Are you certain?”
“I wouldn’t have suggested it if I wasn’t.”
Julianna hesitated again but then he tipped his face, his beautiful face, down to her and pulled her closer. And it was her Fred who tilted her chin up with his thumb. And her Fred who closed the distance between their mouths, kissing her and kissing her until she was gasping for breath.
Julianna had forgotten how a kiss could feel.
Not the mechanics of it, but the startling intimacy of faces so close together.
Or perhaps, she’d never known what a kiss could be at all, because it had not been this way with Robert.
She had not felt completely enveloped by his smell and his warmth and his towering presence.
The rest of the world had not receded when his lips had brushed hers.
Four long years of loneliness cracked apart beneath that kiss. She found herself leaning into him, greedy for the comfort of his nearness, for the certainty of his hands and the steady beat of his heart beneath her palm.
And then it was her Fred who murmured, “Are you alright, Jules?”
Her Fred who smiled as if he’d been given the greatest gift in all the world when she answered, “I’ve never been better.
” She peppered his face with smaller kisses then, on his cheeks, his chin, his lips, his nose.
“This is my first kiss in over four years, and I am lucky enough to have it be with you.”
She watched the way his gaze raked over her, taking in her lips before traveling down the column of her neck to her collarbones and the top of her chest exposed by the bodice.
It was modest enough, more elegant than daring, but she was electrified by the way his pupils flared when he took her in.
By how hard it seemed for him to tear his eyes away.
And then he said, “It’s my first kiss in a very long time too. And it could never have been with anyone but you.”
“Kiss me again,” Julianna said, her voice as low and breathy as she’d ever heard it before.
“Gladly, dearheart.”
He pulled her closer, licking his lips while he did. He was looking at her so intently. So anticipatorily.
And then his lips were on hers again. Slowly at first. Almost sweetly.
Julianna felt the urge to speed up, to freefall into a frenzy of kissing and tongues and lips, but she didn’t.
She wanted to savor these moments, these firsts in ages and eons for both of them.
She cupped his face in one hand and held onto him so closely with the other, letting her fingers drift up and down his back.
“I want this, Jules,” he whispered to her. “I want you. So much.”
“You have me,” she whispered back.
His hands slid down her waist and rested on her hips.
And then he pulled her closer, so that she was flush against him.
So that she could feel the hard rod of him against her belly and her whole body felt charged.
Needy. Her lips parted and he slipped his tongue inside, his fingers gripping her hard.
Fred’s breath hitched out of him and he groaned, just as he had done at the modiste’s shop.
Julianna couldn’t help the noise she made in answer, some guttural grunt of wanting and pleasure.
His fingers reached up and released her hair from its pins, dropping them onto the floor with little plinks she only distantly heard.
She arched forward as the heavy blanket of her hair fell down around her shoulders. He gentled their kiss, pulling back to run his fingers through it. She closed her eyes, the sensation of pleasure running down her scalp from his fingers making her sigh.