Chapter Eleven
Lawrence groaned as he raised his hand to his mouth. “Oh God, this bruise is going to ache forever!”
It was her laughter that revived him.
Lawrence watched, transfixed, as Julia laughed so hard she snorted. Whipping a hand to her mouth in horror as she realized the unladylike noise she had made, it only seemed to make her laugh worse.
“Oh, you’ll survive,” she said amiably, nudging him with her shoulder and making sparks of longing tingle down his arm. “It’s only a bruise, after all.”
Lawrence decided not to show her the terrible bruise that was already, just a few hours after the bout with Tom, starting to purple his side.
Partly because he did not want her sympathy. Well, fine, he wanted her sympathy, but not in that manner. He was no uncouth farmhand trying to impress a milkmaid. He was a duke.
No, Lawrence corrected himself ruefully. He was undercover. His cover was that of a simple man.
Partly because it would be rather unexpected for a man, let alone a gentleman in disguise, to start revealing his actual skin to a lady.
And partly because the locale where they were situated was not entirely set up for such intimacies.
Julia grinned happily as she took another bite of the pie Lawrence had insisted on treating her to after the fight. Her feet dangled over the side of the embankment just skimming the rather murky depths of the Thames.
“A fine idea, this,” she said happily.
Lawrence could not help but smile in return. It was. Hot, steaming pork pies, the pastry absolutely coated with grease, eaten side by side as they sat on the bank of the Thames as they watched the world go by.
It was a simple pleasure he had never been afforded when in town under his true name. Eating a pie from a street seller? His father would have turned in his grave.
Yet the enticing smells had always intrigued Lawrence, and now, finally, he was able to taste their delights.
They weren’t the only delights he wanted to taste…
“Your brother didn’t wish to join us?” he asked lightly.
At least, as lightly as he could manage. Lawrence wasn’t sure whether his curiosity had been audible in his question, but he had to know.
Julia rolled her eyes as she swallowed another mouthful. “Donald, eat something that wasn’t prepared at his club, a Society dinner, or Cook at home? Never fear.”
She took another bite happily as Lawrence marveled.
Well, it was difficult not to. He had never encountered a woman of her breeding who would have done this. She was happily sat with a gentleman—a man, moreover, who was not a relative, in plain sight of the whole world.
Of the docks, no less.
Something painful stirred in his chest that had nothing to do with the successful bout he had just won at the Almonry. The Almonry Den he should still, technically, be in. How else would he find Mortimer?
Memories of a rather awkward conversation, just after he had leveled Tom to the floor, echoed in Lawrence’s mind.
“And you truly trust her?” Alan had said darkly.
“With my life,” Lawrence had replied, only discovering the fierce veracity of his words as he spoke. “I trust Julia Dryden, Alan, and I don’t understand why you—”
“Because she has beguiled you, that’s why,” the older man had said heavily. “Because she has become the only thing you think about, the only person you wish to see. A complete distraction from the whole purpose of us being here!”
And Lawrence had opened his mouth to argue, to disdainfully prove the man utterly wrong. Then shut his mouth.
Well, what could he say? Every accusation was true. She had beguiled him, body and soul. He longed for these moments they could spend together. She was the only person he wanted to see, when fighting in the ring but also when outside it.
And she had proven to be a most excellent distraction from finding John Mortimer.
Lawrence looked askance at the woman beside him. Julia was carefully trying to lick a crumb of flaky pastry from her lips, utterly ignoring the world around her. When she captured it, her eyes fluttered shut with the unadulterated pleasure of the flavor.
His loins lurched. Dear God, what a distraction.
But if Alan was right…
“—too much of a coincidence,” his mentor had said firmly. “You think a lady of her breeding would be interested in you?”
“I am the Duke of—”
“Not to her,” Alan had said darkly. “To her, you’re just a man who fights and lives in a hovel.
Two rooms of a slum. You think she would actually be interested in you, seek you out, if she did not have an ulterior motive?
” When Lawrence did not reply, he pressed his point. “If she was not working for Mortimer?”
The happiness always present in his heart whenever Lawrence was with Julia flickered for a moment. The thought that she could in some way be connected to Mortimer…worse, that she could be purposefully distracting him from—
“I am impressed, you know.”
Lawrence blinked. “You are?”
Julia nodded, wintery sunlight illuminating her hair. “Yes. I thought for an instant that you may struggle to beat that Tom again, but you did well.”
He could not help but smile, all fears she was working against him fading like frost in the morning sun. “Your encouragement was what did it.”
The intention had not been to embarrass her, but a gentle flush tinged her cheeks. “Oh. You heard.”
Heard? Of course, I heard, Lawrence wanted to say. You think a single word could slip from your lips without me paying it heed? You think every breath is not noted, that every moment I wish I could stop that breath with a kiss—
“Well, it was a crowded place and much excitement abounded at your fight,” Julia said with a laugh. “You owe my brother an apology, though.”
Lawrence stiffened. An apology, for her brother?
The only other time a brother had demanded an apology, a rather unfortunate duel had taken place. He had aimed to miss, of course. It wasn’t his fault the fool stepped to the left.
Guildford’s ear would never be the same.
“He bet your fight would last at least ten minutes,” said Julia conversationally, utterly ignorant of the thoughts rushing through Lawrence’s mind. “And lost a shilling, which he would not stop muttering about, the fool.”
Lawrence forced his shoulders to relax. She thought him no more than a poor man with a desire to live life on his own terms, he reminded himself. A man with no income and little manners.
Only half of that was true…
“Well, you can apologize to your brother for me,” Lawrence said aloud.
“Oh. I thought…you might wish to speak with him.”
He glanced at Julia whose gaze had dropped to her hands, now empty of pie.
Was that disappointment in her voice…but that would make no sense. Why would Julia wish him to speak to her brother?
And then a horrible and yet wonderful thought struck him. Brother, mother, yes, Julia had mentioned both. But no father. And that would mean—
“Well, I am sure Donald will win back that shilling somehow,” Julia said brightly, as though there had been no moment between them, no shimmering potential future. “He seems to be continually at the Old Duke’s—that’s a gaming hell, just off—”
“Yes, I know it,” said Lawrence without thinking.
Julia’s eyebrow raised.
Damn. Damn, damn, and blast it to hell!
Seven months, more, he had managed to concoct a life that was never given a second glance…and Julia had threatened to unravel it.
Lawrence tried to concentrate, tried not to become distracted by the beauty of the woman beside him, but it was a damned hard job.
“Thank you for coming with me,” said Lawrence quietly. “Here, I mean.”
Julia looked around, eyes eager. “You know, I’ve never been here.”
“That, I can well believe.”
“Not a place for someone of my stock, as my mother would say,” she said darkly, distaste quite evident on her tongue.
Lawrence stifled a laugh. Even without meeting the aforementioned Mrs. Dryden, he had met enough Society mamas to know precisely the sort of tone of Julia’s mother.
One that, perhaps, he would have taken.
It was a strange thought, but Lawrence had to admit he had believed he knew much of the world before he had entered this particular sphere, only to discover to his great surprise that he knew very little.
Without Alan to guide him …well. He would have revealed himself immediately.
“I like it down here,” Lawrence said quietly, the moment drawing honesty from him. Truth he should probably have fought against. “The water, I mean.”
A mere look at Julia made him laugh.
“Not with any intentions to dive into it or, God forbid, drink it,” he chuckled ruefully. “Not if I want to be well enough to fight another bout. No, I meant…well. Being near water. It calms me, somehow. I never thought about it much when I lived at Pen—up in the north.”
Cursing himself for his own stupidity, Lawrence could only hope Julia had not noticed his slip.
“Pen?” Julia said curiously, the skirts of gown whipping in the growing wind, echoing the noise of the sails of the ships before them. “Is that where you grew up?”
Lawrence swallowed. Penshaw Place. He had thought for a while, when a small child, that Penshaw Place was the entire world. It was large enough for a child to get good and lost in, after all. Hundreds of acres of woodland, moors, farmland, a few villages, even a town.
And that was after one found their way out of the ornamental gardens, the lake, and the deer park.
Strange. One never seemed to value the place when one was there.
It had become a sort of prison, Lawrence supposed, though he had never consciously thought of it that way when there.
But the staidness, the routine, the level of respectability one had to maintain all the time.
Always ensuring no one ever saw him crack a smile or admit an opinion—
“You’ve gone again.”
Lawrence started. “What?”
Julia was smiling wistfully. “Whenever you think of the north, where you came from—I will not call it home, for you do not—you are always overcome by…something. Not melancholy. But not something far from it.”