Fallen (31 page)

Chilly, she curled up in a velvet chair under a woolen shawl. Julian had left a message that he had business in the larger town of South Dearing, and that he would not return until late. As the clock in the hall struck the hour, and then the next, Izzy feared he had stayed over for the night.

After the third set of chimes, she was regretfully deciding to surrender her plan when she heard hoofbeats on the drive, then his voice outside the door. She flew to it and flung it open, only to find herself facing his back as he called some instruction to the stableboy who led Tristan away.

He turned abruptly, and stumbled back a step in surprise. Then, alarm on his face, he rushed forward. He swung her into the house by both arms, looking her over for damage all the while.

"Izzy? What's wrong? Why are you about so late?"

Gently, she disengaged herself from his grip. Smiling nervously, she reassured him. "All is well, Julian. I just wanted to… talk with you a moment. I have hardly seen you these past days. Did you find what you were seeking tonight?"

He flushed darkly, and she wondered why as she reached to help him from his greatcoat.

Then she knew. The scent hit her like an arrow through the heart. Sickly sweet and overpowering, another woman's perfume arose from the body-warmed wool of her husband's coat. She dropped it as if it were red hot and stood frozen, her hands poised in the air.

After a single moment of numb shock, the pain struck. White-hot agony clenched her breast in a cruel fist until she could not inhale. As she raised wide, wounded eyes to his, he flinched, struck deeply by her pain. Izzy did not,
could not
, breathe for a moment, sure that if she moved one muscle, she would shatter from grief.

The terrible silence grew about them, until he could not have broken it if he had tried. Then, her face still as death, she lowered her hands to her sides and turned mechanically toward the stairs. As she reached them, she spoke without turning.

"I must know one thing. Was it someone I… Was it Celia?"

"No! No, Izzy, it wasn't what you—" He stopped, because when all was said and done, it was.

With painful dignity, she nodded and continued up the stair, head held high.

Somehow her trembling legs carried her to her rooms. Blinded by the agony in her heart, she stumbled into her shadowy bedchamber, clapping her hands over her mouth to stifle her sobs. Abruptly, she pulled them away, for they smelled of
her
.

She didn't know who the woman was, yet blistering hatred rose in her for the stranger who had held her husband while her own arms lay empty. Holding her offending hands outstretched, she rushed to the basin.

She scrubbed and soaped and scrubbed again, the rage building on the pain, driving her to abrade her own hands raw. Finally she stopped, panting great loud sobs into the silent room, and stood shaking over the spilled basin.

Ruthlessly, she stripped off her gauzy nightgown and wrapper, now soaked with the soiled water, and flung them to the floor. Clad only in her pantalets, she was picking up the basin to fling the contents out of the window, when there came a pounding on the door.

"Izzy! Izzy, listen to me. I know what you think, and I know, I'm sorry, but I didn't, truly—"

His next words went unsaid, for she opened the door and, nearly naked, flung the contents of a basin over his head. As quickly as she had appeared, she was gone, hidden behind the echoing slam.

As he stood outside, wiping his eyes in resignation, Julian wondered if he was doomed to a lifetime of dripping humiliation outside Izzy's chamber door.

Izzy pulled the light cloak more closely about her as she strolled along her favorite path in the gardens. She had hoped the last bright colors of summer would cheer her and they did help, a bit. But her heart still ached from Julian's betrayal.

When the dark form emerged from the greenery, sending her heart racing in fear, she could only gasp and clutch her cloak protectively over her middle. Then she recognized Eric, and she knew not whether to laugh or cry. She chose to do both.

"Oh, Izzy, I knew it! I just knew it. He has made you terribly unhappy, hasn't he? Oh, little one, do not cry. I got you into this muddle I shall get you out."

Pulling her into his arms comfortingly, Eric murmured more of the same until his words finally registered upon her consciousness. Tensing, she looked up into his concerned eyes and stepped out of his arms.

"Why do you say
you
got me into this? What could possibly make you believe that?"

He flushed and looked away. "I think I know when you became… when you conceived, and I hold myself responsible. If I had not kissed you, Julian would not have—"

"Wait." Izzy held up one hand. "Do you mean to convey that
you
are the reason I am with child?" She had to laugh at him. "The last I heard, it took more than a little kiss!"

"Of course not! I mean that I am the cause of Julian's loss of honor. He would never have compromised you if he had not been so—"

"Julian did not compromise me. I seduced him."

Eric could not have looked more flabbergasted. Slack-jawed, he stared at her until she reached up and gently shut his mouth with one finger under his chin. Shaking his head, he recovered his train of thought.

"Izzy, I want you to know that I have thought of everything. I know you have always wanted to go to America. I have a plan. My family holds interest in a major shipping concern, and I have arranged passage for you on the next transport to the States. The
Catherine
leaves in three days. Everything has been seen to. If you wish to go, you need merely arrive at the docks and step aboard." He smiled at her winningly, clearly expecting her heartfelt gratitude.

Her refusal was deep and instinctive. She did not want to leave the man she loved. All she needed was time. Time to reach him, time to make him see—

Then she remembered. Their wedding night. His drunken rejection. Yesterday. The perfume on his clothes.

No, he had made his preference more than clear. He may want her occasionally, but he would never love her. He had married her out of duty, alone. Dry, loveless duty, like the arid years stretching before her.

Putting his hands on her shoulders, Eric looked urgently into her eyes.

"You can leave, you know. You don't owe him anything."

It was too much. Shaking her head, Izzy turned away from Eric, almost running back up the garden walk.

"Three days, Izzy," Eric called. "The ship and I will be waiting in London."

Julian passed the window at a brisk walk and cast a cursory glance outside. He took two more steps before he realized what he had seen.

Izzy in the garden, in a man's arms.

A golden-haired man, whose stance reminded him of Eric.

He spun back, but there was only Izzy, moving purposely toward the house. He blinked, calling himself mad. His mind was definitely gone.

Izzy was alone in the gardens, and Eric was miles from here. And from her.

After he repeated the facts to himself a number of times, he almost managed to erase the jolting ache from his heart.

A dry sound of amusement made him turn. Down the length of the hall, standing in another window's light, was his father.

"Nothing like seeing your wife with another man, is there, boy? Nothing like wondering forever if your heir is really yours. If she's thinking of someone else when you mount her." The duke straightened and paced toward Julian, his demeanor almost cordial.

"You can't divorce her. You can't marry again. You spend all your days looking at your sons, trying to see yourself in them, even the smallest feature, the slightest timbre of voice."

"Izzy would never—" His father's words hit home. "Do you doubt I am your son?" It was absurd. Anyone could see the resemblance.

"You? No, more's the pity. The devil's very image. You couldn't look more like the old duke if you'd been carved from his rib.
You
are mine, for all the good it has done me."

Julian's pulse stumbled a beat. Manny. With his easy smile and mop of sandy hair. With the shoulders of an ox, but without his father's height.

Manny had resembled their mother, no mystery there. But the image of his mother's dark hair and fragile frame gave lie to that belief. He had never thought—there was no reason to think—

Julian shook off the suspicion, eyeing his father darkly. "You can't bear for anything to be pure, can you? My mother no more lay with another man than Izzy would. But you can't comprehend goodness in anyone."

His father gave him an odd look. "You shall see, when she presents you with a child that isn't yours, with a smile on her face that chills your heart. So loving, so lying a smile that you die inside every time you see it. Every time you see the boy." The duke's voice was flat, his gaze far away.

"Do you truly expect me to believe that? That you thought Manny was not your son?" That was inconceivable. "He was devoted to you and to Dearingham. He was everything I was not."

His father's jaw turned hard and his gaze dark with fury. "Everything you were not? That would not be difficult. You were never anything I valued at all. You never cared for the land, you never cared for your name. You had all
this
—" His arms snapped open to encompass the whole of Dearingham. "And you pissed it away to frolic with your horses and your serving maids."

"I was nothing to you! Why should I try to please a man who could not be pleased? Why should I be Manny when you already had Manny?
He
was all you wanted!"

Julian rubbed a hand over his face. "The odd thing was that I couldn't even hate him for it. He was too good to hate. He was better than the both of us."

"He was worthless!" The duke's face twisted in rage. "There was nothing of me in that—that creature!"

"He was more than you had any right to expect! Perhaps you are right. He was certainly too good to have a drop of your blood in his veins."

His father's face purpled. "My blood could never have done what he did! My blood could never spawn a man-lover!"

Julian started violently. He opened his mouth to deny such an impossibility.

"They found him," his father spat. "When the old duke, my father, was thrown and they didn't think he would live, I sent for Mandelfred. The dean himself went to fetch him in his room, found him with his… his catamite!"

The words rang in Julian's mind, and he shook his head in stunned denial. Manny? Of course, one heard of such things, but one simply didn't think of one's brother…

"That was just before he died. Was that why he was home?" The sad accident, a young man undoubtedly reeling from his father's disapproval… "He must have been shattered." And unbelievable idea was beginning to take shape in Julian's mind. "What did you do to make it worse? Did you revile him? Of course, you did. You made him so ashamed that he felt it necessary—" Julian moved to grasp his father's lapel and haul him close. "
What did you do
?"

"It couldn't be tolerated, of course," his father answered. "Even he could
see that, buggering filth though he was. He took care of it. It was the only
honorable solution. A freak like him could never sit as duke of Dearingham."

Julian could not breathe. Every pull of his lungs stopped short of filling them. Things from the past flickered across his mind. Things half-heard, half-seen, circled in a shattered kaleidoscope of memory.

His head fought against it, rebelled against the knowledge that his heart already held. Julian flung his father away, even as his mind fought to fling off the truth. He twisted spasmodically, pressed his forehead to the cool wood of the paneling. He rolled it in denial of his father's voice telling the truth in twisted bitter detail.
Oh, Manny
.

"I had him take the rifle. A pistol would have cast suspicion. A suicide in the family would have been almost as bad as perversion."

His father grabbed him, pulling him round and hissing into his face. "
That's
what it means to be the duke of Dearingham. To sacrifice your heir, himself, if necessary."

Julian broke his father's hold and stood, shaking. Sickness and rage churned in him; grief and loss swirling there, too.

Manny's desertion wounded him deeply, but his father's betrayal seared his soul. All of this to keep the sacred title free of taint and scandal. It made him ill. It made him burn.

And it made all too much sense. He could almost put himself in Manny's shoes. Manny had never rebelled the way Julian had. He had
wanted
to be the marquess, and eventually the duke. He had loved the land and the people, had loved the grand history of the family, the family name.

Julian could hear his eager voice, "
Listen, Eppie, listen to this. In 1665, the Dearingham estate
…" Manny had filled his head and heart with Dearingham, had never wanted anything else. To lose it would indeed seem the end of all to him.

Julian raised hardened eyes to the duke's.

"Murderer."

The ice in Julian's voice chilled Izzy to the marrow, and she shrank back into the doorway where she had been about to enter the hallway to her chambers.

Before her was a Julian she had never seen. His eyes were
black
.

She shivered and stepped back further into shadow, one hand pressed to her dying heart.

Gone was the boyish jester who had called her pet names and once tussled playfully with Eric. She could no more see the passionate man from one long ago night than she could see a ghost. In the place of that Julian, there was a dark, dangerous figure of fury.

The duke backed up a step.

Izzy stayed as still as a mouse in a field when a hawk flies overhead.

Julian strode the length of the hall until he faced the duke directly. From her vantage point, Izzy could see both of their faces, and for the first time, she saw another resemblance between them. She did not like it one bit.

Julian looked very much like his father—a man who had no heart, who would stop at nothing to achieve his own ends. For a moment she could not tell which of them she had married.