How to Romance a Rake (24 page)

The exquisite pleasure of it was too much and Alec followed her over the precipice into his own release. Thrusting into her again and again, he finally gave a hoarse cry and spilled himself into her welcoming body and collapsed.

They lay like that for several minutes, gulping in breaths as they tried to recover themselves, neither able to form a coherent thought.

When Alec realized he was probably crushing her under his weight, he rolled over onto his back, disengaging himself from her. He flung an arm over his eyes to block the light from the windows.

“Perhaps we could have a twice-daily time for that,” Juliet said finally, curling her body against his. He slipped his other arm around her, pulling her closer. “Just until I become proficient.”

“That would take lots of practice,” he said, smiling, “are you sure you’re willing to devote that much time to it?”

“It’s how I learned the pianoforte,” she said. And from the shift of her body, he knew she’d remembered about Anna’s disappearance.

He sighed, and took the hand that had been on his chest and kissed her knuckles.

“We’ll find her,” he said quietly. “Have no fear of that.”

“I just know how it is to be alone. And afraid. I do not want that for her.”

He kissed the top of her head, thinking of just how familiar she must be with feeling alone and afraid.

“Juliet,” he said. “I need you to tell me how it happened.” He didn’t need to say just what he was speaking of. They both knew what he spoke of.

She stiffened against him, and for a moment he feared she might refuse. But finally, she pulled the sheet up around her, as if she needed a shield to speak about it. He wanted to protest, but knew better than most how essential one’s armor was when going into battle.

As she had done in the bath, she pulled her knees to her chest. With her hair tumbling down over her shoulders, the morning sun lending it a reddish-gold glow, she had the look of a fallen angel, or Eve suddenly wary of her nakedness.

Hating the distance she’d put between them, but knowing it was what she needed to tell her story, Alec loosened his grip, giving her the freedom to pull away if she wished. To his relief, she stayed.

Staring out into the room, she began to tell her story.

Fourteen

“When Napoleon was defeated for the first time in ’14,” Juliet began, thinking back to that late summer four years ago when her life had changed forever, “Papa was dispatched from India to Vienna to assist in the negotiations for the peace. Mama and I had been in England, rusticating as she termed it, but as soon as she heard that there was to be a gathering in Vienna she began making preparations. I believe she was just as pleased with Napoleon’s defeat for her own reasons as she was for the sake of peace.”

She remembered the energy her mother had expended preparing them for the trip, the gowns she’d ordered, the boxes and boxes of belongings she’d had put into the traveling carriages to go with them on the ship from Dover.

“I was not so eager to travel to the Continent as she was,” she said with a wry smile. “She had insisted I remain in the schoolroom until my debut the next year, but for Vienna, she was willing to make an exception. I think she had some mad dream that I’d meet a German prince and become the queen of some small nation where she could rule through me.”

“But you did not wish to go.” It was more statement than question.

“Not at all,” she agreed. “I wanted to stay in the country and continue my lessons. And when autumn came, I had plans to travel to London and teach pianoforte at the Salon for the Edification of Ladies that Madeline and Cecily were forming.”

“But that seems a bit too … ladylike for your salon,” Alec interrupted. “Isn’t that something that most ladies learn before their come-out?”

“You have forgotten that I write my own compositions, as well as play,” Juliet reminded him.

It was to be expected that young ladies preparing for their debut would receive a modicum of training in various ladylike arts: needlework, watercolors, and if she had the aptitude, voice and the pianoforte. But composition was, as yet, a man’s purview.

“Ah, yes,” he said with a grin. “I
had
forgotten. What a multitalented lady I have married.”

Though Juliet had hoped to divert his attention to some other subject, he was not to be so easily led. “Vienna,” he prompted, steering her back to her original story.

“Well, I was not interested in going to Vienna, but Mama insisted, and by the time we arrived the congress was in full whirl. Because many of the diplomats had brought their families with them there were any number of entertainments. Only these were headier somehow. As if we knew even then that more war was on the horizon.”

She thought back to those first few weeks of testing the social waters. Of her mother introducing her to every unattached member of the Continental nobility she could scrounge up. She was not allowed to dance of course since she wasn’t officially “out,” but that did not prevent her from taking turns around the room on the arms of the young gentlemen who were seeking frivolity after the seriousness of their days in negotiations.

“We’d been there a few weeks,” Juliet went on, “when I had had enough. Mama was particularly insistent upon my paying more attention to an aging archduke. He was nearly my father’s age, and he smelled of patchouli. Of course I tried to tell her that I had no interest in the man, but as she often is when she’s got the bit between her teeth, she was having none of my protests. Indeed, she used the same sort of strategy with Archduke von Weber as she did with Turlington. If Mama cannot get someone to assent of their own free will she maneuvers them into a corner from which there is no escape.”

Alec squeezed her hand, and Juliet was glad again to have escaped her mother’s plans this time.

“I told no one my plans, of course,” she said. “But I packed a valise and waited for the household to settle. Finally, when I was sure no one would catch me, I slipped out and made my way through the streets of Vienna. Since Napoleon had been vanquished, people were eager to travel across Europe once more, so I had no doubt I’d find someone willing to transport me to the coast. I had saved my pin money for months, and was willing to pay whatever it took.”

She remembered the mix of fear and excitement that had rushed through her as she made her way to the nearest coaching inn. She’d always been cautioned by her parents not to wander the streets of whichever country they happened to reside in. As an English young lady she would seem particularly vulnerable to anyone wishing to harm her. But there was no help for it. She had needed to get out of Vienna before her mother forced her into a match that would make the rest of her life a misery.

“I was nearing the coaching inn where I’d hoped to find transport when I stopped to let a man pass,” she said. “He was limping badly and as he got by me, he instinctively reached out for support. Only it took me off guard and I was pushed into the path of an oncoming carriage.”

Alec swore.

“I was able to swing my upper body away and protect my head, but my right foot was trampled by the horses,” she said, her voice sounding far away to her own ears, as if someone else were telling the story. “I didn’t know it at the time, but Mama had suspected I’d try to run so she’d sent one of the servants, a man who has been with our family since Papa’s first journey to India. I had been pulled from the street by a group of men who had been loitering outside the inn when I heard Mr. Sankoori ordering one of them to return to our house and inform my parents. The pain was—”

She stopped, swallowing at the memory of pain so excruciating it had made her swoon.

Wordlessly, Alec pulled her against his chest. Needing the support of his body, she did not protest. Somehow the comforting circle of his arms made the telling of the tale less horrific than it had been in the past.

“Mr. Sankoori had them get a litter, and the men who had seen me fall lifted me onto it and moved me to the inn. By the time Mama and Papa arrived I had been given laudanum to dull the pain. Though I could still feel it, it seemed farther away somehow. As if it were happening to someone else.”

“Your parents must have been frantic,” Alec said.

“Oh, they were appalled. Not only by what had happened to me, but also because I think they wondered how it would affect them. Would what had happened to an English citizen on the streets of Vienna affect the negotiations? At least that’s what I imagined Papa considered. Mama was simply crushed that her dreams of running a German principality were shattered.”

She felt Alec’s grip tighten, but he remained silent. “When the physician came and announced that my foot would need to be removed, I think you could have heard Mama’s screams all the way back in London. As I learned later she was given a strong sleeping agent. And as Papa needed to go make arrangements to control just what bits of the tale he wished to have told to the public, he left. I was there with my maid, Weston, and Mr. Sankoori.

“The doctor was the personal physician of the Duke of Richmond, who was in Vienna for the talks. And as Papa had lined his pockets with enough gilt to ensure his silence and his best work, he made sure that the removal itself was as comfortable as it could be.”

Odd how she felt the need to describe the amputation in a way that lessened the horror of it. Perhaps because she sensed that Alec would suffer for her if she told just how awful it had been. What she could remember of it, that is. She had fainted not long after the procedure began.

“When it was finished, the problem became blood loss. I have since learned more about the way physicians often perform such surgeries, and it’s appalling how many people die from the removal alone. I was fortunate to have an experienced surgeon to treat me. But even he was powerless to stop the bleeding of my wound.”

“Thank God you were in Vienna and not in some battlefield hospital,” Alec murmured against her hair. “Though I do not think I will ever be able to forgive your parents for leaving you to suffer through it alone.”

His ire on her behalf warmed her. “I had Mr. Sankoori. He has been closer to me in his way than my parents have been. He has been with my family since my father’s first trip to India.

“Indeed,” she continued, “it was Mr. Sankoori who saved my life.”

“If he hadn’t been trailing you, there’s no telling what might have happened to you,” Alec agreed.

“No,” she corrected him, “I mean he is the one who suggested the treatment that finally stemmed my blood loss. Without Mr. Sankoori, I would have died there in Vienna.”

“What did he suggest that a trained physician could not?” Alec asked, his tone puzzled.

This was the part of her treatment that Juliet had been dreading telling him about. It wasn’t so much that it had been awful, though it had been. It wasn’t even that it was something that was not widely practiced in England. It was the very sound of it, which made everyone who heard the tale recoil in horror.

“He had them cauterize the wound,” she said carefully.

Then, as if he did not know just what that meant, she added, “With hot iron.”

*   *   *

It was a credit to Alec’s self-restraint that he did not reveal through his expression just how disturbing it was to imagine Juliet undergoing the cauterization process. He had spoken to several men from his estate who had lost limbs in the campaign against Napoleon and they had been tight-lipped about what they’d undergone to heal their wounds. And these were large strapping men, used to hardship. The image of Juliet going through those same trials made him want to strike out at something. Instead, he simply held her and let her tell her tale.

“Dr. Jones was loath to perform the same sort of procedures on me that he employed on the battlefield,” she said, echoing Alec’s thoughts. “Though I suppose amputation was something he judged could not be helped.”

“And this Sankoori was the one who insisted on cautery?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice matter-of-fact, as if she were not speaking of the day that had changed her life forever. “Dr. Jones was unused to caring for women, and ladies in particular. He had some chivalrous notion that there were some procedures that were simply not appropriate for the fairer sex. Mr. Sankoori convinced him that if I died from blood loss there would be much more for the fine doctor to worry about when he was without a position and left alone with his scruples.”

“Where were your parents while this was going on?” Alec demanded, though he had a fair idea of what her response would be. Lord and Lady Shelby had never struck him as overly concerned about their daughter’s welfare. Lady Shelby’s plot to marry Juliet off to Turlington was proof enough of that. And Lord Shelby had doubtless been busy with some diplomatic business that ranked higher in his cares than an injured daughter.

“Well, as I told you before, Mama was given a sleeping agent, and she remained insensible during my stay at the inn,” Juliet said. “After he ensured that word of my injury hadn’t spread to the rest of the congress, Papa returned to his duties with the diplomatic corps. At least that is what I understand happened. I was in no condition to know, of course.”

The wistful note in her voice made Alec’s gut clench. He knew what it was to long for a parent’s approval. How bittersweet it could be to have them take notice of you and then withdraw that notice soon after.

“With neither of my parents there, it was Mr. Sankoori who insisted upon cauterizing the wound. By that point I was insensible. So you mustn’t imagine I harbor nightmarish scenes of unspeakable pain in my memory. I do remember some of that wretched scene, but it’s in fits and starts. Mostly I recall the feel of my father’s hand in mine.”

He could tell from her insistently upbeat tone that she did remember more than she let on, but he let her have her polite fiction. He wasn’t sure he’d be all that willing to reveal his thoughts during such an ordeal either.

“And then it was done,” she continued. “We stayed on in Vienna for many months while I healed. Papa put it about that I’d been injured in a riding accident and insisted that I needed my rest to keep the more intrusive gossips away. And then Napoleon escaped from Elba and Waterloo happened. The city was in chaos, but I was focused on my own recovery at the time. And then Mama found Herr Bock, who fashioned a false foot for me. And a deception was born.”