Julia London 4 Book Bundle (76 page)

Their argument yesterday had enlightened her to a side of Julian she had never seen before, and damn him if it wasn’t a vulnerable side. Claudia never would have believed that Julian Dane had a vulnerable bone in his body, not in a thousand years.

She suddenly dropped her fork and buried her face in her hands, miserably confused. There she was, about to feel sympathy for a tyrant again. What difference did it make that he had been hurt by one of his many
paramours? It certainly didn’t give him the right to whisk Sophie away like a mere piece of property. Nor did it excuse the fact that he obviously placed Sophie’s happiness lower than propriety. It was so very arrogant of him to believe that some people were better than others by virtue of their birth or gender!

Claudia lifted her head and pushed the plate aside, her gaze fixing on the candelabrum in the center of the table. Last night, she had lain in bed trying to make sense of a situation that seemed increasingly complex. As the days passed, she was having a harder and harder time reconciling the arrogant, superior, vainglorious man with the one who showed streaks of kindness. It was impossible to ignore the nights that he and Arthur Christian left together, undoubtedly bound for Madame Farantino’s. It was impossible to believe
that
man was the same man who would gently rub her back when her courses pained her, or send bouquets of fresh hothouse flowers to her teas when the other husbands derided their wives for attending, or get down on his hands and knees to frolic with Jeannine and Dierdre.

Yet he was the same man who seemed uninterested in her cause, with the exception of having made a list of names he would persuade to fulfill their pledge. Sometimes she felt as if he was managing her like one of his holdings, leaving her unchecked, unfettered, as long as she did not suddenly twist off wildly in a direction he did not expect.

But there
was
evidence of a softer, unguarded side of him she could not deny, as the argument yesterday had so poignantly pointed up to her. Nor could she deny that the kindness and patience he showed Eugenie’s daughters often made her ache with a longing for something more between them, a distant hope that perhaps
they
might produce children one day. And what of Tinley? How could she ignore the fact that the doddering old man could scarcely lift a feather duster anymore, yet Julian ignored his senility, sparing the man’s pride and allowing him to feel needed?

All right, but how, then, could he ignore Sophie’s heartache, decide what she should feel and whom she should feel it for? Sophie’s devastation meant nothing to him, and Claudia could not bear that.
I am honor bound as your friend to tell you that Phillip is not the sort of man for you
.

No
! She did not want to relive that, not again, but Mother of God, how could she not? How could she ignore his callousness, once to her and now to Sophie, as if they were inanimate objects, incapable of thinking or feeling for themselves?

“Madam? Shall I remove the cake?”

With a thin smile, Claudia responded politely, “Please, Robert. And pour a spot of port, would you?”

Robert blinked, hesitated for a fraction of a second, but quickly recovered and returned with the port a few moments later. Claudia thanked him, sliding her gaze to the long green velvet drapes as she sipped the heavy wine.

Banished
.

The more she dwelled on it, the more incensed she became.

His ghosts and Sophie’s sobs chased Julian all the way back to London, reverberating in his head until he was quite sure he was deaf.

Surely there was
something
he could do short of locking her away at Kettering Hall, although he was damned if he could think of what. By the time he reached the outskirts of London, he was physically and mentally numb, propelled forward by the simple but overpowering desire to see Claudia’s brilliant smile, perhaps even feel her arms around him. An insane hope, he knew, particularly after their argument, yet part of him stubbornly hoped that she had come to see his reasoning.

At St. James Square, he handed the reins of his mount to a young groom and wearily dragged himself into the foyer. Handing his leather gloves to Tinley, he said, “Have a bath drawn at once and inform Lady Kettering I have
returned. I should like it very much if she would join me for supper.”

“Might like it very well, my lord, but she’s already dining,” Tinley casually informed him, and hobbled off. A footman stepped forward to receive his cloak.

Julian sliced an impatient look across the footman. “See to it that he at least remembers the bath, would you?” he asked tersely, and strode across the foyer, headed for the dining room, trying hard to crush the adolescent excitement the mere mention of her name always sparked in him.

That he missed Claudia so badly in the space of twenty-four hours was unnerving as hell, made him feel silly and weak and quite awkward in his skin. Even as a young lad, he’d never been so bloody infatuated with anyone. It outraged him that his body seemed to think she was the only cure to the infernal rash in his heart. Yet when he turned the corner and neared the dining room, he had to force himself to walk and not sprint to her side.

A footman attending the dining room door opened it for him; as he came across the threshold, a startled Claudia came hastily to her feet, clutching a linen napkin. She wore a satin gown fitted tightly to her, the color of a cloudless blue sky trimmed in white. Around her slender neck was a triple strand of pearls, matching the large tear-drop pearls that dangled from her earlobes. Her hair had been piled carelessly on top of her head; little wisps of curls draped her neck.

Arrested, Julian paused, staring at one long curl that spiraled down to her shoulder. It amazed him that his mind’s eye never seemed to capture her true beauty. “You look … lovely,” he remarked, well aware that the words hardly did her justice.

One delicate hand came up and fidgeted with a teardrop earring. “Thank you. Did you just return? I thought you would remain at Kettering Hall for a time,” she said quietly.

“I thought it best that I leave at once.”

Her hand stilled and she looked at him. “You are very good at doing what you think is best, aren’t you?”

The rash flared in his stomach; all at once he felt a fool. What exactly had he thought would happen? That Claudia would rush into his open arms, as anxious to see him as he was her?
The hell she would
. The woman despised him; it hardly mattered to her that he had just endured one of the worst days of his life, and he felt the pain of raw anger rumble through him. “You have already made your opinion known to me. I see no reason to go over it again,” he said tightly.

She cocked her head to one side as if to assess just how beastly he was, and folded her arms defensively across her middle. “Yes, well, you have made it quite clear that my opinion is so meaningless to you that you will not even do me the courtesy of listening.”

God in heaven
, not this, not now! He had only wanted to look at her, just hold her, not argue!
Not speak
. “Your opinion,” he drawled, sauntering to the table, “is inconsequential. I have made my decision, and that is the end of it.”

“No,” she said simply.

“No?” he echoed, incredulously.

“I will not be dismissed, Julian—”

“And I will not be pushed into discussing this further—”

“I shan’t leave this room until I have said what I must, whether you want to hear it or not! It is cruel of you to treat Sophie so abominably! She
loves
Sir William, yet you would apparently rather see her miserable before you would allow her to follow her heart!”

God grant him patience.
“Claudia,” he began, “Stanwood is—”

“A baronet!” she exclaimed hotly. “But that’s not good enough for
you
, not with your ridiculous ideas of who is proper for whom! Can’t you see that you are playing God with people’s lives? This is
exactly
the same as what you did to me, do you even understand that?”

What he had done to her? Confusion clouded Julian’s
brain for a moment—he knew very well what he had done to her, he had
ruined
her for chrissakes, but for the life of him, he could not understand how that related to Sophie. “Pardon?” he asked stupidly.

Claudia made a sound of exasperation. “You tried to banish me, too, in a way. You never thought I was good enough for Phillip, which is why you strove to keep him from me. When that didn’t work, you took it upon yourself to try to convince me that I was not good enough for him, hoping that I might slip away! As
if
 …” she choked on a strangled cry and tightened her arms about her. “As if it was
any
consequence to you at all! But he was your friend, and apparently you would rather he had courted Madame Farantino than me! You never thought I was good enough for him, you don’t think Stanwood is good enough for Sophie, and you don’t care
who
you hurt! But Sophie loves Stanwood, just as I loved Phillip!”

Her words stabbed clean through his heart like a knife, and he suddenly could not seem to catch his breath. It was impossible … 
impossible
that she could have misinterpreted his warning so badly! He opened his mouth, but he was too stunned to think, much less speak.
She had loved Phillip
 …

“No! No, no. Let us be
completely
honest,” she continued, almost hysterically, and behind her, the two footmen exchanged uneasy glances. “You never thought I was good enough for
you!
From the time I was a little girl, you made that
very
clear, but I was just a
girl
, Julian, barely old enough to know what I was doing! Yet you let me know then that I was somehow inferior, not quite up to your standards, and you
still
do! You think it perfectly all right to have your paramours, but you’ve no idea how
painful
it is,” she said, her voice breaking, “so painful that when Sophie told me you objected to Stanwood because of his
rank
, I urged her, unequivocally, to follow her heart at all costs and
defy
your blasted convention—”

Fury exploded hot inside of him. “You did
what
?” he roared, unnoticing of the footmen slipping out of the room.

The sound of his voice shook Claudia from her tirade;
her eyes widened. “I … I told her to follow her heart, not some silly rule about who is good enough for whom,” she said with much less confidence.

He would strangle her. In the morning, the authorities would find the body of his wife with those words strangled from her lips. Julian leaned over, grasped the edge of the table tightly as he fought to keep his rage in check. The ignorant chit had no idea what she had done, no concept of the peril she had put Sophie in! “William Stanwood,” he said, struggling to keep his voice even, “does not love Sophie. He is a profligate. He wants nothing more than her goddam fortune. His debts are staggering and it is a bloody miracle he has not as yet landed in debtors’ prison. His solicitor has inquired into every one of my accounts in an effort to ascertain the exact sum of Sophie’s dowry and the annuity our father left her.” He lifted his gaze and glared at her. “And furthermore,
wife
, it is widely known among the men of the
ton
that Stanwood delights in beating the whores he lies with, apparently deriving some sort of sick satisfaction from it!”

Color rapidly drained from Claudia’s face. She moved awkwardly forward, catching herself on the back of a dining chair. “W-what?” she whispered hoarsely. “Sophie said—”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Claudia! Sophie would have said anything! She is terribly unsure of herself and quite certain she is in love with that degenerate!”

With a blink of her eyes, Julian could see the truth sink in. “Oh no. Oh
no
—”

“Lord
God
, what a tremendous mistake I made in trusting you and Sophie!” he continued hotly. “I had no idea that she was sneaking around behind my back, much
less
that my wife knew of it and condoned it! Had you told me, I surely would have given you every vile reason to be alarmed! But as it was, I found no reason to repeat such obscene things to the women I would protect!” he fairly shouted.

“My God,” she whispered, her eyes roaming wildly
about the room. “Oh my
God!
I am so sorry, Julian. I didn’t know—”

“That’s rather the problem, isn’t it, Claudia?” he spat contemptuously. “You are so caught up in your demagoguery that you are blind to the truth—blind to
everything!
The walls you have erected prevent us from speaking about anything of import! I confess I am quite at a loss as to how to bring them down, and I daresay I am sick to death of trying!”

She said nothing; just bit her lip and lowered her gaze.

It was the same as always; she closed herself off to him, the doors between them slamming shut and locking. His discomfort was suddenly suffocating. He jerked around, wanting her gone from his sight. “Leave me,” he said curtly, and stalked to the sideboard, prepared to drink every drop of liquor he could find.

“Julian, I—”

“
Go!
” he bellowed, and heard the rustle of her satin skirts, her ragged breathing as she moved to the door.

“Claudia!” he said sharply. He glanced over his shoulder, watched her head bow as if she prayed for strength before she turned to face him.

“One more thing.”
God, Kettering, don’t do this
. He was a fool, a goddamned fool, he thought as he glared at her stricken face, on the verge of laying his heart bare to her. “You have misjudged me from the beginning. That night I called on you before Phillip died …”—he saw the hurt flash in her eyes—“I did not mean to imply that you were not good enough for Phillip. I meant to convey that
he
was not good enough for
you
.”

She gasped in disbelief, her hand fluttering to her throat.

“When the rumors began to circulate that he meant to offer for you, I could not bear to think
that you
, of all people, the one bright light in the whole bloody
ton
, would innocently marry a drunkard facing ruin. I could not bear to ever see you unhappy, and frankly, I could not bear to see another man have you. If you intend to crucify me all our days, at least do it for the right reason.” He paused,
summoning every ounce of his courage. “I … I
loved
you. I loved you from the moment I saw you at the Wilmington Ball and every moment of these last two years. There never were any paramours, Claudia. There never was anyone but you.”