Julia London 4 Book Bundle (91 page)

With a final shudder, he lowered himself to his elbows, panting heavily, and touched his forehead to hers. Neither of them spoke. Claudia tenderly brushed damp hair from his temple, ran her fingers down the dewy skin covering the muscles of his arm, silently praying that this extraordinary moment would never end, that what had happened here would never ever leave her.

They remained that way, silently observing one another like two lovers, until the cold air began to chill them. Wordlessly, Julian left her to light a fire. He came back to the bed, pulled back the linens, and ordered her beneath them with a strong warning that she was to
remain just there until he came back. Shoving into his trousers, he disappeared, returning a short time later in a long velvet dressing gown, carrying a tray of bread and cheese and wine. They feasted in her bed, whispering their love to one another, laughing softly about nothing and everything. And then Julian made love to her again, slowly and deliberately, prolonging the ecstasy until she thought she would go quite mad.

When he at last slept, he held her tightly in his arms as if he feared she would leave him while he slumbered. Burrowing into his side, Claudia closed her eyes, dreamily reliving each exceptional moment. Nothing had come between them tonight—it was as if they held the world at bay for a moment in time, and it had been the most wonderful moment of her life.

But as she drifted asleep, she felt the distant tug of reality on her conscience, the faint warning that it was an illusion, that it could never remain so sweet.

A
S
H
IS
M
IND
slowly began to cast off the veil of sleep, Julian reached for her, but found the bed empty. Forcing his eyes open, he pushed himself up to his elbows with a groggy
harumph
and looked around. Claudia was crouched in front of the hearth wrapped in his dressing gown, her hair wild and flowing down her back, poking at the dying embers of the fire he had left flaming a few hours ago.

“Come back to bed, my love. I will warm you,” he said, yawning.

She flashed a smile at him over her shoulder. “The sun is up,” she informed him, and continued poking at the embers.

Damn
.

Still smiling, she stood up and carefully wiped her hands on the outer folds of his dressing gown. Julian beckoned her to him. “Come here,” he said gruffly. She obeyed him, moving gracefully across a floor strewn with clothing and wine bottles and a tray of stale bread and hard cheese to sit on the edge of the bed. Julian came up on his elbow to nuzzle her neck.

Claudia giggled, squirming away from him. “That tickles,” she pleaded.

Reluctantly, Julian lay back against the pillows, letting his hand slip inside the voluminous sleeve of his dressing gown and drift up the inside of her arm over skin that felt like silk. She seemed awfully pensive, he
thought, especially after the night of extraordinary love-making they had shared. He himself was feeling rather randy at the moment. “What is it, Claudia?”

“Nothing!” she declared, a little too adamantly. She blushed immediately and looked down at her lap. “All right,” she said slowly. “I will not pretend. Last night was … it was the most beautiful, wonderful thing that has ever happened to me.”

His groin responded to that with a faint reverberation. “That, my darling, is an understatement,” he said, and absently fingered the end of a long strand of her hair.

“And nothing will ever take it from us—”

“Or those nights yet to come,” he murmured, chuckling softly when she turned an appealing shade of pink.

“It was … wonderful,” she said again, absently plucking at the piping of the dressing gown.

A warning flagged in Julian’s brain—he suddenly sat up, put one arm around her and with the other forced her to look at him. “But?”

“But … but there is so much yet between us … and … and the world,” she muttered miserably.

Panic. Small but certain, it was panic that made his stomach dip as if they had just encountered a rut in the road. “What do you mean?” he asked, trying hard to keep his voice even.

She dropped her gaze again, and he stared at the thick lashes fanning her cheeks. “Well … there is the matter of Sophie’s running away, and … and the, ah, scandal. And my father’s position with the king, which I must stress is paramount to all else in his mind,” she said with a helpless glance to the ceiling.

“I don’t care!” he said roughly. “I love you, Claudia. As long as I have you—as long as you love me, I don’t give a damn what Redbourne or anyone else thinks.”

She lifted her gaze to him, blue-gray eyes brimming with sorrow. “Oh, Julian,” she whispered. “I do love you. More than my life, I swear it.”

“All right, then!” he blustered, but the uneasiness in him was swelling. “What more is there to say? Come to
bed now,” he said, and wrapped her in his arms, pulling her head to his shoulder, unwilling to hear any more of her dangerous talk.

“But … but eventually we must rise, and when we do, there is scandal and disgrace to be borne. And for me, I …” Her voice trailed off; she pressed her face into his shoulder.

“What?”

“I’ve lost all credibility,” she mumbled helplessly.

The image of the house on Upper Moreland Street suddenly invaded his mind’s eye and he realized that in the last weeks, as he had suffered through some of the darkest moments of his life, he had never once thought how it all affected Claudia. As he stroked her hair, he recalled the sense of wonder he had felt as he had walked through that little house, the burgeoning sense of pride. He thought of the dozens of drawings of a schoolhouse that littered her sitting room, the many little speeches he had heard her give at more than one supper party on the subject of girls’ education. He had agreed with her to gain her attention, never really giving any thought to the cause itself. But those things had meant something to her, and he knew she was right—between the humiliation of their forced marriage and Sophie’s ruination, she had no credibility.

Hell, even her own father would not keep her.

She sighed into his shoulder, and Julian turned his face to her, kissing her temple as his hand floated to the slender column of her neck. “It will be all right,” he whispered, but the words sounded empty. Brushing the curls from her face, he kissed her cheek … he would give anything to put this to rights for her, anything to make it all right.

“It won’t be all right—”

“It will,” he insisted, cupping her face and staring down at her.

Claudia smiled tremulously. “It’s the way of things, Julian.”

She said it so calmly and with such innocent belief that his heart wrenched. “I will find a way to make it all right.” He kissed her quickly, before she could see by the
look in his eye that he had no idea how he would fix this, no idea at all.

They made love again, reaching another pinnacle of bliss together. But when Julian heard a stirring in the corridor, he reluctantly rose, knowing that he could not put off the inevitable and that he would, eventually, be forced to face the reality of their life, just as she had said, and all that had gone on between them.

In the days that followed it seemed that there was no going back to the moment in her darkened bedroom when she had fallen into his arms, finally surrendering to him. Oh, they made love just as fiercely and quite often, as if there was an unspoken need between them to make up for lost time. Claudia blossomed in his arms, allowing herself to experience the magic of love, returning his desire with a fervent passion of her own that suddenly knew no bounds. She delighted in his body, torturing him with light caresses and the tantalizing trace of her lips on every conceivable part of him. The climaxes they shared were marked by a furious intensity that left him reeling.

But he could not, no matter how hard he tried, recreate the same freedom or unfettered feeling of euphoria that there had been that night. Not with everything that weighed down on them.

For Julian, of course, it was the abominable task of seeking Sophie’s divorce, and in the course of it, he learned firsthand how very contemptuous the
ton
as a whole could be. Men who had known his father acted as if they had never met him. Mothers who had once offered money, lands, and anything else they thought might entice him, now made their daughters walk in the other direction when he approached.

Julian didn’t give a damn for himself, but he did for Ann, who, had it not been for her confinement, might have suffered the worst of it. And he gave a damn for Sophie. It would be a long time before she could return to England, if at all.

But it was Claudia who was suffering their downright abandonment.

He realized just how frightfully true it was when he found her going over her ledgers. Frowning, she tapped the pen against the page, unaware that he had entered the room. The moment she realized it, however, she quickly shut the book and shoved it away. When he asked, Claudia had waved her hand dismissively, insisting she was merely passing the time. He had dropped it, but much later, after she had left to call on Ann, he withdrew the books and had a look.

With the exception of the four debts he had called in on behalf of her school project, there had not been a single donation made in two months, in spite of the fact that she had gone out almost every day to call on potential benefactors. She never spoke of it, and tried to seem unaffected by it, but Julian could sense her deep disappointment. Moreover, the drawings of the school disappeared—one morning, as he passed her sitting room, he felt as if something was different, as if a chair or table had been moved. Then he realized that the dozens of drawings were gone.

He wondered about the house on Upper Moreland Street, recalling that Sophie had said that contributions were dwindling. But when he tried to talk to Claudia about it, she wouldn’t discuss it, insisting it was nothing and pretending that it was not an important part of
her
life—an important part of her.

What Claudia
did
want to discuss was Sophie, which was not a topic Julian was very keen to resurrect. He did not like being reminded of Claudia’s role in Sophie’s downfall, and worse, privately he wasn’t completely certain he had forgiven her. He had forgotten it, certainly … but forgiven it? Yet she insisted, and one night, as they lay entwined in one another’s arms, she forced the issue. Julian resisted as strongly as he could, but he was helpless against her soft voice and even softer lips. She pressed him until he was so very frustrated with her that he agreed
yes
, he was
still
angry and hurt by it.

Incredibly, Claudia had smiled. “
At last, then!
” she had exclaimed cheerfully, and in a sudden state of derangement, insisted that they speak of their respective feelings about what had happened, the reasons for their anger and distrust. He had done it for her, gritting his teeth and rolling his eyes quite frequently. But he had played along, listening to her ridiculous theory that he would have interceded and sent Sophie back to Stanwood, and the equally absurd notion that he was angry with her for doing what he had longed to do himself. Naturally, he argued with her, explaining to the little featherbrain the nonsense in her theories, and with a theatrical flare, even accepted her apology.

He would never admit, not to another living soul, that he had indeed felt quite relieved when it was all over.

Over the course of several nights, he was to learn much more, such as why Claudia thought him a rake. At the end of
that
discussion, he was rather convinced he
was
a rake. And much to his great surprise, he learned how the beastly little girl Claudia had been adored him. Amazingly, he had never even sensed it.
That
, Claudia huffed, was his greatest fault—he was obviously rather thickheaded when it came to a woman’s affections. Later that evening, however, she begrudgingly admitted—while she lay naked in his arms—that he might have improved a tad bit on that front.

The most miraculous thing of all was that Phillip was finally beginning to fade away, and for that, Julian was eternally grateful. It did
not
happen easily—Julian had never been able to shake the sense that Phillip was watching him with Claudia. He must have said enough for her to gather what bothered him, because she had finally forced him to sit one night and listen to what had gone on with Phillip. Julian did
not
want to hear it … but neither could he say no. He had listened with morbid fascination as she spoke of the increasing distance between her and Phillip, the drunkenness, the knowledge of his mistress. All of it surprised him—but she shocked him to his core when she told him of the last time she had
ever seen Phillip, the assault on her person … and how that memory had overwhelmed her when she had seen Sophie’s bruises, pushing her to act.

But Phillip’s ghost did not truly begin to fade until she assured him with her words, and then with her body, that she never really loved him, not like this, and kissed away any lingering doubts.

Slowly but surely, Julian realized she was leading them through the maze of their past, putting events and perceptions in their proper place before locking them away forever, away from the living. With each passing day, they chiseled away a little more at the fear and doubts between them, growing more secure in one another. Julian reveled in it—for the first time in his life, he felt as if God was truly smiling on him, granting him the one thing that could make him ecstatically happy.

If only he could make her as happy.

For all her confessions to the contrary, Claudia did not sparkle as she once had. No matter how much she tried to convince him she was quite all right, there was something in her eyes that had been dulled, as if a light had gone out that could not be rekindled. No matter what he did, or how hard he loved her, he could not put the light back in her eyes.

He would die trying, he decided.

Having successfully petitioned the Doctor’s Commons in Sophie’s suit, the first step of an arduous journey to divorce, Julian returned home one afternoon in a state of elation—at last, he could see an end to this drama. No one blocked his petition—Stanwood had left London with his fifty thousand pounds, apparently convinced Julian could ruin him as he had threatened. Eugenie reported that Sophie grew stronger every day, that an inner peace had taken hold of her, and that she followed Claudia’s example by spending her time in the villages, working with children and women less fortunate than she.