Loving Julia (19 page)

“You are right. My reasons are beyond you. Beyond anything you can imagine, and I refuse to discuss them.”

His eyes were blazing with an icy blue light that made them glitter like diamonds in the glow of the lamps. His words were as frozen as his eyes. He was very much the earl suddenly, despite the fact that he wore only a shirt and waistcoat and breeches as was his habit in these after dinner hours. Even without his coat and cravat, he looked every inch the aristocrat, but Julia refused to be cowed. She was no longer Jewel Combs, ignorant guttersnipe. She was Julia Stratham, his creation maybe but also his equal and his friend. She sincerely cared about his well-being and that of his daughter, and that gave her the right to probe into an area that he obviously preferred be left alone.

But perhaps she should try another approach. Direct confrontation was very rarely, if ever, successful with Sebastian, as she had learned by painful trial and error. Perhaps she could reason with him, make him see the error of his ways. She took a deep breath.

“Sebastian, don’t you love Chloe?”

“I refuse to discuss this subject.”

“She needs you, Sebastian. You are her father, after all. Do you know she has screaming nightmares at night? Do you know that she runs away from her nursemaid sometimes and disappears for hours? Do you know where she goes when she runs away? I do, Sebastian.”

“Stop it, Julia!” He jumped to his feet, overturning the chessboard in his agitation. All the pieces went flying and the board clattered to the floor. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides as he stood glaring down at her. A vein throbbed angrily in his neck, and a deep tide of red suffused his face. He looked murderous suddenly, and Julia had a fleeting picture of Elizabeth’s sweet face. Was that why he could not face his daughter? She immediately banished the suspicion, but that it had appeared at all galvanized her. There had to be another reason for his avoidance of Chloe. There had to be.

“She goes to the old monastery, right up into the bell tower. I found her there one day, all huddled up on the floor crying her eyes out for her mother. When I spoke to her, I think she thought for a minute I was Elizabeth’s ghost. Poor little mite, the look on her face broke my heart! And you think she doesn’t need you, Sebastian? She does. You are her father, and she needs your love.”

“May God damn you to hell.”

His voice was so quiet that for a moment Julia was sure she must have misheard. But the look in his eyes told her that she had not. He looked like a man enduring the torment of hellfire. The expression terrified her, but after only an instant he turned and with long jerky strides left the room.

“Sebastian!” Julia jumped to her feet and went after him, but stopped in the doorway, defeated. As furious as he was, he would not want to listen to another word she had to say. She would wait for him to regain his self-control, and then maybe they could talk again. She was determined not to let the subject alone.

She stayed in the library for a while, glancing idly through book after book without really seeing a single word printed in any of them, trying not to look at the picture of Elizabeth and Chloe at all. Something about that picture affected her profoundly, and she was sure that it must affect Sebastian. Why did he keep it in the room where he spent most of his time? There was no answer, and there were many. But she didn’t know which was the right one, and she refused to speculate any further. The Sebastian she had come to know was not the kind of man who would murder his wife. But then he was not the kind of man who would neglect a young child, his own child, either. So there was no answer for her in that. She could only go by her gut instinct that told her that Sebastian was not guilty of murdering Elizabeth. The case against him was just a web of gossip and innuendo.

Finally acknowledging that he would not be returning to the library that night, Julia went to bed. A sleepy Emily helped her off with her clothes and into her nightgown, and then Julia sent her off to bed and crawled beneath the covers herself. In the pitch darkness it was possible to imagine all kinds of hellish reasons for Sebastian’s violent aversion to his daughter. But she resolutely refused to consider the most persuasive of those: guilt. There could be any number of other explanations. Perhaps he was a man who simply did not like children. Or perhaps Chloe wasn’t really his child. That explanation would make sense if she had never seen Chloe. But Sebastian’s mark was upon the child, much too obvious for anyone to ever deny.

It seemed like she had just fallen asleep when she heard the screams. Over the months she had lived at White Friars, she had become accustomed to the sounds of Chloe’s occasional nightmares. They never lasted long, and lately she had been sleeping through them as just another sound of the night. But tonight they were frenzied, high pitched and terrified—and they did not stop. Perhaps something had happened to the child—or the nursemaid?

Julia did not stop to speculate further. Jumping out of bed, she caught up her white silk wrapper, threw it around herself and hurried from the room. Chloe’s chamber was farther along the same corridor, just beyond the place where it veered into the west wing. As Julia rounded the bend, a spluttering candle in hand, she had to fight an impulse to clap her hands to her ears to block out the shrill echoing shrieks. A score of servants in their nightclothes were before her, she saw, gathered around the open doorway to Chloe’s room. Elbowing her way to the front, she stopped short at the scene before her.

Chloe, silver-gilt hair in childish plaits that tumbled over the front of her prim, flower-print nightgown, was backed into the far corner of her room. Her face was as ghostly white as the finest English china, and her hands were held out in front of her as if to ward something off. Ceaseless piercing screams poured one on top of the other from her throat despite the frantic shushing of Miss Belkerson, who was trying without success to comfort the child, and Mrs. Johnson, who was hovering uselessly on Chloe’s other side. Chloe’s blue eyes were as saucer-wide as her mouth, and fixed with an expression of abject terror on Sebastian, who stood towering over her, his face as white as hers.

“Please, Miss Chloe, please….” Miss Belkerson was muttering disjointedly, her eyes darting with agonized entreaty from Chloe to Sebastian and back again.

Mrs. Johnson was made of sterner stuff. Pointing the candle she carried at Sebastian, she said, “If you’ll leave us, my lord, I’m sure Miss Belkerson will get her quieted down. I’m sorry to have to say it, and you can dismiss me for it if you wish, but you should never have come in here, not even if the little lass was sleeping. Now you’ve likely scared her out of what little wits she has left. It was not well done of you, my lord, if you’ll pardon me for saying so.”

Miss Belkerson, looking distraught as she tried to push down Chloe’s outstretched arms, nodded once as if in agreement, then caught herself and cast another frightened glance up at Sebastian. He stood as white and motionless as if he had been carved from stone. Suddenly he pivoted, moving like a man just awakened from a nightmare, and walked from the room.

As soon as he was out of Chloe’s sight the screams lessened in intensity. Julia, hand pressed to her mouth, watched as Chloe subsided into a sobbing heap in Miss Belkerson’s arms. Poor child, poor child…. But poor Sebastian, too. He had looked as if he had suffered a death blow. Something was terribly wrong between him and his daughter, but whatever it was, he deserved compassion, too. She turned suddenly, lifting the skirts of her wrapper and nightgown, and practically flew from the room. She did not want him to be alone after this.

“Sebastian.” She caught up to him at last in the great hall, and reached for his shirt-clad arm. He turned on her with such an expression of fury that she shrank back.

“Are you satisfied now?” he demanded savagely. “I told you to keep your nose out of things you know nothing about, but you just had to stick it in, didn’t you? Do you see now why I avoid my daughter? The merest sight of me terrifies her into a screaming frenzy!”

He bit off the last words with such anger that Julia took another step backwards. He noted her retreat, acknowledged it with a bitter, sardonic smile, and turned his back on her without another word. Watching him as he strode away, Julia knew that she had to go after him, to offer what comfort she could. Whatever he was, whatever he had done, to her he was still Sebastian, her Sebastian. She owed him her loyalty if nothing else.

“The master’s in a bad way, Miss Julia.” Johnson had appeared in the hall behind her in time to hear that last savage exchange and had also been present in the gathering of servants outside Chloe’s room.

“I know, Johnson.” Julia smiled briefly, abstractedly, at the butler’s concerned face. Taking her courage in her hands, she turned to follow Sebastian to his last refuge, the library.

XV

Pausing momentarily at the closed door, she took a deep breath and entered without knocking. The fire that was lit against the increasingly chill nights provided the only light in the room, and it had died down to a few smoldering embers. By the faint orange glow she could see him standing with his back to her, head thrown back as he drained the contents of a glass. He immediately poured out more brandy, and cursed as the bottle ran dry before the glass was full.

“Shall I have Johnson bring more brandy?” Julia spoke quietly as she closed the door behind her. He swung around snarling, his hand clenched around the glass as if he were thinking about hurling it at her head.

“Get out of here.”

“Sebastian, I’m sorry. I didn’t understand.” She stayed near the door, unmoving, trying to read his expression through the shifting shadows.

“You still don’t understand. It’s not your business to understand. So get the hell out of here and leave me alone. I wish you’d done it in the first place.”

He turned away from her, lifting the glass to his lips and tossing back the contents in a single gulp. He moved jerkily to one of the two big wing chairs facing the fire and sat down in it, his long legs sprawling out before him.

“Ring for more brandy. Then go.” His voice was scarcely more than a rough murmur as he stared into the fire. Julia hesitated, then crossed to the bell pull. When Johnson tapped discreetly on the door, she opened it and sent him for more brandy. But when he left, she stayed, hovering near the door so that Sebastian would not remember her presence and order her to leave again. When Johnson reappeared with the brandy and two glasses she took the tray from him with a brief reassuring nod in answer to his anxious look. Sebastian might not know or care, but despite his usual autocratic manner the servants were fond of him.

Julia carried the tray to a small table near Sebastian’s elbow, and he roused himself enough to look at her as she poured out a glass for him. From the wild red-rimmed glitter of his eyes and his uncoordinated movements, Sebastian had already had far too much to drink. She didn’t know how well he held his liquor, but she had seen enough men drinking to know that shortly he would be extremely well to live indeed.

“I thought I told you to go away.” He sounded more tired than angry now.

“Yes, you did. Here, take this.” She handed him the glass, then poured a half measure into the other glass. With the bottle in one hand and the half-full glass in the other, she sank to her knees beside his chair, curling her legs up beneath her.

“You drinking too?” A sideways glance took in her half-full glass. “Planning on keeping me company, are you? I assure you, I’ll do much better alone.”

He took a long swallow from his glass, and then another, then returned his attention to the fire. Julia, watching him, felt her heart swell with pity. He looked so—so alone. She moved a little so that her shoulder was just touching the long hard stretch of his thigh. He needed someone now very much, she thought.

“Softhearted little thing, aren’t you?” He must have felt her unspoken sympathy because his eyes veered toward her with an ugly sneer in their depths. “First Timothy, now me. Why don’t you go find some stray kittens or something to waste your sympathy on?”

Julia looked up at him, guessing that he was lashing out at her because of his own desperate pain, and not knowing how to respond. He needed to talk, she knew, needed to pour out the hurt festering inside like pus in a wound. But she did not know the words to touch the place where he had held it so long buried. Anything she said was liable to turn him once again into a raging, mindless beast.

“Damn it, quit looking at me like I’m some dumb, hurt animal.” His sudden snarl made her jump. Her eyes had been fixed on his face, she realized, and hastily she dropped them to the fire. She could feel his hostile gaze on her averted cheek. After a moment she looked back at him, helplessly drawn.

“Sebastian, you need to talk about whatever it is that’s wrong with Chloe.” She didn’t know how else to say it, and hoped her gentle tone would blunt the sharp edge of his anger.

He said nothing for a long moment while she looked up at him with huge golden eyes, her black hair loose and cascading down over the thin white silk of her wrapper. In the soft glow of the dying fire he looked more devil than angel, she thought.

“So you think I need to talk, do you?” The words were drawled in a gritty undertone quite unlike anything she had ever heard from him. A hard smile played about his mouth, twisting the elegantly carved lips into a satyr’s grimace before disappearing to leave them grimly straight. “Talk’s not what I need.” He laughed, the sound harsh. His eyes glittered with a strange hot light as they moved over her.

Julia felt her heartbeat quicken as his eyes touched on her body, which he must know was naked beneath the flimsy covering of her nightclothes. If any other man had looked at her like that, she would have been frightened. But despite everything, she was not afraid of Sebastian.

“Tell me about Chloe, Sebastian.” Her quiet voice brought his eyes up from their insulting appraisal of her bosom as it swelled against the thin silk wrapper. He stared at her for a moment, his expression ugly.