Loving Julia (25 page)
“Go have your supper now, Emily. I shouldn’t be too long, but I’ll ring when I need you again.”
Then there was no more reason for delay. Julia, palms sweating, went down to meet Sebastian.
His first thought was that she had changed.
She opened the door to the salon and stood for a moment, her slender body backlighted by the glow of the chandelier in the hall. Good manners dictated that he rise as she entered, but the sight of her standing there, so apparently cool and collected while he was as on edge as a debutante at her first ball, annoyed him so much that he remained lounging in his chair.
She saw him then. Her eyes had been moving over the room and at last they fixed on him in the high backed chair flanking the window. He watched her discover him, watched the widening of the golden eyes that had eaten like acid into his mind, watched the faint frown on the lovely ivory face smooth out into nothing. His second thought was, God, she is a beauty. His third was unreasoning anger that that should be so.
“I see your manners are as unexceptional as ever, my lord.” That cool little voice taking the offensive pricked him like the point of a sword. He felt his annoyance increase. She was not supposed to chide him for a lack of breeding, for God’s sake. She might choose to pretend that she was a lady born, but he knew better than anyone that she was not. She was just a little guttersnipe that he had chosen to elevate high beyond her station.
“Hello, Julia.” Instead of entering into argument with her, he chose to continue lounging in the chair, his legs thrust out before him in an attitude of utter relaxation. He was sure she had learned enough to recognize the insult of his posture, since a gentleman would never sit so in the presence of a lady. His eyes moved over her, weighing the pleasing curves and hollows. His memory had not played tricks on him as he had half-hoped. She was every bit as delectable as he remembered. The fact should not annoy him as it did. After all, she was his to enjoy.
In the absence of any further comment from him, she walked into the room, closing the door behind her. She moved to the fireplace, putting her back to it. There was a momentary silence as his eyes ran over her from the top of her elegant coiffure to the toes of the kid half-boots peeking out from beneath the modishly full skirts of her black silk dress. Anyone who did not know she was not a lady born would never guess her origins by looking at her. The high cheekbones and pointed chin, the delicate straight nose and wide forehead, the enormous black-lashed golden eyes and full, sweet mouth, the lustrous sheen of her ebony hair and the slender feminine curves of her body had none of the ripeness that was the form that beauty among the lower classes tended to take. Suzanne had been breathtaking, but the very abundance of her charms, the brightness of the blond hair she had “enhanced” with God knew what preparations, the fullness of her face and even the shape of her hands and feet had been a silent testament to her low birth. But Julia had long slender bones, lovely long fingered white hands, and narrow feet. It occurred to him suddenly to wonder about her father. Her mother had been a whore; the Bow Street runners he had hired to check her story had told him that. But who had her father been? Looking at Julia, he thought that the unknown father must have been well-born. There was no other way to account for her appearance, or the ease with which she had learned to act the lady.
“Did you bring me all the way up here just to stare at me?” Her voice was testy.
It made him smile involuntarily and very briefly. Few people dared to talk to him that way. Whatever else she was, she was certainly no coward. He thought of their coming association with satisfaction. He would enjoy having a mistress with a sharp tongue. In all the time that Suzanne had enjoyed his protection, she had never disagreed by so much as a sniff with a word he had uttered.
“Do you like the house?” The question, seemingly out of the blue, surprised her, Sebastian saw. It surprised him, too. He had meant to seduce her, and then inform her of the happy change in her circumstances. He had learned by hard experience that that was the way to save himself from having to listen to a lot of coy protests. From the way Julia had responded to him that night in the library, he had no doubt that she would be delighted to take up residency in his bed. The sticking point, as with all of them, was getting her to admit it. But Julia was an intelligent young woman, certainly more intelligent than any mistress he had had before. Perhaps he would be honest with her. It would make a nice change, and anyway he did not feel like seducing her. He felt more like wringing her neck.
“The house? It’s … it’s very nice.” She was looking at him strangely.
He stood up suddenly, thrusting his hands in the pockets of his dove gray breeches. It was the only way he could think of to control the almost irresistible impulse he had to grab her by those slender shoulders and shake her until her head rattled.
“It’s yours, if you want it.” He could not help himself, but growled the words when he had meant to be charming. She was maddening him just by standing there looking so damned innocent when he knew she was anything but.
“This house? It’s mine, if I want it?” She sounded as if she thought he had lost his mind. She was frowning as she looked at him. Then her brow cleared. “Oh, did it belong to Timothy?”
He gritted his teeth and took a step closer, cramming his hands deeper into his pockets.
“No, it did not belong to Timothy. Your inheritence from Timothy consists of some twenty thousand pounds invested in the funds. Not a fortune, but enough to keep you from starving one day if you are careful with your income. But the income will not provide you with luxuries, like this house.”
“If it is not Timothy’s, then whose house is it, and how could it be mine? Are you suggesting that I buy it?”
His mouth twisted into an unpleasant smile. “As the guardian of your financial affairs, I would never suggest that you squander your money on such an unnecessary purchase. No, I was not suggesting you buy it. The house is already yours if you want it. It belongs to me, and I would be more than pleased to give it to you.”
“You would give it to me?” She was looking at him, wariness plain in those huge golden eyes. He smiled at her again, not the charming smile he had thought to persuade her with, but a hard, cold baring of his teeth.
“Not only the house, but the furnishings, a carriage, and a substantial sum of money to maintain all that. Shall we say a sum of twenty thousand pounds, to equal what you will get from Timothy’s estate? The combined income will be enough to keep you in comfort for the rest of your life.”
He had not meant to offer so much, of course. It was pure folly. The accepted practice was for a man to support his mistress according to his pocketbook while she lived under his protection. When he tired of the arrangement, he settled a small sum on her and she was free to go on to another admirer. Never before had he offered a woman outright possession of this house, which was centrally located and convenient for him to visit and which had seen him through three mistresses. But then, never before had he wanted a woman as badly as he wanted this one. He had found, first to his dismay and then his fury, that the hair of the dog was not as effective a remedy as he had thought for the malaise that had plagued him upon his return to town. At least not the hair of any dog. What he needed, he decided, was the hair of the very dog that bit him. And he meant to have it—and her—whatever the cost.
“In return for what, Sebastian?”
He smiled that wolfish smile again. His hands, thrust into his breeches pockets, clenched into fists.
“In return for becoming my mistress,” he said brutally.
There was a long moment of silence as she seemed to absorb what he had said. He watched as she whitened so much that for a moment he feared she might faint. Her eyes were huge topaz moons in that colorless face as she stared at him. One hand went out to grasp the back of a nearby chair, but that and her paleness were the only outward signs of agitation she betrayed.
“You brought me to London to set me up as your mistress?” The words were uttered through stiff lips. She sounded as if she had trouble forcing them out. Sebastian felt a surge of violence. How dare she stand there looking so—so damned stricken, when he knew and she knew that she was nothing more than a two-bit whore?
“You made yourself my mistress that night in the library at White Friars. I propose merely to formalize the arrangement.” His words were cold, and in no way expressed the volcano of emotions that churned through him. He could not shake the absurd fury that had sprung to life in him all those months ago when he had discovered that his so innocent protegee was in fact no better than she should be.
She moved then, letting go of the chair back with what appeared to be an effort and walking toward him without a word. Sebastian watched her approach, his hands still thrust into his pockets. When she was directly in front of him, so that not as much as a foot of space remained between them, she stopped. He could almost feel the heat of her body even across the space that separated them. But that heat was nothing compared to the golden fire of her eyes. He started to withdraw his hands from his pockets so that he could grasp her waist, but they were still hung up in the folds of cloth when she drew back her hand and slapped him with all her might in the face.
The sharp sound of her flesh making stinging contact with his own was echoed by the even sharper indrawing of his breath. His head snapped back, not so much from the force of the blow as from the very unexpectedness of it. Recovering, feeling rage build in him like a rushing, overflowing river against a dam, he lifted a hand to his burning cheek, staring at her. She still stood before him, disdaining to run, her chin high and her golden eyes aflame.
“You insult me,” she said coldly. And with that, she turned away.
“I insult you, do I?”
His hands clamped onto her shoulders even as he spoke. Julia hardly had time to wince at his brutality before he was spinning her about to face him. Those celestial blue eyes were now blazing with fury, she saw as she lifted her own to meet them. His face was harsh with it. If she had ever wanted to break through the icy self-control with which he faced the world, she had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams.
“I didn’t think it was possible to insult a two-bit whore!” The guttural insult left her gasping. But before she could retaliate either physically or verbally, he yanked her against him, his arms pinning hers to her body as his head descended. Caught off guard, she just managed to turn her head aside so that his mouth found her cheek instead of her lips. The feel of those burning lips against her skin sent an agonizing shaft of longing through her. But she would not, could not give in to it. This was not Sebastian, her Sebastian of all those months ago, but the violent brutal stranger he had so bewilderingly become.
“Let go of me!” Unable to get her hands free, she could only writhe against him in her efforts to break away. As her abdomen twisted against him, she felt a sudden, horrifying change in his body that involuntarily sent her eyes flying to meet his.
That wolfish smile appeared again, transforming the beautiful face into a mask of pure masculine aggression. He was strong and she was weak and he was out to prove his power.
“Not—quite—yet,” he said through his teeth, and then his mouth descended once more.
Quickly she twisted so that his lips again missed their mark, but this time one of the hands that clamped her arms to her sides snaked upwards to burrow through her hair and close over the back of her skull. Slowly, inexorably he turned her head so that she was an easy target. His single arm held her securely as his other forced her head around and held her helpless. He met her angry, frightened eyes with a smile. Then, as she twisted and struggled he slowly, oh so slowly, bent his head. Those blue eyes, ablaze now with blinding emotion, never left hers. She jerked against his iron hold, but to no avail. Then his mouth was on hers, hard and hot and demanding, and he was kissing her with a fury that stole both breath and reason with it. He was kissing her as if he hated her; and she, shameful, spineless creature that she was, loved it.
He tasted faintly of brandy and cigars, and he was warm, so warm. The sheer heat he generated had an enervating effect on her. She struggled briefly, then forgot to fight him as his tongue slid between her lips, stroking over them, flicking against the white barrier of her teeth before weakly, helplessly, she opened her mouth and let him inside. He growled then, and whether the sound was of victory or of passion she neither knew nor cared. All she knew was that he was kissing her so deeply she felt as though he would steal the very soul from her body, bending her back over his arm so that if she had been in any rational state at all she would have feared that her spine would snap. But she was not rational, her mind had fled, leaving her emotions running rampant, and she could not fight them. His kiss was making her dizzy; the room was spinning round and round in front of her dazed eyes. All she could do was close them so that she was enveloped in a warm dark void.
Her heart was pounding so loudly that it drowned out all other sounds. Her bones had turned to jelly, melting like hot liquid in his hands. She could feel the burning fire of her own surrender in her breasts and belly and thighs and especially between her legs, where it tightened and pulsed and throbbed. Then she traced the fire to him, and connected it to his hand, which was sliding over her body with abandon, fondling and possessing while with his other arm he supported her boneless weight. The thin silk covering her and flimsy underclothes beneath were no protection from the invasion of his touch. His palm found her breast again, rubbing roughly across it, tormenting her with the sudden sharp pleasure-pain of it. Then his hand traveled to her other breast, enclosing it in burning heat, and if she had not been lost before she was now.