Loving Julia (37 page)

“So there I was, all of twenty-four years old, with a pregnant wife who couldn’t stand for me to touch her. I reacted as any young man would react—there are lots of women in the world, and I took advantage of the fact. For all her dislike of marriage, Elizabeth chose to enact for me a Cheltenham tragedy when she found out I had a mistress. This was after more than four years of being kept out of my wife’s bed, mind. What a farce! When I refused to go down on my knees and apologize, she went crying to her papa. Old man Tynesdale had wanted his daughter to marry an earl, but now he was beside himself. Knowing Elizabeth and how she felt about making love, there is no telling what she told him I’d done to her besides being unfaithful. He called me on the carpet and read me a regular bear garden jaw for mistreating his daughter, and we had words. Then about a month later, Elizabeth was killed. And you know what? I was relieved mostly. Relieved because I wouldn’t have to spend the rest of my life tied up with a woman I was beginning to actively dislike.

“Then, of course, the rumors started. I had murdered Elizabeth. I hadn’t, but not many people chose to believe me. By that time I didn’t even care particularly. If people wanted to brand me a murderer, that was fine with me. I didn’t need any of them. Except Chloe. My God, in all my life, what happened with Chloe was probably the worst of it.

“Elizabeth had kept her from me mostly. She always acted like my vile presence would contaminate her precious baby. But I loved the child. And I would swear she loved me. She seemed to. She was just a tiny thing, four when Elizabeth died, but she always seemed glad to see me. I would bring her presents sometimes, and she would put her little plump arms around my neck and kiss me and whisper in her lisping little voice. And then … and then …” He broke off to draw a deep, steadying breath.

Julia saw a betraying hint of moisture in his eyes, and despite all her good intentions could not keep from going to him.

Her skirts rustled as she crossed quickly to his side. He was stiff and resisting at first as her arms went around his waist, but as she pressed against him in a wordless gesture of comfort his arms came around her. He held her close, his voice not quite steady as he bent his head to finish with a near whisper in her ear.

“When you showed up in my hallway that day, looking like a cross between a third-rate Cyprian and a drowned rat, I thought I didn’t need anyone. I was totally self-sufficient and I liked it that way. Oh, I had friends, of course, as everyone does, but they were really just acquaintances. In all the world there was not a single soul who really gave a damn if I lived or died. And then you came.

“If my mother hadn’t come into my study that day, I probably would have had you thrown back out into the streets. Those marriage lines you showed me were not worth very much when it came right down to it. You would have had the devil’s own time claiming anything with them. But I didn’t have you thrown out. I took you down to White Friars with me because I couldn’t think of anything else to do with you—I was already regretting the impulse that had caused me to let you stay. But you were a funny little thing, and I ended up quite liking you. And then you turned into a raving beauty…. I should have seen my Waterloo coming. In fact, I probably did. I just refused to recognize it. You were a virgin that night and I knew it, and I wouldn’t admit it even to myself. I told myself that I had to be wrong about the physical signs because no virgin could have responded the way you did. You were all fire, my own, and you set me aflame, too. My reaction terrified me. I wanted more, much more. So I ran, and I’ve been running ever since. Until yesterday, when I realized that I was all alone in a cold gray world, and I was tired of being alone. I wanted to warm myself at a fire—and that fire was you.

I wanted to hold you and kiss you and never let you go as long as either of us lived. I wanted you to love me, and I wanted to love you.”

As he finished his voice got lower and lower until at the end it was barely audible. But Julia heard. She heard, and wept inwardly at every syllable. Her proud Sebastian, always needing love and never finding it, had gotten so he feared the very thing he craved. He had treated her as he had because he had been emotionally scalded too many times. Even now he sounded as if he were afraid to risk his heart again.

“I do love you, Julia,” he muttered into her hair, and Julia felt her heart swell and ache with the sweet pain of it. Her arms tightened around him, hugging him to her, and she turned her head so that her face nuzzled into the warm sandpaper skin of his neck just below his ear.

“And I love you, my darling,” she whispered, pressing her lips into the soft place where his vein pulsed with telltale urgency. His arms enwrapped her so tightly that she feared he might crush her, and then his head was turning and his mouth was seeking hers.

This time when they made love, there was a feverish urgency to their passion. He took and she gave, and she took and he gave. Their bodies clung to each other with fierce tenderness, and when they came shuddering back to earth together they barely had time to catch their breath before the need that drove them reared its head again. They made love again and again until at last dawn was lighting the sky with pink streaks and the first faint stirrings of a new day were heard in the street outside the window.

Sated, they lay together in the huge bed, their naked bodies pressed together beneath the single sheet that was the only covering they could bear, their hearts finally slowing to something resembling a normal rhythm. Julia, sleepy-eyed and heavy limbed, lay with her head on Sebastian’s shoulder and one hand pressed into the nest of fur on his chest. Sebastian was flat on his back, one arm beneath his head and the other around Julia. His hair was ruffled, and the dark beginnings of a beard shadowed his cheeks and jaw. He looked gorgeously raffish, Julia thought as she looked up at him, and could not forbear pressing a soft kiss into the sandpapered underside of his jaw.

“You are insatiable, woman.” He turned his head to smile down at her as he spoke.

“Mmmm.” It was a purring, contented agreement. Beneath the sheet Julia’s hand moved lazily down the hard muscled contours she had come to know so well during the long and tumultuous night. The flat muscles of his abdomen contracted as she stroked them, and even as her fingers lazily circled his belly button she could feel the rising tautness that spoke as no words could have of his hunger for her.

“So are you,” she added with a glimmering upward slant of her eyes. He pulled her hand away and brought it to his mouth, kissing it lightly before pressing it back to his chest.

“I hate to disappoint you, my own, but we have to get up.”

“Do we?” The provocative whisper was accompanied by her fingers heading off an another foray into newly charted territory. They were firmly recaptured, and this time held.

“Yes, we do.” His voice left no room for argument.

Julia nipped his neck with her teeth in punishment. He yelped, and rolled so that she was pressed down into the bed and he was looming over her. The possibilities inherent in the position pleased her, and she smiled at him with promises in her eyes.

“None of that, now. We’ve got to get you back to Grosvenor Square before there’s more of a scandal than there’s bound to be already. There’ll be talk about the way I spirited you off as it is, but we can always say that I came to fetch you on urgent family business.”

“I don’t care about scandal.” She moved against him with sensuous enticement. His muscles tightened in answer and a half-smile played about his lips, but he shook his head.

“I do. I won’t have the entire ton gossiping about the future Countess of Moorland more than I can help.”

Julia went very still suddenly, her golden eyes huge as they stared up into his.

“Sebastian,” she said faintly after a moment. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

He looked down at her, a frown gathering on his brow.

“Hell, no.” The blunt words were like blows to her heart. Then he smiled, a sweet and charming smile such as she had rarely seen on his face. Despite the disordered hair and stubbled cheeks, or perhaps because of them, he looked so breathtakingly handsome in that moment that she felt her breath catch. “I thought I took care of that last night.”

Julia, feeling dazed and not quite sure she was hearing what she thought she was hearing, shook her head. “No.”

The smile died from his lips, but his eyes were very tender as they looked down into hers. “What did you think last night was all about then?”

“I didn’t know.” The words were scarcely more than a whisper. Then, from the fountain of her love for him and the knowledge of the lack of birth that made her ineligible to be his wife sprang the courage to deny herself what she wanted most in life. “You don’t have to do this, you know, Sebastian. You don’t have to marry me. I’ll be your mistress if you like, for as long as you like.”

He scowled at her, his blue eyes turning menacing. “What kind of nonsense are you talking now? I thought you said you loved me!”

“I do! You know I do. But—but, Sebastian, we both know that Julia Stratham is just someone you made up. I’m not her, not really. You’re an earl, a member of the nobility, and I know you have a duty to your name. I’m—a mongrel. My mother was an actress, and my father could have been anyone as far as I know. I—”

“Shut up.” His voice was fierce. “If what you’re trying to say is that you’re not good enough for me, then I’m ashamed of you. Where’s the spitfire who used to look down her nose at me, and call me names? Is she gone completely, forced out by the
lady
we’ve created between us? If so, then I’m sorry. I liked that chit, and I won’t have you apologizing for her. Do you understand me?”

Julia felt suitably abashed at the savageness of his tone.

“I’m sorry, Sebastian,” she said in a small voice.

His frown lessened, but he still looked severe. “And so you should be. Offer to be my mistress indeed! You’ve a sad lack of morals, my girl, and you should be thankful I don’t beat you.”

“But, Sebastian, are you sure you want to marry me?” Her voice was tiny. But she had to say it, despite his displeasure. Now that she was on the verge of achieving her dream, she realized that the tactics she had resorted to to fix his interest had backfired on her. She wanted, oh she wanted, to believe that he genuinely loved her enough to overlook her background and hundreds of years of prejudice to marry her. But it was fatally easy to wonder if she had merely caught him by the masterly use of feminine wiles. Oliver’s proposal might well have acted as the final spur.

“Oliver!” she squeaked the name. From the moment she had seen Sebastian at the ball until this instant she had not given Oliver a thought. Now she did, and she was horrified. She had promised to wed him in two days—no, one day, now—she thought feverishly. And instead she had run out on him at the ball the night before. He would be furious and rightly so. She would have to explain—what? That now she would be marrying Sebastian instead?

“Oliver!” Sebastian stiffened and sat up on the edge of the bed, scowling down at her out of storm-darkened eyes. “I’m making you an offer, and you’re thinking of
Oliver
?” The terrible mockery in his voice as he said the other man’s name told her how near he was to losing his temper. Unlike Oliver, Julia remembered, Sebastian was prone to jealousy. In fact, if the glower on his face was anything to go by, he was extremely prone to it.

“I just remembered that he had his name down for the last dance last night. He—he must have wondered what on earth had become of me.” The excuse rang lame even in her own ears. Sebastian’s scowl did not lessen by so much as a single degree.

“So?” The brutal syllable warned her that if she could not smooth him down, an explosion was imminent. The knowledge that he loved her enough to be so fiercely jealous was warming, but she did not want to deal with a furious Sebastian, especially over so paltry a cause. Oliver meant less to her than Sebastian’s little finger.

“So nothing,” she answered meekly. “He—he just happened to pop into my head, that’s all.”

“See that he doesn’t again.” It was an order.

Julia bowed her head in contrite acquiescence. No need to trouble Sebastian with the details of her plans for Oliver which were all over now, of course. All she had to do was tell Oliver.

“You did tell him that you were not going to marry him, I presume?” The rapier question, uttered in a tone of extreme displeasure, rattled Julia. She wet her lips, saw his eyes following the telltale movement, and hurried into speech.

“Of course I did.”

He eyed her for a moment before his frown slowly relaxed. His expression was still stern, but he no longer looked on the verge of doing someone a violence.

“Good. I don’t want to hear his name on your lips again, is that clear?”

Despite her newly found meekness, that dictate brought a little of her own temper rushing to the fore.

“You don’t own me, you know, Sebastian.” A touch of rebellion glimmered in her eyes. Despite her love for him, if he thought she was just going to lie down and play doormat for him to walk on for the rest of their lives he had another think coming.

He turned suddenly, catching her wrists in his hands and looming over her so that she was pinned to the bed. The sheet had been pulled away from her breasts by his sudden movement, and she lay bare to the waist, her long black hair loose and tousled by their exertions of the night. Her straight black brows met in a forbidding frown over those golden eyes, and her soft rose pink lips were compressed above her obstinate little chin.

His eyes roved over her, moving from her face to the smooth white column of her throat to the narrow shoulders with their prominent collarbones, then slid down to rest on the strawberry tipped mounds of her breasts standing out above the delicate rib cage and narrow waist before coming back up to meet her eyes.

“Oh, yes,” he said low, his eyes fixing her with a burning possessiveness that shook her with its intensity. “You’re mine now. Never mistake it. You’re mine, and I’ll drag you down into hell with me before I’ll ever let you go.”