The Secret Life of Lady Julia (19 page)

Chapter 28

H
e’d run into a wall in the dark. Or a door, or a battering ram. How stupid of him.

Thomas tried to open his eyes, but searing light forced them shut again. Perhaps he was dead—shot, after all. His head rang like heavenly bells, but how likely was that? He should be feeling the crackle of flames licking his feet.

A soft, cool hand touched his face, and he could smell violets. So it was heaven after all, he decided, but then a scream split his skull all over again. The pain was excruciating.

“Hush, Mrs. Hawes! You’ll wake the baby!” a woman’s voice whispered.

Baby?
What
baby
? The child’s wail rose in the distance.

“Is he dead?” another female voice warbled.

“Of course not, he’s breathing, see?” Fingers poked at him, and the violets assaulted his senses again. There was only one woman he knew who smelled of violets . . .

“I don’t like the look of that lump,” the sharp-voiced one said. “What did you hit him with?”

There was no answer. He felt fingers probing at a hot place on his forehead and saw stars for a moment. He gasped as the pain shot through his brain, tried to turn away.

“Lie still, Mr. Merritt,” she murmured.

He frowned, and discovered that hurt too. He’d heard that voice before, but he couldn’t think of where it might have been. Then he heard footsteps, felt them pounding through the floorboards under his head, and men shouting.

“Julia? What on earth is going on here?” a male voice demanded.

“Julia.” His mouth formed the word, and it came out as a croak. He forced his eyes open and saw her above him. There were cherubs behind her too, hovering over her hair, which hung over her shoulders in dark waves to caress her breasts, which were clad in the filmiest lace.

He
was
in heaven, after all. What on earth had he done to receive such a reward? He tried to smile at her as he reached out a hand to touch her cheek. Her skin was as soft as he remembered, heated by a deep flush as he spoke her name again. She flinched, and he let his hand drop away.

“Do you know this man?” a man asked, his voice starchy with indignation.

“Dull Duke David,” he muttered, making an assumption as to his identity.

Rougher hands gripped his jaw, twisted his head, probably to identify him, or to check the wound. Was it as bad as it felt? He squinted up at the face above him but didn’t recognize the man.

“I’ve never seen him before! He’s an intruder!” the screamer warbled as if she’d been asked. “If her ladyship hadn’t laid him low with the bed warmer, he’d have murdered us all in our beds!”

“Would he, Julia?” the man demanded, and Thomas watched his eyes flick over Julia’s scanty garments.

She sent him an indignant glare, one he remembered well from the day he’d met her in Hyde Park. How long ago that seemed, how very far away, and yet that expression was as familiar as if it had been yesterday. She rose to her feet to retrieve a blue robe, and buttoned it right to her chin, her white fingers moving like angry spiders. She tied the sash with such fury it nearly cut her in two, and then she stood before the man like a queen, though her feet, planted beside his own head, were bare.

“His name is Thomas Merritt. He came in through the window. I had no idea who he was when I hit him.”

“She saved us all,” the screamer added. Thomas turned his head to see the bed warming pan on the carpet beside him, sprawled like a second victim.

He tried to sit up, but the room spun, and he sank back to the carpet. With a whimper, the screamer grabbed for the warming pan, but Julia stopped her. The man put his foot in the center of Thomas’s chest. “Don’t move,” he ordered. Thomas stayed where he was.

“Do go back to bed, Mrs. Hawes, we’re quite safe now,” Julia said calmly.

“Are we?” she asked.

“Lord Stephen will take care of everything,” Julia soothed, and the woman withdrew.

Lord Stephen? What happened to Dull Duke David?
Thomas squinted at the man. Definitely not David Temberlay. This man was tall and fair-haired, and glaring down at him as if he’d like to finish the job Julia had started.

“He’s not wearing his boots,” Lord Stephen said, making it an accusation, his expression hard as stone, his eyes suspicious.

Of course he wasn’t. He’d taken them off so he could move more quietly over the marble floors. Did thieves not usually take their boots off when they broke into a house? He sent Lord Stephen a rueful smile, which hurt like the devil. The man’s face darkened with anger. “Why is this man half undressed in your room?” he demanded.

“I have no idea,” she replied, her tone cutting, aristocratic. She held the lord’s eyes boldly, indignation clear at his insinuation.

Lord Stephen looked away first. “Tie him up, search his pockets,” he ordered, stepping back. Other hands grabbed him roughly, bound him with the ties from the curtains, and he winced as his head bounced against the carpet. He felt hands in his pockets, robbing him, instead of the other way around. They dragged him up and propped him against the foot of the bed.

“There’s only this, Major Lord Ives.”

They laid the little gold watch in the man’s palm, and Thomas squinted at him. Whoever he was, Lord Stephen wasn’t the man in the portrait.

He looked down at Thomas in surprise. “Where the hell did you get this?”

“Won it,” Thomas managed, his tongue thick. “Who are—”

“I’ll ask the questions,” Lord Stephen snapped, his fingers closing over the timepiece, and Thomas frowned at the loss of it. “Who the devil are you?” he asked Thomas twice, once in English, and again in German.

“Nobody,” Thomas replied in English, though his voice was so slurred it might have been any language. He glanced at Julia, who stood silently behind the man, staring down at him, her face white. She was as beautiful as he remembered. “I simply came to return—” he began, but Lord Stephen raised his hand to strike him, and Thomas braced for the blow. It didn’t come. Julia caught his hand.

“He’s English. His name is Thomas Merritt,” she supplied for him.

He gave her a lopsided grin, though it hurt. “Forgive me for not bowing, Your Grace.”

She colored to a deep shade of scarlet, and his breath caught. No, she wasn’t as beautiful as he remembered, she was even prettier—with her hair loose around her shoulders and her bare feet.

“Take him down to the guard room,” Lord Stephen ordered.

“Dr. Bowen, would you take a look at his forehead first?” Julia asked breathlessly, turning to one of the other men who stood in the room. The third appeared to be a footman.

Thomas turned to regard his captor. “A doctor?” he asked, but the good doctor was looking at Lord Stephen for confirmation of Julia’s request.

“Please, my lord. I fear I may have injured him—”

Judging by the look on his face, Thomas was sure Lord Stephen would refuse, order him taken to the lowest dungeon, if the grand palaces on the civilized Minoritenplatz had such things, but the man nodded at last. “Take him to the sitting room. I’ll be there momentarily.”

They grabbed his arms, hauled him to his feet and dragged him toward the door. “Boots,” he said, but they ignored him, left his footwear lying by the window. He glanced over his shoulder at Julia. She was staring at him, and Lord Stephen was staring at her. Then he was in the hallway, sliding over the icy marble tiles in his stocking feet.

Why on earth would the Duchess of Temberlay be in Vienna? he wondered.

There was something definitely wrong here, and as soon as his head stopped pounding and he had his wits back, he’d figure out just what it was.

Of course, he’d probably wake up in the morning a corpse in a ditch, next to the cold dead body of Patrick Donovan.

He almost laughed at the foolish idea of waking up dead, but it hurt too much at the moment.

His captors yanked him into a well-appointed sitting room gleaming with polished wood, plush with comfortable furnishings, and shoved him into a chair. More curtain ties bound him to it. He looked longingly at the crystal decanters that sat on the delicate side table.

The doctor poked at his wound and winced. “She has a good arm,” he said, shaking his head. “But you’ll live.”

He’d live—at least until they hanged him, or shot him, or turned him over to Erich, who would do both.

He laid his head back and shut his eyes, trying to still the wave of dizziness.

At least he’d had the opportunity to see Julia Leighton once more before he met his end. The familiar ache passed through his breast, a feeling he’d come to associate with her. Now it was even stronger, knowing she was in the very next room. Whatever the reason she was here, he was glad that she was.

Seeing her once more might just be worth the pain he was about to face.

Chapter 29

S
tephen went downstairs to find Charles Stewart. The first question he wanted to ask was how the hell the man in charge of ensuring that the embassy was guarded day and night against intruders could have let this happen. Julia might have been—

He stopped on the staircase and stared into space, and considered, felt another emotion stir in his chest, this one unfamiliar.

Julia
knew
him, this Thomas Merritt. He had found his way into her room by climbing the side of the building in the dark. She’d been undressed, half naked, tantalizingly clad in a mere slip of silk and lace, completely different than the prim Miss Leighton. And Thomas Merritt wasn’t wearing his boots. What kind of thief, if that’s what he was, took off his boots? He gripped the banister hard as jealousy tore at him. He might if he wasn’t planning a quick escape, or he intended to stay the night. Had she met him at Talleyrand’s, agreed to a tryst?

While he’d been waiting for her in the sitting room.

He reminded himself that she’d hit Merritt hard enough to leave him senseless on her bedroom floor, just steps away from her sleeping son. What kind of woman did that to a lover?

He knocked briskly on Charles Stewart’s bedroom door. A sleepy manservant answered.

“Wake him. I need him upstairs at once,” Stephen ordered, not bothering to be polite.

“I would, but he isn’t here, Major. He’s out for the evening, and I don’t expect to see him until tomorrow.”

Stephen punched the door frame, and the man flinched and stepped back. “Do you know where he is?”

The man gave him a wry smile. “I’m sorry, Major Lord Ives, but it’s four in the morning. I doubt by now even Lord Stewart himself knows where he is.”

Stephen turned away. It wasn’t protocol, or his place, but he’d interrogate Thomas bloody Merritt himself.

But first he had a few questions for Julia.

She was dressed when he knocked on her door, wearing a prim and sensible gown of moss-green wool, her hair plaited and bound as tightly as the prisoner. Her hazel eyes were sober as she regarded him, her cheeks stained a guilty pink—or was it anger?

“Did you meet him at Talleyrand’s?” he asked without preamble.

She looked surprised for a moment, then lowered her gaze. “No, I knew him in London,” she said.

“Why is he here?” he demanded, and she met his eyes again, her brows rising.

“Why was he in my bedroom in the middle of the night, or why is he in Vienna?” she asked quietly. “I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to either question, Major Lord Ives.”

He swallowed. They were back to Major Lord Ives, were they? Then he recalled she had never actually used his Christian name. Had she called the intruder by his name?

He retreated to safer, more sensible ground. “He had Doe’s watch in his pocket,” he said, and drew it out to show her. She hesitated a moment before she took it from him and opened it, letting the familiar notes of the lullaby play.

“I thought she said she’d sold it for—” She paused, looked up at him with sudden realization, coloring anew. “Thomas Merritt gave Dorothea
laudanum
?” she asked, her brow furrowing. “But that’s entirely—” She stopped and swallowed, snapping the watch shut, cutting off the tune.

“Is it?” he asked.

Her brow furrowed as she studied the watch, ran her fingers over the damaged case. “I don’t know,” she said at last. She bit her lip, as if dreading something. “I suppose Dorothea could tell us if he was the man who gave her the drug. I—I didn’t see him at the ball that night.”

“Are you defending him?”

She looked surprised. “No, of course not.”

“How well do you know him?” he demanded, his hopes pinned on her answer.

She turned pink again. “Not terribly well. We met only—briefly.”

He had the urge to pull her close, kiss her again, see if he could taste the truth on her lips, read it in her eyes, but she stepped back, wary, folding her arms across her chest in defense against such intimacy.

What on earth was he doing? He had never, ever been jealous of any woman before, never acted on emotion as he was doing now. But Julia wasn’t any woman. He had kissed her, told her he loved her.

He took the watch back, the brush of her fingertips against his sending shock waves through his body. He straightened himself, took control.

“I’ll speak to Dorothea when she gets up. For now, I have questions for Thomas Merritt.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“I think not,” he said coldly.

She leveled a determined look at him. “I shot a man yesterday, my lord. Then I knocked Mr. Merritt senseless. I have no wish to make harming people a regular activity. I wish to make sure I have done no permanent damage, since I cannot ascertain whether or not the man I shot is dead. I too want to know why he came here.”

There was no passion in her eyes, no feminine fear for a lover, merely determination. Still, he was inclined to refuse, to tell her to wait in her room and not dare to stir until she was summoned to give an official account of herself before himself and Lord Castlereagh.

But he wanted to see her with him, watch her as she looked at Merritt, see the truth. He nodded.

She picked up Merritt’s boots and followed him down the hall to the sitting room.