Always a Rogue, Forever Her Love (Scandalous Seasons Book 4) Page 18

  “You know you don’t want that, sweet,” he said coaxingly. “Why do you continue to fight me?" His tone bore the same satiny edge of a cool, metal blade.

  “Just leave.” Her sharp cry sent the kestrel in the tree branches above into flight. Juliet stilled as a familiar figure appeared just beyond Lord Williams’ shoulder. Never before had she been more grateful for the timely appearance of another soul.

  Jonathan caught her gaze; questions reflected in the blue depths of his eyes. Then, he leveled a hard stare on Lord Williams. “I believe the young lady asked you to leave, sir,” he said in clipped tones.

  Jonathan stared stock-still, his gaze fixed on the bastard who’d dared put his hands upon Juliet’s skin. When he had started after her earlier that morning, he’d imagined stealing a private moment with her, away from the suspicious eyes of his mother and sisters. He had not thought to encounter this…nameless fiend, who didn’t have the sense to realize Juliet belonged to Jonathan in every sense of the word.

  Tension thrummed through Jonathan’s body as he took in the panicky glitter in her eyes, and he looked once more to the other man, fashionably attired in fawn-colored breeches and blood-red jacket.

  Jonathan had come upon Juliet, conversing with the gentleman a short while ago. The actual words of their exchange had been lost to him. He’d hovered on the edge of the wooded copse, torn apart by an unholy jealousy of the other man’s nearness to her tall, willowy frame. The man’s positioning and low tone had hinted at a familiarity between the unlikely couple. A woman of her general warmth and kindness would never have dealings with the hard-mouthed, sneering gentleman. Then Jonathan had registered the horror in Juliet’s terror-filled eyes.

  He flicked a cold stare over the gentleman. The stranger gave a curt bow of his head, and with a final, lingering glance in Juliet’s direction, walked a wide path around Jonathan, and took his leave.

  The fluttery dance of the leaves overhead and Juliet’s harsh breathing was the only sound in the still area.

  “Did he hurt you?” For if he did, by God Jonathan would drag the bastard back to this secluded spot at the river and rip his entrails through his coward’s throat like the animal he was.

  The clipped question yanked her attention back to him. She shook her head. “No.” That one word utterance, so firm, so unwavering from his beautiful warrioress. She folded her arms across tight to her waist as though chilled and in need of warmth.

  “Who was he, Juliet?”

  She wet her lips. “I don’t...”

  He stalked over to where she hovered at the edge of the river. “Do not.” Jonathan forced himself to take a deep calming breath, and he leaned close. “Do not,” he said again, in a hushed, angry whisper.

  For the protection afforded the trees, Polite Society hovered just beyond, unaware of the tumult in the picturesque landscape.

  If he so wished, Jonathan could command those that worked his land-holdings and members of the peerage with nothing more than a black, censorious glower. And yet, this delicate slender beauty with hair the color of sunset should stand there, a mutinous set to her mouth, deliberately silent.

  Jonathan cursed. “Who is he?”

  “He is a close friend of my brother.” Juliet dipped a curtsy, and walked away.

  By God, the audacious minx had more pluck than all the lords in the House of Lords. “Where are you going?” Did she merely think to leave him here without any answers to the questions tumbling through his mind?

  Her boot hung suspended mid-air. She completed the step. “I must return and see to my responsibilities.”

  “I granted you Sundays free, Juliet.”

  She tilted her chin up. “Did you follow me here today? For what purpose would you spy on me?” Her scolding tone would be better reserved for her young charges.

  He arched an eyebrow. “I’m the Earl of Sinclair. I don’t spy on anyone. I merely ask, and information is imparted.”

  “Oh, your level of arrogance is staggering,” she hissed. “How dare you?”

  “I dare because your behavior today hardly inspires a sense of trustworthiness.” Her throat bobbed up and down. Tears flooded her eyes, giving them the look of fathomless pools he wanted to drown himself in. His heart cracked. In the time he’d come to know Juliet, he’d seen her spitting mad, deliberately teasing but never this broken, crushed creature before him now. “Ah, God, Juliet.” Her name, a prayer, an entreaty merged as one and he pulled her into his arms.

  Only, she struggled against him like an angry cat, clawing at his chest. “Stop it. Just, release me.”

  For a too-long, ugly moment it seemed as though she saw him the same as the cold-eyed, leering bastard who’d put his hands upon her a short while ago. Pain knifed through him that she should ever put him into a category with a man she’d clearly feared and detested. “I would never hurt you,” he murmured against her ear, all the while he maintained his delicate hold about her.

  She rested her forehead against his chest, and at last allowed him to give her his strength. He didn’t know how long they stood there, her wrapped in his embrace. It may have been minutes, or hours. Time melted away, and of all the power afforded him as an earl, never before had he wanted anything more than to order the whole world away, so that just they two remained.

  He thought of Poppy’s confession about Juliet’s crippled leg, and it occurred to him, how little he really knew of her. And he didn’t merely want to know the identity of the gentleman in the copse or about the incident at Hyde Park. Jonathan rested his chin atop the crown of her fire-kissed tresses. He wanted to know all of it…every last piece of her. “I want to know everything there is to know about you,” he said quietly. “Tell me, Juliet.” And he’d come to know his Juliet enough to know it unlikely she’d give him answers to even one of those questions.

  “Why? Because you’ll remove me from my post if I do not?” she tossed at him.

  He edged away from her, and closely studied a face that had become so very precious to him. “Do you truly believe that of me? Do you think I’d so carelessly toss you from my home?” He could no sooner separate one of his limbs from his person. So accustomed to her guardedness, her next, whisper-soft words nearly bowled him over.

  “My father died more than a year ago.”

  He looked at her face, but the elegant planes of her cheeks gave little indication as to her thoughts. “I’m so sorry.” Jonathan realized before he’d finished speaking how wholly inadequate his apologies were.

  “He fell ill,” she went on, her gaze directed inward. “One day he came down with a fever. Three days later he’d died. I, of course mourned Papa, but Albert,” a brittle smile formed on her lips. “Albert took himself to London and…” She shrugged. “Well, you know Albert. You know what he did.”

  His jaw tightened. She spoke as though he kept frequent company with her reprobate, whoremonger of a brother. “And you remained alone.”

  She remained silent.

  Jonathan gritted his teeth so hard, pain shot from his jaw to his temple. As the older brother to four sisters, he had always seen himself as an extension of his father. His sisters’ every happiness had mattered to him more than his own. And here was Juliet, on her own in the world, sitting in hired hacks in wait for the gentleman who’d won her precious cottage. A vitriolic rage boiled inside him toward her brother and threatened to consume him with an animalistic fury. Not trusting himself to speak, he waited for her to continue.

  “He couldn’t be more different than my calm, practical papa. Papa valued hard-work, and cool logic. My brother thinks nothing of wagering all on a game of chance.” She shook her head as if even after the year since her father’s death, she still couldn’t quite believe it. “He met a gentleman in London and they became fast friends. He…he…began to court me.” She smiled wryly. “I believed he intended to offer marriage.”

  A loud buzzing filled Jonathan’s ears, and he stared unblinking at her. Some gentleman had fought to claim her. The
truth of that gnawed at his insides for the realness of it; there had been another, and not a mere fictitious man Jonathan had conjured in his mind.

  Something raw, something violent roared to life inside him, as a burning hatred for the man who’d nearly made her his wife, filled every corner of his being. On the heel of it, came the darkest niggling possibility. “Are you betrothed?” The question slid past tight lips. Because if she was, it would destroy him.

  “Betrothed?” A mirthless laugh escaped her. “No, he would not wed me.”

  Odd, he should all at once be relieved, and yet ache with hurt for the clear pain in her words.

  Juliet stepped out of his arms and he followed her movements as she wandered over to the edge of the water. She continued to hold her arms wrapped about her.

  “What happened?”

  “You are acquainted with Albert. He is a wastrel. An insolent fool who sat down to a losing hand of cards,” her voice broke ever so slightly, and she averted her eyes, as though embarrassed to show hurt for the circumstances to befall her. She cleared her throat. “Just as he lost Rosecliff Cottage to you, he lost even more to this friend.”

  His breath slipped past his teeth on a hiss, her meaning clear. The gentleman had wanted to make her his mistress. Fury blinded his vision, and he blinked it back. What manner of man would offer her a temporary place in his bed when he could possess her forever? What—?

  Jonathan recoiled, feeling as though he’d been dealt a swift jab to his midsection. He’d made the same indecent offer to Juliet. He had offered her the role of his mistress; having pledged jewels and baubles, which he now realized would mean nothing to an honorable woman such as her. Jonathan stretched a hand out, but with her back to him she could not note his silent plea of forgiveness. He let his hand fall to his side.

  “I’m so sorry, Juliet.” He didn’t refer solely to the nameless bastard who’d sought to destroy her reputation. Instead, he craved absolution for his own crimes against her.

  Her delicate shoulders, which bore the weight of more than any one person deserved, lifted in a slight shrug.

  He crossed over to her, until they stood side by side, their thighs brushing, and he stared out at the water. At last the question he’d carried, how a refined young lady came to be outside of the Hell and Sin Club. “It is why you became a governess.” Because she’d had too much honor and pride to make herself the whore to a bored gentleman. “My offer was the more palatable of your options.” And then he’d gone and asked the same thing of her as that bastard.

  The late afternoon sun threw their shadows upon the crystalline surface of the rippling water, and he detected her nod on the river. “I lost everything,” she said quietly. “My home, my father, my opportunity to make a respectable match. My virtue was—is—all I have left. That, and my pride.” She looked to him. “And, when your sisters’ instruction is complete, I will have Rosecliff Cottage, too.”

  Jonathan tried to imagine her as a young lady who’d just lost her father, with a brother who’d squandered all their wealth, and the crushing fear she’d surely known. He balled his hands into tight fists at his side. Juliet had displayed courage and honor in the tragedy that had befallen her, whereas he had spent too many years living in a state of self-indulgence, gaming and drinking. He’d never been more humbled than this very moment. He scrubbed a hand over his face trying to drive back the memory of their first meeting.

  He’d been a smug, self-serving bastard who’d seen in the beautiful stranger a mistress for himself and a governess for his sisters. She had seen him as nothing more than a self-indulgent scoundrel who toyed with her life and her girlhood home.

  Just then he detested himself.

  “I learned one day,” she continued, jerking him from his tortured musings, “the absolute precariousness of my situation.”

  Jonathan glanced down at her. She worried the flesh of her lower lip with her teeth. With his teasing words, and his talk of kisses, in her mind, she’d surely seen him as no different than the gentleman who would have forced himself upon her.

  She deserved to be cloaked in diamonds and sapphires, and draped in the finest French silk, not as some gentleman’s mistress but as an honorable gentleman’s wife.

  Staring at her, studying the smattering of freckles, her bow-shaped lips, he acknowledged the truth—a rogue such as him could never be worthy of Juliet.

  Juliet attempted to decipher the inscrutable expression worn by Jonathan but his face may as well have been carved of stone.

  She looked to him, needing there to be truth between them. “You asked what I’m hiding from. I’m hiding from the gentleman who made me that indecent offer. Not because he made it,” she said on a rush. Baron Williams had deserved her well-placed knee in his groin for such a scandalous proposition, but that had not been what caused her to clout him over the head with a candelabra. “I nearly killed him.” The damning whisper circled around them, and chilled, even in spite of the warm afternoon sun.

  Jonathan stood silent, as though he knew there was more to her admission, and unwilling to find her guilty. It gave her the courage to continue.

  “He…” She took a deep breath and pressed on. “He nearly raped me. He grabbed me here,” she touched a hand to her breast and then warmed with embarrassment for what had befallen her that day. “He ripped my gown. He kissed me here.” She touched a finger to her neck, and her breath quickened in panicked remembrance of the moment he’d raised her skirts. “And, I hit him over the head. I just reached for the nearest item. I didn’t intend to kill him, just to stop him. I didn’t think anything beyond stopping him from…from touching me.” Her jumbled words ran together, nearly incoherent, but she could not stop them from coming, feeling at last freed by the admission.

  Jonathan scrubbed his hands over his face, and when he dropped them at his side, she staggered back a step under the icy hardness that sharpened the harsh, angular planes of his face. A muscle ticked at the corner of his eye. “Who was he?”

  She angled her head, suddenly nervous of this fierce stranger she’d never before encountered.

  “I want his name, and he will regret having dared to put a hand upon you.”

  And in that moment, she fell in love with him all over again. She knew it imprudent, and hopeless as nothing could ever come of anything with Jonathan, the Earl of Sinclair, but she loved him. A man who believed her without reservation, who wanted to protect her like she was a cherished young lady in need of protecting—when no one had looked after her in so very long. Juliet swallowed hard.

  Jonathan’s back straightened, and his head whipped toward the entrance of the copse, from which Lord Williams had disappeared a short while ago. “It was him. That day in Hyde Park, when you claimed to have dropped your kerchief, you were in fact hiding from him, weren’t you?”

  She hesitated, and knowing any further attempt at prevarication futile, nodded once.

  His eyes narrowed into near-impenetrable slits. “He propositioned you, didn’t he? That is why he came for you this afternoon.” An edge, hard as the steel press of a blade, underlined his question.

  Juliet rocked back and forth on her heels. “He spoke of Newgate. He suggested—”

  “You aren’t going to Newgate,” he cut in with the bold conviction that could only be evinced by a man in possession of a lofty age-old title.

  “You can’t prevent him from seeking justice, Jonathan.”

  “Justice? There would be no justice in that.” He shook his head, and a black lock tumbled over his eye, the only softening to this stone-faced earl. “I will protect you. No harm will come to you as long as you belong to me.”

  Her heart skipped several beats, and then settled in a fast, pounding rhythm. He spoke so effortlessly of protecting her; of her belonging to him. But in what way? In no way that could ever be honorable. He spoke with all the resilient determination of a man who’d not known the desperation of being alone, at the mercy of those around him. He pledged to protect her, b
ut his were not the words of a gentleman seeking marriage to her.

  Or were they?

  “Are you offering marriage?” The lone cry of a kestrel above was her only response. She smiled sadly up at his unflinching face. “I didn’t believe so, Jonathan. You would make me your mistress, but I’ll never become your lover.” It would take her heart apart piece by piece to spend the fleeting days as his lover, knowing he’d wed, and one-day tire of her.

  His jaw flexed. “I would take care of you, Juliet.”

  “I don’t want to be with a man solely because he’ll take care of me," she interjected in hushed tones. “I want to marry a man because he cares for me, because he loves me.” She held her palms up. “I’d wed a gentleman because he can’t live a life without me.” She somehow gathered the words on his lips before he even uttered them. “I’d not have a man outside the bonds of matrimony. I have too much respect for myself, Jonathan.”

  Something stirred to life in his eyes; something powerful and harsh.

  Juliet winced at the curse that burst from his lips.

  He held his arm out. “This is not finished, Juliet,” he said between gritted teeth.

  A sad smile turned the corners of her lips downward as she placed her fingers on his coat sleeves and allowed him to escort her home.

  It had been finished before it had ever truly begun.

  Chapter 17