Always a Rogue, Forever Her Love (Scandalous Seasons Book 4) Page 22

  He pounded on the roof of the carriage.

  His driver opened the door and stuck his head inside. “My lord?”

  “To…” You act so high and mighty, Sinclair. “To…” You act so indignant, when in truth, you are just like me.”

  “My lord?”

  So, what was the difference, you or Lord Williams? Both of you wanted her for the same purpose.

  “Home, Marshall.” You tried to make my sister your whore. “I’d have you drive me home.”

  Marshall’s mouth screwed up. “You’re certain, my lord?” It was the closest the servant who’d clearly heard the entire exchange with Marshville came to questioning his employer.

  Jonathan nodded once. The driver slammed the door and the carriage dipped slightly as he climbed atop his box.

  A moment later he snapped the horses forward.

  Jonathan stared blankly at the window. Albert Marshville had been shockingly correct in all the biting charges he’d leveled. Like Lord Williams, Jonathan had been less than honorable where Juliet was concerned.

  There was one slight, yet significant difference.

  Jonathan loved her enough to finally do the honorable thing.

  Stay away.

  Chapter 20

  July 1819

  Jonathan picked up his glass of whiskey and rolled it between his hands. He stared into the amber depths, the burnished orange-red hue put him in mind of hair the same color as a burnt sunset.

  He set the glass down with a thunk. Liquid droplets splashed the surface of his desk, and onto the opened sketchpad.

  He fixed his gaze on the book left by Juliet more than three months ago. The grinning visage of a gentleman who looked a good deal like him stared up from the page. Only this gentleman possessed an easy grin and a carefree spirit.

  He no longer knew that man. That gentleman had died sometime in the days after he’d made the decision to not fight for Juliet.

  Oh, that wasn’t to say the selfish scoundrel in him had at all respected his silent pledge he’d taken to stay away from Juliet. He’d gotten on his horse more times than he could count and galloped in the direction of Kent but always dug deep and found the strength to double-back around. A humorless grin turned his lips. Who would have imagined that someone else’s very happiness mattered to him more than his own?

  “I have doubts you’ll be able to stand this evening, if you continue in this manner,” his mother snapped from the doorway.

  He grinned and poured himself another. “Mother!” he said jovially, and raised his glass in mock salute.

  Her frown deepened. She entered the room, and then trotting behind her came four dark-haired devils who’d tormented him for most of his life. They lined up in a single, determined line, arms folded across their chests.

  Penelope glowered at him. “You smell hor–disgusting, Jonathan.” She bristled at the pointed looks thrown her way by her sisters. “What? I didn’t say horrid. I said disgusting.”

  A still familiar pain pierced his heart. Juliet had tried valiantly to strike that single word from his sisters’ vernacular. It appeared in the end, she’d proven mostly successful. Would the pain of losing her ever fade? He forced a smile for their behalf. “How lovely it is to see—”

  Poppy stuck a finger out, silencing him. “Stuff it, Jonathan.”

  He blinked. “You called me Jonathan.”

  She threw her arms into the air. “Of course I did. No decent, proper young lady would refer to her brother as Sin. Surely you know that?”

  “Neither do young ladies throw their arms up in a dramatic fashion,” Prudence muttered under her breath. Four pairs of eyes swung in her direction. She shifted back and forth upon her slippered feet. “I was merely pointing out that detail. Not that I don’t agree with Poppy. Because I do. A young lady mustn—”

  “Please, ladies.” Patrina shook her head with the somberness of a Society matron and not the young minx who’d done something so foolhardy as to nearly elope with a heartless cad. “We mustn’t lose focus on the purpose of this visit.”

  Five pairs of eyes swiveled back to Jonathan. He swallowed a groan at the determined sets to their mouths. He’d well learned over the years when the ladies in his household wore those defiant expressions, the best course was either to flee or hide. Alas, between the five of them fixed between him and the door, they posed quite an impenetrable wall. He propped his hip on the edge of the leather sofa. “Well, on with it then? Is it more pin money you seek?”

  Penelope gasped. “You are hor—reprehensible, Jonathan. We are not here to discuss the matter of pin money.” Pause. “Though if you’d care to increase your generousness—”

  “Penelope,” Mother said with a pointed frown.

  The girl colored. “I was merely saying if he wanted to increase it, we shan’t protest. But, yes, that isn’t the matter for this visit.”

  His heart pulled at the change wrought by Juliet on his incorrigible sisters. Horrid stricken from the vernacular. Well, nearly anyway. The girls were making a marked, and impressive attempt. He was Sin no more, but Jonathan to the girls who’d always appreciated a flourish for the dramatic.

  Poppy took a step toward him. “You know, Penelope is correct,” she said, as though it pained her to make such an admission.

  Time should have taught him to not respond to Poppy’s bait. He quirked an eyebrow.

  She sniffed the air. “You smell horr…” She glared at her sisters’ deliberate looks. “I was going to say horrendous.”

  Patrina nodded her head once. “I don’t normally agree with Poppy, but you smell as though you’ve been bathing in brandy.”

  “Whiskey,” he corrected.

  Penelope’s eyes went wide. “You’ve been bathing in whiskey?”

  “Have I been…?” Jonathan pressed his fingers against his temples and rubbed. They were giving him a dashed megrim. “No, I have not been bathing in whiskey, I was merely...” He waved a hand. “Never mind, what are you all on about?”

  His sisters looked toward Mother. She smoothed her hands along her skirts, and cleared her throat. “We are here about your Miss Marshville,” she said as calmly as if she’d said, ‘I’ve ordered tea and biscuits for refreshments’.

  He took a sip of whiskey. “My Miss Marshville?”

  “This…” Mother gestured to his rumpled garments, “is all about Miss Marshville, isn’t it?”

  This is about how little my life means without her. Jonathan said nothing. He expected his mother to launch into a diatribe about all the ways in which Juliet was an unsuitable match, fully prepared, nay looking forward, to launching into a defense of the woman who’d claimed not on his heart but the hearts of his sisters. So he was startled at her next words.

  “I’ve come to the realization that we—”

  Patrina cleared her throat.

  Mother blushed. “Very well, I came to the realization that Juliet, she…” She paused, as if searching for the right words.

  “You love her,” Patrina put forth. “You love her, and you’re not the same man without her, and…you really do need to go get and bring her back, Jonathan.” She glanced over at their mother. “Isn’t that what you were trying to say, Mother?”

  His mother nodded. “It is.” Her lips tightened. “Furthermore, it has come to my attention,” she fixed her disappointed stare on Prudence. “That lies were told where you and Juliet were concerned.”

  Prudence glanced down at the tips of her slippers, head hung in shame.

  It had only been a lie because Juliet had too much honor to agree to a position as his mistress. Otherwise, Pru would have been right. He’d have been the roguish scoundrel Society took him for and ruined a respectable young lady’s reputation.

  Mother sighed. “Juliet is a good woman, Jonathan. She sacrificed herself without question to salvage Patrina’s reputation. I am sorry I sent her away.” She turned her hands up. “At the time, I believed I was acting in the best interest of all my children.”

&
nbsp; The knife twisted again in his stomach. Then, that was the kind of woman Juliet Marshville happened to be. Selfless, fearless, and uncowed by any man.

  “I don’t, in all my years, remember you this way,” Mother said.

  “And what way is that, Mother?” he asked tiredly.

  “Broken.”

  A humorless chuckle escaped him. Broken seemed a rather apt way to describe a shell of a man with a broken heart and a broken conscience and—

  “You need to go to her, Jonathan,” Patrina’s interruption cut into his musings.

  He dragged the back of his hand over his eyes. “I can’t. She’s gone. I don’t deserve her.” He would never stop loving her. She would forever occupy every last corner of his useless heart. Jonathan raised his glass to his lips, but his mother strode over, and snatched it from his fingers. She set it down on the nearest table so hard it sent liquid drops spraying onto the Aubusson carpet.

  “Then you don’t love her,” she snapped.

  “Don’t,” he cried and then took a calming breath. “Don’t. I…” He glanced at his sisters and then back to his mother careful with his words. “I have not been honorable where Juliet is concerned.” That was the safest admission he could make in front of four young ladies.

  Poppy sighed and flung herself into a nearby leather-winged back chair. “I don’t like Jonathan. I preferred Sin. Why, Sin who would simply go and take back his Miss Marshville because he loved her and couldn’t live without her and didn’t care…”

  Mother glowered at her.

  “What?” she grumbled. “I do. This Jonathan fellow is stodgy and proper and will suffer a broken heart for it.”

  He blinked. By God, he must be going mad, or perhaps he already was, but Poppy’s words penetrated the agonized stupor he’d lived in for nearly three months and actually made sense.

  She was right.

  He might have wronged Juliet and set her free out of love for her, but he needed to see her, needed the decision to be hers and not one he made for her.

  And if she chose to send him on his way then…

  Jonathan shoved aside the thought. He’d not let himself think of any other possibility but one that involved her becoming the Countess of Sinclair.

  He smiled.

  “You’re going for her,” his mother said with a nod of approval.

  “I’m going for her.

  Chapter 21

  Juliet knelt in the soft earth and snipped back the overgrown pink rose bush. She brushed back her wide straw bonnet. A bead of moisture dotted her brow and she dashed it away.

  Once upon a lifetime ago, Jonathan Tidemore, the Earl of Sinclair had spoken to her of warm summer days in her gardens of Rosecliff Cottage. He’d tantalized her with forbidden thoughts of making love under the glittering stars. He’d teased her with the promise of what-ifs. In her heart, she’d wanted him to be her gentleman under the stars.

  She touched a purplish-pink rose and palmed the satiny smooth bloom. Now, she could never gaze upon another night sky without thoughts of him.

  With a sigh Juliet looked around at the overgrown garden. Her poor cottage had been woefully neglected. Then, when there was no prideful owner in residence, disrepair tended to occur. The opened sketchpad on the ground snagged her attention.

  The grinning gentleman stared back up at her—he, the true owner of this cottage she’d commandeered without his knowing…or perhaps without his caring.

  A gentleman of his vast wealth would have little need for a modest dwelling such as Rosecliff Cottage.

  Juliet gave her head a shake and returned her attention to a branch covered in tear-shaped green leaves. Then, she had hoped if he’d not come for his cottage that he mayhap had come to care enough to come for her.

  She snipped off the excess greenery.

  In the three months since she’d been escorted to Rosecliff Cottage by Lord Drake and bartered her every happiness for the protection of Patrina’s name, not a day had passed that she’d not thought of Jonathan.

  On her better days, she had wondered whether he missed her. On her worst days, she railed at him for not having loved her as she loved him. On her very worst days, she sobbed bitter angry tears that he’d either not known or cared to know where she’d taken herself off to.

  Yet, she had always prided herself on being logical.

  Logic had told her since the moment she’d met the Earl of Sinclair that nothing could ever exist between them. There was the history between Jonathan and her brother, the loss of Rosecliff Cottage, and then ultimately his offer to make her first his governess, then his mistress.

  Such thoughts had compelled her to take that which was owed her—Rosecliff Cottage. The beloved brick-front home had always mattered more to her than Albert, and certainly more than it did to Jonathan who’d never even bothered to visit the modest property he’d won in a game of faro. Pain lanced her heart.

  He’d never come.

  She had been so very certain that he would, not necessarily to visit the property but because he would surely have known she’d come here.

  These past months now, she’d managed to tilt her chin back up and live as she had before Jonathan; confidently, boldly, and when she could…happily. She stared blankly down at the smiling visage upon the opened sketchpad.

  Well, mayhap not happily.

  Juliet sat back on her haunches amidst the cluster of rose bushes and pink peonies and dragged over the sketchpad. She touched her fingers to the sun-warmed sketch of Jonathan.

  Had he wed his Lady Beatrice? Was he in fact kissing the lovely young lady with those sinfully knowing lips?

  A spasm of grief ripped through her body and she tossed the book to the ground. “Enough,” she whispered.

  A shadow fell over her, and she glanced up at the cloudless summer blue sky with a frown.

  “Hullo, Juliet.”

  Juliet shrieked and pitched forward. She landed in a tangled heap amidst her rose bush. Jagged thorns bit painfully into the soft flesh of her palm. She shoved herself upright and turned.

  Jonathan!

  Oh God. You are here? Where have you been?

  He beat his riding crop against his thigh, looking impossibly handsome with his tousled, too-long black locks. Her fingers twitched with a sudden need to brush them back from his forehead. She swallowed hard. “Jonathan.”

  Their gazes locked and held. A shiver coursed through her body at the desire in his sapphire blue eyes. Then he glanced away, looking at a point beyond her shoulder.

  “This is my Rosecliff Cottage?” he said, more to himself.

  She wet her lips. “This is my Rosecliff Cottage,” she corrected.

  The claim so very reminiscent to that long ago night outside the Hell and Sin Club.

  He stood before her looking impossibly handsome, and still elegant in his simple buckskin breeches and black tailcoat. Oh God, how she’d missed him.

  She curled her toes inside her serviceable boots at the contrast she presented sweated, in her mud-splattered fuchsia skirts.

  He tossed his riding crop down beside her sketchpad and held his hand out.

  She eyed his outstretched fingers a moment, and then placed her fingertips in his palm. It was like coming home. More a home than this lonely cottage ever had been.

  Wordlessly he wiped away the trickle of blood left by the thorn and raised her fingers to his lips.

  “I should have come for you. I wanted to.”

  “Did you?” She couldn’t call back the bitterness of that reply. “And what of Patrina? How is she?” She rushed before he could speak.

  “She is fine,” he assured her.

  How could she be fine? Albert had absconded with the young lady and taken her to Rosecliff, and well, young ladies didn’t survive such a scandal.

  “No one has discovered the truth, Juliet,” he said, as if reading her thoughts.

  “B-but…” They would. Society always discovered the secret shame carried by its members.

  “Yo
ur brother will say nothing. I’ve spoken to him.” The flinty edge to that pronouncement gave her pause. She tried to read his guarded expression, unsuccessful in her attempt.

  Jonathan reached into the front of his jacket and pulled out a thick packet. He pressed it into her palm.

  Juliet stared a moment. She used the tip of her finger to loosen the ribbon that bound the velum together. She opened the packet and read. Her heart paused.

  She looked up at him and found him solemn.

  “It is yours, Juliet. It has always belonged to you. I just didn’t realize it.”

  All the hope she didn’t realize she’d held since he’d reappeared in her life, died.

  The deed to Rosecliff Cottage. This is what he’d give her. Her home. The beautiful sanctuary she’d loved since she’d been a girl, and fought so desperately for the return of. He would give her this. But where was the elation? The sense of victory? Of gratitude? “Oh,” she managed to squeeze past dry lips. In this, the kindest, most generous gesture, he would give her Rosecliff Cottage, but selfishly Juliet wanted more.

  He spoke haltingly. “Do you no longer want it?”

  She wanted him. Juliet turned the packet over in her hands and lied. “Of course.” “Thank you,” she said stiffly.

  “I owe you an apology.” His words, harsh and guttural, jerked her attention upwards.

  She furrowed her brow. “For…?”

  His tautly held shoulders indicated the thin thread he had on his control. “I offered to make you my mistress. I foolishly spoke to you about baubles and trinkets, and promised it all to you, if you’d take me as your lover.”

  What had once so appalled her, now enticed. Juliet loved him so desperately she was almost tempted to throw away her virtue for the pleasure of his embrace. Almost. She suspected, if it wouldn’t kill her the day he decided he no longer wanted that place in her bed, she might more seriously consider his offer.

  “Will you not say anything, Juliet?”

  She traced the tip of her tongue over the seam of her lips. “What would you have me say?”