Three Nights with a Scoundrel

Page 4

She suddenly tilted her head and narrowed her eyes at him. “I’ve just formed a suspicion. I think I know who … or rather, what, you truly are.”
His pulse quickened. Sweat beaded at the back of his neck. Despite the mad upheaval in his chest, he strove to look bored. “Oh yes?”
With a glance to either side, she inched closer. Her eyes gleamed with humor. “You’re a vampire. Aren’t you?”
A relieved chuckle escaped him. He made a show of stretching his arm along the back of the bench—not coincidentally toward her—and defiantly tilting his face to the sun. After a long moment, he cocked an eyebrow. “Here I am, sitting in broad daylight. I haven’t disintegrated to ashes yet.”
“No. Not yet.” Her voice went serious. “You must stop. You must give up this search before it kills you, too.”
Julian rubbed his eyes briefly, then dropped his hand. “Impossible.”
“Not impossible. Merely difficult. Believe me, I do understand. I’ve buried myself in ledgers and papers, putting things in order for the transfer of the estate. I could leave the duty to others, but I don’t. Because as much effort as it is, I need the distraction. Grieving is work in its own right. A harsh, relentless sort of labor.”
He would not have thought to phrase it so, but she was right. Julian felt as though he’d been spending recent months digging trenches with a teaspoon. But there was more to this than Lily supposed.
“It’s not just a distraction,” he said, trying to explain as best he could without revealing details. “I need answers. Leo deserves answers.”
“Sometimes there are no answers.”
Before he could argue back, a pair of beribboned young girls in white pinafores bounced past, hand in hand. A round-faced nursemaid followed them, tugging a miniature terrier by the leash. The dog gave Julian’s boot a low growl.
Lily cleared her throat. “I had an unexpected caller the other day. Lady Norwich. You remember her.”
The abrupt change of subject set his brain spinning. “Do I?”
“I should hope so. You had an affair with her two summers ago. Before her husband passed away.”
“Oh.” An awkward pause. “That Lady Norwich.” With false nonchalance, he asked, “And what did she have to say?”
“She wants me to marry her brother, Mr. Burton.”
He sputtered. Damn that Maria Norwich. She wasn’t supposed to be so obvious. But then, subtlety never had been Maria’s forte. “She said that?”
“No, of course she didn’t say it. But there is no other reason she should have called, except to pave the way for her brother. She had nothing whatsoever to talk about. Just sat there like a stick, sipping tea.”
“I didn’t know sticks could sip tea.”
She cut him a stern look. He could tell she meant that glare to have teeth. The problem was, when Lily was near, Julian’s thoughts fixated on lips and tongue.
“Stop making fun,” she said. “I know you sent her, or at least put the thought in her head. You’re matchmaking again.”
“Burton will inherit an earldom.”
“I am not interested in Mr. Burton, or his earldom.”
Leaning forward, he reached into her lap and took her hands in his. She cast an apprehensive glance to the side, and he ignored it. Etiquette be damned, he had to convince her of this.
He squeezed her gloved fingers tight. “You must marry, and soon.”
“I don’t intend to marry at all.”
“Leo’s heir will arrive from Egypt in a matter of weeks.”
“Yes, and the new marquess is my cousin. We haven’t seen one another since childhood, but I doubt the man will cast me out of my home. He may be perfectly happy for me to manage the household until he marries, as I did for Leo. And if such an arrangement is not agreeable to us both, I will find living quarters of my own.”
“Alone? You cannot live alone.”
“I most certainly can. I am a single woman in possession of good fortune. Why should I be in want of a husband?”
“Lily …” He released her hands. There was no way to talk around it. “You cannot hear.”
“I am deaf, yes, and have been so these past nine years. And …?”
And there were innumerable obstacles for a deaf single woman setting up a household of her own, and well she knew it. She was simply being difficult. “The merchants will cheat you, for one.”
“Holling and Swift look out for me. And I can hire a companion.”
He made an exasperated gesture. “The companion will cheat you.”
“I’m safer in the hands of a cheating companion than saddled with a grasping fortune-hunter husband. Even if a servant siphons ten percent of my fortune, I still retain the greater part. If I marry, I lose control of everything. And really, Julian. Malachi Burton?” A laugh caught in her throat. “When we were younger, he lacked the temerity to ask me for a dance. Now marriage? He must presume me desperate indeed.”
Her gaze wandered to the center of the square. A little smile touched the corners of her lips. “You never knew me before my illness. I had so many suitors in my first season.”
Julian blinked at her. Unbelievable. She spoke the words as though they should come as a surprise. “As many as there were eligible gentlemen in London, I’d wager. You could have just as many now. Show your face at a party now and then, and the men would flock to you.”
“Please.” Her cheeks flushed. “I’m eight-and-twenty, not a debutante.”
“Were you eight-and-forty, any man would be lucky to marry you.”
“Any man would be lucky to attach himself to my money and connections, do you mean?”
He tsked. “Don’t fish for compliments, Lily. It’s unbecoming.”
“I’m not fishing for anything. I’m stating facts. Even ignoring my impairment—which most find difficult to ignore—by the ton’s standards, I’m a dried-up spinster.”
“Nonsense.” He brushed her cheek, then held up his thumb to mock inspection and pronounced, “Glistening with the dew of youth.”
With another woman, he might have put that same thumb in his mouth, lightly sucked it in lascivious suggestion. He would not do that with Lily. He would not. No matter how much he wished to savor the sweet essence of her skin.
She gave him an arch look, one eyebrow rising in reproof.
He returned the expression, mirroring her primness with such success that she laughed despite herself. He loved the sound of her laugh. It wasn’t musical or affected, just honest and real.
“I’ve missed this,” she said suddenly. “I’ve missed our friendship so much.”
Julian didn’t know what to say. Of course he’d missed her friendship, too. But did she have to graze his wrist when she said that, sit forward on the bench … tugging his eyes down the bodice of her dress, giving rise to desires that strayed well beyond the bounds of friendly discourse?
She said, “The house is so empty with Leo gone.”
God, yes. Speak of Leo. Help me smother this inappropriate yearning under a thick blanket of guilt and grief.
“I haven’t bothered with parties in years. The house was always full of his friends. I never felt deprived of companionship, but now …”—she straightened her glove—“those friends don’t come around so often as they might.”
He was unable to look at her for a moment. “I’ve been busy.”
In just how many ways was it possible to betray a friend? Julian had lied to Leo for the duration of their acquaintance, lusted after his sister for almost as long, and then sent the man alone to a violent death that had been meant for him instead. It galled and shamed him, to look back on the record of this “friendship” and feel how acutely, how catastrophically he’d failed. He’d vowed to prove a truer friend now, even as the poor man shivered in the grave. Justice for Leo’s murder and a suitable husband for Lily: These were now his guiding aims in life.
She noted his solemnity. “I know how hard it will be for you to let this investigation go. The senseless nature of it all offends you deeply. You’re so like Leo that way. He never could tolerate injustice. That’s why the two of you were such fast friends.” She framed his jaw with one hand, lifting his face until his eyes met hers. “He knew, as I do, that beneath all that scandal and devilry … you’re a good man, Julian Bellamy.”
A good man? Good Lord. She had no idea.
Just that slight, innocent touch—the curve of her palm, the scattered pressure of three fingertips against his cheek. Sensation rioted in his blood, incited by multiplying possibilities. They all started with a kiss. He wanted to kiss her again, right now, and do a proper job of it. Slide down the bench until their bodies met, steady her with a light touch, tilt her face to his … This time he would learn the taste of her.
This constant war between his base male instincts and what remained of his conscience—he’d been waging it for years. And by the gods, it was an epic struggle. Worthy of lutes and Homeric poetry. More. He deserved his own damned constellation.
You’re a good man, Julian Bellamy.
No, he really wasn’t a good man. Nor was he even Julian Bellamy. But he would pretend to be both, for a little bit longer.
“Leo was a good man.” He cleared his throat. “And you’re right. It’s the injustice I can’t abide. Good men should not be killed in alleyways. Brutal murders should not go unpunished. And,” he said with a meaningful look, “bright, beautiful ladies of marriageable age should not live vulnerable and alone.”
Her eyes went serious, unblinking. She leaned closer still. The epic battle, it would seem, was only beginning.
“Then don’t leave me.”
Chapter Three
It wasn’t easy for Lily, holding Julian’s gaze. His eyes were a bold, piercing blue. And the face they were set within … well, those fine features were unsettling indeed.
After years of friendship, Lily would have thought she’d be inured to his good looks. But no. She suspected there was something instinctual about it, something elementally female. Obviously, he had a certain effect on women. For a lady to look upon Julian Bellamy and not feel herself heat from within … well, it would be rather like a hare calmly staring into the eyes of a wolf. Improbable—and even if it could be achieved, imprudent.
But no matter how her heart bounded in her chest, Lily held his gaze, hoping to sink home the import of her words.
Don’t leave me. I can’t lose you, too.
Could she even explain what his friendship meant to her? Their connection was both open and secret at once; in some ways freely admitted and in others never discussed. While she and Leo had almost known each other too well, every interaction with Julian felt fresh and exciting. He made her think, laugh, debate.
Lately, however, he just had her terrified. Since Leo’s death, each time she saw him, he looked a little more gaunt, a little less alive. And then that scare today in the early morning hours …
Even now, she felt the slick warmth of his blood on her fingertips, the strength of his grip tangled in her hair.
The taste of desperation still lingered on her lips.
That kiss … botched and meaningless as it was, it had changed everything. It was the kiss of a soldier marching off to war, or a man on his way to the gallows. The kiss of a man who expected to die, and soon.
She would not allow it. She couldn’t.
“Losing my brother was the most horrid thing to ever happen to me,” she told him. “I can’t lose you, too. I just want you to be safe.”
“Can’t you understand? I feel the same. I want you safe, and you only refuse my attempts to secure your future.”