Three Nights with a Scoundrel

The cool night air took his sigh and made it a coil of vapor. A visible expression of his hesitance.

She grabbed the lapels of his coat and pulled him close, pressing her brow to his. “Choose me,” she said, in a tone that she feared was too close to pleading. “Choose us. I can’t go on like this, bidding you farewell over and over, not knowing what will become of you once you’ve left my sight. If you desert me tonight, Julian …”

Dear God, was she really saying this? In principle, Lily abhorred ultimatums. They made a woman look desperate and manipulative. But she was desperate, no denying it. And since reasoning, arguing, and outright begging hadn’t convinced him, manipulation seemed her only option left.

Before she could lose her nerve, she said, “Walk away from me right now, and I don’t want to see you again. Ever.”

Then she pulled away to wait for his answer. It was a lonely, unbearably quiet wait.

Everyone assumed that because she was deaf, her world was silent. But that wasn’t the case. She lived with a steady, cycling murmur of sound—much like the effect she’d experienced as a girl, pressing a seashell to her ear. A muted roar, forever washing and ebbing at the edges of her consciousness. For one hideous summer, a high, shrill whistle had lodged just inside her left eardrum, and its ceaseless whine had nearly driven her mad. She’d wept with relief the morning she awoke to find it mercifully gone. But even afterward, total quiet was something she’d never known.

Until now.

There was absence of sound—and then there was silence. Julian’s pause fell into the latter category.

After a long, soul-wrenching minute, he kissed her. So lightly, her lips trembled under his. As they ended the kiss, he cupped her chin in his fingers and stared deep into her eyes.

“God be with you, then.” His thumb stroked a tear from her cheek. “Good night, Lily.”

Chapter Sixteen

Julian ordered the hack driver to return to the assembly rooms, and be quick. He was back on the same street corner where he’d met Lily in less than ten minutes’ time.

Incredible. Had that entire blissful interlude really lasted less than ten minutes? He would make the memory last a lifetime. Her hot, sweet words sliding over his neck. The heady scent of her body, an intoxicating blend of citron and rosemary and feminine musk. Her fingertips, gliding along his …

Not now, he told himself. Not now.

The pistol he’d dropped was, as expected, gone. Vanished into the night—or rather, into the hand of some lucky passerby. Something that valuable and shiny wouldn’t lie about unclaimed on a London street corner for more than a minute or two. Down the street, carriages were jostling for space, preparing to accommodate the departing guests. The immediate vicinity, however, was quiet and deserted.

So here he was. Alone, unarmed, and late for his appointment with Death. What happened now?

He stood there for a few minutes, just waiting to see if anything would occur.

When it didn’t, he started to walk.

He walked back to his house along his usual route, ambling down the streets and avenues. He was honestly surprised when he arrived before the modest Bloomsbury façade unchallenged. He then sat on his front stoop for a good quarter-hour. Try as he might to keep his attention sharp and scan the darkness for threats, his thoughts kept returning to Lily.

For Christ’s sake, he was a marked man.

But even a marked man was a man, and he was a man irrevocably marked by Lily, branded by her touch. The way she’d moaned for him …

Why hadn’t he called for the hack driver to circle the block? Another minute, and he could have had her coming again. He could have experienced the strength of her climax from the inside, felt her womanly flesh grasp his fingers tight. Her breathy cries, combined with the light touch of her fingers—all together, it probably would have brought him off, too. His loins stirred, just at the thought.

Not now, he told himself. Not now.

He rose, brushed off his trousers, and started to walk again.

He walked back to Mayfair, back toward the neighborhood of the assembly rooms, this time working a serpentine route down smaller streets and back alleys. Aside from the occasional sleeping beggar, some early carts on their way to market, and a few passing cabs, he met with no one.

And he found himself back on the same damn corner, still alone and undisturbed.

He walked some more. Through the straggling whores still haunting Covent Garden, by the cheap gin houses in the rookery of St. Giles, passing back along the Strand. He walked streets he normally wouldn’t walk alone at night, for any reason. No one in his right mind would. But he walked them anyway, daring his unknown enemies to strike. Or if those enemies eluded him, simply tempting fate.

The hours passed. His feet went from sore to aching to numb in his boots. But Julian kept walking.

He found himself in St. James’s Park at the first glimmer of daybreak, in the meadow that was the site of so many illegal, infamous duels. Here, in this field, a gentleman’s honor could be redeemed by the firing of a single shot into the air. Julian had never understood it. Duels seldom amounted to more than a show of false courage. One ball sent whizzing skyward, and everyone went home mollified. England’s “best” men were preserved to live another day, clutch their gold more tightly to their breasts, and get more children on their wives and chambermaids. Sounded rather nice, didn’t it?

But no one came to duel with Julian, and he’d lost his pistol anyhow. He would find no satisfaction here.

He could find satisfaction with Lily, a sly voice inside him whispered.

Not now, he told it. Not now.

So he walked some more, pondering other things. What did it mean, when a man planned his own funeral and no one came?

Lily and Morland had insisted from the beginning that Leo’s murder was a senseless, random act. Could it be that they were right? Perhaps he’d missed his opportunity due to Lily’s interruption, or he’d simply failed to lure his enemy to action. But the other possibility was equally strong: that there was no enemy to lure. No would-be murderer, at any rate.

It would have been easier to accept, if he didn’t want to believe it so damn much.

Julian didn’t have his destination in mind—rather, it seemed to draw him like a lodestone. Before he knew it, he was there—in Whitechapel, navigating a cramped district stacked high with warehouses until he stood in the alley where Leo had died. He’d walked here at night, several times. It was full daylight now, and the place looked narrow and dirty, not threatening. It smelled of filth and rotting fish.

Julian stared around him, wondering what the hell he was doing. He’d come to pay respects to Leo, he supposed, but any respect was wasted here. Leo had mercifully left this place behind, in body and spirit. Julian should do the same.

So he turned north and walked to Spitalfields. He traveled against the flow of the working poor, who streamed en masse toward better neighborhoods, on their way to work as scullery maids, chimney sweeps, rat catchers, and the like. Perhaps he would meet with one of his errand boys if he looked sharp.

The bells of Christ Church greeted him, ringing in the new day with familiar peals. Welcome home, he could imagine them to say. He’d spent his first nine years of life within earshot of these bells.

For the first time in decades, he entered the church. The devout were at their morning prayers, and Julian had no wish to disturb them. He lingered at the rear. Tilting his head to view the arcade, he was transported back to his boyhood, when these soaring arches and stately white columns made this the grandest building he could imagine ever being permitted inside.

And now, with stern-faced saints to chaperone, he loosed the reins on his thoughts. They went straight to her.

Lily. Just her name inspired in him more breathless awe than any psalm or choir could do. He might never learn who killed Leo, and whether or not that same person wished to kill him. But he knew that Lily loved him. And he knew that made him the luckiest bastard in England. Assuming she would even speak to him this morning, that was. He wanted to believe she was too generous to hold true to her ultimatum, but he couldn’t be sure. Her will was strong. But perhaps her love was stronger.

What would it take, to make a real future with a woman like that? Not just a night of stolen passion, but a life worthy of her?

He would have to commit a small murder of his own. Mr. James Bell would need to die a quiet, sudden death, and Julian would have to sell off the business concerns discreetly. A lady of Lily’s rank could not have a husband who dirtied his hands with trade. Julian would mourn the loss, no question. He’d been working for years toward the new mercantile scheme, and this would mean abandoning the idea entirely. And then, there were his employees … hundreds of mill workers and their families depended on his wages for their livelihood. Unlike most other owners, he paid them enough to live well. If he sold the mills, who could say what their fate would be?

But this was so much more than a business decision.

To be with Lily, he would have to be with Lily. Live in her aristocratic world, with no daily escape into his offices and no anonymous walks through the city at night. He would have to comport himself with dignity—no more wild antics or bacchanal evenings at the club. The affaires—those, he would never miss. They hadn’t been about pleasure in the first place, but merely revenge. So disgusting and degrading. It was a wonder he could stand in this holy place and not burst into flames.

Damn, there was no way around it. He was completely unworthy of her. If he did go to Lily, he would have to live with the knowledge that he’d betrayed Leo’s friendship by taking his sister for himself.

And he would have to accept uncertainty, where Leo’s murder was concerned. He would never know whether he’d unwittingly had a hand in his friend’s death, or whether someone had wished to kill him. He would always worry. Always feel that little prickle of fear as he walked down the street, fearing that one day someone would recognize him, and Lily would suffer as a result.

What would he be forced to give up, to be with Lily? Only his trade, his principles, his possessions, his identity, his loyalty to Leo, and his very peace of mind. Only everything, forever.

Right. There really was no choice.

Before he left the church, Julian bent his head. He said a prayer for his mother and a prayer for Leo. And then a prayer of forgiveness for what he was about to do.

Lily’s sitting room boasted a floor-to-ceiling bookcase, filled with volumes she’d collected from her girlhood on. Since Leo’s death, she’d spent many a sleepless night rearranging its contents. She might pass one evening alphabetizing the books by the author’s last name. Then the next night, by the author’s first name. Another night, she would sort them by genre: poems, plays, novels, essays. She’d invented dozens of ways to organize these books. Chronologically, by date of publication. Chronologically, in the order she’d acquired them. Chronologically, in the order she’d read them. By size. By color of the binding. By the number of pages.

One particularly melancholy night, she’d ranked them by how many characters died in each.

Last night, after Julian so heartlessly left her crying on the doorstep, Lily had marched upstairs, removed all the books from the shelf, and packed them away in trunks. When dawn came, she greeted it with fresh resolve. That was the last night she spent rearranging bookshelves. She’d only just emerged from months of mourning her brother. She would not lapse back into helpless grief today.

She took a light breakfast in her chambers. With her maid’s assistance, she dressed in a cheery pink day dress and adorned her neck with a single strand of pearls. As the maid twisted her hair, Lily stared at herself in the mirror. Weary, red-rimmed eyes stared back at her from a pale, drawn face. She looked horrid, no question. But she couldn’t improve her aspect by sitting about the house moping.

She dismissed the maid and considered the possible activities. She could pay calls, Lily supposed. But then, whom would she visit? Amelia would want to hear all about last night, and Lily didn’t feel up to discussing it. As for others … it might be best to wait and see the scandal sheets today. She and Julian had departed the assembly abruptly, then vanished together into a coach. Who knew what the gossips might have concluded? She didn’t especially care, but neither did she wish to face the rumors unprepared. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">