Three Nights with a Scoundrel (Stud Club #3)

He actually recoiled, as if she’d shot him. His gaze was wounded, bleeding out hope in rich shades of blue.

“Julian.” She softened her expression and signs, trying to make him understand. If there was one thing she’d learned from losing Leo, it was the danger of depending on another person for everything. “I love you. But I don’t want to be your reason for living. I want to share your life. There’s a difference between the two.”

“There are vast chasms between the two. Worlds between them. Whole galaxies and nebulae.”

“So?”

“So we should stay in your world. Where it’s all bright and rich and dazzling.”

Oh, yes. A bright, rich, dazzling pack of lies. “I thought we already had this conversation. You were going to stop treating me like a child who can’t know her own mind.”

“Of course I know you’re not a child. You’re so clever, Lily. Your mind is one of the things I most admire about you.”

“Well, you certainly don’t trust my judgment. Not enough to tell me the truth. Can you possibly understand how lowering it is—how abjectly humiliating—to beg a bird for information as to your husband’s whereabouts? A bird.”

“That’s how you found us? Did Tartuffe mention the Jericho?” He stared at her with open admiration. “I’m sorry I called you clever just now. It was a profound understatement. Obviously, you’re a genius. A brave, beautiful genius.”

“I’m a perfect simpleton, judging by your treatment of me. Again and again, I’ve told you I love you. I wanted to marry you. I am carrying your child. And you continue to insist you’re unworthy of me. How is that not an insult to my intelligence? Am I so stupid, I can’t even know who’s worthy of my love and who isn’t?”

He clearly had no idea how to respond to that.

“When we married,” she went on, “I was so foolishly full of my own emotion. I thought, if I only held you very, very tight and whispered enough words of love in your ear, you would move past the hurt in your past. But kisses don’t truly heal wounds. It’s just a fiction nursemaids pass along.”

He was still for a long moment. Finally, he signed, “You’re right. If we go on like this, I’m always going to feel a fraud.”

It was what she’d suspected. And his admission was a small victory in itself. Even so, Lily couldn’t help but wither in her skin. He seemed to be telling her they couldn’t be happy together, or apart. That didn’t bode well. “So where do we go from here?”

He turned to the window and was silent. Lily tried not to stare at him. She didn’t want to seem as though she was desperately hanging on the hopes of his reply. Even though she was.

Suddenly, he swore. “Fine. Let’s do this.” He rapped smartly on the carriage roof, calling for a halt. Gesturing for her patience, he opened the window to call up to the driver. With his head turned, she couldn’t make out what he was saying.

But he resettled in his seat, and the carriage resumed its journey. Lily watched out her window. Where they normally would have turned on Oxford Street, the coach continued straight. She considered asking him their destination but then decided against it. Wherever he was headed, she was along for the ride.

They rattled on past Mayfair and turned into Bloomsbury. She recognized the street name instantly from addressing so many invitations and notes to Julian over the years.

“We’re going to your house?” she asked.

He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “We’re going to Julian Bellamy’s house,” was his cryptic reply.

The carriage rolled to a stop, and Julian opened the door himself, reaching to hand her down. Day was quickly dwindling, giving way to a cold December night. Lily shivered in her traveling cloak as she followed him to the doorstep of a nondescript row house. The home was largish, but not especially grand.

From his breast pocket, he withdrew a pair of keys and fitted one into the lock. She watched with absurd fascination. In all honesty, she could not recall ever locking the front door of her home. There was always a footman standing at attention, waiting to open or close the door for her.

He used the second key to turn another lock, down near the bottom of the door. And then he used his shoulder to push the panel inward.

The entry was cold and dark, and stairs loomed directly before them. They climbed the steep flight, then emerged into a spacious corridor. From what she could see, peering into adjacent rooms, the furniture had all been covered with Holland cloth.

“Wait,” he signed. He ducked through a door and returned a minute later, candelabrum in hand. Two lit tapers burned in the holder, casting flickering light around the room. He offered the candelabrum to her, and she took it, holding it between them to throw warm illumination on his face.