Three Nights with a Scoundrel (Stud Club #3)

“Walk home? From Southwark?”


He shrugged his good shoulder, easing his hand from her grip. “It’s not so far.” Not for him. Lately he spent most nights wandering all quadrants of the city.

Last night, he’d made his way back so far as the square where Harcliffe House was situated. This house was always the last stop on his nightly rounds. He would pause on the corner down the street. If he stood half on the pavement, half on the green … then craned his neck … he could just glimpse the fourth rightmost window on the second floor. The one he knew belonged to Lily’s bedchamber. If the window was dark, she was sleeping and at peace. He, too, could relax. On the nights he found a lamp burning, he ached for her sorrow. And he simply stood there, quietly sharing her grief, until that light went dark or the sun came up—whichever occurred first.

In the weeks after Leo’s death, he’d found that lamp burning more often than not. As the months passed, however, her bad nights had grown less frequent. Last night, he’d been comforted to see the window dark. And just as Julian had turned to seek his own home, that faint pain in his arm shifted to a deep, persistent throb.

He said, “I was passing nearby. I stopped under the streetlamp to have a look at my arm. Just a flesh wound, but I hadn’t noticed it earlier. Something was caught … a shard of glass, I think.” He touched his bandaged arm in demonstration. “I grasped it and pulled it out, and there was a fair amount of blood. Quite startled me, and I …”

“And you fainted.”

“Fainted? No.”

“You swooned.”

“No,” he said stoutly, jamming his hand under his arm. “Absolutely not. I didn’t swoon, Lily. Men do not swoon.”

“You slumped to the pavement unconscious, for the costermonger to find. Sounds like a fainting spell to me. What else could it have been?”

“I don’t know. Something different. Apoplexy. Malaria.” Anything more masculine than swooning.

Her eyes rolled toward the ceiling. “You don’t have apoplexy or malaria. Aside from your wound and a few bruises, the doctor could find nothing wrong with you. Not physically, at any rate. You’re simply exhausted. When was the last time you slept through the night?”

“Can’t recall, honestly.”

“Hm. And when’s the last time you had a proper meal?”

“Ah, now that I remember. I had a very fine steak at the Stoat’s Head.”

“Yesterday?”

He hedged, pushing a hand through his hair. “Not precisely.”

One dark eyebrow arched in disbelief. “You fainted, Julian.”

“And what if I did? What would you have me do, start carrying a vinaigrette?” He chuckled to himself. That would be a good joke. Within a week, every young buck in London would be carrying the same. Like Beau Brummel before him, Julian was the trendsetter of his day. His clothing, hair, even mannerisms were meticulously copied by the impressionable young gentlemen of the ton. Just as he’d planned from the start.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I want you to start taking care of yourself, that’s all. Sleep. Eat. Avoid scenes of violence and mayhem. Is it really so difficult?”

“Yes. It’s impossible.”

She winced, absorbing the force of his reply. He regretted his vehemence, but not the sentiment.

She said quietly, “I want you safe. I care about you. What’s so impossible about that?”

Everything.

He yanked the coverlet about himself, scanning the room for his clothes. He had to get out of this bed, this house … before this conversation went places it shouldn’t. He planted one foot on the floor and transferred his weight to it.

Dizziness swamped him. The room made a violent twirl, and he found himself pitched straight back to the mattress.

“Malaria,” he muttered. His arms felt wooden at his sides.

“It’s not malaria. Nor even a fainting spell this time. The doctor left a sleeping powder, and I put some in your barley water.”

She pushed him back on the bed, arranging the coverlet about him. Her hands … they were everywhere. As she leaned forward to arrange the pillows beneath his head, he got an intoxicating lungful of her sweet warmth. The swell of her breast brushed against his wounded arm. Soft. God, so soft. His heart gave a wild kick. Now this was perilous.

He said, “I thought you wanted me to avoid danger.”

“I do. That’s why you’re going to sleep. When you wake up, you’re going to eat. And then we’re going to talk.”

Her words seemed wrapped in cotton. It took him a moment to unravel their meaning. “Just how much sleeping powder did you give me?”

“Two doses, and an extra pinch for good measure. You’re a large man, Julian Bellamy.”

“Ah, Lily. You noticed.” The flirtatious retort slipped out by accident. Damn. He was so sleepy, drunken with it. He couldn’t censor his replies.

“You’re also an ass.”

“You know me so well.”

“Do I?” She laid a hand to his cheek. “Sometimes I wonder. Sometimes I think I don’t know you at all.”