The action only made her feel more vulnerable. She was still lying naked on the bed. She sat, drawing her knees up to her breasts. “I shouldn’t have said anything. You obviously don’t feel the same.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying.” He moved closer to her, which she wanted to believe was a good sign, but his face looked hard again. The warrior was back. “You don’t know me or what I’ve done.”
“I do know you,” she protested. “And I know exactly what you’ve done. You’ve repaired locks, built rat cages, guarded the door, fed hungry children, defeated Mr. Slag—”
“That was my duty, and protecting a beautiful woman and innocent children is no penance. At least, not the penance I deserve after the sins I’ve committed.”
She rose on her knees, taking his hands in hers. “What sins? Defending your country? Safeguarding your men? Killing an enemy who would have killed you if you hadn’t acted first?”
“Juliana, I was never supposed to come home. I was sent to die and take as many of the French with me as possible.”
“But you did come home, and you’re alive.” She took his face in her hands. “Act alive. Kiss me, Neil. Make love to me.”
He shook his head.
“Neil, I know how you feel. When I lost Davy, nothing else in my life mattered. I’d lost my sister and best friend, and then I lost her child. I wanted to die. But strange as it seems, this pitiful orphanage and the lost boys saved me. They gave me a home and a family. You can be part of that family.”
His body went rigid. “What are you saying?”
What was she saying? What was she saying to this man in the middle of the night, as she knelt on her bed, naked and vulnerable? “Marry me,” she whispered, wishing for all the world she did not have to be the one to ask him. Praying he would want her as much as she wanted him because she had never wanted anything as much as she wanted him.
He shook his head, and she felt ice slide down her bare back.
“That’s not possible.”
“I see.” She sat back, feeling more naked than ever before. She reached for the coverlet and pulled it up and over her.
“It’s not that I don’t want you, Juliana.”
She moved back and out of his reach when he extended a hand toward her.
“You simply do not want to marry me. I understand. I run an orphanage. No man of my station will ever want to marry me when I won’t return home.”
“No.” He took her shoulders in a firm grip. “That’s just it. I’m not of your station. I’m a bastard—”
“You are the acknowledged son of a marquess, Neil. That hardly makes you lowborn.”
“But not a legitimate son. My father’s legitimate son—the youngest, Christopher—died in the war. I was there that day, and I couldn’t save him.”
“Neil—”
He released her shoulders and stepped away. “It should have been me lying dead on that battlefield, not Chris.”
She shook her head, tears stinging her eyes. “No,” she whispered. “Do you think God or fate or whatever you want to call it makes mistakes? You survived and you deserve to live a long, happy life with a family.” She could see the word family affected him. He swallowed convulsively. “I am sorry about your brother. So sorry. But you are the one who is here. And if you know me at all, you know I wouldn’t care if you were a cobbler or a beggar on the street. I love you.” She should stop saying that. She should stop ripping her armor off, especially when he possessed so many arrows.
“And what kind of husband would I be? I have no fortune, no title, I wake with nightmares.”
“You would be the husband I love,” she countered. “Do you think I’m perfect? I have a list of flaws as long as Rotten Row.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do.” She held up a finger. “I’m headstrong.” Another finger. “I’m impulsive.” Another finger. “I don’t think before I act.”
“That’s the same as impulsive.”
She scowled at him. “I repeat myself when making lists. I can’t keep a servant. I’m a horrible judge of character, if Mr. Goring is any example—I could go on all night. Whatever your imperfections, I love you despite them. The circumstances of your birth matter not a whit. It’s the two of us together that matter. Together we are stronger than anything.”
He gave her a long look, then shook his head. “I wish things were different.” He straightened his clothes and moved toward the door.
“That’s it then?” she called out. “You’re leaving?”
“I was always leaving. I’ll make sure the roof is repaired, and I’ll speak to Billy before I go.”
Her mind reeled as her body grew ice cold. “You won’t even try? You won’t even consider giving this…this family a chance?”
“This is the best thing for both of us.”
She reached for the closest object and took hold of a pillow, throwing it with all her strength across the room. Unfortunately, he reached up and caught it easily. “Arrogant man! Who are you to tell me what’s best for me?”
He tossed the pillow onto the bed. “You needn’t worry I’ll leave without making certain you’re safe.”
“Damn your bloody duty, Neil Wraxall,” she yelled. “I don’t want it.”
He went to the door, and she grabbed another pillow. She threw it, but the cushion thudded uselessly against the closed door.
Neil was gone.
*
Walking away from her had been the hardest thing Neil had ever had to do. It was also the right thing. She needed a peer—a man with rank and wealth and connections. Not a former soldier and a counterfeit hero. Even the boys at the orphanage deserved better. They needed a man they could emulate, not one who had been born into circumstances little different from theirs.
Neil paced the orphanage, patrolling it and checking to be certain doors and windows were locked. Slag was gone, but that didn’t mean Julia wasn’t still vulnerable. After his third pass, he found himself in the servants’ quarters and the room he’d been given. He stared at the bed. For the first time in memory, he wanted sleep. Tonight he was weary enough to succumb quickly. He stripped and lay down, asleep before his eyes were fully closed.
He knew it was a dream as soon as he saw the battlefield. He stumbled through it, as he had all those years ago, his focus on the fallen infantry, looking for Christopher’s golden-blond hair. Men with brown hair, black hair, gray hair, and dark-blond hair lay with unseeing eyes or clutching bleeding arms or legs. One man held a hand over a gash across his middle, keeping his intestines from spilling out. Neil couldn’t let himself see this. Couldn’t allow himself to believe any of it was real, else he’d lose his breakfast and his faltering courage. Neil trudged through the pools of blood, halting at the bright cap of blond hair lying in one of the bloody puddles.
His breath caught and his belly tightened.
“Chris,” he said hoarsely, turning the man over. His heart pounded wildly, his vision dimmed, but when he opened his eyes again, the man he touched was not Christopher, not his brother.
“Water,” the man croaked. With shaking fingers, Neil unfastened his canteen and pressed it into the man’s hands. He moved on, moved down the hill, his eyes scanning for that crown of bright curls.
Please, God. No.
He almost passed another man with blond hair. This man’s cap was still on his head, his face obscured because he lay facedown on the hill. Neil did not want to do this. Did not want to see the dead face. But he had to know. He’d go mad otherwise. Neil got behind the body, dug his heels into the steep slope for purchase, and flipped the man over.
Shock and pain stabbed through him as he stared at the face of Christopher Wraxall.