After the Abduction (23 page)

“There’s a first time for everything.”

Striding up to him, his uncle grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “Good God, have you no soul?”

Sebastian shoved him away. “Deuce take it, she wants me hanged! How do you expect me to react?”

Uncle Lew blinked, then backed up a step. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, she knows I’m her kidnapper. Not just suspects.
Knows.
”

“You are sure?”

“Yes. She’s been trying for the past two days to trick me into confessing it.”

“Then why the bloody hell have you been spending time with her? You told me to keep her away, and the next thing I know you’re showing up here with her—”

“She came to my workshop that first night they arrived, after you left Charnwood Hall. She accused me, and I…”
Let my attraction to her govern my actions.
“I convinced her that she was wrong. Or I thought I convinced her. I thought I was safe.” He dragged in a harsh breath. “Obviously, I’m more easily taken in by sweet-faced beauties than I realized. I underestimated her.”

“You? Make an error of judgment? Never!”

Sebastian rapidly tired of his uncle’s sarcasm. “Apparently, you find the possibility of my being hanged amusing.”

His uncle snorted. “She does not want you to hang. The girl is already half in love with you.”

When the very word
love
made his pulse pound, he scowled, both at his uncle’s blindness and his own. “Be sure to have that carved on my tombstone.”

“You impudent scapegrace—has it not occurred to you why she came here?”

“I know why. For my blood, and she’ll do what she must to get it.”

Uncle Lew crossed his arms over his chest. “I think you are wrong. All she wants is the truth. Because you broke
her heart when you abandoned her. It took me only one short conversation to deduce that. She wants to hear why you did it. And she deserves to know. You ought to tell her. It’s the right thing to do.”

“Don’t you think I realize that?” He whirled away from his uncle. “I want to tell her so badly I can taste it.” He planted his hands on the pedestal, staring blindly across at a jungle of rose vines climbing trellises. Some Eden this turned out to be. “But I can’t risk it when her intentions are so uncertain. Too much is at stake, both for me and for Morgan.”

“Then perhaps you should not be seducing the young lady in my conservatory. Or did you think seduction would make her forget what you owe her?”

He stiffened. He couldn’t look at his uncle. The man would read his guilt in his face. “What makes you think I was seducing her?”

“My favorite begonia is on the floor, Lady Juliet’s fichu is draped over my fern, your gloves are on the pedestal, and when she left, she looked decidedly disheveled.”

He winced. “I…she…it’s not what you think.”

“I
think
you have decided to follow in your father’s footsteps.”

A blinding fury possessed him, but when he spun around to find his uncle regarding him smugly, he realized there was someone else he tended to underestimate.

It took a herculean will to regain control over his anger. “I meant to court her,” he said tersely. “I thought marrying her would make everything right.”

“Was seducing her supposed to further your courtship?”

“I was not—” He scrubbed his hand over his face. “We were talking. About the gossip in London. One thing led to another and…we got carried away.”

Uncle Lew raised an eyebrow. “Do tell. My nephew
making an error in judgment and getting carried away, all in one day. Will wonders never cease.”

“You’re not making this any easier,” Sebastian snapped.

“I am not trying to, my boy.” He strolled over to the benches that lined the circular area and sat down. “Since Lady Juliet’s guardians seem unaware of what you two have been doing, I am trying to step in on her behalf, to discern what your intentions are. Because I find that I like the young lady quite a lot. And I should hate to see you ruin her life twice.”

“I don’t wish to ruin her life. Until today, I wanted to marry her.”

“So you could defuse her need for vengeance and assuage your own guilt, I suppose. How crafty of you.”

Put like that, his aims sounded less than admirable. “Those weren’t the only reasons.” He wet his dry lips. Admitting these things to his uncle was hard, yet he hated being thought the same sort of seducer his father had been. “I’d forgotten how delightful she can be. You didn’t know her before, but sometimes I glimpse the younger Juliet, the one who smiled at everyone, welcomed every attention, anticipated every need.”

“If that was the younger Juliet, I would say she has not changed that much. When she is not plaguing me with questions about you, she is a perfectly charming woman.”

“Charming, perhaps, but distrustful. She used to be open and artless, never suspicious of anyone. How the devil do you think I carried her away so effortlessly?” He glanced away. “And now she suspects everyone. Especially me. It makes her unpredictable and dangerous. She’ll use any deceit to unmask me.”

“That is your own fault. You taught her that men are betrayers, so what else can she do but use deceit to learn the truth?”

He had a point. “That’s why I was foolish to think courtship would work.” He paced back and forth, wracked by restless energy. “She’ll never trust me, and I can never trust her. Even if she agreed to marry me, it would only be another of her little ploys. My first instinct was right—I should stay the devil away from her until the Knightons leave. Knighton has already said he doesn’t believe her suspicions, so as long as I’m not around for her to trick into admitting I was her kidnapper, there’s nothing she can do.”

His uncle chuckled. “You weren’t terribly successful in staying away from her before. I suspect you won’t manage it any better this time.”

He bristled. “And why not?”

“You want her. That changes everything. Because once a man wants a woman, he will do any number of foolish things to secure her.”

Like risk putting his neck in a noose. He shook off the thought. “I’m not my father. I can control my physical urges.”

Uncle Lew idly stroked the ivy streaming over one end of the bench. “I am by no means certain that is true. But even if it is, the physical urges are not what will trap you. It is the other urges that will prove your downfall.”

“What other urges?”

“The temptation of having a soft woman to confide in. The lure of a companion who understands you. The need for love.”

He shook his head. “Then you have naught to worry about. I outgrew the need for love the day I discovered what havoc it wrought in the life of my mother—your sister. It won’t govern my own actions.”

“One does not outgrow the need for love, my dear nephew. One merely twists it elsewhere, toward secondary passions.” Uncle Lew twined the green ivy around his gloved finger. “But like a vine, it will always creep back
around your heart when you least expect it, and if you do not take great care, it will seize such hold of you that only by satisfying the need can you cut yourself free.”

That was precisely the possibility that alarmed him. “You’ve become tediously philosophical in your old age, Uncle Lew. Thank God one of us is immune to such sentimentality, or else we’d all be lost and done for.”

With that, he turned and strode out of the conservatory.

So he didn’t hear his uncle murmur, “Who says you are not lost and done for already, my boy?”

Chapter 13

According as the man is, so must you humour him.

Terence’s
The Brothers,
embroidered by Juliet

Laverick on her personal washcloth at seventeen

A
week later, Juliet paced her bedchamber, tired of plying her needle and ferreting out what little dirt she could find. She’d run out of things to wipe, scour, or straighten. The silver, which had already been well polished, now reflected her image with startling clarity. She’d even banished all dust from the canopied top of her bed.

Thanks to Rosalind’s scheme, sneaking out was nearly impossible. Somebody was always in the halls, and the servants had been told she was ill. Only Rosalind’s maid had been taken into their confidence, since she was supposedly taking care of Juliet. So after a week Juliet was going steadily insane, with no one to talk to but her sister and Polly.

It was her own fault, too. She’d driven Sebastian out of her reach by her emotional outburst at their last encounter. He’d avoided her entirely all week. Even if she could find him, he’d never confess now.

And she couldn’t find him. She’d tried sending notes, saying that they needed to speak. He ignored them. When she sneaked out at night, he was nowhere to be found. Once she’d even approached his bedchamber, but he hadn’t been there.

That perturbed her more than she’d like. Although he sometimes showed up at meals, according to Rosalind, he must be spending the rest of his time elsewhere. At Foxglen, perhaps? Or with a friend?

She hadn’t thought of it until now, but he might have a mistress in town. He might be in another woman’s bedchamber at this very moment, fondling and kissing her and…

Tears welled in her eyes, and she wiped them away viciously. She didn’t care if he was! She didn’t! Never mind that after being in his pockets for two days, it felt odd to go a week without him. Never mind that lately she ate little and slept less. And when she did sleep, she had shocking, fantastical dreams: of rolling about naked in rose petals on the floor of the conservatory. Or ivy vines twining up her thighs, past her belly and over her breasts until suddenly they weren’t ivy at all, but plundering fingers and hot, caressing lips that woke her from her fevered state to find herself mashing her pillow in her arms.

Drat the wretch! It had taken her two years to banish him from her dreams, and now he thought he could creep in again when her back was turned. He had no right!

The door to her bedchamber banged open, startling her. She made a belated leap for her bed, but only landed sprawling across it as her sister entered.

“Not a very convincing sickbed performance,” Ros
alind snapped. “It’s a good thing Griff is a gentleman and would never barge in here without knocking.”

Juliet sat up and scowled. “A pity that his wife doesn’t share his good breeding.”

“Indeed it is.” Not the least affronted, Rosalind plopped down on the end of the bed. “Lord, he’s driving me insane.”

“Is he?” Then at least she had company in her misery.

“Him and his bloody hot water. He grumbles about his bath. He grumbles about your being ‘sick.’ He grumbles about Lord Templemore’s absences from most of our meals, because he’s certain that any man who doesn’t dine with his guests is off somewhere plotting trouble.”

Griff was only half wrong. Sebastian was actually off somewhere
avoiding
trouble.

“He even grumbles about Mr. Pryce, who’s perfectly amiable, but who gained Griff’s enmity solely by being related to the ‘untrustworthy’ Lord Templemore. I’m beginning to think this was an awful idea.”

“Good. If I have to spend one more day in this bedchamber, lovely as it is, I shall go mad. It’s time for my miraculous recovery.”

“It is
not
! My courses would normally come next week, and I refuse to leave Shropshire until I see if any of this works. I may have to consult Winnie again.”

With a groan, Juliet dropped back against the pillows. “Then for goodness sake, find some way to get me out of this room for a while.”
Find me a way to see Sebastian.

Rosalind smiled. “Actually, that’s why I’m here. I’ve persuaded Griff to go to town for the day. I said I wanted to shop. Lord knows there’s probably nothing much in Llanbrooke, but I told him I needed an outing, and he agreed. So we’re heading off as soon as I finish looking in on my poor ill sister.”

“What good does it do me if
you
go to town? The servants are everywhere, so I’m virtually a prisoner.”

Mischief glinted in Rosalind’s eyes. “I had the groom saddle a horse for Polly. I told him I needed my maid to ride over to Winnie’s cottage. But you can do it instead. Only you don’t have to go to Winnie’s—you can go where you please. Polly’s waiting for you with the horse at that side door to the orangery. You know the one?”

“I think so.” Her blood began to pound. Freedom!

“This time of day there’s no one on the backstairs on this wing. I’ve taken careful note of their movements. So you can slip out without being noticed.”

Leave it to Rosalind to spring her from prison. “Thank you,” Juliet said. “Another day of brushing dust out of the canopy fringe, and you’d have to cart me off to Bedlam.”

“Do be careful. The snow’s gone, but you don’t know the area, and—”

“For goodness sake, just go. Go! Enjoy your time with Griff. I’ll be fine.”

“I’m sure you will.” Rosalind stood and headed for the door. “One more thing. If you want company, you might ride to that quaint cottage we saw the other day. I believe that’s where Lord Templemore has gone to hide from Griff’s foul temper.”

Juliet sucked in a breath. Of course! She should have thought of it sooner. Where else but to his forge did Hephaestus retreat when besieged by enemies?

Then she caught Rosalind’s questioning glance, and the blood rose in her cheeks. “Why would I want Lord Templemore’s company? Or be so brazen as to seek him out?”

“I’m not saying to go alone, silly. Take Polly with you. But the man did promise to keep you busy while you were in seclusion, and from what I can see he’s reneged on his promise most abominably. Did the two of you argue?”

How much should she reveal? If Rosalind were to realize what she and Sebastian had been doing, she’d be locking the bedroom doors, not setting her free.

“Yes, we did argue. At Foxglen. And…er…he’s been avoiding me ever since.”

Rosalind scrutinized her. “Then perhaps you should make it up with him.”

“Why?”

“Because you like the man, admit it. And God knows he likes you.”

She swallowed, wishing she could confide all her confused feelings to her sister. But Rosalind wouldn’t understand. She didn’t even believe Sebastian to be Morgan.