Dangerous to Love (43 page)

“I knew it.”

“And?”

Carefully disengaging her wrist from his clasp, she took a step back. “What are you implying, Julian? That I was some sort of monster?”

He answered her gently. “No. What I think is that you loved Allardyce too.”

“With my whole heart,” she whispered.

“And hated Serena?”

She shook her head. “No. I pitied her, as I pitied myself. He used us both. Me, he abandoned. Serena had the good sense to abandon him.”

They walked on in silence until they came to the rotunda.
Behind them, the great Palladian mansion blazed with lights. In front of them, the sweep of lawns merged with the riverbank. They paused to savor the scent of wild honeysuckle.

Turning to him at length, she said softly, “Why did you bring me out here, Julian?”

“To say good-bye,” he said simply.

“Strange.”

“What is?”

“It reminds me of the last time we said good-bye, you remember, shortly before you sailed for America? I have a distinct impression of dêjà vu.”

He remembered very well. It was on the occasion of his marriage to Serena, when he’d tactfully severed his connection to Amelia, among others. And he hadn’t sailed for America. He’d been transported against his will. Amelia could not know that, unless she had been a party to his abduction. Her artless words appeared to exonerate her. Or was she trying to throw him off the scent? God, he hated the role he was playing.

“Yes,” said Julian. “I feel it too.”

They made the return walk to the house in almost complete silence.

   The evening was well advanced when Lord Kirkland came upon Julian on the terrace. Her ladyship was not pleased that the guest of honor seemed to have vanished into thin air, and the earl had been given the task of tracking him down. Kirkland hung back when he saw that Julian was in conversation with a foppish gentleman whose name he could not remember but who had bored him insensate in the billiard room with tales of his sugar plantation in the West Indies. He was on the point of slipping away unnoticed when Julian himself came toward him, leaving the bore at the stone balustrade.

“I’ve been sent to f-fetch you,” said his lordship in his diffident way. “Her ladyship thought you, um, might wish to join her in the c-card room.”

Julian had no intention of allowing the countess to monopolize his time any more than she already had that evening. He’d had his work cut out for him, giving the performance that he and Loukas had decided upon, approaching all the principals in the affair (or “suspects,” as Loukas called them) and duplicating, as far as possible, the conversations that had taken place two years ago, just before he was abducted. This was the first chance he’d had to have a few words alone with the earl.

“Frankly, my lord,” he said, smiling easily, “I was hoping to have a respite from gambling for the next day or two. What would please me is a moment or two of your time.”

The earl cast one quick look over his shoulder, then fell into step beside Julian. He gave a low, conspiratorial chuckle. “What Esther can’t see won’t m-matter to her, I suppose. Oh, don’t think I’m finding fault. You know how women are. When she sets her heart on things, no one can gainsay her.”

“She is very devoted to you, I’ve been told.”

“Very, and I to her.”

This was going nowhere, thought Julian, and plunged in. “Lady Kirkland tells me that she does not see much of you these days, that there is something big going on at the War Office?”

Occasionally, Lord Kirkland had a sly look about him. This was one of those occasions. “Something b-big? Like what, for instance?”

“Oh, I don’t know. There are always rumors of Jacobite conspiracies.”

They spoke in generalities, going in circles, arriving at nowhere. This was no more than Julian had expected. At
the same time, as he and the earl strolled in the garden, he could almost feel the eyes that were following them. At one point on the path, they came face-to-face with Lord Charles Tremayne. Since he had flirted with Catherine Ward earlier in the evening, right under Lord Charles’s nose, Julian was not surprised at the smoldering look he received.

There was only one act left in the drama, and it was to open with Serena.

T
he burst of song from the floor above shook Serena from her reveries, and the hand dragging the brush through her hair stilled, then fell away. Her bedchamber was directly beneath the “barracks”—the communal dormitory where all the young single men were housed. Evidently, the young bucks were serenading their female counterparts in the chambers across the hall. As she remembered from her salad days, the fun was likely to go on till the wee hours of the morning unless it became so rowdy that his lordship was called from his bed to read the riot act. On second thought, she rather suspected that the servants would summon her ladyship. Kirkland was so inoffensive as to be almost a nonentity. No one would pay him the least heed. Poor man.

She heard the sound of doors slamming and girls giggling. Oh, to be young and carefree, like Clive and Letty! Ladies of her advanced years were considered above such goings-on and were given their own bedchamber. The young people would have been aghast if anyone had suggested that they be confined to their own families. House parties were supposed to be fun.

Shaking her head, smiling a little, she went back to brushing her hair, wielding the brush vigorously until she was satisfied that every particle of powder had been removed. Usually a maid would have done this, but with so many guests, maids were in short supply, and Serena did not have the patience to wait for one to become available.

Setting the brush aside, she rose from the dressing table and slipped into a brocade robe. Though it was close
to two of the clock, she was far from ready to retire to her bed. For one thing, the racket overhead was increasing by the minute. From the foot-stamping and clapping, she deduced that the young men in the barracks had embarked on a riotous country dance. Good grief, what next?

There was another reason for her wakefulness. All evening long she had sensed a sinister undercurrent. She climbed on top of the bed and braced her back against the headboard. Staring into space, she tried to recall the exact moment she had sensed that all was not as it seemed to be. It was at the dinner table, now that she remembered it. The conversation had focused on Julian. Someone remarked that he’d heard Raynor had decided to settle in England. A hush had fallen. By sheer coincidence, her glance had been resting on Clive, who sat across the table from her. His hand had jerked, scattering droplets of ruby-red wine on the pristine white tablecloth.

She dwelled on that thought before moving on. There was very little to go on, only fragments and impressions that added to her confusion—Lord Charles and Jeremy, and their voices raised in anger; Catherine with a haunted look about her; silences, and covert looks; and long unexplained absences of those who should have known better. She wasn’t thinking only of Letty and Mr. Hadley. Jeremy had scarcely put in an appearance all evening, and when he did return to the ballroom, just as the dancing was drawing to a close, he looked very thoughtful.

As for Julian, she had scarcely exchanged more than two words with him all evening. He’d been everywhere at once and as impossible to reach as a distant star.

There were other unconnected things that bothered her. There was the bore from the West Indies who had monopolized her attention just as Julian had slipped into the gardens with Lady Amelia; and the little footman with the wig that sat slightly askew atop his head. She
had only caught a glimpse of him from the back, but there was something vaguely familiar about him, something that hovered at the edges of her mind.

She was startled by a sudden thundering of footsteps descending the stairs, followed by an uproar of slamming doors and irate masculine voices demanding to be granted a little peace and quiet so that ancient relics such as themselves could catch their damned beauty sleep. The young men from the barracks responded with laughter and rude catcalls. From what Serena could make out, they had decided on impulse to go swan hunting in his lordship’s man-made lake. More doors slammed, and as the thunder of the stampede died away, the house seemed to exhale a long, pent-up breath before settling into an uneasy silence.

The poor girls in the attics would be desolate to lose their beaux. There could be no adventures for females in the middle of the night. What they had yet to learn was that young men could be very inventive. She well remembered a house party she had attended as a young girl, where the boys had gone off gallivanting and later, much later, had tried to reenter the house by climbing the ivy outside the girls’ dormitory windows.

She couldn’t help giggling. On that occasion, the girls had been caught in their underthings, and in their confusion they had overturned the
pot-de-chambre,
much to the amusement of the boys. They had practically raised the roof with their shouts of laughter. She hoped Letty and Clive were enjoying themselves. Life of late had become very dreary in their household. Clive was hardly ever there and Letty was very subdued.

No. This was not precisely true. Letty was only giving the appearance of being subdued. When Mr. Hadley came calling, a blush crept into her cheeks and her eyes sparkled. Serena could still scarcely credit the way things had
turned out. Letty and Trevor Hadley? They were as different as a frothy syllabub and plum pudding. She hoped Letty knew what she was doing. Poor Trevor. The thought made her smile. He might think that Letty was young and impressionable. It was Serena’s opinion that Letty would lead him a merry dance.

Sighing, settling herself more comfortably, she turned her thoughts to Julian. He was keeping her at arm’s length, and it was her own fault. If she could only have a few minutes alone with him, she was sure she could make him understand.

That thought inevitably led her to speculate on why he had slipped away with Lady Amelia, and whether or not he had arranged with Mr. Bowring to waylay her in case she went after him. How could she have gone after him when she was hedged about all evening by Clive or some other member of the Ward party? Besides, she had too much pride.

In any case, her woman’s intuition told her that Julian simply wasn’t interested in Lady Amelia. Smiling, she held on to that thought, examining it from all angles, sifting through it, then the thought slipped away as she slipped into sleep.

   She came awake on a scream. A hand was cupped to her mouth, smothering her cry against her lips. Her assailant had straddled her, and the press of his weight made movement impossible. Rigid with terror, she stared up at him. As recognition dawned, her body went limp. Julian!

As soon as he saw that she wasn’t going to struggle or make an outcry, he removed his hand from her mouth and rolled to his side. Serena immediately dragged herself to a sitting position so that their eyes were on the same level.

“I suppose you climbed the ivy outside my window,” she said humorously, trying to relieve some of the tension
between them. “If anyone had seen you, so much for our little charade to repair my reputation!” She looked at him hopefully, but could detect no softening in him.

“No one saw me. Rest assured, your reputation is still intact. Serena, there is something I must tell you, something that is going to come as a great shock.” He paused, letting her digest his words.

He was going to break things off with her. She read it in every line of that hard face. She couldn’t allow him to do it. She simply couldn’t. She damn well wouldn’t.

Grabbing for his hands, she brought them to her bosom. Her heart was in her eyes. “Julian,” she whispered, “I love you.”

His eyes flared and he made a sound that was not quite a gasp, not quite a groan. “You love me?”

Disregarding the sarcastic tone, which she thought he might be entitled to, she nodded vigorously. “I always have. I always did. You see, Julian—”

He shook her off. “Don’t start that now. I haven’t got the time for it. Or is this an attempt to entrap me?” He broke off as it came to him that by that last incautious remark, he had almost betrayed himself. It was no part of his plan to take Serena into his confidence. She was pivotal to the whole scheme, but if she ever suspected that he was using her, there was no saying what she might do.

“Entrap you? Is that all our Fleet marriage means to you?” Indignation was beginning to stir in her.

This was not the time to go into this. Breathing deeply, he started over. “Serena, listen to me. There is something I must say to you.”

She could have wept in frustration. After all her soul-searching, and after all she had endured by agreeing to attend this horrid house party, he didn’t want her anymore, just like that. Lady Amelia, no doubt, had helped make up his mind for him. Pain and temper sizzled
through her. So, that’s what they had got up to when they had slipped away to the gardens. So much for womanly intuition!

Launching herself at him, she toppled him on his back, then quickly straddled him. “Have you been making love to that Lawrence woman?” The sound of her teeth grinding together was clearly audible.