His Sinful Secret (27 page)

“My lord, precisely what are you asking?” She folded her hands in her lap and looked steadily back. Why should she confess her feelings? What possible good would it do either of them? It was one matter to be a besotted fool and another to admit it.

“Julianne, I have the impression you are being deliberately obtuse.”

“I have the same impression of you.”

A smile tilted his lips. “May I say, madam, you can be slightly vexing?”

Her laugh broke the slight tension. Though she wore only a robe, and despite how cold she’d been earlier and the rain still pecking at the window, the room was suddenly overly warm. “Only if I am allowed to mention your habitual reticence again.”

“You are allowed to mention whatever you wish.”

“What will happen to Chloe?” This was important to her . . . so important their interesting discussion was temporarily dismissed. “I hold your parents with affection, but I have never been certain they will accept her. Many aristocratic families ignore illegitimate offspring.”

“Where is her mother?”

Leah. It had been difficult all along to think of her with any kindness, and at the moment, Julianne genuinely detested her. “She’s not a lady, and I am not alluding to her social standing in any way. She is addicted to drink, as far as I can tell, and I suspect spends the money I give her in taverns, for she certainly does not use it to care for Chloe other than in the most basic of ways. When I arrived this afternoon, the house was shuttered and locked up. I am glad Fitzhugh was following me, for he was able to break in the door. We found Chloe hiding in the pantry. Otherwise, the house was deserted.”

“A child that young left all alone?” Michael’s expression took on a grim cast.

He did not, Julianne noticed, address the issue of why Fitzhugh was following her in the first place.

At the moment, she was so glad he wasn’t angry with her that she wasn’t going to press the matter. Apparently her ruse of escaping out the back had been detected.

“I was horrified.” She looked away for a moment, swallowing hard. “It’s my fault. I left her in Leah’s care when I knew . . . or I suspected what she was like. Chloe doesn’t speak, and as I said, she must be at least three years old. I shudder to think what Leah is like when I am not there. It is clear she considers the child a burden, and yet since Chloe’s existence provides her with a good income, she has never abandoned her before that I know of. Whenever I come, she is waiting eagerly for her money. I swear to you I never thought she would forsake her own child. She’s ill-mannered and brash, but I always assumed it was directed at me, and though it might seem odd, I understand it. She had Harry’s child and yet he wouldn’t wed her, but intended to marry me. In her place, I’d harbor resentment too.”

“From your description of her, I can imagine the exalted past Dukes of Southbrook spinning in their regal graves should he have contemplated doing so,” Michael said dryly. “It sounds to me like he made a careless mistake he regretted, and there is not one of us who walk this earth who cannot say he hasn’t done the same. Harry’s resulted in a child, though, and he should have told my father of her existence so she could be cared for if something happened to him.”

Julianne agreed. Telling his parents would not have been easy, and if they’d ever met Leah they would be appalled, and so Harry had avoided both. “In his defense, he was young and seemed in good health. I am sure he didn’t imagine anything would happen to him.”

“There’s no need to defend him, but cease taking blame in this situation. It isn’t your fault.” Michael’s voice was even and his gaze steady. “It is my brother’s fault for impregnating this woman in the first place. Besides, I hardly think a young, unmarried lady could be expected to take a child from its mother and raise it, even if she was affianced to the father. This isn’t your scandal, my dear, nor was it your responsibility to step into the breach when Harry died.”

“I should have told your father.” It haunted her still whether she had made the right decision.

“It’s hard to say if you should have or not. My parents at least have some distance from their grief now. I’ll explain everything. However they feel about the child, you needn’t worry. Obviously she is attached to you. It seems logical enough for us to care for her.”

The offer, so easily said, left Julianne in a state of semishock.

“It’s my brother’s child,” he offered with a brief, now humorless smile. “I am unlikely to forsake her. Wouldn’t she be better off with our children?”

Our children. Of course he wanted an heir—all men in his position did—but the words were somehow so intimate. “Thank you.”

“Please explain why you should thank me.” Michael got to his feet, dropping his napkin, and with lethal grace came around the table.

He tugged her to her feet. Julianne rose willingly, and when his arms came around her, she melted into his embrace. To her surprise, Michael didn’t kiss her, but simply held her against him for a moment, before he said in a husky tone, “You are no doubt exhausted. I assume, considering we have a guest who might awake in the middle of night, confused and frightened over her new surroundings, you will wish to sleep in here with her. I would suggest having one of the maids stay with her instead, but that would be selfish of me. She might need you. Tomorrow we will go about selecting a nursemaid.”

If she wasn’t head over heels in love with her sometimes-enigmatic husband already, she would have fallen then and there.

So
she
kissed
him
. Her palms slid upward over his chest to his shoulders, and Julianne saw in his eyes a brief flare of heated understanding of what she wanted before he obligingly lowered his head and touched his mouth to hers.

It wasn’t an explosive kiss, nor a seductive one, but tender and soft enough to weaken her knees.

“I think,” he murmured against her lips, “I should retreat to my room now, or my noble intentions will be quickly abandoned.”

Julianne nodded and stepped back. He was right, of course; Chloe had endured enough, and at least Julianne was a familiar face in a strange place. But Julianne would miss sleeping in his bed.

She would miss
him
. His arms around her, his respiration in the dark, the warm, solid feel of him next to her.

“At least he missed, Colonel.” Fitzhugh gave Michael’s haphazard bandaging a disparaging scrutiny as he unwound and tossed away the bloodied material. “Apparently your would-be assassin needs lessons on the pitfalls of attempting murder on a windy afternoon in the pouring rain.”

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t give him any.”

“A less dramatic display of gallantry might have been better, too. I doubt carrying the marchioness up the stairs helped matters.”

“It’s a scratch,” Michael muttered, shirtless, sitting on a carved chair and well aware of Julianne asleep on the other side of the door separating their bedrooms. “I should have chased the bastard, but the chance of an ambush was too great. I couldn’t see him any more than he could see me for a clear shot.”

“Getting cautious, are we?”

“Do I have a choice? My parents aside, now I have a wife and apparently have inherited a child. Julianne expressed her gratitude for your timely intervention. I do as well.”

His valet merely shrugged and deftly wound a bit of cloth along the gouged flesh from the bullet. “I wasn’t sure if I should reveal I was nearby, but Lady Longhaven was clearly distressed. It seemed best to step forward and offer my assistance.”

“I am going to have some explaining to do, both for this”—Michael gestured at his arm—“and for why you were shadowing her in the first place. She was too tired and distracted tonight to address it, but I am coming to know her, and she won’t let it be for long.”

“She is a plucky little lass.”

It wasn’t particularly easy to win Fitzhugh’s regard, and that was definitely a compliment. Michael raised his brows. “I sense Julianne has an admirer.”

“Her ladyship told me the story in bits and pieces as we sat in a somewhat questionable inn and that little girl ate what looked to be the first good meal she’d had in some time. I don’t think rightly Lady Longhaven would normally divulge such confidences, but she was tired and muddy and frightened for her reception when we arrived here.” Fitz drew his graying brows together. “I like compassion in a woman. It makes her beautiful.”

“My wife is already beautiful.”

“Ah, there, sirrah. I thought you’d noticed the lass a time or two. But beautiful inside isn’t the same as beauty on the outside, in me opinion.”

“Don’t produce that rolling Irish brogue.” Michael’s smile was cynical. “You only do that when you want to irritate me.”

His valet didn’t dignify the accusation with an answer, but instead tied up the wound neatly.

“She was protecting my mother and father.”

“That’s the impression I received also, Col . . . my lord.”

“Tell me what happened.”

The older man complied, his short recital of the events of the day tallying directly with what Julianne had told him earlier. As Michael slipped on his shirt, he said, “The woman . . . the child’s mother—I think you need to find her. I don’t want later for her to upset my wife by trying to claim the child was kidnapped. I’d like to make the situation clear. The child stays with us. I’ll arrange a settlement of some kind.”

“I am sure that can be accomplished.” Fitzhugh handed him his jacket. “I understand the marchioness’s happiness is paramount.”

There was a short, profound silence. When Michael had agreed to the marriage, it hadn’t ever occurred to him he would so swiftly become involved. It hadn’t occurred to him he would
ever
become involved.

Michael turned around and adjusted his lapels. He spoke softly. “I’m in trouble, am I not?”

“Indeed.” Fitzhugh offered his watch and chain. “The marchioness is most charming.”

“Most women are a confounded nuisance.”

“If only we could exist without them, sir.”

“Are you possibly laughing at me, Sergeant?”

“I no longer hold that rank, my lord.” Fitzhugh grinned.

Blast it, Michael didn’t want to go out this evening, but he must, as the game had changed. “Stay here and watch over her.”

“I think I should go with you.”

He shook his head. “I am fine alone. No one is eternally lucky when it comes to a determined assassin, but, truthfully, I prefer you here, Fitz.”

“Then here I will stay.”

He sat down to pull on his boots. “If she should ask where I am—”

“Come back before she awakens and does. It shouldn’t be so difficult.”

Michael shot a sardonic sidelong glance at his friend and rose. “I will do my best.”

H
is growing arousal was an unneeded distraction. It wouldn’t have happened if Antonia’s very tempting backside wasn’t pressed against him as she leaned forward to peer around the edge of the building.

It might have been on purpose. Lawrence wouldn’t put it past her. That was why they were so well suited. He didn’t put
anything
past her. Like him, she was a survivor.

It also could be his recent abstinence. Lawrence had wondered more than once, and particularly at his moment, if he wasn’t being a damned fool to refuse to bed her in the weeks since Longhaven’s marriage. Part of it was pride, and Lawrence was fairly sure he’d dismissed useless pride more than a decade ago when he’d found himself a beggar and a thief. Once you’d compromised your principles for survival the first time, scruples became more of a flexible ideal.

But at the moment, business was the order of the day.

Antonia was convinced this was their chance to catch Roget. Johnson had traced the man who had shot at Lord Longhaven back to this very address.

The marquess would be in his debt if Lawrence was the source of discovering the person behind the attempts on his lordship’s life, and it was a payment he fully intended to collect. He slipped his arm around Antonia’s waist and pulled her back, even closer. Nuzzling her ear, he whispered, “I’ll go in first. No argument.”

“Masculine privilege annoys me,” she whispered back fiercely. “You know that.”

“Many things annoy you,” he responded in amusement, “but your safety matters to me. It’s a selfish decision, not a heroic one. If something happens to you, I will be most upset. For instance, who would I have left to annoy?”

“Do not try to be amusing.”

“Ah, but I wasn’t. I was simply telling the truth for a change. Without you my life would be devoid of all interest.”

He knew how to silence her. When would she learn he knew
her
?

Never gracious when forced into a compromise, Antonia scowled, but she did allow him to draw her back into the shadows. She was dressed all in black like a slender boy, her dark hair drawn back and tucked under a hat, and her mouth was sulky. “I’ll give you two minutes.”