When he had held her in his arms and made her believe that she might be enough for him.
Her breath caught in her throat.
She knew better . . . knew that the faster she left, the better off they would all be. She would never have him—she could never be a true partner to him. He would always be a duke, she always a commoner with a questionable history. But it did not make her love him any less, even as she wished it did.
She could not prove to him that she was more.
But she could prove it to herself.
And so she waited for her mother.
She was here because of the scandal. Because her mother’s actions had colored the world’s view of her . . . for her entire life. Because her mother’s actions had made her question her own actions, her own motivations, her own desires.
Because she had to know, once and for all, that blood did not out.
She had to know she could be more. Better. Different.
She had lived for too many years in her mother’s shadow; it was time for her to come out into the sun.
“An odd time for a call,” Louisa said as she entered the room, swathed in a dressing gown that floated around her as though she were wrapped in wind. She looked beautiful. As usual.
She sat, casting a critical eye over Juliana, taking in her gown, wrinkled and dusty from the journey, her mud-covered boots, and her hair, coming loose from the simple coif that Carla had arranged at the last staging post. “You look awful.”
Juliana resisted the temptation to smooth or settle. She had nothing to prove to her mother. Instead, she sat and watched as Louisa poured a glass of sherry without offering Juliana anything.
“So you have come to visit me in prison.”
“Hardly a prison,” Juliana said drily.
Louisa waved a hand dismissively. “All these statues make me feel like I live in a museum.”
“No one is forcing you to remain in London,” Juliana pointed out.
“That much is true . . . but I don’t have anywhere else to go, darling.” Juliana did not care for the endearment, so cold and casual. “I don’t suppose that Gabriel has decided what to do with me?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, I hope he does it sooner rather than later. I should like to be gone from here before I am made a grandmother. I do not need the reminder that I grow old.”
One side of Juliana’s mouth rose at the complete and unbelievable self-absorption. “I do not think that Gabriel has much interest in your schedule.”
Louisa rolled her eyes. “It is not that I am not happy for him. He and his wife seem comfortable. But that life . . . the clinging children . . . the crying . . . the incessant requests . . .” She sat back in her chair. “It was not for me.”
“I had not noticed.”
Louisa’s gaze narrowed on her. “You have grown up to have your father’s bold tongue.”
Juliana shrugged, knowing the movement would grate on her mother. “I was lacking additional examples.”
Louisa sighed. “Well, if you are not here to bring news of my future, what brings you here in the middle of the night?”
So typical. Such concern for herself and no one else.
Juliana did not hesitate. “Do you regret it?”
Louisa was not a fool. She did not pretend to misunderstand. “Which part?”
“All of it.”
She did not have to think about the answer. “I do not regret it on the whole, no. I do not regret being a marchioness, or even a merchant’s wife—though your father was less wealthy than he initially let on, and things were not always easy . . .”
“I assure you, things did not become easier after you deserted us.”
“Deserted,” Louisa scoffed. “What a dramatic word.”
“Would you refer to it in another way?”
“Juliana . . . it was my life. And I wanted it to be lived. Surely you can understand that, darling. You are so obviously that way.”
The casual observation sent a chill through her. “What does that mean?”
“Only that one learns plenty of things when one is trapped in a town house with nothing to read but the gossip rags from the past six months. You have been as scandalous as I was. All garden trysts and toppling vegetables and falling in the Serpentine!” Louisa laughed, a high, tinkling sound that Juliana loathed. “My! What fun that must have been!”
“It was terrifying. I nearly drowned.”
He saved me.
“Oh, I’m sure you’re exaggerating. And you were rescued by a dashing duke! It sounds precisely like something I would have done if I hadn’t been married at a foolishly young age and become the mother of twins. I will tell you, if I had it to do again, I would have been more of a scandal and less of a marchioness, that is certain.”
“You were plenty of scandal, Mother, I assure you.”
“Yes, but I wasn’t here to see it, darling, so it’s almost as though it didn’t happen,” she said as if she were speaking to a child. “You, however . . . you are living your scandal.”
It wasn’t true. She was living the reputation that she had inherited from this woman, who seemed not to care at all for the burdens with which she had saddled her children.
She was more than that.
Wasn’t she?
Her mother pressed on, her tone airy, as though she had never given much thought to her actions. To the way they might have affected others. “You did well without me, darling. To think . . . you’ve found your brothers . . . and they care for you. Yes . . . I’ve done my job.”
Louisa’s self-satisfaction was undeniable. Juliana could not help her laugh. It was rather impossible to hate someone who seemed so utterly disconnected from her own actions.
“I know you want a better reason, Juliana. I know you wish there were some answer that would make everything cleaner. That would make you forgive me. But there isn’t. I made some difficult choices. And if I had it to do over again, I’m not sure I would make them again.”
“You mean, choosing to have us? Or choosing to leave us?”
Louisa did not speak.
She did not have to. The answer was in her eyes.
And everything became clear.
She was nothing like her mother.
Juliana let out a long breath, a breath she felt she had been holding for a decade, and stood, taking in her mother, who looked so much like her—as though she were looking into the future.
A different future than before.
A better one.
Because of a mother who had never once shown caring or attention, and who, once she had left, had never looked back, Juliana at last had a family. And perhaps it was enough.
Perhaps she could convince herself of it.
Soon her brother’s house would be filled with laughing children and loving parents, and perhaps the noise would block out the time when she had been close to finding love of her own.
Perhaps there would be a time when he was not constantly in her thoughts.
When she did not love him so much.
It seemed impossible.
She looked to the statue again, watching as Eros stretched for that elusive thing beyond his reach.
It was all she could hope for.
Simon stood just inside his study, exhausted and covered in mud from his journey across England. He’d arrived at his town house in the dead of night, only to discover that all hell had broken loose while he was gone.
Boggs had taken his cloak and hat, handed Simon the Gazette with an even-more-somber expression than usual on his usually-quite-somber face, and gone to find food, as Simon had done nothing but change horses in the last eighteen hours, so desperate had he been to get back to London.
And to Juliana.
Simon stared down at the newspaper, reading the words again and again, as though repeat viewings could somehow change them. Take them away. But no, every time he read the article, it was precisely the same. Precisely as damning.
&nb
sp; First person account . . . Duke of Leighton . . . his sister, not even out . . . in a family way . . . a daughter, born just days ago.
He was going to murder his sister.
She’d known he would never reveal the scandal himself. She’d known he’d never risk her reputation, or Caroline’s, in such a way.
And so she’d taken matters into her own hands.
Why?
The answer flashed, quick and so obvious, he couldn’t believe he had missed it. He moved to his desk and lifted the pile of correspondence there, sifting through until he found the square of paper that he was looking for.
Slipping his finger beneath the wax seal, he allowed himself to hope. Not much. Just until he read the single line of text there, underlined. Twice.
The engagement is off. –Needham
Georgiana had made certain that his betrothal to Penelope could not stand.
Your betrothal gift has already been sent to London.
She’d ruined herself. Ruined them all.
To ensure his happiness.
Now he had only to reach out and take it.
The Northumberland autumn ball was planned as the last official event of the season, before Parliament’s special session finished and society packed up and headed for the country for the close of the year.
The stairs leading up to the house and the foyer were packed with throngs of revelers, passing their heavy cloaks to footmen and moving up the grand staircase to the ballroom, where the main festivities were already under way.
All of London society had braved a particularly nasty rain to be there, a fitting end to this altogether-too-long of a season.
And if Simon’s evening went according to plan, this ball was going to be the talk of not only that season but several more to come.
Unfortunately, he appeared to have been uninvited to the festivities.
“I am sorry, Your Grace, but the duke and duchess are not receiving.” The head footman of Northumberland House, who’d been assigned the unfortunate task of asking Simon to step out of the crowd, delivered the unfortunate news with a slight tremor.
“I beg your pardon?”
The servant backed up a step. “They are not . . .” He cleared his throat. “Receiving.”
Simon turned to look at the stream of people dressed in their very finest, moving up the center staircase of the house, headed for the ballroom. “And so I suppose all these people are . . .” He trailed off, waiting for the footman to complete the sentence.
“. . . Family?” The footman finished, uncertain.
Simon supposed he should sympathize for the poor man, who had likely never turned away a duke before, but he could not muster the emotion. He was too irritated. “And the music from above. It is part of a . . . family gathering?”
The servant cleared his throat. “Erm. Yes?”
He was being turned away from Northumberland House because his sister had borne a child. Out of wedlock. The Leighton name was now synonymous with scandal. It had taken less than a day, and all invitations he had received for events to be held in the coming weeks had been politely revoked—it seemed a rash of cancellations had taken place across London.
Perhaps, had it been another day—another ball—he would have done what was expected and left, but Juliana was inside that ballroom. And he had a plan to win her. One that relied heavily on this, the last ball of the season.
Simon had had enough. “Well, I suppose we’re lucky that Northumberland is a distant cousin.” He pushed past the servant and started up the staircase, taking the steps two at a time as the servant followed along behind.
“Your Grace, you cannot!”
On the landing, he turned and faced the footman. “And how do you plan to stop me?”
“Your Grace . . .” The servant apparently planned to appeal to Simon’s better judgment.
Little did he know that Simon’s better judgment was already engaged in an alternate purpose that evening—to find Juliana and make her his.
He ducked around a cluster of revelers and pushed into the ballroom, finding her in the crowd the moment he entered; he was drawn to her like a moth to a flame.
He had missed her with a powerful intensity, and seeing her filled him with acute pleasure. She was his drug. He craved her nearness, her laugh, her courage, the way she moved her hands when she spoke, that little shrug that had driven him mad when he had first met her and that he ached for now.
She waltzed across the room on Allendale’s arm, dressed in a lovely gown of the palest pink, and for a fleeting moment, Simon was distracted by the fact that she wore such an uninteresting color—a color that made her blend in with the rest of the young, unmarried women in the room—until a turn in the dance gave him a view of her beautiful face, and it no longer mattered what she was wearing.
The only thing that mattered was the sadness in her eyes. The longing in them. For him.
Thank God.
For he could not bear it if she belonged to someone else.
The thought came on a wicked wave of desire—desire to march up to her, pull her from the earl’s arms, and steal her away.
Which, as luck would have it, was precisely the plan.
He had not removed his cloak when he had entered, and as he moved through the crowd, clusters of revelers stopped, first to stare, then deliberately to turn away from him. He knew what they were doing—had done it himself dozens of times before—and he would be lying if he said that the cuts were not painful.
But the embarrassment and shame that he should be feeling as each of these people who, mere days ago, were desperate for his approval, turned their backs to show him their disapproval paled in comparison to the pleasure he felt at the way they eased his passage to his single, undeniable goal: Juliana.
His Juliana.
He took a deep breath and, defying all convention and everything he had ever been trained to do or be, crossed directly into the center of the room, stopping dancers in their tracks.
Proving, once and for all, that she had been right all along—and that reputation was nothing when compared to love.
Allendale saw him coming. The earl’s friendly smile faded into a look of shock, and he slowed Juliana to a stop. The orchestra played on as Simon drew nearer to them, and he heard the confusion in Juliana’s voice when she said, “What has happened?”
Her voice was a benediction—that lilting Italian accent that he craved, the way she drew out her syllables and let them linger on her tongue. She turned to him, and her eyes widened—at his nearness or his attire or both—her lush mouth fell open, and the entire room disappeared. It was only her. Only them. Only now.
“Your Grace?”
He did not trust himself to speak to her. Not when he wanted to say a hundred things that were for her and her alone. So he turned to the earl instead, saying with a lifetime of ducal imperiousness, “Allendale, I am taking your partner.”
Benedick’s mouth opened, then closed, as if he were trying to recall the exact protocol for this situation. Finally, the earl turned to Juliana, allowing her the choice.
Simon did the same, holding out one gloved hand, palm up. “Juliana?” he asked, adoring the way her sapphire eyes darkened and her lips parted at the word. “I should very much like to cause a scandal.”
She stared at the hand for a long moment, then met his gaze.
And there was an unbearable sadness in her eyes.
Suddenly, he knew what she was going to do.
And he could not stop her.
She shook her head. “No.”
He stood there like a fool, arm extended, not understanding.
She shook her head again and whispered, “I won’t be your scandal. Not this time.” The words crashed around him, and he watched as her eyes went liquid with unshed tears. “No,” she repeated, and she hurried past, heading for the exit.
It took him a moment to realize what had happened—that she was leaving him. That she had rejected him. He met Allendale’s gaz
e, blood roaring in his ears, shame and confusion and something else flooding through him, hot and furious.
“How could you do such a thing to her?”
The words barely registered before Allendale was pushing past him as well, following Juliana through the crowd.
He turned to watch them, to watch her rush through the room, their massive audience moving aside to let her pass, and he did the only thing he could think to do; he called after her. “Juliana!”
A collective gasp rippled through the room at the sound, a booming shout that was entirely out of place in a ballroom, or anywhere a cultured gentleman happened to be. But he did not care. He took a step toward her, following, and an arm came across his chest.
Ralston held him back.
He fought against the grip, calling out again, her name tearing through the room, echoing up into the rafters, silencing everyone in the room, including the orchestra. “Juliana!”
She turned back. He met her gaze—the color of Ceylon sapphires—and said the only thing he could think to say. The only thing he could imagine would keep her there. With him. The only thing that mattered. “I love you.”
Her face—her beautiful, perfect face—crumbled at the words, and the tears that she had held at bay spilled over.
She ran from the room, Allendale on her heels.
Simon tore himself from Ralston’s grip, followed, determined to reach her. Determined to fix it.
And damned if the ton didn’t protect her from him.
The orchestra resumed its playing, and there were suddenly throngs of people in his way. Everywhere he turned, there was a waltzing couple trapping him on the dance floor, and when he reached the edge of the ballroom, a constant stream of guests simply happened into his path.
Not one of them met his eyes; not one spoke to him. But they made it impossible for him to catch her.
When he had fought his way through the crowd, down the stairs, and out the door, she was gone, and there was nothing but a drenching London rain to greet him.
And at that moment, as he stared into the fog, replaying the events of the last few minutes over and over, he recognized the emotion coursing through him.
It was fear.
Fear that he had lost the only thing he had ever really wanted.