Once Upon a Marquess (The Worth Saga 1)

She wasn’t going to speak. Not if he was going to continually talk over her. She folded her arms.

“Nothing,” he said, “except my interrupting you. You hate that. Did I do it well?”

She sighed.

“Or,” he offered, “if you hate me too much even for this discussion, you could just skip all the preliminary steps and give me your brother’s journals.”

Judith snorted. “There isn’t the slightest chance of my offering you an unearned advantage of that magnitude.”

“I thought as much.” Christian shrugged. “In any event, if we are to find out where the money has gone—”

“Now it is my turn to interrupt you,” Judith said. “The money was urgent because Camilla was on the verge of coming out. If I am not her legal guardian, the urgency intensifies. Who has charge of her? Will she still have a Season, or will that be blocked as well? The money is the least of our problems now.”

He simply nodded. “So we must choose our next target. Do you think that Mr. Ennis is honest? If he is, who is this supposed legal guardian who has appeared out of nowhere to frustrate our purposes?”

“My purposes,” Judith reminded him. “And… There is a possible answer. My uncle. Camilla’s guardian. If it’s anyone, it’s him. He’s the only other person I could imagine taking over the role.”

“You haven’t told me where the money came from in the first place.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “You sent it anonymously, but how did you obtain it? Was he involved in some way?”

Judith turned to glare at him. “Those are questions. We agreed I wouldn’t have to answer questions. He’s not even technically my uncle by blood. He’s uncle to the youngest three children. But we stayed with him during the years when my father and Anthony were away from England, and I’ve never lost the habit of calling him Uncle William.”

Christian was frowning at her now. “Do I understand that correctly? Your uncle only offered to take in Camilla?”

Judith tasted a hint of bitterness on her tongue. “No. It was not like that. He offered me and Benedict a place as well. He said that if we came to live with him, we’d never want for anything. We’d have clothing, food, come-outs for the girls, schooling for the boys. We’d have everything, he said, as soon as the scandal died down. Camilla said yes.”

“But you refused?”

Judith’s fists clenched. “That’s a question again.”

“Of course you refused,” he said on an intake of breath. “You, Camilla, and Benedict? What of Theresa?”

“She was difficult.” She forced herself to stare straight ahead as she said those words. “Even more difficult when she was a child. After the thing with my father… She would scream for Anthony. And you know how some children have imaginary friends? Theresa invented an entire imaginary sister who she insisted was real despite all our attempts to reason with her. My uncle thought she needed to be sent to a school for women. He actually referred to crushing her spirit as a positive thing. There was a reason my father carted her off to China with him when she was just three. He didn’t want to leave her with Uncle William. He certainly didn’t care to expand Theresa’s horizons.”

Christian was looking at her with something like pity. She didn’t want his pity, damn it.

“So you said no,” Christian said in a low voice.

“So I said no.” Judith’s voice broke despite herself. “What else could I say? How could I accept comfort and clothing at that cost?”

It had been the most difficult, exhausting no of her life.

“You make it so easy.” Christian’s voice was a low murmur beside her. “We’re not friends. You hate me. This entire mess is my fault. See how easy it is for me to remind you?”

She examined her gloved hands. It had been difficult, exhausting…and in its own way, in every small triumph she had won, every barrier she had beaten down, utterly exhilarating. It was one thing to hate him. It was quite another to have him take pity on her for the very things that had brought her pride.

“No,” Judith said. “It was not all your fault.”

He went very still next to her.

“We’re not friends,” she said, “but we are allies of a sort. The truth has been bothering me since last we spoke. My father was difficult; I never knew him well. Before he inherited the earldom, he was in the army. After, he was gone for years on end for his ambassadorial duties. When he returned from his last stint in India, he was…odd. He developed some exceedingly strange notions.” She couldn’t look at him. “He served in too many wars before he inherited the earldom unexpectedly. I read all the evidence in the case, and I still have no idea what motivated him. I suppose Anthony might know, but…” She drew in a deep breath. “It took me years to admit it to myself, but…you could have been right about him.”

“This is alarming.” Christian pulled back from her. “We can’t have you talking like that. It sounds like common ground.”

“It isn’t,” Judith told him. “If my father was absent, Anthony was always there. It’s Anthony I care about. You should have known that the evidence you found would unfairly implicate my brother. You should have spoken on his behalf at his trial. Yes, maybe our family would have lost everything. But I wouldn’t have lost him. I wouldn’t have had to do this alone.”

He exhaled. “I see.” He sounded as if he were poking needles into his thigh. His jaw worked for a moment as if he were trying to argue. Then he shook his head. “Good. Hatred is preserved. The alliance is safe.” He looked away briefly before turning back to her and giving her a glower that could have incinerated her. “I could not have spoken on his behalf in any event. Your brother was guilty.”

She exhaled.

He shook his head. “Make arrangements to visit your uncle.”

“You make them.” She didn’t look at him. “He’ll agree to a visit from you; you’re in Parliament. I’m certain he won’t answer my inquiry. He hasn’t in years.”

They’d reached her street. It was so narrow that if he drove down it, he’d not be able to turn the conveyance round at the end. There was no green grass near here, no cunning little parks, no swans floating on gentle manmade ponds. There was only the hard stone of the street, littered with little bits of paper.

He stopped the horses. “I’m going to get out and hand you down. It won’t mean anything.”

She let him do it. She let him come to her side, let him take her hands as she stepped down. Her hands in his didn’t mean anything. It was a gesture as meaningless as his glowers.

His eyes seemed to track her so intently now.

She wouldn’t look up into them. She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t think of his fingers curling around hers. Of the fabric of his jacket brushing her arm or her skirts against his legs.

Her slippers touched the ground; he let go, and she felt her lungs working again. She dared a glance up at him.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because I want Anthony’s journals.”

“No. I mean, why are you trying to set me at ease?”

He didn’t deny the claim. For a moment, he looked off down her street. Then he shrugged. “Because I want Anthony’s journals,” he repeated. “If you start forgetting you hate me, you’ll panic and order me to stay away before we’ve resolved your little problem.”

How well he knew her. She could feel that beat of panic now, a dull insistent thud in her chest.

“As for me?” He shrugged and looked her in the eyes. “I don’t dare let myself forget you hate me. Not once. Without that, I might…”

He was standing next to her. She was bracketed between him and his curricle.

Once, she’d thought herself in love with him. With that pale scar on his cheek from the time he’d cracked his head on a rock. With the dark curl of his hair. With the way he could make her laugh despite herself.

She’d loved the way he looked at her—precisely like this. He had always sparked her imagination to a riot. She’d wanted more than his

hand on hers, more than his lips on hers. He was the only person in the world who could make her feel both comfortable and uncomfortable all at the same time.

If she didn’t hate him, she truly would panic.

She forced herself to look in his eyes. “You didn’t say. What would you do if I didn’t hate you?”

He met her gaze. Oh, she should never have looked at him. That spark of laughter in his eyes seemed to ignite into something heated. A thread of consternation coiled in her belly. It wound deep in her, threading through her heart, her breath, her wants.

Once upon a time, he had been all of her dreams. Somewhere, deep inside, some part of her believed that he still was.

He didn’t answer her question. Instead, his hand made a fist at his side. “By all means,” he said, “let us remember that you hate me.”

Chapter Seven

The first thing Judith saw when she walked in her door was Theresa, sitting on a chair at the table, brushing her blond hair out of her eyes. Benedict sat across from her, watching intently.

“Will she be all right?” Benedict asked.