Vice

Chapter 22

“I daresay you've known Lady Lydia all your life," Juliana remarked to Lord Quentin several mornings later, when he returned to her parlor after escorting her visitors to their carriages.

"What makes you say that?" He walked to the window overlooking the garden and stood looking out so she could see nothing of his face.

"Oh, just that you seem very easy together. Like very old friends." She refilled their coffee cups with an air of nonchalance.

In the last few days Lady Lydia had been a frequent visitor to Lady Edgecombe. Somehow her visits coincided with Lord Quentin's seemingly casual presence in Juliana's parlor. Lady Lydia never came alone; she always had some friend or acquaintance of her mother's in tow, a lady anxious to pay a courtesy visit to the new bride. But it was clear to Juliana, at least, that these chaperons were merely a blind. Behind their presence, Lady Lydia and Lord Quentin could talk and smile, brush hands in a fleeting gesture, sit side by side on a sofa, their heads bent together over a book of illustrations.

"We are old friends." Quentin turned from the window to take his refilled cup, that same bleak look haunting his eyes.

"But you feel more for each other than friendship." Juliana found herself taking the bull by the horns without conscious thought. Her impulses were always getting the better of her, but maybe in this case it might prove helpful.

Quentin said nothing for a minute. He drank his coffee, then said, "Is it that obvious?"

"To me."

"I am trying so hard to control it, Juliana." Quentin's voice was low and anguished, reflecting the misery in his eyes. "But I can't bear the idea of her marrying Tarquin. Of her marrying anyone but me." He began to pace the room from window to door, the words bubbling forth as if Juliana had unplugged a well. "I should go back to Melchester at once. Put myself beyond temptation. But I can't do it."

"Have you finished your business with the archbishop?"

Quentin shook his head. "If only I had, I wouldn't have an excuse to stay… to betray Tarquin every minute I'm in lydia's company."

"You're too harsh with yourself," Juliana said practically. "You're not betraying the duke by sitting with Lydia-"

"I lust after her!" he interrupted in anguish. "God help me, Juliana, but I lust after another man's wife."

"She's not his wife yet," Juliana pointed out.

"Don't split hairs." He sat down, dropping his head in his hands. "It's mortal sin. I know it and yet I can't stop myself."

"But she feels the same way about you."

Quentin raised his head. His face was haggard. "She has said so. God forgive me, but I asked her. I forced her to acknowledge her own sin." He dropped his head in his hands again with a soft groan.

Juliana tucked an errant ringlet behind her ear. All this talk of sin. she supposed, was only to be expected from a man of the cloth, but since it was impossible to believe that Quentin had carried his devotion to Lydia as far as consummation, he did seem to be going overboard with the self-flagellation.

"Why don't you ask the duke to release her?" It seemed a simple enough solution.

Quentin gave a short, bitter laugh. "Sometimes I forget how unworldly you are. Lydia's family would never countenance a match with me. Not when their daughter is destined to be a duchess. Our world doesn't work that way, my dear."

Juliana refused to be satisfied with this. "But Lydia surely is not so mercenary?"

"Lydia! Sweet heaven, no! Lydia is an angel!"

"Yes, of course she is. But if she doesn't care about becoming a duchess, surely she can persuade her parents that she loves someone else."

Quentin shook his head, almost amused by this naive pragmaticism. "Lord and Lady Melton would never give up such an advantageous match for their daughter."

"But supposing the duke offered to release Lydia?" she suggested. "Perhaps he would do it for your sake. If he understood how you feel-and how Lydia feels."

"My dear girl, it would be the same as jilting her. Tarquin would never do that to her… or her family. Besides," he added with a rueful sigh, "I could never ask Tarquin to make such a sacrifice. He wants this match. He's done so much for me over the years, I couldn't bring myself to ruin his life."

"Oh, pshaw!" Juliana exclaimed in disgust. "You wouldn't be ruining his life. He'd soon get over it. It isn't as if he's in love with her. And as far as jilting Lydia is concerned, a private rearrangement is no concern of anyone's. It'll be a nine days' wonder at worst."

Quentin wondered if she was right, and for a moment hope flickered. Then it died as swiftly as it had arisen.

"Lydia has been educated to be Tarquin's wife. She will bring him Melton land to augment his own. She knows her duty and she knows what to expect. She will be a good wife and mother to his children, and she'll expect no more than courtesy and consideration in return. She won't think about other women in his life, because she knows that all women of her social status do not marry for love. She knows that she must expect her husband to seek his pleasure outside the marriage bed." The bitterness was back in his voice now. "Tarquin has no truck with sentimentality, Juliana. And love comes into that category."

"I suppose so." Her fingers plucked restlessly at an overblown rose in a bowl beside her chair. The petals showered down. She and Tarquin had had no private talk since their last confrontation. He had been polite and distant, but he hadn't come to her bed. She wondered if he was waiting for an invitation. She had told him to leave her alone, after all.

"Don't you think he could change, Quentin?" She pinched a rose petal between her fingers, not raising her eyes as she asked the question.

"He already has a little," Quentin said thoughtfully. "I think you've had a softening effect on him."

Juliana looked up with a quick flush. "Do you think so?"

"Mmmm. But then you, my dear, are a most unusual young woman." He rose to his feet and took her hand, raising it to his lips. "Unusual, and most perceptive. I didn't mean to burden you with my troubles."

Juliana's flush deepened with pleasure. "You didn't burden me with anything, sir. I'm honored with your confidence."

He smiled again and bent to kiss her cheek. "You have, at least, enabled me to see clearly again. If it's so obvious to you what Lydia and I feel, then it may become obvious to Tarquin also. I don't want that to happen."

"So what will you do?"

"Write to my bishop and ask to return before my mission is completed."

It was a sad-indeed, rather pathetic-solution, Juliana thought, but she merely nodded as if in agreement, and he left her.

She leaned back against the chair and closed her eyes for a moment. Her hand drifted over her belly. Had she conceived? It was five weeks since her last monthly terms. She felt no different, none of the signs so painstakingly pointed out by Mistress Dennison. And yet she had this strange, deep knowledge inside her body that something different was going on. She couldn't put words to it, but it was a definite conviction known in her blood if not in her brain.

She would wait until she was sure, of course, before telling the duke. In their present state of estrangement he'd probably be delighted that there was no further need for their lovemaking. She ought to be pleased herself, but Juliana was too honest to pretend that the thought brought her anything but a hollow pain. She hated the present coldness, but some stubborn streak kept her from making the first move. It was up to the duke to heal the breach if he wanted to.

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" 'E's lodgin' at the Gardener's Arms, in Cheapside, Yer Grace." Ted took a thirsty gulp of ale. Tracking George Ridge across London had been hot and thirsty work.

The duke was perched on the edge of the desk in his book room, a glass of claret in hand, his canary silk coat and britches a startling contrast to his companion's rough leathern britches and homespun jerkin. Yet it would be clear to anyone walking into the room that there was a definite equality in the relationship between the Duke of Redmayne and the stalwart Ted Rougle›.

"Has he recovered from your little intervention?"

Ted grinned. "Aye, 'e's large as life an' twice as ugly." He drained his tankard and smacked his lips.

Tarquin nodded, gesturing to the pitcher that stood on the silver tray at the far end of the desk. Ted helped himself with a grunt of thanks.

"An' there's summat else ye should know, Yer Grace." Ted's tone was faintly musing, yet carried a note of some import. Seeing he had the duke's full attention, he continued. " 'Cordin' to the missis at the Gardener's, 'e's bin 'avin' a visitor. Regular like."

"Oh?" Tarquin's eyebrows crawled into his scalp.

"Right sickly-lookin' gent, the missis said. Gave 'er the creeps 'e did. All green an' white, with eyes like the dead."

"She has a colorful turn of phrase," Tarquin observed, sipping his claret. "Are we to assume that Lucien and George have set up an unholy alliance?"

He took out his snuffbox and stood for a minute tapping a manicured fingernail against the enamel. He was remembering that George had been in the Shakespeare's Head the night Lucien had put Juliana on the block. Juliana said he'd made a bid on her. It was possible that these two, both bearing grudges against Juliana, and in Lucien's case overwhelmingly against his cousin, should have formed the devil's partnership.

Ted didn't answer what he knew had been a rhetorical question, merely regarded his employer stolidly over his tankard.

"Let's deal with George first," Tarquin said. "We'll pay a little visit to the Gardener's Arms later tonight… when the oaf should have returned from his amusements in the Garden. Bring a horsewhip. We must be sure to emphasize my point."

"Right y'are, Yer Grace." Ted deposited his empty tankard on the tray, bowed with a jerk of his head, and left.

The duke frowned into space, twirling the delicate stem of his glass between finger and thumb. He'd been intending to put a stop to George's antics as soon as Ted had tracked him down after the attempted abduction, but if Ridge had joined forces with Lucien, then the situation was much more menacing. Lucien was unpredictable and could be quite subtle in his malevolence. Ridge, as he'd already demonstrated, would rely on brute force. They made a formidable combination.

He stood up suddenly, impelled by a force he'd been fighting for the last couple of days. He wanted Juliana. This estrangement tore at his vitals. It was becoming almost impossible to keep up the cool, distant facade. Every day he looked at her across the dinner table, at the fierce vibrancy of her hair, the luster of her eyes, the rich curves of her body. And he held himself away from her. It was torture, a wrenching on the rack. And Juliana, damn her, was giving as good as she got. Her stare was as cool as his, her voice as flat, her conversation never transcending the banality of small talk between strangers. He wanted to throttle her as much as he wanted to assuage his aching longing on her willing, eagerly responsive body.

Never had he felt like this before. As if every carefully woven strand of his personality was tangled, his life a jumbled jigsaw. And all because a seventeen-year-old chit didn't know what was good for her. What else did she want of him, for God's sake?

With a muttered oath he flung himself out of the book room and took the stairs two at a time. He entered Juliana's parlor without knocking, shut the door behind him, then stood leaning against it, regarding her in brooding silence.

Juliana had been writing a note to Lilly. At midnight they were all due to meet at Mother Cocksedge's establishment. Juliana had planned the evening very carefully. She was going to the opera in a party assembled by one of Lady Melton's acquaintances. It would be easy enough to slip away before supper. She could plead a headache, insist on returning alone in a hackney, and instead have herself driven to Covent Garden. In the unlikely event that the duke returned from his own entertainment before her, he would assume the party was sitting late over supper.

She was explaining in her letter to Lilly that she would arrive at Cocksedge's just after midnight when Tarquin burst in. She felt herself flush. Instinctively she thrust the sheet of vellum to the back of the secretaire.

"My… my lord. This is a surprise,'' she managed to say, trying for the cold tone she'd perfected recently.

"I miss you, dammit!" he stated, pushing himself away from the door. "Goddamn you, Juliana. I can't go on like this. I don't know what you've done to me." He pulled her up from her chair. He held her face between both hands and kissed her with a deep urgency. His hands moved upward, pulling the pins from her hair, his fingers roughly running through it as he loosened it; all the while his tongue hungrily probed her mouth.

Juliana was so taken aback that for a minute she didn't respond; then a wild, almost primitive, triumph flashed through her veins. She had this power over him. A woman's power. A power she was positive he had never acknowledged before. Now she clung to him, at last after days of deprivation able to give expression to the unquenchable well of passion that bubbled at her core. Her tongue fenced with his, her body reached against him, rubbing, pressing, moving with sinuous temptation, and she felt him hard and urgent against her belly.

Tarquin bore her backward to the sofa, and she fell in a tangle of skirts to sink onto the shiny taffeta. He didn't release her mouth, merely pushed up her skirts to her waist, released his own aching stem, and drove deep into her body. Her legs curled around his back, and her body moved with all the urgency of a passion that had many causes but only one outlet. Anger, hurt, mistrust, desire, all consumed in the flames.

He drew her legs onto his shoulders, his palms running up the firm calves, over the smooth flesh of her thighs above her garters, cupping her buttocks. His eyes were closed as he held her in his hands, and his flesh was plunging deep into the dark, velvet depths of her body. As the little ripples of her approaching climax tantalized his flesh, he opened his eyes and looked down at her. Her own eyes were wide-open, glowing with joy, not a sign of misgiving or withholding beneath the jade surface. She was giving herself to him as if there had never been a word of doubt between them, and he knew, in that moment, that the giving was a true expression of her soul.

And in the same instant he understood what she wanted from him. A gift that came without reservations. The gift of himself. He had beneath him, her body encompassing his as he possessed hers, the possibility of a love for all time. A partner of his heart and soul.

Juliana reached up and touched his face, a look of wonder now in her eyes. He looked transformed. Her breath caught in her throat as she read the message in the intensity of his gaze. This was no longer a man who couldn't believe in the reality of love.