He could have lost Clara tonight.
It had been a litany hammering through him the entire time he’d roused the servants, checked upon the safety of his sisters, and scoured the house for any signs of the intruder. In the end, they hadn’t found a damn thing. The police had been summoned, and they’d taken statements but had accomplished precious little. They certainly hadn’t discovered any clues as to who had attempted to murder Clara.
The mere juxtaposition of his wife’s name andmurderin the same thought left him feeling as though all the air had been sucked from his lungs. As though the weight of a cartload of bricks sat upon him, as though his gut was tied in knots, his skin a bizarre blend of hot and cold, simultaneously numb and on fire. A world without Clara. He couldn’t fathom such a travesty. By God, there ought not to be a world at all without her in it.
He had not lost her, and he could thank the Lord for that a hundred thousand times and his gratitude would still never be adequately expressed. If indeed the Lord cared to listen to a sinner like him, that was. But not losing her wasn’t the point any longer, not now.
For hecouldhave lost her. Had he been any slower to break down the door, had he been sleeping instead of awake and brooding, had she not been as strong and fierce a fighter as she was, he wouldn’t have her warm, lovely curves draped over him. She’d have been murdered in her bed, just next door, because of him. Because he had unwittingly brought danger into her life.
Whitney’s words echoed through his mind.How can you keep her safe?What would happen if the villain who assaulted you returns to finish the deed here in your home? What if Clara is in the way?And what had Julian done but mocked him?This isn’t war, he’d scoffed. But tonight had proved him wrong. Dead wrong. Itwaswar. He’d tear out the throat of the man who’d dared to create such bruises on Clara’s tender skin, who’d dared to attempt to choke the life from her while she slept in her bed.
A hunger for retribution burned through him. A bloodlust. A desperation to right the wrongs of the night. Tonight, he’d done what he did best his entire life: he’d failed. He’d failed Clara, much as he’d failed at everything he’d ever tried. Being a good son, rescuing himself from debt without selling his soul, keeping his bloody wife safe.
Christ, it was his fault. Every bit of it. He could have left her alone. He could have taken the hundred thousand pounds and marched her off to the nearest ship for Virginia. Even today, he could have sent her to her father’s home, at least until he could be assured of her safety.
But he was a selfish fucking bastard. And he had wanted her from the moment he’d first seen her. He had seen her innocence, her brightness, her intelligence and beauty and daring, and he’d wanted to possess it all for himself.
He’d wanted to possess her.
Hell, yes. Everything could change. For now he knew that he needed to let her go. To rid her of him. To send her back to safety. Let her go to Virginia. By God, let her go anywhere else in the goddamn world, so long as she was away from him andsafe. He couldn’t bear to be the cause of her death. To be the reason she was in grave danger. Until tonight, he’d thought he couldn’t bear to set her free.
Tonight, he’d realized his capacity to love hadn’t withered away entirely from his black soul. He loved Clara. Loved her more than he’d ever experienced. It terrified him. Terrified him as much as the notion of being responsible for her death did.
Because of his love for her, he knew he could no longer keep her tied to him. The danger surrounding them aside, she was too good for him. He’d been too caught up in his own needs to acknowledge it before, but he could damn well see the truth for what it was now. He didn’t deserve a woman like her.
And she didn’t deserve a man like him, a jaded bastard who’d manipulated her, seduced her, deceived her, and all because he had wanted her for himself. Because the good and the innocence in him had died the day he’d accepted Lady Esterly’s proposition. He’d become what he hated most, and if Clara remained his wife, he would only ruin her as surely as he had been ruined. The binds between them needed to be severed for her safety as much as for her own good.
And so, he would send her back to her papa by any means necessary. Anything to secure her safety, to give her the sort of future he could never provide. She was a stubborn woman, his little dove, and he knew she would not go easily. But go she would, for he loved her enough to make certain there would never be another day she suffered because of him.
For the moment, however, he couldn’t bear to push her away. He needed this precious time, needed the feeling of her wrapped around him, the luxurious strands of her hair beneath his palm, her even breathing, her lush breast pressed against him. He needed to drink in this one last night they would have together before he said goodbye to her forever.
“Thank you for chasing him away,” she said quietly into the stillness that had descended between them, disrupting the bleak turn of his thoughts at last.
He’d supposed she’d fallen asleep, worn out as she must be from the horrors of the attack she’d endured. He swallowed against a sudden thickness in his throat. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you sooner. I wish to God I’d been there before…”
He couldn’t bring himself to give voice to what had happened to her. That bastard’s hands on her throat. The purple fingerprints on her otherwise flawless skin. The angry bruise on her cheek. His fists clenched.
Her hand traveled over his chest in a tentative caress, almost soothing. “You came for me just when I needed you, Julian.”
Jesus, could it be thatshewas reassuringhim? How utterly ridiculous. How thoroughly Clara. He trapped her wandering hand in his, stilling it. “Don’t fancy me a hero, little dove. I’m a man, weak-willed, selfish, and more flawed than you can imagine.”
His biggest flaw of all was being incapable of protecting the woman he loved. How helpless he’d felt, attempting to slam his way through the door, hearing the muffled sounds of the breath being choked from her. To think someone in the world felt such malice toward him that he’d intended to kill not only Julian but his wife as well was jarring indeed.
Even more jarring when one considered the pathetic fact that he hadn’t an inkling as to who would wish him such ill or why. He’d been of half a mind to suspect Whitney of hiring someone to remove him, blight that he was, from the earth. But Jesse Whitney loved his daughter, and he would never have consented to her being injured, which left Julian hopelessly adrift.
She pressed a kiss to his chest, sending a fresh arrow of heat to his groin and effectively cutting through the morose bent of his mind. “You are a good man, Julian, for all that you choose to believe you’re not. Besides, I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for you.”
Her drawl remained more pronounced than usual, and her voice felt like honey sliding slowly over him. He didn’t want to think about how near she’d come to death. Didn’t want to entertain for one more moment the knowledge that if anything had happened differently earlier, she would be forever gone. Gone from him he could bear because he loved her too much, but gone from the earth he could not.
She pressed another kiss to his skin, her tongue flicking out to taste him, and he wasn’t sure which urge was stronger, the one to catch her in his arms and flip her on her back or the one to fling her from him for her own good. His fingers tightened over hers, twining with them.
“Damn it, don’t you see? You wouldn’t have been in danger at all, wouldn’t be in this very house like a lamb ripe for slaughter, if it weren’t for me.” His voice was rougher than he’d intended, but there was the truth of it.
“Nothing that happened was your fault.” She seemed to read his mind in that canny way she had. She kissed higher, her hot mouth roaming to his neck. “You mustn’t blame yourself.”
“Ah, but I must, for that is where the blame lies.” And to do penance, he would see her safe and far, far away from him. An ocean away if he had anything to say about it. “I’m so very sorry for all the pain I’ve caused you. How is your cheek, love?”
He’d wanted to summon her a doctor but she’d been adamant in her refusal. With the fight drained from his body, he’d made her promise to agree to an examination in the morning. She had acquiesced with extreme reluctance.
