“Why did you not say them when I returned? Why wait?” she asked.
“Why did you refuse to marry me?” he countered. “You gave me leave to court you at Farnsworth Hall. We parted as friends and lovers. Yet when we met again in London, it was as if you were a stranger to me.”
“You were the stranger, Sidney. I thought I knew you, but when I saw you that horrible day, I realized I never had.”
“When you saw me? Where? What day?”
“Here,” she whispered. “Outside Cagney House. I chanced to be driving by just after you had returned from Buckinghamshire. Only, I had not known you were arrived just then. Not until I saw you in the street with Lady Richards. You had run out to her barouche with a box—a gift, I can only suppose. And you kissed her, there in the midst of everything. You kissed that woman just as you had kissed me, only a fortnight before. That was betrayal enough, but I realized you had informed her of your arrival before you had even bothered to send word to me.”
He was cold.
Numb.
He had never imagined she would have been there that day. That she would have seen…
“Christ.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I did not kiss her. She kissed me.”
Julianna rose with such haste, her chair upended, toppling to the floor. “That is all you have to say for yourself? All this time, a sliver of me hoped you would have an explanation. One I could forgive.”
He shot to his feet as well. “That is not all, damn you. Lady Richards was my mistress. The only reason she knew I had returned to London was because I had sent her a note with the intention that she should prepare herself for my visit. I was going to pay her a call and end our understanding. Instead, she misunderstood the nature of the note and came to me. I delivered the news to her just the same. What you witnessed in the street…”
“Save it,” she snapped. “I do not want to hear more of your lies.”
“I am not lying, damn you. I am telling you the truth. The same truth I would have told you two years ago if you had but asked!”
The words fled him with more sharpness than he had intended. She recoiled as if he had slapped her.
“What was I to have said, Sidney? Thank you for offering to marry me out of some misplaced sense of guilt, but would you mind telling me why I saw you kissing a beautiful woman in the street yesterday?”
He winced. “It was not that way. She was my mistress, it is true, but that was before you. I had no intention of continuing my arrangement with her. I broke it off. The gift I gave her was a parting one. It is customary. I’d had it for weeks, knowing I would have to give it to her, but I had been too busy to see her and have done with it. I had not seen her in weeks by the time you and I were together at Farnsworth Hall.”
“That does not explain why you were kissing her.”
He rounded the table, intent upon reaching her, upon ending the distance between them for good. “I gave her the parting gift, and she kissed me before I knew what she was about. I stopped it the moment it started. Make no mistake, Julianna. I ended things that day.”
Sounds hit him then, breaking the silence. A feminine voice, raised in ire. Male voices. Footsteps. A flurry of them. The cacophony grew louder, nearing the dining room.
What the devil?
The doors burst open.
And a red-haired woman came storming over the threshold.
She was dressed to perfection, as always, her olive, silk skirts swirling about her, a matching dolman fastened at her throat, a jaunty hat perched atop her brilliant curls. But she was in high dudgeon. And drunk, judging from her glassy eyes and vacant expression.
“Charlotte.” He bit out her name as if it were an epithet.
Because in this moment, it most assuredly was.
Damn it all to hell.
Chapter 19
I loved Julianna then. I love her now. I never stopped loving her.
~from the journal of Viscount Shelbourne, 1885
Charlotte?
