“Shelbourne, please,” she said, reading his face when he turned back toward her.
Fury did not begin to describe his countenance. Nor did outrage. She had never seen him so angry.
It required all the composure she possessed to remain where she stood as he stalked back.
He was breathing with the force of an irate bull, his chest rising and falling. He stopped just short of her, lip curled. “I thought I could not possibly hate you more than I already do. But I was wrong.”
Everything within her tightened even more. There was a band around her heart, squeezing, constricting. “Shelbourne, I—”
“No,” he roared, cutting her off. “You do not have the right to speak just now, Julianna. What you will do is answer my questions.”
She compressed her lips. She was at a disadvantage in their bargaining. He had all the power. She had none. “Very well. What are your questions?”
“When?” he growled.
“When what?”
“When did you know you were carrying my child?” His tone was more cutting than any blade. “Before you left for New York?”
She shook her head. “No. It was not until after my arrival there that I realized there had been consequences of our time together.”
His mouth tightened, his nostrils flaring. “How soon after you disembarked? Months? A day? What was it, damn you?”
“A month,” she admitted quietly.
“How do I know the child is mine?”
She blinked. That was most certainly not a question she had expected. “I have just told you she is yours.”
“Yes, and you have proven yourself to be of sterling character, have you not?” he sneered once more.
“More sterling than yours,” she countered. “Though I should think it hardly a claim I would bother making to anyone else.”
How dare he suggest Emily was someone else’s daughter? He, who had bedded her and then offered to marry her after visiting with his mistress and kissing the woman in the streets? A mistress he would have had every intention of keeping even after they were wed, Julianna had no doubt. The memory—the shock of her discovery—still was as sharp and painful now as it had been then.
“Is the child—Emily—here in London?” he demanded next.
“Yes.” The admission was torn from her. The truth.
“I need to see her.”
“See her?” The thought of him meeting Emily was enough to make her ill. She had never intended for their paths to cross. Indeed, there was no reason. She and Emily had created a fine life for themselves.
Even if all the world believed Emily was an orphan Julianna’s mother had taken in after a terrible carriage accident. Even if Julianna had never been able to call herself Mama to her own daughter, for fear of her nurse and the other servants overhearing.
“Yes,” Shelbourne bit out. “I want to see her. I need to see if she…resembles me before I believe she is mine and not the offspring of some American twat you allowed into your bed after me.”
The insult stung. She had never been intimate with another man before or after him.
“You cannot see her,” she said hastily.
“You claim to have my daughter, whom I have been denied the right to know, and yet you will not allow me to meet her?” He was incredulous.
“No one knows she is mine. Everyone believes she is my mother’s ward,” she admitted. “I cannot have you bursting into my father’s home, demanding to see your daughter.”
“Yes,” he snarled. “You can. And will.”
Julianna was thinking of her daughter’s best interests. Emily could not have a father suddenly thrust upon her, a father who was never meant to have met her. A father who would not remain in her life beyond their initial meeting. “I need time to prepare. She has naps and feeding times and routines, Shelbourne. You can visit her tomorrow.”
