“I will visit her today, or you can take your offer and shove it up your arse.”
Clearly, Shelbourne was not in the mood to concede.
“You have a dinner party,” she reminded him, desperate to keep him at bay until she could collect herself and prepare.
“Fuck the dinner party,” he said. “If I have a daughter, I want to see her. What the hell did you think would happen, Julianna? That you would waltz into my home and inform me I have a child you have been keeping a secret in New York and I would blithely agree to marry you and send you both on your merry ways? Christ, if you believed that, you are mad.”
When he phrased it thus, her plan certainly sounded madcap. However, she had her reasons for believing he would want to continue his life of dissolution. The man she had met last night in his library had been the man who would be willing to accept her bargain without making a single counter offer.
It would seem she had underestimated him. But that was fine. She could react. Adapt. Her plan was fluid, just as it had always been from the moment Uncle Jonathan’s will had been read. She had seen the chance to live her life as Emily’s mama at last, and to have her freedom and her business both. It had been worth every risk she had taken, crossing the ocean, confronting Shelbourne.
She would do it again just for the chance to have her independence. To have her daughter. To live her life as she chose instead of how she was forced to live it.
“Give me two hours, then,” she implored, her mind still whirling with all the implications of what he wanted.
A meeting with Emily.
She had hoped he would want nothing to do with their daughter. That he would be only too happy to agree to a marriage of convenience and live separate lives.
“Now, Julianna,” he gritted, before bending and scooping up his shirt in tense, jerky motions. “You owe me that much.”
She relented, nodding. “Very well. You may see her now. I will take you to her.”
What could be the harm, she reasoned, in Shelbourne meeting Emily?
Chapter 4
I have been dreadfully ill ever since my arrival in America. I was bedridden aboard the steamer, which I attributed to seasickness. But my malaise has continued. Today, I discovered the reason for the illness. I am going to bear a child. Part of me will always be happy to have this part of him to love. The other part of me is terrified of the future. I have not yet told Mama, and I fear her reaction. I feel so terribly alone here.
~from the journal of Lady Julianna Somerset, 1883
He had a daughter.
A.
Daughter.
Sidney spent the carriage ride to the Marquess of Leighton’s townhome in a blur of warring shock and anger. Julianna traveled separately in the conveyance she had arrived in, and thank Christ for that. He had never been more enraged in his life.
Not since the day she had laughed at him after he had asked her to marry him.
And even on that day, his anger was a pale imitation of the all-consuming fury he felt now. It was a beast, alive and terrorizing, inside him. Roaring to be unleashed. To vent its rage on someone.
Onher.
Julianna.
His heart—the stupid, worthless organ that had fallen in love with her—constricted in his chest at her betrayal. He had never imagined there had been consequences from their reckless, stolen moments. Although she had made it clear she did not want a marriage with him, he had believed she would have written him. She’d had two bloody years to contact him.
No word.
Until she reappeared as suddenly as a storm.
Yesterday. She could have damn well told himyesterday. Instead, she had allowed him to chase her away. And she had returned to prolong the torture again today. Following him about. Playing coy. Waiting until she had no choice but to reveal the truth.
By God.
His hands clenched into fists on his lap as the truth walloped him. She had not planned on telling him about hisdaughter. Emily, her name was. A place inside him he had not known existed warmed at the thought of her.
