He studied her now, trying to tamp down the bitter resentment still coursing through him for what she had done, first in leaving him and then in keeping his daughter a secret from him. She had returned, two years too late.
“You should have thought of that before you begged me to take you,” he said, his voice low so it would not carry to their daughter’s ears.
Not that Emily would have an inkling of what he was saying, but he would not have Julianna chastising him again over his language.
A flush stained Julianna’s cheekbones. “You are being crude, Lord Shelbourne.”
Yes, he was. But if she thought he was not capable of far worse, she had never known him.
He merely shrugged. “I prefer honesty. Unlike you.”
Her lips tensed, but she kept her gaze carefully trained upon Emily, who was playing with a set of wooden blocks, entertained by stacking them up and then knocking them down with her pudgy little fingers. Her sweet innocence softened the harshness within him.
Which was why he was staring hard at Julianna now. He needed to cling to his anger.
“I never lied to you,” she said, turning to favor him with a glance at last. “You could have written to me or contacted me to inquire after my welfare. You could have made certain there had been no repercussions from the intimacies we shared. Instead, you chose not to.”
How wrong she was. He had crossed a damned ocean for her. But that secret was his, and he was not about to share it with her, now or ever.
“I trusted you would send word to me,” he said instead. “It is what you should have done, and you know it.”
“I did what I felt was right.”
“And yet it was wrong,” he could not resist countering.
Since her revelation, he had spent time—so damned much time—trying to understand her actions. To comprehend why she would have given birth to their daughter out of wedlock and kept her a secret rather than simply telling him the truth.
He would have married her in the beat of a heart.
Hell, he hadwantedto marry her. From the moment he had first kissed her in that bloody lake, he had known he would, with a stupid, incipient hope that was rather unlike him. One he had ultimately shed.
“I do not know if it was,” Julianna insisted, before turning her attention back to Emily.
His gaze swung to their daughter as well, just in time to watch her rise, take a hesitant step, and trip over the blocks, falling to the carpet and smashing her face into the Axminster.
Her wail rose up instantly, and Sidney was on his feet, rushing toward his daughter, intent upon calming her, staying her tears.Christ, he hated when she cried. Each time clawed at his black heart, reminding him it was not entirely dead.
But Julianna had risen as well. They sank to their knees as one, both reaching for Emily at the same moment. Her hands closed over Emily and his closed over Julianna’s. She had been a second quicker in her motherly instincts.
The realization was not what shook him, however. The feeling of her hands beneath his, coupled with the resultant electric jolt, was.
Nothing had changed.
Not since the day he had first seen her. Not time, not distance, not betrayal and lies.
He hated himself.
He removed his hands from hers as if she had burned him, allowing her to take Emily into her arms and offer her comfort. And even the sight of Julianna holding their daughter close, kissing her brow and murmuring calm words into her ear, affected him.
Julianna was a good mother. It both pleased and pained him to acknowledge that fact. Pained him because it certainly would have been easier to cling to his rage if she had been the sort of mother who did not care for her child. The kind who did not want her social obligations to be hindered by a mere babe. Pleased him because he wanted to know his daughter had been well loved and taken care of in his absence.
He had missed so much. It still made him furious, thinking of it all. From the time she had been born, to now. An entire year had been denied him. So many moments. Her first smile, her first step. Now that he knew she was his, he would do everything in his power to make certain he would never miss another damned thing.
“There now,” Julianna was murmuring to their daughter, rocking her in her arms. “Did you hurt your darling face when you fell?”
She punctuated the question with a kiss to the tip of Emily’s nose.
Something warm trickled inside his chest. Ruthlessly, he quashed it. There was to be no warmth for this woman. No quarter. She had kept his child from him, damn her.
