His name in her honey-drenched voice brought back too many unwelcome memories.
He sneered. “You do not have leave to call me by my Christian name, madam. You gave up that right when you refused to marry me.”
Stupid, drunken sot.Why had he alluded to his humiliation and her infuriating rejection? He had not meant to.
She appeared as unaffected by the bitterness in his voice as she was by his insistence she leave. The damned woman did not budge a hairbreadth.
“That is why I am here, Shelbourne.”
Her announcement confused him. He squinted at her, and for a brief, maddening moment, he saw two Lady Julianna Somersets.Christ, he had thought there could be nothing worse than one of her.
“What do you mean, that is why you are here?” he demanded, doing his damnedest not to sway or lose his balance. “Cease speaking in vagaries and stop plaguing me. Say what you want and be done with it.”
All that goddamn wine was truly having its effect upon him now.
Yes, that had to be it. His drunken state was the only plausible explanation for the words that emerged from her lovely, traitorous lips next.
“I want to marry you.”
* * *
She had done it.
Julianna had blustered her way into a meeting with Shelbourne, and she had blurted out the words that had been stuck in her throat and weighing down her heart since well before her journey across the Atlantic with Emily.
Somehow, the floor had not opened to swallow her.
She had not burst into flame.
Her humiliation had not incapacitated her.
But then Shelbourne did the one thing she had least expected. He threw back his head and laughed.
Her shame swelled to its highest tide yet. Still, above the embarrassment, she could not help but to allow her gaze to devour him. She would have preferred for the intervening years since she had seen him last to have had an adverse effect upon his stunning masculine beauty. They had not.
Even soaked to the skin from the rain battering the streets beyond his elegant townhome, and thoroughly inebriated, he made her heart pound and her breath catch. His dark-brown hair was wavy, tousled, and worn long enough to fall over his brow and hide half his ears. Longer than it had been two years before. This evening, he wore a shadow of whiskers on his angled jaw that suggested he had gone several days without his valet passing a razor over his skin.
His green eyes were light, ringed with gray. Cold now. Colder than they had ever been. But that did not matter. Nor did the manner in which his wide, sensual lips had thinned in distaste when he had first spied her. His nose was straight and strong, his cheekbones perfect slashes, and his loosened necktie revealed the most riveting swath of his neck. The jut of his Adam’s apple, where she had once dared to kiss him, called to her foolish lips.
Nothing could detract from Viscount Shelbourne’s allure. Nothing except for her self-respect. And the memories of how he had stolen her heart and then betrayed her.
Yes, there was that.
Her bitterness, pain, and loss had not diminished in the time she had been away in New York as she had expected them to. Her life had changed, and quite drastically. She had found happiness again, but the emotions she carried for Sidney—Shelbourne, she reminded herself sternly—had not worn smooth like river rocks. Instead, they remained sharp and jagged, capable of leaving scars.
“Are you quite through with your amusement?” she asked him coolly, pleased with herself for allowing nary a tremor into her voice.
She was sure there was no way he could detect her inner turmoil. Her time away from England had shown her how strong she was. She would not falter or surrender with ease.
He inhaled deeply, a smug, mocking smile curving the corners of his lips. “Depends, my lady.”
She hated the way he looked at her now. Initially, he had been indolent rather than cutting. She preferred the sauntering rakehell to the sharp-as-a-blade lord ready to wound.
Julianna struggled to maintain her sangfroid. “Upon what does your mirth depend, Lord Shelbourne?”
“Upon whether or not I am so drunk I misheard you. I thought you said you wanted to marry me. Ludicrous, is it not? Considering I offered to make you my wife two years ago. You were the one laughing then, were you not?”
Memories of that horrible day made her stomach churn. She tamped the recollections down, refusing to allow them to derail her from her tracks. “You heard me correctly. If you would cease laughing and allow me to explain—”
