Just as well. Julianna would have hated to box the fellow’s ears. But she would have done, had he attempted to strong-arm her out the door. She had not traveled an entire ocean with Emily, disrupting the comfortable life they had in New York, to return to England, only to be tossed out on her rump as if she were a charwoman who had been caught stealing.
After the butler had gone, Shelbourne turned his wrath back to Julianna. He strode toward her, still dangling the freshly opened bottle of wine from his long fingers. “Time to go, Lady Perfect.”
Lady Perfect.
Her heart gave a pang at his use of the sobriquet he had once had for her. Back when he had charmed her. When he had made her melt with a single look, a touch.And his kisses.When he had made her fall in love with him. And when he had subsequently broken her heart after so thoroughly owning hers.
She stood there, watching him—this new, unfamiliar Shelbourne—approach her, thinking of the past. Aching for what had once been. Aching for him. And then she shook herself from that reverie.
Likely, his inebriated state had made his tongue loose. He had not realized what he had called her. Or if he had, it did not hold the significance to him that it did to her. Indeed, their entire relationship had never meant as much to him as it had to Julianna. She did not need to dig far in her memories to remember all the reasons why that was so bitterly, disappointingly true.
“I am not going,” she told him. “Not until you listen to me.”
“I do not want to listen to you,chérie.” He stopped before her, toasting her mockingly with his bottle before lifting it to his lips for another long swig. “Not now. Not ever.”
“Shelbourne, please,” she entreated softly. “I only require a few moments of your time. Long enough to explain myself.”
But he remained a bastion of icy disdain. “I will haul you over my shoulder and carry you out of here. Is that what you want?”
“You would have to catch me first.”
He raised a brow. “Is that a challenge?”
Was it? That seemed a foolish, dangerous prospect. She no longer knew Shelbourne; indeed, she doubted she ever had. She did not know what he was capable of. The angry man before her seemed as if he would do anything, including running her to ground in the fashion of a hound chasing a fox.
Did he want her to leave so desperately that he would throw her over his shoulder as he had threatened? Did she want to risk it?
“I do not think you could possibly catch me, soused as you are,” she found herself taunting him. “You’ve already fallen over once.”
He took another swig from his bottle. “Shall we test that theory? I will give you to the count of five. I would run very fast if I were you,chérie. You won’t like it when I catch you.”
He was jesting. Surely.
She stared at the man she had once loved, the man who had been replaced with a menacing stranger. He did not intend tochaseher from his townhome.
Did he?
“One,” he said.
Good heavens.Self-preservation warned her to take him seriously.
And to leave before this situation got even worse. She could always pay another call upon him tomorrow.
“Two.”
She grasped her skirts in both hands.
“Three.”
He certainly seemed intent. Julianna lifted her hem and set off. The floor was wet from Shelbourne’s ignominious parade through the rain, and the smooth soles of her boots slid on the Axminster.
“Four,” he called after her.
She paused on the threshold of the library, glancing back to find him watching her with a hard countenance. He was angry, harsh, and yet so very beautiful. He settled the bottle of wine on a table at his side.
“Shelbourne,” she tried again, thinking to dismiss this nonsense. To appeal to his reason.
“Five,” he bit out.
