Just to be careful, however, he should limit touching.
Which he intended to do. He rested his head against the table leg and closed his eyes.
Just as soon as she awoke.
…
Ever since she was young, Julia’s dreams hadn’t been anything she’d wished to recall.
Mostly, they involved her being frozen—immobile—as some terrible, existential peril bore down.
In them, she was caught.
Trapped.
Unable to warn those she loved of approaching death.
Since she’d made her curtsy, the location of her dream occasionally changed, but the essence remained the same—powerlessness in the face of some overwhelming threat.
Sometimes, she was revealed as a fraud. As a woman withideas…not to mention a will strong enough to bring those ideas to fruition.
If they knew—how the grand dames of the ton would shudder.
No man could snarl another into submission as effectively as a woman who’d sacrificed herself in order to embody society’s feminine ideal. Which was why—after Rayne—Julia had been very,verycareful.
She’d smiled and silently observed. She’d kept lists of gossips. Because she’d known—known—that if anyone who didn’t already love her caught the merest glimpse of the chaos that lay within, she’d be finished.
Shunned.
Cut, in the most public of ways.
Tonight, however, she dreamed an entirely different dream.
Inthisdream, she lay cuddled in the embrace of the only man who made her heart dance. The only man who, for a few precious moments in a dark stairwell, had made her feel that, no matter what the threat, together, they would prevail.
Rayne.
You see, don’t you, darling?Finally, you see. We belong together. We always have.
But something in the dream wasn’t right. Someessentialelement had changed. She’d discovered a reason—a very good reason—she could no longer believe.
Katerina.
Her eyes flew open as a wash of cold drenched her chest.
She hadn’t been dreaming.
Shewascaught within Rayne’s embrace…but rather unromantically sprawled out on a dirty floor in a dark room in front of a dying fire. Events returned in a rush—the carriage, the boys, his rage, her shaking, the way he’d told the postilion she was widely known to be his mistress, Katerina.
His. Widely. Known. Mistress.
Everyone present the night she’d announced her love had known he and Katerina were lovers. And he’d had to have picked not just any mistress, but a woman Julia had later come to know and like. A woman who had become one of her sister’s closest friends.
She imagined Katerina’s soft, Dutch lilt—poor, inexperienced thing…How Rayne and Katerina must have laughed at her foolishness!
She squeezed her eyes closed.
She would go back to Southford, of course. She would gather her shredded dignity, return to Miss Watson, and explain…
