Go to London, Bromton had growled.Go to Moscow. Go as far as the Gobi Desert, for all I care. Just stay away from Lady Julia. I will not ask you again.
“Yes, I did,” he sighed. “I had to leave.”
“To rescue my reputation.”
“Julia, I had no honorable intentions.” At least he hadn’t had any then.
Those intentions came later…aftershe’d said she loved him. Even now, he wanted to preserve that moment…and preserve her from him.
“Perhaps not,” she said. “But you acted honorably just the same. That night—I would have doneanythingyou asked.”
“I know.” His ribs felt as if they had closed round his heart like a spring trap. “I let Bromton know, too.”
“Didyou intend to ruin me?”
“In the state I was in,” he sighed roughly, “I could have justified any evil.”
“You didn’t, though, did you? Your better side won.”
“Aren’t you forgetting the rest?”
Hehadn’t forgotten wielding Bromton’s secret with the intent to wound. He hadn’t forgotten the heat beneath his collar. He hadn’t forgotten Julia’s pleading expression or Farring’s gaping shock.
Carnage.
And then, a single, devastating glimmer of light that had changed everything.
“It was,” Julia breathed, “tooawful.”
Yes, and— “Who is to say I won’t unleash the same havoc again?”
“Would you?” she asked.
He could never be sure, could he?
“Sleep, minx.” He rolled over. “We’ve had enough excitement for one day.”
The shadows grew as she turned down her lamp wick. The straw whispered as she settled.
“You wouldn’t,” she said softly.
“How do you know?” he asked the darkness.
“Trust me,” Julia replied.
…
Julia waited as long as she could for Rayne to answer before drifting into a restless slumber.
Then, she dreamed.
She was there, at the edge of Southford’s ha-ha, arms full of chin-tickling petals. To the right was Rector Chandler’s steeple. To her back lay the home farm. And in front—not too far off—was the manor house.
If she squinted and tilted her head just so, she could make out her father’s shape in his study window. Surely her father would see her flowers and smile. He would set them in water, and then he’d let her crawl into his lap like he used to, long ago.
And he wouldn’t smell like gin. Not yet—not in the morning.
But she’d better hurry, just to be sure. As she moved to take a step, the sky turned gray. Thunder rumbled as if there’d been a landslide in heaven.
