It was a question she would have thought she knew the answer to immediately. “Mostly, that it’s home but also that there is a sense of hope there—a belief that if a person works hard enough and is smart enough, he will find some opportunity.” She swallowed hard. “A white man can make a good life for himself.”
He nodded slowly and then cocked one brow. He had not missed her use of the masculine pronoun, nor the mention of the color of his skin.
Charley sipped her drink slowly. At home, despite her normal outspokenness, she’d learned there were some opinions best kept to oneself.
“It bothers you then, that the ingredients your father will be using at his new facility will have been harvested by slaves.” This man had read far more into her statement than she’d intended. She didn’t want people to think ill of her father. She didn’t wantBritishpeople thinking ill of their new president. But Jules was right. She hated it, and she hated that people she admired and loved couldn’t see the wrong of an entire system.
She simply nodded. “My turn.” She ran her finger around the rim of her glass. “What was your father like?”
“My father,” he swallowed hard, then said, “was the most honorable person I’ve ever known.”
“Did you get along well with him, then?”
“I did. But he’s dead because of me.”
Chapter 14
LOWERED INHIBITIONS
His heart stuttered, then scampered rapidly. Julian hadn’t meant to tell her about feeling responsible for his father’s death. This guilt, the pain of it rang like a mantra he played over and over in his own head. Others who knew the details that proceeded his father’s death never brought it up to him.
It was a wound that could never heal.
Rather than open another bottle, he poured out more of his grandfather’s favorite for both of them. His limbs felt heavy and relaxed. He wanted to forget what he’d just said, and imagining what Miss Charley Arabella Jackson’s lips tasted like would be the perfect antidote.
Just now, he was fairly certain, they would taste like scotch. But every woman had her own uniquely feminine flavor.
He envisioned running his tongue along the seam of her lips and slipping it past her teeth.
“How did he die?” Her voice wrapped around him like a coat that had been warmed by the hearth.
Jules lost himself in her emerald eyes. Ironically, if he was to be honest with himself, he’d judged her to be beneath him before he’d even met her because she was American. It had been an arrogant assumption to make and was not well done of him at all.
What would she think of him when she realized his character was nowhere nearly as strong as that old grandfather of hers?
“He died because I was a lazy fool.” Julian washed the stench of his words down with another swallow of scotch.
“Very well, but how did that bring about his death?”
Her question had him glaring at her but not forgetting that he wanted to kiss her. It bothered him that she was not flirting or smiling seductively or doing anything to invite his advances and yet his body was responding in a rather inconvenient manner.
How had he killed his father? If she wanted an answer, he’d give her an answer.
“It happened three years ago. My father, the man whose shoes I’m expected to fill, insisted on acting as my second in a duel.” Jules remembered the events that had led up to all of it. “I failed to present myself and the married gentleman, who’d challenged me for dishonoring his wife, plunged a sword through a few of my father’s organs.”
Those green eyes of hers had gone wide but he couldn’t make out her thoughts. Suddenly, his fingers itched to remove the pins holding her riotous mass of curls up so that he could take a handful—
“That’s unfortunate.” She reached out, as though to touch his hand, but then drew it back. She sipped at her drink. “I believe it’s your turn now.”
His mind required a moment to remember that they’d been asking questions of one another. Ah, yes, he was getting to know his intended.
Jules shook his head and did his best to dismiss his self-hatred for the moment. “Do you hate all men, or just British gentlemen in particular?” He flicked his gaze to where her fingers thrummed the surface of the table and then back up to try to read her eyes again.
“I don’t hate men. I don’t hate British gentlemen. I am not inclined to trust them. They have far too much power for their own good.” The thrumming stopped. “I trust you though.”
“Why?”
She placed her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her folded hands. “Is there a reason I shouldn’t? Aside from your inability to present yourself at early morning appointments. Did you sleep in, then? Or did you intentionally keep yourself absent?”
