“It doesn’t seem abandoned,” she commented. He’d released her hand so that she could move around and explore the open space at her leisure.
“It isn’t really.” She ought to feel unnerved that, while she was looking at the walls and the floors and the tables and windows, he continued watching her.
But she liked it. She liked the way he looked at her. No one had ever found her even remotely interesting before. If they did, it had been to identify the flaws they’d like to fix.
Jules rocked back onto his heels, appearing more relaxed here than at the estate. Less as though he was being the person everyone expected him to be and more as though this was the person he needed to be to preserve his own spirit. At the opposite end of the room, where a large hearth took up half of the wall, she caught sight of a bookshelf and some furnishings. She drifted in that direction and realized there was a single comfortable chair, a table with a second wooden chair, a lantern of sorts, and candles.
“You maintain it for yourself.”
Blankets had been folded at the end of a rudimentary cot. “That’s not why I brought you here.” He’d noticed the direction of her gaze and was quick to dispel any notions she might conjure up about him.
“Do you sleep here, then?”
“Sometimes. My father used it as a retreat of sorts, and for the past three years, I’ve done the same.” Charley wondered if he talked about his father very often with his mother or Bethany. It was difficult to imagine him discussing his feelings with Tabetha. His youngest sister seemed to look upon him more as a very controlling uncle than a loving brother.
Charley hated that guilt plagued him for such an unintentional blunder. Although in some instances, it was something that might be considered regrettable, in his case, Jules obviously deemed it unforgivable. The consequences of sleeping in that morning were enough to torment anyone, let alone a man who valued honor as highly as he did. But… “It’s something anyone could have done.”
He knew exactly what she was referring to. The haunted expression he sent her revealed all the feelings he kept locked away from the world. Why could he show them to her? What was it about her that made him open up more?
He lowered himself onto the wooden chair despite the fact that she still stood and dropped his head into his hands. Trappings of their outward persons ceased to exist now that they’d escaped the manor at Westerley Crossings, now that they were absent from the people who wanted to see them in very particular ways.
He shuddered. “I was at a brothel.” After he spoke the words, she could swear she felt a ripple of pain roll off him. He glanced up. “I apologize. I didn’t bring you here so that I could confess sins you have no wish to hear.”
Charley allowed her bottom to rest against the table beside him. If—and that was still as far as she could consider—if she accepted his proposal, she would want to know as much as possible about him. From where she perched, she could see him from a different angle than usual. His maple-colored hair springing up from his head appeared untamable, and she could see why it constantly escaped the queue he tied at the back of his neck. His shoulders seemed broad and sturdy but were slumped as he wrestled with a past he didn’t know how to release.
“Tell me.”
He didn’t speak right away. A distant look crept into his eyes as the memory hypnotized him. “My father had recently warned me that I would have to give up the carousing I’d fallen into. We were arguing more than ever before. The worst of us—Mantis, Chase, and I—didn’t have much better to do at the time and had done nothing to make our families proud.”
She could only imagine how popular he was in London. And all the trouble such devil-may-care young men could get themselves into with nothing to do but pursue leisure.
“When a person doesn’t have a vocation, or a passion, I think that it must be easy to fall into depravity. I’ve seen it happen to some of my mother’s friends. Only, women tend to stir up trouble, when such is the case, by gossiping and bullying. Men?” She frowned. “They drink whiskey and tend to be less subtle about the trouble they make.”
He lifted his head from his hands and his blue eyes glimmered as his gaze met hers. “We fought. We gambled.”
“And other things.” Jules’ prior behavior didn’t bother her. She was enough of her father’s daughter not to be shocked at what men whom the world considered refined and genteel often resorted to—even those who attended church regularly and professed to be devout in their religious beliefs.
He grimaced. “Yes.”
He stared down at his hands again, then lifted them to grasp one of hers. He didn’t hold her hand, so much as play with her fingers, her palms, as though the lines and flesh there were the most fascinating thing in the world.
His innocent exploration sent tingles down her spine. And as before, invisible silken ropes entwined themselves around them, making them the only two people in the world.
“Greys suspected one of the… ladies at the establishment put something in whatever I drank that night because I have no recollection of anything that happened after I went upstairs—” He caught himself. “Regardless. There is no excuse for my carelessness.”
“The duel was over a married woman?” He’d told her that, hadn’t he?
“Yes. And I was not unaware of her marital state. I was a fool.”
“Had you ever done that before? Blacked out?” A man the size of Jules would need to drink an abundance of commercial whiskey or wine to black out to the point of forgetfulness, especially if he consumed spirits regularly.
“Never like that.”
“Is it possible her husband arranged it?” She knew that even if this was the case, he wouldn’t excuse himself, but she thought that perhaps, if he told her some of it, it might fester less.
He half-hypnotized her with the lazy drawings he was making on her palm, but she forced herself to give him her full attention.
“It’s possible. Lord Casterley was… is… a cold-hearted bastard. But it doesn’t change anything. I made my choices. If I hadn’t been so selfish…”
