His smile grew sad and he lifted her hand to kiss the top. Then he let her go and paced away. “I heard something else in your conversation with your sister. Is your father insisting you return to his home?”
“Yes,” she admitted on a groan. “I’ve been here too long according to him. He wants his secretary back, as he is planning some little gathering with his cronies. Trying to repair the social damage done by my sisters’ marriages, no doubt.”
Ellis ran a hand through his hair, mussing it further, making it look like he’d just rolled out of bed. Her bed. That sent a shockwave of desire through her that had her clenching her legs together.
“I don’t like it, Juliana,” he said, his sharp tone pulling her away from pleasurable thoughts. “He knows the risk, doesn’t he? He’s aware of what Winston Leonard is and what he could do?”
Juliana sighed. “He was at Harcourt from the beginning. He was part of Anne’s disappearance, he heard the stories of Harcourt’s brother and he knows I was taken and injured by Leonard. But despite all those things he…he doesn’t care.”
His jaw tightened. “How could he not?”
“Oh, Ellis,” she said with a sad smile. “You know how.”
He frowned, and she could tell he was thinking of his own past, far more fraught than hers, far more dangerous, but when it came to abandonment? When it came to a lack of parental love or protection?
Well, that was another thing they shared.
“He’s a bastard,” Ellis growled, pacing away from her to the window where he stared out into the inky night.
“Yes. He is that. But I’m accustomed to him. I can accept what my future is when it comes to him. And I know my sisters and their husbands will take pity on me and draw me out as often as possible once all…all this is resolved.”
He pivoted back. “Yes. I suppose the best thing we can do is resolve this. It’s the best way to protect you from Leonard…and from…from everything.” He straightened his shoulders. “Back in Harcourt, my cousin discovered a code that likely leads to the gem Leonard wants so much.”
“In the statue, yes,” Juliana said with a shiver as she thought of that day in Harcourt’s study when she and Anne had found the shards of the statue and the note from Rook…the day she was taken.
“Rook and Harcourt still have it, don’t they? They’re determined to turn it over to Leonard and think that will end this. I know better. Do you know where it is? Can you retrieve it or take me to it?”
Juliana stared at him across the room. He didn’t look like her attentive lover anymore. Or the flash of genuineness she sometimes caught. He didn’t look like the false mask of Handsome Ellis Maitland either.
No, he looked like something else entirely. A darker, more dangerous Ellis. The kind of man who had found a way to survive on the street. The kind of man who looked out for himself and didn’t care who he hurt in the process. And her sister’s words to her in the hallway suddenly echoed again.
“That’s what you came for, isn’t it?” she asked. “Is…is the rest of this just using me?”
Chapter 21
Ellis drew back at the question, spoken so softly but with enough power to rock him back on his heels. All his life, the answer to anyone who would have asked that question,are you using me, had been yes. To survive, he’d had to use others. To win, he’d done the same. Relationships were a currency to him. They’d had to be because letting them be anything more was only a threat to himself. Look at how Leonard could leverage his bonds with Rook or Gabriel even now.
But in this moment, staring at the woman across the room, the one worrying her hands before her and refusing to meet his gaze, he recognized something terrifying.
He wasn’t using her. He couldn’t use her. Because he was in love with her.
For a moment, the thrill of that realization nearly gave his heart wings. But then, the reality set in, as it always must.
Love was only pain. Especially in this case because within hours, days at best, he hoped to be facing off with a murderer. When it was over, he would be dead or transported. Either way, he would be gone. So loving her was only pain, and he could hardly bear it.
Part of him wanted to push her away because of it. To declare that he was, indeed, using her. It would be better for her, even if it broke his own heart. If he removed any inkling she had that he cared for her, when he was gone she would recover from the betrayal all the faster.
But then there was the other side. The side of him she had woken so gently and carefully and beautifully. The side that didn’t want to leave her feeling used and broken by him. The side that wanted her to know she mattered. She hadalwaysmattered, from that first moment on the hill in Harcourt when he’d folded his arms around her and tried to comfort her. He hadn’t wanted what he felt when he did that. He’d pretended it away, but it had been there, making him question every decision he’d ever made.
She would matter until the moment when he kissed her for the final time and walked away to save her and everyone they both loved so deeply. The second side won out, because she had given that side life.
“Ellis?” she whispered.
He moved toward her in three long steps and caught her hand. He drew her back as he sat down on a chair before her fire and tugged her into his lap. He cupped her cheeks, holding gently, forcing her to look into his face so she would see. So she would know the truth.
“I may lie about everything else,” he said, hearing the roughness of his voice. The broken hitch of it that reflected his equally broken soul, his newly broken heart. “But not this. Your sister was wrong when she spoke to you in the hallway. I amnotusing you, Juliana. Yes, I came here because I want to end this madness with Leonard. I want to protect my brother and my cousin, but also to protect you and your family. But I also came here because…”
He trailed off and stared up into those green eyes. He could read her because he could always read people. He saw the flicker to her gaze, the gauzy sparkle of tears. He felt her soft in his arms, but also taut with waiting. With wanting.
