No, her thoughts were lost in a back bedroom of a notorious club, with a man who had made promises about what he’d do to her and then not kept them. Of course, that man was a liar, so she shouldn’t have been shocked. Or still so titillated about what it would have felt like if Ellis Maitland had actually touched her instead of pushed her away.
“Don’t you think, Juliana?”
She jolted at the sound of her name and turned to find her sisters standing together, watching her with expectation. As triplets, they had spent their life as the Shelley Sisters. A unit. One she’d taken comfort in, just as she had taken comfort in sharing the same face with two people she loved more than anything.
But in the past few weeks, everything had changed. She was no longer part of the unit of the Shelley Sisters. Thomasina was now Countess of Harcourt, and Anne had married Constantine Maitland on their way to London just a few days before. Ellis’s cousin, the one called Rook.
Juliana was happy for them. She could be nothing but. Despite troubled beginnings, they were both blissful in their marriages, and she never would have wanted anything less for them. But their sudden and heavenly unions had the effect of severing the sisterhood in a way she had always feared would happen: their strongest bonds were with their husbands now.
Nothing could ever be the same.
“Juliana?” Thomasina repeated, tilting her head with concern. Thomasina had always been the kindest, the most desirous of pleasing those she cared for. Though Juliana had noticed a change in her since she’d been forced to marry and then fallen in love with the earl after a scandal had broken his engagement to their sister Anne.
Pleasing others didn’t seem to be her strongest drive anymore. Thomasina was truly coming into her own.
“I’m sorry, I was woolgathering,” Juliana admitted with a forced smile.
Anne exchanged a look with Thomasina, and their powerful, sisterly bond was obvious. It had to be after their shared birth and life. They’d turned to each other when no one else saw them as anything but interchangeable, including their father. Juliana could see and feel the concern for her pulsing like a heartbeat between her sisters.
And it only made her feel more like an outsider than she had before.
“You have been nothing but distracted lately,” Anne said, stepping forward. “What can we do for you?”
Juliana bent her head. Anne had been known as the wild child of their threesome. Proven by the fact that she had broken her arranged engagement to Harcourt and ran away with Ellis Maitland earlier in the summer. A fact that jolted jealousy through Juliana as she glanced up at her confident sister.
It hadn’t worked out, of course. Ellis had immediately abandoned her with his cousin, Anne had fallen deeply in love with Rook as they struggled to find their way back to her family and now, she was here. Changed, just as Thomasina had been, by love. Anne was…softer somehow. She no longer had anything to prove because she had everything she ever wanted.
“I don’t need any help,” Juliana said softly as she turned away a moment.
Herrole had once been to help everyone around her. Thomasina pleased, even if it hurt her. Anne went wild, even if it destroyed everyone else. And Juliana cleaned up the messes left behind.
Only now they didn’t want her to do that. No, now they pitied her. And that was the biggest change between them, even more than the units her sisters were happily forming with their new husbands. They saw this next step in their lives as freedom at last, and she? Well, she was left behind.
“Juliana—” Thomasina began as she touched Juliana’s hand and urged her toward them again.
Anne swiftly shook her head toward their sister and smiled instead. “Not now, Thomasina,” she said. “Father will only be gone a moment.”
Juliana let out her breath in a long sigh. Their father. While his daughters’ worlds had been torn apart, he only cared himself. But that had always been true, from the moment their mother died and he became their only guardian. What mattered to him were his plans, his goals. And now he had apparently left the room, which she hadn’t even noticed when she was lost in thought and regret and longing for things and people she couldn’t have.
Shouldn’twantto have.
Anne turned to Harcourt and Rook, who were standing by the fire, heads together in serious thought. The pair had not always gotten along. Harcourt was suspicious of Rook’s past, his connection to Ellis and the underground. But the men had made a somewhat wary truce at present, in order to protect their wives. Still, she sometimes sensed what could be a bond growing between them, and she thought one day they would be friends.
And then she would be truly cut out of her sisters’ lives. They would become a foursome, not a threesome, and she would be alone. Even if they invited her along as an afterthought.
“Rook,” Anne said, her face lighting up as she crossed the room to him, weaving her fingers through his. “You were saying something about Winston Leonard.”
Juliana flinched but pushed her shoulders back to forge past the fear and pain that name caused. “You have news?” she asked.
Harcourt looked toward Juliana with concern for a moment, but then his gaze flitted to Thomasina and she was forgotten. “Yes,” he said. “Rook?”
Rook lifted Anne’s hand to his lips for a brief kiss before he released it and paced across the room. “We all know that Winston Leonard is a villain of the worst kind. Duke’s third son or not, he is a dangerous criminal. When my cousin and Harcourt’s late brother were working together, they were fairly harmless. But Leonard only wanted to use them, so he saw them as disposable.”
Harcourt nodded, his lips in a thin, grim line. Thomasina moved away from Juliana’s side to go to the earl as he said, “They were fools to fall for his schemes. And even bigger fools to betray him.”
“Why do you think they did it?” Juliana asked, her thoughts returning to Ellis. His actions in the last few months had clearly been born of desperation, but he hadn’t seemed a desperate man last night. Perhaps that was why she hadn’t recognized him right away. He’d been confident and calm and cool as he toyed with her, then confronted her. Then let her leave without touching anything more than her hand.
“Ellis thinks he can handle anything,” Rook said with a shrug. “He always has. And most of the time he’s right. I’m sure he thought they could do the job Leonard required, stealing that gemstone that has caused so much trouble, and get paid. Job done.”
