“Consider it done, old chap.” Stanhope slapped him on the back. “Now where is your future bride?”
“I am afraid she has left me after hearing about my supposed son.”
Stanhope looked deeply concerned. “Shall we send out a search party to bring her back?”
Lady Willa, clearly out of breath, entered the ballroom through the back doors. “Your Grace! Lady Julia has fled in a borrowed carriage. What has happened?”
Alonzo rubbed his chin. He knew exactly where she was headed. It was the same place he would go—to her beloved Whitmore.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Alonzo arrived atWhitmore very late. He had ridden for three hours—mostly at a gallop. There were lit lanterns hanging by the front door, and lights in the lower windows. He dismounted from one of Stanhope’s superior beasts and waited for a servant to come and get the horse.
A young man came around the side of the house. “May I help you, sir?”
“I am the Duke of Pridegate, here to see my betrothed, Lady Julia.”
The boy bowed and then took possession of the horse. “Welcome to Whitmore, Your Grace. Her ladyship only arrived a few hours ago. Is she expecting you?”
“No, it is a surprise.”
“The front door is always unlocked, Your Grace. If you go inside, the butler, Mr. Greeves, will help you.”
Alonzo found the boy’s easy manners refreshing and respectful. “Thank you,” he said, and watched him lead the horse away.
From what he could see, Whitmore was a handsome, gray-stone manner house with three floors. He adjusted his cravat and straightened his overcoat, ready to take Julia in his arms and comfort her. As he climbed the steps to the front door and opened it, he was welcomed into the modest entryway by floor vases filled with fresh flowers, marble benches, and portraits of who he guessed were Julia’s ancestors, on the walls.
He removed his hat and overcoat, placing them neatly on one of the benches. There were no servants in sight, so Alonzo decided to explore. There were five doors off the main hallway, and he opened the first two to find no one within the rooms. But he had a gut feeling that the lone door on the other side of the passageway might be a study—where he would find his beloved.
Sure enough, as the door opened, she looked up from her place on a leather sofa arranged in front of a marble hearth with a roaring fire. Her beautiful face was tear-stained, her eyes red and swollen, her hair down, cascading down her back in luxurious waves of spun gold. She stole his breath in that moment—perhaps his very soul.
“Alonzo?” She stood in shock. “Why are you here?”
“Do you not know, my sweet?”
“I could guess—you wish for us to still be wed. But I have thought about this long and hard. The child deserves his father, regardless of the shortcomings of his mother.”
He wasn’t surprised by her selflessness. She’d sacrifice her own happiness for anyone in need. “Julia, there is no child.”
“What?” She swiped a tear off her cheek. “But I saw the image. There is no mistaking his parentage. Why would any woman, even one as brazen as Miss Hershey, risk everything to travel this far and confront you the way she did if there weren’t a child?”
“The child is her nephew, not her son.”
A long moment passed before she could speak again. “Are you sure?”
“As sure as I am about loving you.”
“There is that,” she said, a faint smile lighting her face.
Alonzo walked deeper into the comfortable room, looking about. There were shelves with leather-bound books, the leather sofa and two matching chairs, thick carpets on the floor, portraits of horses and hunting dogs, one of a scene from a garden with a child running into her mother’s arms, and a gold clock on the mantle that chimed twelve times.
“The witching hour,” she said.
“No. The loving hour.” He surged forward and captured her in his arms, and his beautiful Julia, the woman he would die for, kill for, pressed herself against him, showing him a hunger of her own.
“What is this?” he asked. “You missed me after only a few hours apart?”
“It felt like a lifetime, as if I had lost the best part of myself.”
