“Yes, well, our other good friend is eagerly anticipating my reply to her last letter. She’d very much like to speak with you.”
Cass pressed her lips together. “No. I refuse to see Lucy. She’s the cause of all of this. If we’d just simply told the truth and allowed Pen and Julian to see each other that first day, they would have broken their engagement and Julian wouldn’t hate me right now.”
“I know it’s difficult for you,” Jane said. “But Lucy really did think she was helping. Her heart was in the right place. It always is. You know that.”
Cass clenched her jaw. “I cannot even look at her.”
“All right. All right. I’ll tell her.”
Cass sniffed. “Thank you, Janie.”
“For what it’s worth, I do think she feels awfully sorry,” Jane replied.
Cass groaned and rolled over, hugging the pillow to her chest. “Oh, Janie, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Jane stroked her hair. “Let’s begin by you telling me where you’d like to be. We can go to Brighton or Bath. I’ll travel with you. We’ll make it a holiday.”
Cass took a deep breath. “I want to go back to London.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Julian finished writing the letter to Wellington. He folded it, sanded it, and sealed it. Then he pushed the missive across the desk away from him and leaned back in his chair. He was staying at Donald’s town house again, a place he truly didn’t belong. He glanced around the room, his brother’s study. Sparse, clean, functional, just like Donald.
Donald had been the perfect eldest son. The only son their father had ever wanted. And now Donald was missing.
Julian stood, walked over to the sideboard, and poured himself a drink. He downed it in one long gulp and poured another.
Warmth began to spread through his limbs, but no amount of alcohol would ever erase the memory of the screams of pain on the battlefield, some of which had been his own.
He took the second drink back to the desk and sat down again. A bit of it sloshed onto his hand. He cursed.
When he’d returned to London from the house party, his first order of business had been finding Penelope’s parents and telling them that he did not intend to marry their daughter. Mr. Monroe had been quite reasonable, actually. Apparently, Penelope had already explained the entire situation to them. They didn’t want their daughter to be unhappy any more than they wanted Julian to be unhappy. Penelope’s parents both wished him well and told him how thankful they were that he’d returned from the war. They inquired after his mother’s health as well as Daphne’s. The entire experience had not been unpleasant. At least something had gone right after that disaster in Surrey.
Julian’s next order of business should have been finding Cassie, but of course his plans there had drastically changed. He couldn’t even think about her. Not after what she’d done. All he cared about now was finding Donald and Rafe.
He grabbed an opened letter from the desktop. He’d received it from Derek today. Julian’s eyes scanned the page for the tenth time. It said the Hunt brothers had followed the trail they’d found when they originally arrived and had a good two more days to travel before they arrived at the location where Donald and Rafe had last been seen. If Donald and Rafe, were, in fact, the two Englishmen their informants had seen. It was all a gamble, but it was the only hope they had.
Julian took another drink. If Donald and Rafe were there, Derek would find them. There could be no one better to look for them, not even himself though he hated to admit it. He’d written that letter to Wellington, asking to join them, not because he didn’t trust his friends to do the job, but because he bloody well couldn’t sit here in a London town house and do nothing while his brother and his friend were missing and his other friends were on their trail. And the truth was, he intended to go after them with or without Wellington’s approval. He’d prefer the former but as soon as he got his answer, he’d be off, one way or the other, unless Derek had already returned with news.
Yes, Julian wanted to go to find them, but if he were being truly honest with himself—and the brandy made him honest, damn it—he’d admit that he didn’t want to stay in London because he’d be tempted to go see Cassie. The farther he got from her, the safer he would be.
When she’d apologized to him on the terrace, he’d been tempted, so damn tempted, to demand that she tell him who the hell she was in love with. She’d been remorseful the last time he saw her, with tears in her eyes. But her excuses made no sense. Part of the reason he’d left was because he couldn’t stand to look at her, her ethereal beauty, her perfection, and know that he could never have her, not the way he wanted her.
Why had she allowed him to kiss her? Was she so evil that she thought it was a funny game? “I’m your friend Cassandra,” she’d said. Some friend, a liar. The Cassandra he knew wasn’t a liar.
And for one moment, one awful, perfect, wonderful, hideous moment when he’d been standing in that foyer with all those people listening to the words coming out of their mouths, he’d realized that the woman he’d lusted after so unmercifully and the woman he’d cared about for so long were in fact the same human being. It had been an exquisite torture, one that ripped his heart from his chest as he’d realized that he could never have her. Patience might have wanted him, but according to Hunt, Cass wanted someone else. And even if she didn’t, it didn’t matter because she was a liar, an actress, someone who couldn’t be trusted.
Damn it. Who was the man she was in love with? Julian shouldn’t care, but he did. He took another drink. By God, he’d rip the blighter limb from bloody limb when he found out his identity. No, he wouldn’t. But he wanted to. God, he wanted to. Was it Upton? Upton had played along, hadn’t he? Had they been laughing at Julian behind his back during the house party? Had they all been? Upton and Jane Lowndes and Lucy? Even Owen had somehow not deemed it fit to mention to him that his sister was trotting around a house party claiming to be someone she was not. What the hell was the matter with the lot of them?
Julian tossed the contents of his glass down his throat and made his way unerringly back to the sideboard to get another.
***
When the Duchess of Claringdon was ushered into his brother’s study hours later, Julian wasn’t entirely certain what day it was anymore. The brandy had accomplished its purpose.
“Thank you for seeing me, Captain Swift,” the duchess said.
Julian bowed to her and nearly toppled over. “My pleasure, Your Grace, for it is not every day a true duchess visits me.”
