She’d never given him permission to call her by her first name, and yet that’s the name that rose to his lips, as if it had always been there, waiting for him to speak it.
“Charlotte.”
She turned, and he caught a glimpse of her just for a moment, bathed in starlight, her hair a dark cloud against her white neck. For months afterward, for years, he’d wonder why she hadn’t looked surprised to see him standing there.
Had she been waiting for him? She couldn’t have known—
“I knew you’d come.”
Julian’s breath stopped in his lungs. She’d thought of him? Had she wanted him to come?
“Did you hope I would?”
She laughed softly, and to Julian it was as if the sound was born of the night itself, and yet still hers, all the same.
“You already know I did.”
Something in his chest leapt toward her then. His heart, he thought it was, but it didn’t matter, really. Whatever it was, it was a part of him, and he’d never get it back from her. Didn’t want it back.
“You already know,” she said again, the laugh still in her voice.
He did know. He’d known since the first moment he saw her. No. Before that. He couldn’t remember a time now when he hadn’t known.
He hadn’t come here tonight for Cam.
He’d come for her.
He should leave. Leave her here, untouched, alone in the starlight. But he wouldn’t reach London before midnight, and it was dark, despite the stars . . .
This is what he told himself as he held out his hand to her.
Chapter Eighteen
“Don’t say, Mrs. Mullins, they hid the kittens in the kitchens? Why would they bring them here?”
Eleanor leaned toward the cook across the scrubbed surface of the scarred wooden table, a grin on her lips. She’d come down to the kitchens for less than honorable reasons, but at some point during her conversation with Mrs. Mullins, she’d begun to enjoy herself.
Mrs. Mullins’s kind blue eyes twinkled with merriment. “Dear me, who knows what goes through young boys’ heads? I suppose they thought it would be warm in here, what with all the cooking. It took me days to figure out where all the cream had got to.”
Eleanor curled her fingers around her cup of warm milk. “They sound terribly naughty, both of them.”
“Oh my yes, they were. Good boys though, and they’ve grown into fine men too, though I don’t have to tell you so, being as you’re betrothed to Mr. Camden.”
Eleanor squirmed against the wooden bench. She didn’t like to lie, but really, it was just a tiny little one, and Mrs. Mullins wouldn’t talk to her about Cam if she knew the truth.
Though what the truth was at this point, Eleanor couldn’t say. It had started simply enough, but everything had become so confused, she was certain of only one thing. She had toknow. Cam’s whole story, not just fragments of it.
“Did Cam come see you today, Mrs. Mullins? I hope he wouldn’t forget the friend who sneaked him sweets and saved his kittens.”
“Oh, he wouldn’t forget me, my lady. He came after the gentlemen got back from their sport, and dear me, such a handsome man he’s grown into. Even when he was just a lad I knew he’d be handsome. I’d have recognized him anywhere, with those green eyes, though I haven’t seen him these eleven years.”
“Yes, he told me he hadn’t been back to Lindenhurst since his return from India.” Eleanor kept her voice casual, but her heart began to hammer in her chest. “He didn’t say why. He doesn’t speak much of his childhood.”
Mrs. Mullins twirled her mug between work-roughened hands. “Bad memories, I daresay.”
“How old . . .” Eleanor took another breath, and plunged ahead. “How old was Cam when his father died?”
Mrs. Mullins shook her head, her expression grim. “Nine.”
