“Taken in? So dramatic, my lady. You make me sound a villain, and your friends dull indeed. Are they so lacking in penetration they can’t tell the truth from a lie?”
“Or a hero from a liar? My friends may have more experience with liars than most, but they see you the way all of London sees you. You’re a hero, after all, and heroes can’t be liars, can they?”
Julian stiffened as he always did at any mention of his supposed heroics. “I’ve no idea, Lady Hadley. Why don’t you tell me?”
“It doesn’t signify. As I told you last night, I’ve little use for heroes, and even less use for liars. The point is my friends believe you truly care for me, and so they believe they’re acting in my best interests.”
“Perhaps I am. Have you even considered that possibility?”
Her gaze snapped to his face, and she let out an incredulous laugh. “My goodness. Is that what you tell yourself, Captain? That you’re engaged in some heroic battle to save me from myself? First England, and now the Marchioness of Hadley. Well, the scandal sheets certainly think so, and it’s a far more entertaining story than the truth.”
He frowned. If the scandal sheets had picked up on this nonsense, there was a chance Jane Hibbert might hear of it.Damn it. Was there no limit to how far Charlotte’s chaos could reach? “What is the truth, my lady? That you’re better off sneaking into whorehouses in London with the wicked widows, while Lord Devon pants after you, awaiting an opportunity to make you his lover? You lie to yourself if you call that the truth.”
“I don’t toy with the truth anymore, Captain, but one can’t say the same for you. You might want to be careful with that. Didn’t you pay attention to the play last night? ‘The truth will out.’”
Whatever the bloody hell that meant.
He didn’t ask. She’d find herself bundled into Cam’s carriage on her way to Bellwood soon enough, and that would be an end to the entire mess. He’d be rid of her and her endless dramas, and free to court Jane properly. After more than a year of turmoil, peace was within his grasp at last.
He urged his horse forward with a tap of his heel, intending to leave Charlotte behind and join Amelia. “Send word to Bedford Square what time you wish me to fetch you tonight.”
“No need. I told you, Captain West. I don’t wish for your escort this evening.”
Devil take her.He drew back hard on the reins and his horse stopped, but it was too late to force the black anger back into its cage behind his ribs. “This evening, or any other? I’m surprised to find you so fastidious about the company you keep. I did discover you in a whorehouse not three days ago, mingling with Mrs. Lacey’s doxies.”
She was several paces ahead of him now, but she turned to say over her shoulder, “Mrs. Lacey’s doxies have no specific interest in me. I can’t say the same of you.”
The poison, black as pitch, rose like bile inside him until he could taste it at the back of his throat. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but any specific interest I had in you came to an abrupt end when you married the Marquess of Hadley.”
He braced himself for her sharp rejoinder, but she remained strangely silent, her body rigid in the saddle, as if she expected to be thrown to the ground at any moment. He kneed his horse forward to catch up to her, but as soon as he saw her face his blood went cold.
Every trace of the haughty, selfish Marchioness had vanished, and in her place was Charlotte, only Charlotte, all pretense stripped away. She looked…broken, somehow. Lost. Lost inside a blank silence that nevertheless throbbed with a pain he hadn’t expected, and didn’t understand.
Julian stared at her, shocked. He tried to feel triumph at having managed to shake her composure at last, but as the moments continued to slip by in silence, his false smile stiffened on his lips.
“I’m not an utter fool, Captain,” she murmured at last. “I don’t mean a romantic interest. I know very well you only pretend to care for me to win over my friends. In truth my welfare is of no consequence to you.”
It wasn’t, because he couldn’t allow it to be. If he let her in, if he let her make him feel anything, then God only knew when he’d lose control again. He’d explode into a rage and fail them all—Cam and Ellie, and Jane, and even Charlotte—just as he’d failed Colin.
“I suppose that answers the question of whether you think me a hero or a liar.” He took care to appear indifferent, but suddenly he wanted more than anything for her to say aloud he was no hero, because shouldn’t someone—even if it was her, or maybebecauseit was her—be able to see the truth?
Charlotte’s gaze moved over his face as if she were searching for something, but then she looked away. “I see you as a man. Nothing more, and nothing less. I don’t judge you against your heroic reputation, Captain.”
He forced a laugh. “No? I hope you’re not going to say you don’t judge me at all, for I find that difficult to believe.”
For the briefest moment her eyes closed. His gut clenched with foreboding, and he had to fight a childish urge to put his hands over his ears so he wouldn’t have to hear what she said next—
“I do judge you, Julian.” Her voice was so soft it was more breath than sound. “I judge you by the man you once were.”
The breath rushed from his lungs. He tried to fill them again, but all the oxygen had been sucked from the air around them.The man you once were. So wistful, those words, as if he’d been so much more then, so much better than whoever he was now—not the man who’d fallen in love with Charlotte Sutherland, and not the hero London believed him to be.
“That man was easier to manipulate.” His tone was bitter. “His naiveté would be useful to you now, I’ll grant you that.”
She shook her head. “That man wasn’t naïve. He was compassionate and joyful and kind, with remarkable eyes, at once deep and dark and yet filled with light, just like a sky full of stars.”
He raised a hand to his chest as something shifted painfully beneath his breastbone.
Eyes like a sky full of stars. An absurd, romantic fancy, nothing more.
