Julian slammed his glass down on the table. “You thought Charlotte and I would fall in love again and live happily ever after? Bloody hell, Cam. You’re a bit old for fairy tales, aren’t you? I told you.I’m betrothed. Or at least I was. By now Jane will have read the scandal sheets and decided to jilt me.”
Cam flinched. “Has she said anything in her letters?”
“No, but it’s only a matter of time. This business with Charlotte needs to end.”
“I see that, but it needs to be done gently. Christ, if you knew what she’s been through—”
“No!” Julian shot to his feet. “I told you, I don’t want to know. It will make a mess of things.”
It was too late, though, like slamming closed Pandora’s Box after the demons had already escaped. He’d already begun dreaming of her, and last night when he touched her, kissed her, the memories came flooding back—the way her scent was more intense in the warm hollows of her body, the silk of her skin under his fingertips. She hadn’t been the only one trembling with desire.
When he looked at her—at her red lips and dark eyes—that most primal part of him, that animal part of him, it…wanted. Her mouth open under his, her dark hair spilling over his hands. His body craved hers the way an addict’s craved opium. Ignorant to logic or reason, it hungered for the very thing that would destroy it, and once the body became diseased, the mind would follow. If he let his desire for Charlotte poison his body again, all his plans—to wed Jane, to make amends to Colin—would disappear in a cloud of opium smoke.
Cam was staring at him. “I realize you and Charlotte have a complicated past, but my God, Julian, you’re so cold. I hardly recognize you.”
Julian looked away. No. Cam wouldn’t recognize him, because he wasn’t Julian, the man whose entire world had turned on one of Charlotte’s smiles. He was Captain West now. Captain West, the man he’d become after Charlotte discarded him to marry Hadley. The man who’d held on to his limbs but left everything else behind on a muddy field in Belgium. The man who’d traded his humanity for his own private Pandora’s Box, except the demons inside him were deeper, more sinister.
The man who’d left Colin to die alone on a battlefield.
London’s conquering hero.
Cam rose to his feet. “You’re still our best chance to get Charlotte to leave London, but I regret asking for your help, and I’ll be relieved when this is done. I don’t trust you anymore, Julian.”
Julian sucked in a stunned breath. He and Cam had squabbled as children, and blacked each other’s eyes as boys. They’d wrestled and argued, hurled insults and resorted to fisticuffs more times than Julian could count, but never once, in all that time, had his cousin ever said he didn’t trust him.
His anguish must have shown on his face, because no sooner did the words leave Cam’s mouth than he rushed to take them back. “I beg your pardon, Julian. I didn’t mean—”
But he did mean it. He’d said it, he meant it, and it was too late now to pretend otherwise. “It’s time to leave for Lady Chase’s picnic. I’ll wait for Lady Hadley in the carriage.”
“Julian, wait—”
Julian closed the study door behind him.
* * * *
“But I don’t understand. Didn’t you already accept Lady Chase’s invitation?”
Charlotte stared out Ellie’s bedchamber window at the lawn stretched out below her, a lovely uniform green, velvety and lush, perfectly groomed.Perfectly empty.Had it been only last week she’d watched Amelia playing at bowls from this very window?
“I’m sorry, Charlotte. You’ll have to give her our regrets. It’s far too hot for me to be out in the sun all afternoon. Cam doesn’t like it, and to be honest, dear, I don’t feel up to it.”
Well. There wasn’t much she could say to that, was there? Charlotte braced her palms against the windowsill and touched her forehead to the glass. It was an unseasonably humid day, and it felt hot against her skin. “I don’t like to go alone.”
Ellie joined her at the window. “But you’re not going alone. Julian will escort you.”
Julian. Charlotte bit back a bitter laugh. The toast of London, and the only man in England who could save her from herself, or so the scandal sheets would have it. She’d managed to slip his grasp last night with Devon’s help, but there would be no escape today.
Charlotte turned from the window to face her sister. “A picnic, of all things. Whatever possessed Lady Chase to have a picnic in London in the middle of July? Someone or other is sure to swoon in this heat.”
Ellie gave her a hopeful look. “London will be intolerably hot for the rest of the summer, I imagine. Won’t you come to Bellwood with us? You can send a note to Lady Chase excusing yourself from the picnic today so you can ready yourself to leave. I don’t like you to be alone in London—”
“The carriage is ready, Lady Hadley.” Ellie’s lady’s maid bustled into the room looking harried, and saved Charlotte from having to refuse her sister yet again. “Captain West is waiting for you in the drive.”
“Thank you. Come now, Ellie. I won’t have you worry about me.” Charlotte gritted her teeth and forced herself to smile. “I’m hardly alone in London, after all. I daresay Captain West won’t let me out of his sight.”
Ellie looked anxious still, but rather than argue she gave Charlotte’s arm a reassuring squeeze and turned to follow her maid out of the bedchamber. Charlotte trailed after them, down the stairs and into the entrance hall. The front door was open and Julian stood on the drive, waiting for her.
Ellie pressed her cool cheek against Charlotte’s. “Promise me—” she began, but then she hesitated, and instead of finishing the sentence she simply wrapped her arms around Charlotte in a tight hug.
