His Sinful Secret (18 page)

Or
did
Julianne Hepburn have him?

Only in name. In duty. In obligation.

In truth, she thought neither of them had him. Maybe they were more sisters than adversaries.

“If you wish the duty, then yes. I would be grateful.” Michael’s expression was inscrutable.

Antonia stepped forward and asked in a husky tone, “How grateful?”

“I’d better go back inside,” he said, his voice even as he ignored the insinuation. “Keep me informed.”

With mixed feelings, Antonia watched him slip back into the ballroom. In a way she’d won, because she could now freely court the Marchioness of Longhaven with Michael’s permission.

She’d lost too, because he’d walked away.

In her experience, he always did.

T
he carriage rattled along, and Julianne watched the man across from her from under the fringe of her lashes, trying to not seem as if she were studying him like one might analyze an exhibition in an art gallery.

What would the display be called?
Lessons in an Inscrutable Man?

An apt analogy in many ways. His expression changed about as much as a painted facade on a canvas. Michael merely sat there, obviously deep in thought, his face averted just enough that she could see the clean line of his profile. As usual, he looked remote and it was also reflected in the way he sat against the squabs, his lean body seemingly relaxed, those long legs carelessly crossed at the ankle.

But it was a deception. There was nothing relaxed about him. Whether he wished it or not, and she had a feeling he didn’t wish it at all, Julianne was beginning to know certain things about her handsome husband. One of them was the more detached he became, the more involved he really was in the situation.

At the moment, he seemed very, very distant.

Lady Taylor was the culprit. However good Michael might be at controlling his expression, Antonia Taylor was not. At the ball, the woman had looked at him in a singular way that really left little doubt as to her feelings.

And Julianne had no idea how to deal with it, or if she even had the right to say anything. Men of her class were largely able to do as they pleased. It was clear Michael didn’t want to acknowledge anything but a passing acquaintance with the lovely Spaniard, but there was obviously something more there.

How much was the real question.

Was she jealous? Julianne wasn’t sure. Their marriage was based on their parents’ dictates, not personal choice, but for her anyway, it was impossible to separate the passion and intimacy they shared from her emotions. They were lovers in the physical sense, but he did his best to make sure that was the extent of it. Was Lady Taylor the reason?

On the other hand, he had come over and whisked her away, and she found that a small satisfaction. He cared a little what she thought anyway.

“Lady Taylor is quite charming,” she said, testing the waters, adjusting her skirt in a casual manner as if the comment was offhand.

“Yes.”

“It’s clear the two of you are very well acquainted.”

“Is it?” His response was noncommittal.

Of course it was. She was just disinclined to allow him to get away with it. It wasn’t like she’d sought her out. Antonia Taylor had deliberately approached
her
.

“I suppose,” she said as if just contemplating it in an abstract way, “the war would lend a certain commonality to even the most disparate of people, wouldn’t it? Create friendships where normally perhaps there would be none?”

“Are we in a philosophical mood this evening?” His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. Those hazel depths were instead . . . watchful? No. Perhaps
wary
was a better word. That was natural enough, she guessed. Any man might be wary when questioned by his wife about a former mistress.

He and the vibrant Lady Taylor were lovers once—and maybe even still enjoyed that relationship. Julianne knew it with a growing conviction and dismay. She had no desire to share her husband. Was it over between them?

“I am not so much philosophical as I am puzzled.” She deliberately made a statement where he would have to ask a question in response.

Michael, of course, didn’t cooperate. “We are all puzzled from time to time. It’s an irritating fact of life.”

What was irritating was his ability to be equivocal. Julianne battled the urge to simply ask him outright about his paramour, and won only with supreme self-control. She wasn’t good at playing games. In her world, if she had a question, she just asked it. “I’m sure you’re right,” she murmured, turning to look at the very uninteresting view of the curtain drawn over the window of the carriage.

If he sensed her withdrawal and unease, he gave no sign of it. When they reached the ducal mansion, he escorted her inside with his usual detached courtesy. Once in her room she let her maid assist her out of her elegant gown and quickly dismissed the young woman, going about the business of brushing her hair and otherwise readying for bed, but in truth listening for the telltale sound of the door opening between her and Michael’s room.

It didn’t.

She sat and waited, watching the ormolu clock on the polished Italian marble mantel tick away the hour. Though she hardly relished the idea of being caught eavesdropping, she even tiptoed to the door eventually and listened for sounds of her husband speaking to Fitzhugh.

Silence.

Finally she got up the nerve to actually open the door on her own, only to find the bedroom quite empty. The impersonal, undecorated walls; the huge carved bed; the expanse of the expensive rug—all were familiar, but her groom seemed to be missing. Even his loyal valet was nowhere in sight. There was no sign of Fitzhugh anywhere.

Michael had changed out of his evening clothes. The neatly tied cravat he’d worn earlier was tossed carelessly over the back of a wing chair by the fireplace, his jacket on the bed. Emboldened by the absence of anyone who could see her, she walked in, leaving the door ajar.

It was possible he was downstairs in his father’s study, or maybe had decided on a stroll in the gardens around the mansion, but she doubted it. Instinct told her he’d changed his evening clothes and gone out. Since the fastidious Fitzhugh wouldn’t normally leave his master’s clothes lying about, it seemed likely he might have gone along.

Michael had said nothing about having other plans. While he didn’t have to explain himself to her, she still thought it odd he hadn’t mentioned he was leaving again.

If she was puzzled before, she was even more so now. Julianne went over and picked up the tailored dark coat Michael had worn earlier. It carried his scent, masculine and spicy. With a guilty look over her shoulder, she dipped her hand into the front pocket. Nothing. Not even a pouch of tobacco or snuffbox or stray coin. Since she had already done the unthinkable and searched one pocket, she went through them all, with the same results. Even his handkerchief was pristine and untouched.

Could the man
be
more difficult to know?
She wondered it with frustrated annoyance. She wasn’t even privy to his bad habits. If he chewed his nails or tapped his fingers incessantly when he was bored, or even drank too much claret, she hadn’t noticed it. Julianne sat down on the bed in her nightdress, the jacket still in her hands, and stared at the empty fireplace. What she needed was more information.

And a plan.

Michael was too guarded. He would never tell her anything. He didn’t
want
to reveal anything about himself. It hurt to acknowledge it, but the conviction had grown that she was right. He claimed to be a private person, and from what little she knew so far, she agreed. But the real question was this: was it innate and unchangeable, or calculated?

She didn’t know.

If it was the former, it put her in the depressing position of being married to a man who might keep himself from her for the rest of their lives. If it was the latter, it meant she had to find out why he had built such formidable defenses.

Generals won battles between great armies, but it took strategy. Having a larger force didn’t necessarily mean victory. Surely one woman could breach the defenses of her husband if she approached it the right way?

Fatigue and frustration made her lie back for a moment against the luxurious pillows, discreetly monogrammed with the Hepburn family crest. She clutched her husband’s velvet coat in her arms, her mind a blank when it came to the issue of how to handle her vexing—at least to her—situation, and tried to define her options.

On the positive side, he was polite to a fault, a considerate lover, and most definitely generous when it came to how he provided monetary support, such as her allowance.

On the negative side, he was purposely distant, secretive, and, for all she knew, at the moment in the bed of the exotic and unpredictable Lady Taylor. She’d seen him leave the ballroom and when he returned, Lady Taylor strolled back in not long after. They’d met out on the terrace. She had no doubt in her mind.

Where is he now
?
With her?

To her chagrin hot tears pricked Julianne’s lids. The sensation startled her, for while she didn’t think it was unnatural for her to resent the idea of her husband having a mistress, she didn’t expect to cry over it.

It was unsettling to think her feelings might be engaged. It wasn’t like she loved him.

Was it?

The only time Julianne felt like there was anything real in her marriage was when he held her close and she experienced the careful seduction of his kiss and touch. If it was an act, it was well orchestrated, but the real man was elusive. Falling in love with Michael Hepburn would be a foolish thing to do.

The bed was comfortable, the hour late, the lighting low.

She was immersed in a mystery. It was her last thought as she felt herself drift away.

H
e hadn’t expected success on his midnight quest, which was just as well, because he hadn’t found it either. Someone was toying with him. Offering little tidbits of information that proved to be entirely too vague, leading him on. Michael opened the door to his bedroom, his thoughts still occupied by the perfidious Roget, and stopped dead on the threshold.

Though he had in the past been greeted by a variety of women who waited in his bed for a myriad of reasons, he couldn’t recall ever being so surprised.

It was the nature of the picture, symbolic in a way that froze him to where he stood, and not so much what it represented, but maybe—God help him—what he
wished
for it to represent.

Julianne was on her side, so the enticing curve of her bottom was visible through a virginal nightdress of fine lawn, the gleaming cape of her hair spilling across her porcelain cheek and bared shoulders. She looked lovely and very young, his evening jacket nestled against her breasts in her clasped arms as she slept.

All he could comprehend, all he could think of, was that she slumbered with his coat in her grasp, as if it were something precious.

Arrested, riveted, he stood there, wondering if there was anything she could have said, anything she could have done, that would have made such a visual and emotional impact.

He—he who had literally saved his life in the past by his lightning reaction to difficult situations—was rendered impotent to know how to handle this. Disarmed by one innocent young woman who now happened to be his wife.

Eventually he moved into the room and sat down to pull off and discard his boots, glad he’d told Fitzhugh he wouldn’t need him further that evening. The sight of his beautiful wife in his bed was his alone, and besides, the Irishman had already made more than one comment about Julianne’s possible effect on his judgment. All in all, he thought he was doing a good job keeping a detached attitude toward his marriage, but at this moment he was off balance.

What he
should
do was pick her up and carry her back to her room and tuck her safely in her own bed. It would be dawn in just a few hours, and though he had learned throughout his time in Spain to function on almost no sleep at all, he had also learned that snatching the opportunity to rest if it was available was a good idea.

But, his hardening cock argued, waking his innocently alluring wife in the most pleasurable way possible was an even better option.

Indecisive, he sat there, restive, his shirt half buttoned, his moody gaze fastened on her slender form. Was this a seduction and he the quarry? If he made love to her, it was an affirmation she had some measure of control over his actions.

That was his one absolute rule: keep the upper hand always.

If I just sleep in the chair, I won’t have to touch her,
he brooded, distrustful of his ability to resist temptation once she was in his arms. God knew he’d slept in less comfortable places.

Had she not stirred then, he might have even stayed where he was. But she sighed and turned over to face him, her soft lips parting, the material of her nightdress molded to the fullness of her breasts. Through the thin fabric he could see the faint pink of her nipples and a hint of tantalizing shadow at the apex of her thighs.

Suddenly he was on his feet, his half sprawl in the chair abandoned.
Why not,
he told himself as he jerked the hem of his shirt from his breeches and shrugged out of the garment. She was his
wife
. Moreover, one of the reasons he’d married was to continue the Hepburn family line, and there was only one way to accomplish that mission.

His breeches hit the floor. Naked and fully aroused now, Michael eased onto the bed. He began by running his fingers through her tumbled hair, the silky strands soft and warm. Long lashes fluttered as he skimmed the arch of a fine brow with a fingertip.

He’d already discovered that she looked entrancing when she woke. There was something remarkably intimate in the moment as a person passed from sleep to consciousness; the gentle gasp of breath, the languid movement of a hand, the subtle change in posture. When Julianne fully opened her eyes and recognition of his presence dawned in those blue depths, he deliberately took his jacket from the now lax circle of her arms and tossed it on the floor. Fitzhugh would have an apoplexy in the morning to find the expensive garment in a wrinkled heap, but Michael didn’t care at the moment.