Loving Julia (28 page)

The gleaming lion’s head knocker caught her eye as she ascended the steps. Remembering how it had once awed her made her smile despite her nervousness. And so she was smiling as Smathers, having apparently heard the carriage arrive, opened the door.

“Good day, Smathers,” she said composedly, walking past him with Emily at her heels. He blinked at her, obviously not recognizing her as anything but a lady of quality.

“Would you be so good as to have someone bring in my bags?” she asked, turning back to him.

“You—you are visiting us, madame?” Smathers sounded all at sea. Obviously he was searching his mind to recall if any of the family had made mention of visitors, and drawing a blank.

“Did his lordship forget to mention it?” she smiled sweetly. “Yes, I am come to visit. I am Mrs. Stratham.”

For a moment the butler looked blank, and then his eyes widened and ran swiftly over her again. But before he could say anything, there was another step on the stairs. Julia turned to see Sebastian descending from the breakfast room with Caroline at his heels. It was an almost uncanny replay of her previous entry into this house. As Sebastian saw her, he stopped dead for a moment, and then continued his descent. His eyes were like frosty blue ice as they fixed on her unwaveringly. Behind him Caroline looked surprised, but not more so than she would have been by any unexpected visitor. It was obvious she did not recognize Julia—yet.

“Good morning, my lord. Did you forget to tell Smathers that I would be staying with you for a while?” Julia essayed a gay tone while Emily, hovering discreetly behind her, looked as if her eyes would pop out of her head.

There was a brief silence as Sebastian gained the bottom of the stairs and gave her a hard, measuring look. For a moment Julia’s heart pounded—would he send her packing with a flea in her ear?

“Apparently I did,” he said in an icy drawl, and Julia breathed again. “You may have Mrs. Stratham’s bags taken up to the gold room,” he instructed Smathers. Turning to Caroline and offering his arm to assist her down the remaining two steps, he added, “Of course, you remember Mrs. Stratham, Caroline my dear.”

“Mrs. Stratham!” Caroline’s pale blue eyes looked at first bewildered, then widened with dawning horror. But with a swift look at the implacable face of the man beside her, she managed a wan smile. “Of—course I do! How do you do, er, Mrs. Stratham?”

“I am very well, thank you,” Julia said with outward composure. Inwardly her heart was pounding like a kettle drum. She had not meant to encounter Sebastian so soon. He was looking at her from behind that icy mask like he hated her.

“If you will excuse us, Caroline, I have business I must discuss with Mrs. Stratham.” His tone was bland, but his eyes were not as he inclined his head in the direction of his study.

Julia, taking one look at those icy blue eyes, almost lost her courage. But then she remembered that she loved him, and wanted him, and if she wanted him she would have to fight for him. So she lifted her chin, and with a slight smile at the dazed Caroline, preceded Sebastian down the hall to the study that she remembered so well.

As she went, her eye was caught by the ugly blue and white vase that she had threatened to smash all those months ago. Sebastian had since treated her to several long lectures on porcelain of that type, and she now knew it was indeed very valuable. No wonder Caroline had looked on the verge of a heart attack when she had thought it would end up in jagged shards on the floor. And the elegant gilt chair she had treated so disrespectfully was Louis XIV. Julia smiled involuntarily as she remembered the havoc she had created on her last visit to the earl’s Grosvenor Square household. She hoped this time to make a better impression.

When they reached the study, Sebastian held the door for her with a punctilious courtesy that was daunting. Firmly fixing her goal in mind, Julia mustered the courage to meet his eyes with insouciance as he sat down behind the desk. Their positions were exactly the same as they had been on the first night they had met, and Julia found it rather uncanny. Everything was the same, from the hunting print on the paneled wall behind the desk to the huge leather chairs to the faint smell of cigar smoke. Sebastian was lighting one of those thin cigars now, placing it between his teeth before leaning back in the chair. As always she found the sight of the raffish looking cigar strangely at odds with Sebastian’s austere beauty. The cigar should have belonged to a highwayman, or a pirate. But perhaps the real Sebastian was far more akin to those ruthless men than to the elegantly handsome gentleman he was by birth and appearance.

“With your permission, of course, Mrs. Stratham,” Sebastian said with heavy irony as he caught her eyes fixed with some disapproval on the cigar. Julia nodded; she would never have dared deny him permission to smoke, especially not in his present snit with her. He eyed her up and down, the blue eyes hooded beneath lowered lids and the white swirl of smoke.

“Now suppose you tell me what the devil you’re playing at?”

“I’m not playing at anything. I simply have no wish to return to White Friars right now. I plan to enjoy London. As your kinswoman I felt the correct place for me to stay was here, in your house.”

He eyed her with icy remoteness. “I won’t humiliate you by insisting that you leave immediately, but you will return to White Friars tomorrow. Do I make myself clear?”

Julia met his eyes without flinching. Now was the time to make it clear that the relationship between them had undergone a major change. She was no longer the adoring little guttersnipe, but his equal. “I do not take orders from you any longer, Sebastian. I will stay as long as I please. If you throw me out of your house, I will camp on the doorstep. I promise you.”

He raked her with eyes that would have sent her cringing for cover a few days ago. Now she merely lifted her chin at him.

“If you think to challenge me, miss—” But she cut off his threat.

“I don’t want to challenge you, Sebastian. I simply want to go shopping, for one thing. Do you like my dress? I hope so, because you’ll be getting the bill for it—and a few other little purchases I made. You may take some of my money out of the funds to pay for them.”

“Thank you,” he replied with heavy irony. “I will do so. And you will leave for White Friars tomorrow.”

Intimidation was something Sebastian was very good at, Julia remembered. He had used it before when she had displeased him, wearing her down until she had been so afraid of his displeasure that she had been ready to do anything to win her way back into his good graces. But this time she could not allow him to defeat her so easily. If she was to win the battle, and eventually the war, she would have to go on the offensive, to keep him off balance for a change.

“Do you remember the last time I was in this room, Sebastian?” The unexpected question threw him a little, Julia could see by the slight wariness that entered his eyes.

“I do indeed. You made an, uh, indelible impression. Not only on me, but on the entire household.”

“You said you would make me a lady. And you did.”

His eyebrows lifted as if he questioned that, but Julia ignored that silent insult and rushed on.

“You took a guttersnipe and made a lady, Sebastian. You taught me to talk like a lady, act like a lady, think like a lady. Is it so unreasonable that I should want to live like a lady?” She took a deep breath, and decided to take the bull by the horns. “I couldn’t be your mistress, don’t you see?”

“You were doing a fairly good job of it, as I recall.” The cynical observation threatened to unleash her temper, but Julia quickly controlled herself. Getting angry at Sebastian was not part of her plan. She looked at him steadily, trying to disregard the warm rush of color that heated her cheeks as his words recalled the fiery passion they had shared.

“I thought you were the most wonderful thing on earth, Sebastian. I looked up to you, admired you, respected you. Until you came along, I’d never had a friend, you see.”

There was a moment of silence. Sebastian’s face could have been carved from stone as he stared at her.

“I hardly think I would call us friends.” The quiet observation in the chilly voice was belied by the glowing red tip of the cigar as he took a deep drag. That icy mask he wore was slipping, just a little, she hoped, and rushed on.

“But we were friends, Sebastian. Good friends. And more than friends. I cared about you, Sebastian, and I thought you cared about me. That’s why I—I let you…” Her voice trailed off and her face turned scarlet. For all her good intentions she found that she could just not spell out exactly what it was she had let him do in the face of those cold, unwavering blue eyes.

“You
let
me?” He made a cynical sound that was halfway between a snort and a laugh. “As I recall, you more than let me. You were all over me as soon as I touched you. Each time.”

Her color was one thing she was unable to control. She wanted to crawl under the chair and hide as her face burned even hotter than before. But she did not; she kept her chin high and met his eyes with as much dignity as she could summon to her aid.

“And,” he continued smoothly, but she got the sense that his muscles were tensing like those of an animal about to spring, “you’d more than let me now. I could take you, right here in this room, with the whole staff undoubtedly hovering about outside, and you would love it. That’s how it is with whores. Especially good ones. And you are very, very good, my dear.”

The hot color faded from her cheeks. She felt herself pale as the insult sank home. Her eyes met his, and she saw the hostility flaming beneath the ice. He was deliberately trying to hurt her, she told herself, deliberately attacking her most sensitive spot to keep her from getting too close. Because she had been close. As she had thought about it the day before, it had suddenly become clear to her that Sebastian cared for her opinion, and therefore for her, more than he was willing to admit. People had been calling him murderer for years; apparently it had never particularly bothered him before. But he had not liked hearing the accusation on her lips, and that augered well for the success of her plan. If she could just control her temper until he could be brought to a realization that he cared for her more than he knew…

“I don’t really think you murdered Elizabeth, you know.” Her quiet statement in the face of his flagrant provocation brought a fierce frown to his face. His eyes flamed, and then were quickly banked with ice.

“Do you think I gave a damn what you think?” The cold, polite tone was at variance with the savagery of the words.

“I just wanted you to know,” she said simply, and smiled at him. That sweet smile seemed to madden him. He went very still for an instant, staring at her with disbelief, and then the banked flames leaped to life in his eyes and he snarled as he came out of the chair. He looked bent on violence, but Julia sat where she was, fingers curled into the leather arms of the chair in anticipation. Shaking him out of his icy armor was part of the plan, and she had to be prepared to take the consequences when she succeeded.

But before he made it more than halfway around the desk, the door to the study flew open. He stopped, lifting flaming eyes to glare at the intruder. Julia felt a mingling of relief and disappointment as she too looked toward the door.

“My God, it is her! When Caroline came and told me that you had invited her to stay, I thought she must be hallucinating. Not even you would invite a—a female of that stamp into our home. Have you no regard for our name at all?”

The Dowager Countess of Moorland stood silhouetted in the doorway. After one condemning look at Julia, her attention was all on her son. Looking at the still slender, silver-haired figure clad all in black, Julia was struck once more by how very much she resembled her son. She must have been a dazzling beauty when she was young, Julia thought with a swift glance at Sebastian. But now she was an unhappy bitter woman estranged from her only surviving child. What had happened to make her so?

“Do come in, mama,” Sebastian said mildly. With one hard look at Julia he abandoned his intended assault and seated himself comfortably on the edge of his desk. One booted foot swung idly as he returned his mother’s angry look with a slight mocking smile

“Taking her in off the streets and sending her to live at White Friars was bad enough, but at least no one ever had to see her there. Here, she is bound to be discovered by all our friends. I tell you, I will not have it! She must leave this house at once!”

“Come in and close the door, mama. I have something to say to you that I am sure you would prefer was not overheard by the staff.”

The dowager countess, who had ignored his previous ironic invitation to enter, stood poised for a moment longer in the doorway, giving her son a glance of such intense dislike that Julia’s eyes widened. Then with a haughty lift of her head, she stepped inside the room and closed the door. Sebastian smiled at her. Julia shivered. She would not like to have that smile directed at herself.

“First of all, mama, you force me to remind you that this house is mine. I allow you to live here simply because you are my mother, however little you or I may relish that fact. Caroline too lives here strictly on my good will. If I choose to invite another member of our family to reside in this house as well, I will do so. Julia has as much right here as either you or Caroline—the right of my say-so. Remember that, if you please.”

The dowager countess turned icy blue eyes on Julia. Julia’s first impulse was to shrink back, but then pride took hold and she held her head high under the woman’s scathing regard. “Julia! She wasn’t Julia the last time she was here! I seem to recall something far more common. Ah yes, Jewel. A vulgar name for a vulgar little—”

“Mama!” Sebastian broke in sharply. “You will be civil to
Julia
at all times. Is that clear?”

The older woman’s eyes swung back to her son. “I will not. I will have nothing to do with her. I cannot prevent you from lodging her in this house, for as you say it is yours and you will do as you please, just as you always do, with no thought for the pain you inflict on others, but—”