Loving Julia (41 page)

“I am sure you will understand if I tell you that it is a matter of the most supreme indifference to me.”

The dowager countess, still in the pale lavender brocade that she had worn to the rout, stepped inside the room and crossed to the leather chair on the opposite side of the desk from her son. He was lounging back in his chair, his coat and cravat discarded. His booted feet were crossed at the ankles and propped on the edge of the desk, and he held a cheroot in his mouth and a glass in his hand.

“You look disgusting,” she said.

“I feel disgusting,” he answered levelly, removing the cheroot from his mouth to take a gulp of the fine Scotch whiskey in his glass. “So I would suggest you leave me to it.”

The dowager expelled her breath in an audible hiss. “Good God, Sebastian, you’re not pining over that slut already, are you? After the way she behaved with Carlyle—the way she betrayed you?”

“Which you were very careful to bring to my attention, mama. Now I’m starting to ask myself, why?”

“Obviously I felt you should know the kind of female she is. Any man of sense would have already assumed her lack of virtue from her background, but then you have never been a man of sense as we both know. I should think you would feel grateful to me for having saved you from the consequences of your own folly.”

“Do you know, mama, I do not. I also believe that you acted out of malice—for me and for Julia.”

“You’re not blaming me!”

Sebastian’s eyes glinted. “Yes, mama, I am blaming you. I’m blaming you for a great deal. Not entirely for this fiasco tonight, but certainly for the years and years of your neglect and indifference toward me. Now I’m finally giving you a chance to explain yourself. Why?”

The dowager countess hesitated, her still lovely face creasing with fine lines as she frowned down at her son. The cold smile with which he was so familiar lifted the corners of her lips, and the blue eyes that were so like his own gleamed at him.

“So you want to know why I’ve never liked you, Sebastian? Very well, I’ll tell you. If you do not like what you hear, you have only yourself to blame.”

The smile vanished as her face contorted with bitterness. Staring up at her, Sebastian thought that for the first time in his life he found his mother almost ugly.

“The father that you thought was so wonderful was a monster to me. Edward was conceived within weeks of our wedding, and by the time I found out that I was with child I was never so thankful of anything in my life. I did my duty. I gave him his heir. I never wanted another child after that, but he did. He raped me time after time to get you, and I’ve never been able to look at you since without remembering the violence with which you were conceived. Now there you have the story. Are you pleased?”

Sebastian stared at his mother, stared into the cold blue eyes and wondered with a sense of shock if she could be telling the truth. Certainly he could never remember his father mistreating his mother, but then his father had been an invalid since his sixth birthday. If it were true, it put a different complexion on things—on a whole spectrum of things. Perhaps his mother had some justification for her aversion to him. Sebastian also thought of himself with Elizabeth. It sounded very much as if he and his father had faced a similar situation in regards to their wives, but they had responded to it very differently. If Elizabeth had lived, Sebastian wondered, would he too have eventually resorted to rape? And would the whole of his miserable childhood have been played out again with his own second child?

“I’m sorry, mama. I didn’t know.” Sebastian’s voice was quiet, and his eyes were very blue as he met his mother’s glittering gaze.

She stared at him for a moment, her eyes hostile and her mouth tight. Then she seemed to crumple, and sat down in the chair across the desk from him.

“You didn’t know.” Her voice was harsh as she threw the words at him. Her eyes gleamed wildly beneath a sheen of moisture, and her mouth was shaking. “Of course you didn’t know. How could you? You couldn’t help the circumstances of your birth. I used to tell myself that when you were an infant, but it didn’t make any difference then—and it doesn’t now. From the very first moments when I felt you moving inside me, all I could think of was that you were a child
he
had forced on me. I hated him for it, but he didn’t care if I hated him. So I hated you.” The countess looked up at him, her mouth compressing in an effort to still the trembling at the corners. Her voice was barely audible as she continued. “I could hardly even bear to look at you. My own son. And I hated him for that as well.”

Sebastian stared at his mother for a long moment. He had suffered from her maltreatment all these years, but it seemed that she had suffered, too. He had always thought that maybe there was some flaw in himself that only his mother could see, some flaw that rendered him impossible to love. But now he realized that he had been viewing himself as through a distorted mirror from the very earliest moments of his childhood—and that mirror had just shattered into a million pieces. It was not him that his mother hated at all.…

But the revelation had come too late to change anything much. He no longer needed his mother nor her love. He was a man now, and the lonely, heartsick little boy who had lived for so long inside him could at last be laid to rest. For that if nothing else, he had to be grateful. His feet dropped to the floor and he sat up, stubbing out his cheroot and setting the glass with a little clink on the desk.

“I’m very sorry for all you’ve suffered, mama,” he said quietly.

For the first time in his life he was able to look at her without feeling the corrosive bitterness that had colored his every thought of her for as long as he could remember. He was suddenly aware of how small and frail she was—and how old. With all her material possessions, her title, and social position, what had she really? Her husband had died bitterly estranged from her; the son of her heart was dead, too. She was left with him, a son whom she had spurned and despised from birth, and who had learned to despise her in turn. She was simply an unhappy old woman, who, whether she would admit it or not, needed him far more than he needed her.

And she was his mother. Whatever else she might do or be, there was that inviolable bond of blood tying him to her. And, he realized, he might be looking at himself as he would be in his latter years, alone and unloved. He shuddered inwardly, and from this revelation came the strength to ignore all that lay between them and reach out to her.

“Maybe we should give ourselves a second chance, mama.”

Those eyes that were so like his own filled with tears as she stared at him. Her hand lifted, and for a moment he thought that she would touch his arm that rested on the desk. But the habit of years prevailed, and her hand dropped back into her lap. She blinked once to clear the tears away, then lifted her head in the familiar prideful way.

“I’m afraid it’s far, far too late for that,” she said. Even as Sebastian stared at her impatiently he saw her withdrawing behind her veil of ice.

A knock sounded on the half-opened door. At Sebastian’s brusque “What is it?” the door opened fully. Sebastian lifted his eyes from his mother’s controlled face to see Smathers, as immaculate as ever despite the lateness of the hour and the excitement the evening had generated. He looked apologetic at the interruption, but Sebastian gestured to him to speak.

“There is a man here to see you, my lord. A Mr. Bates, he gave his name as.”

“Bates!” It was the name of one of the Bow Street runners Sebastian had set after the man or men who had murdered Timothy. Sebastian wasn’t entirely certain, but he rather thought that Bates was the heavyset one of the pair who had driven down to White Friars all those months ago with the information about Julia’s involvement in the robbery that had ended in Timothy’s death. Bates had also told him about how she had nursed his cousin on his deathbed, just as she had claimed. That information, in Sebastian’s mind coupled with the liking he had already begun to feel for the chit, had outweighed the other, particularly since Bates had been quite certain that the murder was the result of panic of one of the other participants and not planned at all.

“Where is he?”

“I have left him in the hall, my lord.”

Without another word Sebastian strode out to meet the man. Bates was indeed the man he remembered. He waited uneasily amongst the Meissen porcelain and Louis XIV chairs that Julia had once threatened. Thinking of Julia hurt, so he tried to banish her image from his mind. But it was impossible not to remember how she had betrayed him, or that she was even now out there alone in the dark on the streets of London. Sebastian set his teeth. Whatever this fellow wanted, he would give him short shrift.

“You wanted to see me, Bates?” His tone was abrupt, his eyes cool. Whatever the man had to say, he did not want to hear it. Not now. It could make no difference, with Julia lost to him.

“It’s about that gentry-mort you set me to find out about, yer worship.”

Gentry-mort meaning female in the man’s rough cant, Sebastian deduced, and his eyes took on an icy hauteur that made the other man look apprehensive.

“I have learned all I wish to know about the, er, ‘gentry-mort,’ thank you.” Sebastian’s eyes narrowed as he thought of something. “By the by, isn’t it a trifle late to be making business calls?”

Bates nodded, his jowly face lugubrious. “Aye, yer worship, it is that, but I jest clapped me peepers on the gentry-mort and it looked like she was in a peck o’ trouble. So I jest thought to meself, I thought, Will, old boy, you’d better go on around o’ that earl’s house and tell someone what you seen. Jest in case you shouldn’t want the gentry-mort to come to harm, yet worship.”

“What did you see?” Sebastian’s voice was hoarse. Bates shook his head sorrowfully.

“That cove wot pulled the toothpick on your kin has the gentry-mort, and if I were him and worried about scraggin’ I’d be wishful of makin’ sure she didn’t peach on me. O’ course, since she’s such a pretty little thing, it’ll likely take him a while to get around to that part o’ it. So we’ve likely got some time, yer worship.”

Sebastian felt his heart race as he absorbed from this that Julia was in extreme danger from the man who had killed Timothy because be feared hanging if she should identify him. The lout would probably kill her with as little compunction as he would swat a fly—but first he would pleasure himself with her body.

Sebastian felt a stabbing pain unlike anything he had ever felt before slice through his heart. If she died, he would not want to go on living. If one hair on her head was harmed, he would with great pleasure kill the swine responsible.

But of course, the one with the ultimate responsibility would be himself. Because he had not trusted her enough to let her explain about Carlyle. And he was sure suddenly that there would be an explanation. He had allowed himself to be poisoned by his own jealousy and his mother’s whispered spite. Only now, when Julia’s very life was in danger, was he beginning to think clearly again. She loved him; it had not been a trick, and he had come very close to throwing it all away. He had in truth been the fool she had called him. But there was no time for recriminations. All that could come later. What mattered was that he get Julia safe.

“Smathers, wake George and Rudy and arm them with whatever you can find. And have the carriage brought around. On the instant, do you understand?”

“Yes, my lord!”

Sebastian was already vanishing into his study again, to emerge moments later with a pair of duelling pistols which he thrust into the waistband of his pantaloons.

“Where are you going with those?” His mother was standing in the hall staring at him, an indecipherable expression on her face. He looked at her without really seeing her at all.

“I’m going to fetch Julia, of course. Get out of my way, mother. Come on, Bates.”

XXXIV

“Keep away from me, Mick!”

Julia’s voice was hoarse as she backed away across the garbage-strewn floor of the cellar. She held Mick at bay with a broken whiskey bottle, which she had grabbed as soon as he released her wrist after dragging her into the dark room. As she moved away from him, the bottle clutched in her hand her only weapon, he watched her with a lustful smile that turned her stomach.

“My, Jool, ya sure do talk pretty now! Almost as pretty as ya look. Ya know, I’m sorta glad I never ’ad ya when you was one of us. It wouldna been nearly so much fun as this is gonna be.”

“What about Jem, Mick? He’ll be very angry if you hurt me.”

Mick folded his arms over his chest, making no move to come after her. He was right, she thought sickly, there was no hurry. Here in this filthy cellar she was at his mercy. She was under no illusions that even a broken bottle would hold him off for long. She would be lucky to even cut him, but she would try. She would die trying because he would kill her if she didn’t succeed. After he raped her. The very thought made her sick.

“Yer off there, Jool. A lot’s been ’appenin’ since you were with us. Ol’ Jem, he’s got a ’ole new gang o’ prigs. ’E won’t care a farthin’s worth wot I do ter ya. ’Fact, ’e’ll probably be fair glad. ’E’s been mortal ’urt that ya peached on us, your friends like.”

“I never peached!” That accusation got through to the Jewel she had once been, and made her straighten with righteous indignation.

Mick shook his head at her. “Ain’t no use ter lie, Jool. We knows ya peached, ’cause who else set the runners on our tail? They came down on us like rats on cheese right after ya ran off. Who else coulda tole ’em wot we done?”

“If I told them, why weren’t you arrested? Why wouldn’t I have given them your names and where to find you, you dolt?”

“Don’t ya be callin’ me names now, missy,” he warned with an ugly look that made Julia step back another pace. She would have retreated even further, but her back was pressed against the moldy stone of the cellar wall as it was.

“I don’ know why we wasn’t taken up. Maybe ya didn’t peach all the way—jest tole ’em sommit of wot ’appened. Sommit that made you look awful good, by my reckonin’. But that don’t matter now. If ya ain’t peached yet, there’s no tellin’ when ya might. That’s what I tole Jem when I set that boy to watchin’ that fancy ’ouse where you was livin’—oh, yes, I been knowin’ where ya were fer about a month now, ain’t much that ’appens in London-town that gets by ole Mick. I knew’d that sooners or laters I’d get a chance to shut ya up permanent. So when the boy comes ter me ternight and sez yer out runnin’ the streets alone, I knew the time ’ad come. O’ course, I didn’ know yer’d make it easy for me by comin’ back to the ol’ neighborhood. I thanks ya for that.”