Prelude to a Scandal (14 page)

She snorted. “Puff away.”

“Good.” He plucked up the cigar and leaned toward the burning candle set on the edge of his desk. The tobacco hissed softly as he brought it back to life. Keeping the cigar between his lips, he straightened and sucked in a mouthful of much-needed hot, earthy smoke.

Pulling the cigar back out, he turned his head, and blew the smoke out to the side, feeling decidedly calmer. He slowly took up the ash pan with his other hand and rounded the desk. He paused directly before her. “She cannot stay here.”

His wife lifted her chin to better meet his gaze. “Why not?”

He settled himself on the edge of his writing desk and set the ash pan beside him. It was obvious Justine wanted to be treated with the equality of a man. And he intended on gifting her that by being as honest with her as possible. “I suppose I should tell you something. Before any more is said.”

She eyed him. “And what is that?”

“Early this morning, I took down Miss Thurlow’s portrait from the wall, carried it into my bedchamber and made use of it one last time before having it removed from the house by one of the servants. It wasn’t quite as pleasurable as it used to be but I genuinely required a sense of release.”

Her eyes widened as she scrambled away, distancing herself from him. “You did what?”

He cleared his throat and, for a moment, couldn’t believe he’d actually said it. Had he done it because his guilt was too great? Or perhaps because he was trying to make her understand why he couldn’t have Matilda around, pregnant or not. He was not to be trusted.

“How could you?” she asked with a broken softness that was more achingly sad than accusatory. “You promised. You promised me last night upon your honor and upon your soul you never would.”

Radcliff tapped the ash off his cigar and leaned toward her. “You need to understand something, Justine. You need to understand that this obsession of mine isn’t something I can readily control with a promise. It was either the portrait or you.” He stared her down. “And I didn’t want the portrait, Justine. That I know.”

She glared at him, hazel eyes ablaze, her cheeks flushing, making every single freckle disappear. “Am I to somehow feel honored by that admission? Is that what you think?”

Radcliff ran the tip of his tongue across the lower half of his lip, wishing to God he was a different man. Wishing to God he was a man capable of making her proud.

He shifted against the desk and rolled the thick cigar gently between his fingers. “I am truly sorry. It was not my intention to break the promise I had so genuinely made.”

“And yet you did.”

“And yet I did.” Christ. He was such a bastard. He really was. He and his brother alike.

Shakily inhaling another mouthful of smoke, he quickly turned his head again and blew it out to the side. Lowering the cigar toward his knee, he finally said, “I wish to be frank. I like you, Justine. More than I have ever liked any woman in my life.”

Clear astonishment touched her features, her arched brows momentarily flickering. “Why are you telling me this?”

He leaned toward her again, shifting his weight against the edge of the desk, and boldly met her gaze. “Because I want you to understand something. I want you to understand that despite this obsession of mine, I have always wanted to be a good man. Even throughout all those misguided years, all I ever wanted was to lead a life with one woman. And now, with you, I have that chance. Do not complicate my life—a life that is already complicated enough—by involving another woman in it.”

She rigidly pointed a finger at him. “You are the one complicating your own life, Radcliff. No one is complicating it for you. Not I. Not Miss Thurlow. You.”

He feigned a laugh and wagged his cigar at her, causing a few ashes to scatter from its tip. “No, no. You see, right now, you are complicating it. How? By inviting my brother’s pregnant mistress to stay here. In my home. Never mind my obsession, or what I think. What do you suppose the rest of London will have to say about this? Or your parents, for God’s sake? What is more, it is only a matter of time before Carlton comes hunting her down. And then what? Then what? I am not about to duel my own brother over his mistress. Over a…a whore.”

Justine drew closer, her hazel eyes fixed steadily upon him. “The only whore I see standing before me, Radcliff, is you. You and you alone.”

Radcliff snapped his mouth shut in complete astonishment, unable to move, yet alone breathe. It was the way she had said it, with such conviction, that made him feel as though he were bleeding internally. What was worse, he knew she was right. He was a whore. A whore to his own cock.

“Why do you continue to debauch yourself at the cost of your pride and your honor?” she persisted, drawing steadily closer. “Why do you continue to debauch yourself at the cost of a promise you made to your own wife?”

He straightened, realizing her body was far too close for his liking. He froze when she set herself and her full lilac skirts firmly against the length of his trouser-clad legs, blocking him against the desk with her own body.

Their gazes locked, and he was faintly aware of her hand drifting toward the cigar he held against his knee. She slipped it from his fingers, lowering her gaze for a moment, then leaned toward the ash pan and dashed it out, leaving it there.

“Justine,” he whispered hoarsely, feeling as though he was going to stop breathing. “Why must you torment me like this? I am doing the best I can.”

Justine caught his gaze. “If you think I am tormenting you, Radcliff, then you do not know me all that well. And if this is the best you can do, then I genuinely fear for you and this marriage. I truly believe we’ve been going about this all wrong. Eliminating your desires from your path is not by any means beneficial. For how are you to learn to control an obsession if your environment is being controlled for you? Miss Thurlow aside, I have decided we are going to bring back female servants into this house. Henri is a very nice young man but enough is well enough. I want a proper lady’s maid. Is that understood, Your Grace?”

He swallowed and half nodded, acknowledging her words. She was right. He had to face who he was. And he had to do it without abusing her trust and paying others to make things more convenient for him. But what if he failed her? What then? Would she leave him?

Justine searched his face. “When I was much younger, and incapable of truly understanding, my father told me that when a man overindulges in any one thing, it means he is trying to compensate for something that is missing in his life. So what is it that is missing from your life, Bradford? Can you tell me? Do you even know?”

Radcliff looked away from the heated intensity within those eyes, feeling as if she were stripping away the last of his sense and sensibility. For he knew the answer to her question all too well.

The strain of becoming duke at the age of fourteen had made him seek out a means of escape. And physical pleasure, he’d quickly learned, was a breathtaking method of release.

Eventually, however, he had wanted and needed more. Being young at the time, he had felt no need to control it. Being a rake was acceptable, given his status. Yet somehow, the more pleasure he’d sought out, the less he’d actually received in turn. And despite all the women who had willingly flocked to him, he’d always felt used and alone.

Justine sighed. “I suppose there is only one way for us to go about this.”

She reached around him and plucked something off the desk. She held up the etiquette book, then firmly grabbed his hand and placed the book on the flat surface of his palm.

“And so the dockside whore must learn to become a respectable lady,” she drawled, tapping at the surface of the book. “Read it and ask yourself how you can apply female etiquette into your daily life.”

She took several steps back. “I am asking you to do right by this situation, Your Grace. I am asking that you allow Miss Thurlow to stay with us until the birth of her child. After which time, a more suitable arrangement will be made. I trust, should you agree to shelter her, that you will not further abuse me or Miss Thurlow. For if you do, I vow to board the next outgoing ship to Cape Town with my parents. And you will never see me again. Do you think I ever wanted to stay here in London? I never belonged here amongst all these snobs and expectations. I only returned because my parents wished for me to marry. Which I did.”

She bowed her head, her long chestnut curls swaying, then turned and whisked toward the doors. She pushed them wide and disappeared, the clicking of her slippers continuing down the corridor and what felt like out of his life.

Radcliff lowered his gaze to the small, but weighty, red leather-bound book he still held. Though a part of him wanted to dash the book across the room out of anger, out of the absurdity of what she proposed, he realized that if he didn’t make some sort of effort, Justine was not only going to hate him for the rest of her life but would most likely disappear onto a ship and sail out of his life forever.

And he was beginning to realize that he didn’t want that. He wanted to learn to be the best man he could be, the sort of man she could be proud of. He’d never had a moral compass. But it was time he found one before he was lost at sea and left for dead.

Radcliff tightened his hold on the book, letting the binding bite into the skin of his palm, and rose from the edge of the desk. “Justine!” he yelled out, striding toward the open doors.

He stepped out into the corridor, turned and paused.

Justine, who already stood at the far end of the corridor, turned slowly toward him, her skirts rustling against the white marble floor in the drumming silence that spanned between them. The light from the windows beyond barely reached her face, making it almost impossible to see her eyes.

He didn’t know why, but he needed to see those beautiful eyes. Perhaps because he wanted assurance in light of what he was about to do.

He held up the book, shaking it at her, as he made his way toward her. “I will read this. And I will read it again and again, until I have come to understand the lesson you wish me to learn.”

She didn’t move. Nor did she seem to want to reply.

As he drew steadily closer, her eyes eventually became visible. And to his astonishment, they were squeezed shut. As if she were unwilling to look at him or face the situation at hand.

Imagine that. She wasn’t the bold tough she professed herself to be. Like him, there were cracks within the marble.

He paused before her. The soft scent of powder and oranges, which his cigar must have earlier covered, encased him, and the strange urge to hold her in a way that did not involve anything but a simple, mutual offering of understanding and companionship, overwhelmed him.

In that moment, he suddenly realized it was never lust he had wanted. It was a companion. That companion being Justine. He wanted her smile. He wanted her words. He wanted it all. Never in all his three and thirty years had he yearned to have this sort of genuine understanding and this sort of genuine companionship from a woman.

And it scared the bloody shit out of him. Because he’d never depended upon anyone but himself for anything. But it was obvious that when it came to something as simple as his own happiness, he couldn’t depend on himself at all.

He swallowed and shakily tucked the small book into his waistcoat pocket, trying to understand what was happening to him. “I have made a decision with regard to Miss Thurlow.”

Her eyes fluttered open, and she gawked up at him with those hauntingly beautiful hazel eyes. “What is it?” she whispered.

His Justine clearly had her generous heart set on helping him and Matilda Thurlow. And by God, if he didn’t admire the hell out of her for it. For she was tossing all of London to the wind and doing what he knew himself was the right and only thing to do.

Although he didn’t have to agree to anything, for he was duke, damn it, he also knew that by agreeing, he just might save his own marriage and redeem himself in her eyes. Which was all that mattered to him.

He set his hands behind his back, reminding himself that Waterloo had not been won overnight, and formally announced, “I have decided Miss Thurlow will stay until the birth of her child. After which time, you and I will arrange something more suitable for the two. Preferably it will be abroad. Far from Carlton.”

A stifled sob floated toward him somewhere to his left. His brows rose as he glanced toward Matilda Thurlow, who stood in the doorway of the parlor with her hands rubbing her large belly.

Matilda smiled tremulously, and despite her puffy face and the bruising and bloody lip, her blue eyes practically sparkled. “Your Grace. Thank you for your never-ending generosity.”

He cleared his throat. “I am pleased to be of assistance. Now if you ladies will excuse me, I admit to having some important business to tend to.” He offered Justine a curt nod, then rounded her and did not stop walking until he had turned the farthest corner and was out of sight.

He staggered to a halt and stood there in the corridor for a dazed moment, wondering how the hell his life had ever gotten so complicated.

There was the echoing of steady steps, and the butler’s large polished boots and oversize wool trousers appeared in the spot he continued to vacantly stare at before him. “Your Grace?” A gloved hand touched his shoulder. “Do you require assistance?”