Ruthless Charmer (33 page)

It was hours later that he found himself standing across the way from Madame Farantino's, leaning against the streetlamp with a cheroot dangling from his mouth. He really had no idea how he had come to be here. After leaving Kettering House, his head still fogged from the liquor, he had made the hack circle Hyde Park, and finally tiring of that, he had gotten off at Regent Street, wandering aimlessly about until he had, somehow, ended up here.

A footman across the way motioned him to come inside. Julian tipped his hat in acknowledgment, but settled against the lamppost and dragged on his cheroot. Certainly it had occurred to him to go inside; she had left him feeling a bit like a caged animal, anxious, strangely ravenous. Part of him was tempted to go inside and expend that anxiety on a woman who would demand nothing more than his sex and leave his heart and soul intact.

Julian flicked the cheroot to the cobblestone and ground it out with the heel of his boot. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he took one last look at Madame Farantino's before turning toward the Tam O'Shanter. He never had any intention of crossing the threshold of Farantino's, no matter what his body wanted to believe. Whatever he thought of Claudia, one thing remained, unfortunately for him, quite unchanged.

He still loved her.

Desperately so.

Julian leased a small but well-appointed town house on South Audlcy Street for Sophie that was only a short walk to Hyde Park. Stanwood took residence there on a cold morning, but left early that afternoon to call upon a notoriously expensive haberdashery. Apparently, his wardrobe was not befitting his new residence, and he insisted Sophie accompany him, more, Julian thought, to keep her at a safe distance from her family than to seek her help.

That was one thing Stanwood did quite well. Julian faithfully called three times a week—more than that he believed made him seem desperate. Less than that made him quite desperate. He worried constantly about her; she had lost quite bit of weight since her elopement, perhaps as much as a stone. Dark circles shadowed her brown eyes, and although she smiled and spoke cheerfully when he called, he thought her cheerfulness forced, her smile painted on for his benefit. Sophie was miserable.

So was Julian. He was absolutely powerless to do anything for her within the confines of the law. There was nothing he could do, not one goddam thing to change this tragedy for her. Sophie's loss of innocence weighed heavily on his heart; nothing could ever give that back to her. The only thing Julian seemed capable of doing at all was enduring his hatred for Stanwood, and that took every ounce of strength he had.

Even his attempts to at least set the bastard up in respectable employment had failed. Having convinced Arthur to take Stanwood on as a clerk in the Christian family law offices—no easy feat, that—Stanwood had declined with a sneer, saying that morning hours were not to his liking. That was plainly true—on more occasions than not, the toad met Julian in the afternoons still in his dressing gown. He drank heavily, too; the smell of liquor permeated the house.

But what infuriated Julian most was the way Stanwood spoke to Sophie, as if she was a child or a servant to be commanded to sit, to stand, to fetch for him. It seemed he treated everything she said as ridiculous, laughing in that condescending way of his. It was all Julian could do to keep from wringing his neck—and when Stanwood sensed that Julian was about to lose his temper, he would put his arm around Sophie with a sneer and remark upon the privileges of married life. The scoundrel knew exactly how powerless Julian was, and he delighted in it.

Worse, Stanwood began to borrow heavily against Sophie's impending annuity. Julian had anticipated it, had advanced him one thousand pounds shortly after the couple's return to London—but that sum was now twenty-five hundred pounds and growing weekly. It puzzled Julian—having arranged for the house, he knew the cost of letting it. He knew the approximate cost of the many new clothes Stanwood seemed to possess, and the few Sophie had been treated to. None of it added up to as much as even five hundred pounds. He strongly suspected Stanwood had begun to gamble away Sophie's fortune, but as he was reportedly never seen at any reputable gaming hell, Julian wondered exactly where he was gambling so unsuccessfully. He would have a deuce of a time finding out.

Stanwood could not abide for her sisters to be alone with Sophie, and made it quite clear that he could scarcely tolerate even Julian's presence. Unfortunately, Julian was his only means of income, and he could ill afford to ban him from his house. So Julian called three times a week, quite happy to let his mere presence perturb Stanwood, and hoped it would perturb him right to death.

But Julian could not accept how powerless he was. Worse yet, at the end of every day when he faced the fact that another twenty-four hours had passed in impotence, he was forced to endure the torment Claudia was putting him through.

Torment. Hell, yes, it was torment on every level, open and deep, and penetrating the darkest depths of his soul. It was nothing overt, really, but a million little things piled upon one another that threatened to smother him. As ludicrous as it seemed, Julian was convinced Claudia was attempting to kill him with kindness—and if he ever uttered that to another living soul, he was quite certain they would cart him off to Bedlam.

Nonetheless, the evidence certainly supported it. It was an unspoken fact that the two of them had called an uneasy truce. He supposed they had settled into the disquiet of their marriage, neither of them willing to push any farther. He had thought her reserved politeness a symbol of that truce .. . until her kindness began to affect him, little things designed—he thought—to comfort him.

For example, one evening Claudia surprised him by announcing Eugenie and Louis would join them for supper. That was odd; he was not in the habit of dining with Claudia of late—he could hardly look at her seated at his table, knowing what she had done to Sophie. Had done to him. So he therefore spent the unusual supper engaged in argument with Louis, first over the insidious little LeBeau—who apparently was still threatening to have Julian's head—then over exactly when the Renaults would return to France.

The tactic worked. He and Louis were quite oblivious to the ladies, hardly noticing when Claudia rose from her chair and went to the sideboard. But Julian did notice the frantic whispers with the footman and then the appearance of a silver tray on which sat four small wineglasses and a bottle of wine. Not just any wine, mind you— imported Madeira wine, sent for and received all the way from Portugal.

He would have thought nothing of it under normal circumstances. He certainly was not the only peer to have a special liking for the wine, and he certainly wasn't the only one to have ordered it specially from Portugal on occasion. What was unusual was that he had depleted his stock, and had remarked one night—long before Sophie had run away—that he had been remiss in ordering the wine, and therefore, would be forced to wait months for it. He had not as yet put in his order.

When the footman served the wine, Claudia beamed at him as if she had just snared the fattest fish in the river. Julian looked at her with all due suspicion, but she very happily turned her attention to Eugenie. It was obvious the Demon's Spawn had recalled his remark from weeks ago and had found the blasted wine somewhere. For him. She had actually thought of him, before Sophie had even gone, and nothing could convince him otherwise.

And if that wasn't enough to convince him, the incident of the silk neckcloths certainly did. Tinley, damn him, had somehow managed to ruin a handful of fine silk neckcloths Julian had had tailored in Paris. They were scorched, as if someone had attempted to iron them. Bartholomew wailed his innocence. Not Tinley—he stated he was quite clearly at fault, but for the life of him, could not remember what he had thought to do with the neckcloths. Nor had he been particularly contrite about it. After some railing on Julian's part, the expensive neckcloths had been discarded.

Yet one by one, reasonable copies of them began to appear in his wardrobe. One day there were two of them; a fine silver silk, another gold and black pattern. The next day, the burgundy, followed by the forest green the next. Bartholomew was as perplexed as Julian was. When Tinley was questioned, the old man readily assured his lord that he had lost most of his mind, but not that much of it.

It was her. Claudia was the only other person who

could possibly know which ones had been lost, and as the daughter of a fastidious earl—one far too concerned with his appearance in Julian's humble estimation—she knew very well where and how to replace them. He did not ask her, but every time he wore one of the resurrected neckcloths, he watched her closely, looking for any sign that she had done it. The little devil pretended to never notice.

There was more. Her teas had suddenly stopped, as had the bizarre events for ladies she had often staged. There was no explanation for it, but it seemed to Julian that instead of her teas, she was waiting for him every evening. She seemed always nearby, engaged in some quiet activity. Just being. And he noticed that when Claudia was just being, his snifter was filled with fine brandy, his cheroots were neatly trimmed and handy, the newspaper folded to the financial pages as he liked it.

She was driving him mad, all right, because he was actually beginning to look forward to her presence, to feel a curious sense of peace when she was near. No one needed to tell him how preposterous that was. Everyone knew that Claudia Whitney was a woman who laughed at men and filled her days as she pleased. She was the sort of woman for whom a man would do just about anything—God save all of the poor bastards—but she was not the sort of woman who would actually dote on a man. Yet she was doting on him! The question was, why?

It honestly frightened him on a level he could not quite comprehend. If everything had been normal, he might have become completely besotted with her
. . .
if he wasn't already. But Julian was not going to allow that to happen. He was not going to fall any more in love with her than he already had the misfortune to have done. He was not going to believe her utterance of love that night in the library. He was not going to let the woman touch him in any way, because the next time she turned away from him, he was quite certain it would kill him.

Julian was up earlier and earlier each morning, his sleep growing more fitful. On one particular morning, he allowed Tinley to serve him a steaming plate of eggs and tomatoes—then proceeded to do a full inspection, as there was no telling what Tinley might think were eggs these days. Satisfied everything was in order, he dined at leisure, perusing yesterday's newspaper, until Claudia startled him by breezing into the breakfast room at an ungodly early hour, a gorgeous smile on her face.

He extended a curt nod before jerking the paper up so that he could not see her. He could hear her, however, and heard her rummaging around the room before seating herself at the table. He waited, expecting some sort of cheerful quip to start his dismal day_.__ . ._ but he heard nothing even as benign as a small sip of tea. Against his better judgment, he lowered his paper.

Seated directly across from him, Claudia flashed a brilliant smile that dimpled her cheeks. He lowered the paper farther, frowning mightily at her, because the Demon's Spawn looked as if she had just swallowed one very fat canary. "Well? What are you about?" he gruffly demanded.

Still beaming, she nodded to the table between them. Julian looked down; there between them was a small pot of violets, its purple flowers a showy contrast to the dark mahogany wood. A pot like a dozen or more now scattered about the house. He stared at the little pot, and kept staring as Tinley wandered to the sideboard and helped himself to tea. "I don't understand," he said at last. "What is the significance?"

Claudia's grin widened impossibly, and Julian was quite certain he did not want to know the significance. "Don't you remember?" she asked gaily. "You had them on your table every morning at Kettering Hall—you said you liked to look at your favorite color because it helped you eat Mrs. Darnhill's dreadful porridge."

The Demon's Spawn had lost her mind. "I never said any such thing," he protested.

"Naturally you did," Tinley interjected, and sipped casually from his teacup.

Julian cast an impatient glance at him. "Shouldn't you be polishing something somewhere?"

"It's Wednesday, my lord."

That signified only in Tinley's decrepit mind, and Julian was about to tell him so when Claudia insisted, "You did, Julian. The violets grew almost wild around Kettering, and there were fresh cuttings of them every morning. Jeannine and Dierdre and I have been potting them for weeks now. They've decided violet is their favorite color, too."

Merriment danced in Claudia's eyes; he felt a hard pull in his chest. Marvelous. Fall victim to her charms again if you think your fool heart can take it. "I did not ask for violets, Claudia. The stuff grew like weeds and the gardeners had to do something with it so we would not be overtaken. The servants put the violets on the morning table, not I. I merely said what came to mind to persuade four young girls to eat their porridge instead of the ghastly tarts Cook made for them."

Her smile faded completely, and Julian had the curious sensation that a light had gone out in the room. "Oh," she said quietly. "I thought you would be pleased."

Yes, undoubtedly she had hoped he would be so pleased that he would return to his old habit of chasing after her like a puppy. He resented the hell out of it, particularly because he was so dangerously close to doing just that. He folded his paper and stood. "I am not particularly pleased. I have no great love of violets," he said, and shoving his hands in his pockets, walked out of the dining room, leaving his breakfast unfinished.

And leaving Claudia absolutely fuming.

What in God's name was the matter with him? Had every shred of human decency taken leave of him? She looked at Tinley; the old man shrugged, sipped his tea, then put the cup down. "His lordship is a bit testy this morning, it would seem," he remarked.