Three Nights with a Scoundrel: A Novel (34 page)

“The model was a laborer,” he said, when she turned to him.

“How do you know?”

“Look at the tan on his forearms and face, the roughness of his hands.”

“I suppose it must be difficult to find gentlemen of leisure willing to pose for such studies.” As though it were a connected thought, she added, “I was thinking of commissioning your portrait.”

He laughed, startled.

And now she blushed. “Not like that, of course. Fully clothed. But we should have a large one, for the house. And I would like a miniature for my dressing table.”

Ah. Sweet thought, that.

They moved on to a lovely painting of a mother bathing her young child. Julian wondered at its placement in this “gentleman’s” gallery, as there was nothing at all erotic or prurient about the composition. It was a domestic, maternal scene. The two stood before a roaring fire, the child with his feet in a basin and the woman crouched beside. The woman’s plaited hair dangled as she bent to sponge her naked cherub. She herself was dressed in a thin shift, the linen wet and clinging to her rounded breasts and hips. The artist had done a remarkably fine job of rendering the damp, translucent fabric stretched over pink skin.

“Who is the artist?” Lily asked, turning to the gallery owner.

“A Mr. Conrad Marley,” the man answered.

Lily frowned as she turned back to the painting.

Julian touched her arm, raised his eyebrows in question.

She hesitated, throwing an apprehensive glance toward the owner. Then she signed, “Spell it for me.”

Julian smiled. He reached for his wife’s hand and brought it to his lips, ignoring the curious stare of the gallery owner. The man would never understand the small victory he’d just witnessed.

He and Lily had been practicing signing in private for weeks, but this was the first time she’d used signs with him in the company of someone else. Julian understood why she hadn’t until now, and he never would have pressed. To begin with, excluding anyone from a conversation offended her natural sense of etiquette. She would no sooner sign with him in friendly company than she would converse with him in Hindustani, for the sole reason that it alienated their companions from the discussion. But in front of servants and hackney drivers and shopkeepers, he knew she had an entirely different reason for hesitating. By signing, she openly declared herself to be deaf. She made herself vulnerable to the curiosity and even cruelty of strangers.

Julian knew better than most the courage that required. He’d grown up watching his mother make this calculation in so many interactions—at what point would she break down and sign to Julian, asking him to explain? When did her need to understand trump the perpetual cause of caution?

Thankfully, Lily would never know the sort of treatment his mother had endured. She was wealthy and highborn, and no shopkeeper with sense would slam a door in her face. No street urchins would throw bits of refuse at her back. Still, she faced subtler forms of prejudice and disdain. And always, that backhanded “concern” from the imbecilic, self-righteous Aunt Beatrices of the world, who to preserve the fragile peace of their feeble minds would insist the defect resided not only in Lily’s ears, but in her very soul.
If you cannot be like the rest of us
, their subtle shaming implied,
at least do not call attention to your differences
.

Just now, Lily might as well have signed, “Bollocks to that.” With her question, she’d asserted her right to receive information on her own, understandable terms. Even if it made those around her suspicious or uncomfortable.

Julian wanted to catch her in a tremendous hug. Instead, he carefully spelled the artist’s name and waited for her reply.

“Mister?” she spelled back.

He confirmed with a nod.

She looked at the painting again, then signed, “No. A woman painted this. I can tell.”

“How?”

She pointed to the babe’s plump arm. “Perfect. Men always paint babies too fat or too thin.”

He considered. He’d never spent much time thinking about the relative corpulence of infants, in life or art—which, he supposed, was rather Lily’s point. “Perhaps you’re right.” Though gently-bred ladies were encouraged to draw and paint, a female artist would have to assume a man’s name if she wished to be taken seriously. Or to earn any decent money for her work.

Lily stared at the painting for a minute longer, tilting her head. Julian stared at Lily, because lovely as the picture was, his wife was lovelier. Besides, he was obviously going to buy the thing, and he’d have plenty of time to gaze upon it later. The only question was whether to purchase it now or come back in secret, to make it a surprise. Perhaps a Christmas gift.

But before he could decide, Lily surprised
him
.

“I think I’m pregnant,” she signed.

And with that, his world stopped. Went still as a painting.

It was as though some invisible, divine hand had forced him, and this moment, into a small, square frame. He didn’t feel hemmed-in or constrained. No, never that. Just … put into perspective. Within the borders of this picture, this precious vignette, resided everything of true meaning: the two of them, and the promise of a child. The world outside it was just noise, nothing but meaningless distraction.

At a loss for words, he laid a hand to the small of her back.

She didn’t turn to him, but her cheek dimpled with a shy smile. “I can’t be certain yet.”

Julian was certain. He
knew
. Within a year’s time, the world would include another plump, squirming, rosy-cheeked creature, and that infant would be part him and part her, forever intermingled and impossible to separate. Looking at the domestic Madonna in the painting before him, Julian felt he understood why God had introduced His greatest miracle to the world in the form of a helpless infant. He couldn’t conceive of a more humbling, awesome thing than a child.

Not just
a
child.
Their
child.

This was his chance to start fresh and do everything right. For so long he’d chased revenge. Now true redemption was in reach. He wasn’t a bastard child any longer. He was a grown man, a husband, soon to be a father.
His
family would have every advantage Julian had never known.
His
wife would never be driven to sacrifice her own comfort or nourishment for the sake of their child.
His
son would be tutored in Latin and Greek, would never even learn the signs for “hungry” or “cold” or “frightened” or “penny.”

“We’ll take this one,” he told the gallery owner.

Once the purchase had been settled, they left the shop together and began strolling aimlessly down the crowded street. Lily suggested they walk the short distance to their new residence before returning to Harcliffe House.

“I’d like to see how the blue toile is working in the parlor.”

Julian was thinking of the house, too. But he wanted a look at the nursery. He needed to check it for drafts. Had there been enough bars on the window? “Just wait until it’s all done,” he told her. “It’s too dusty right now.”

“And what is a touch of dust?” Lily shook her head. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you. Now you’ll be insufferably protective.”

Of course he would be protective. And if she thought he was insufferably so today, she ought to wait for tomorrow. Once Leo’s killers were brought to justice, safeguarding Lily would become his paramount purpose in life. Ridiculous as he knew it to be, part of him wanted to wrap her in cotton wool and confine her to bed for the next eight months.

With one arm draped around her shoulders, he steered her through the river of humanity, banked by shop fronts on the one side and carriages on the other. He was unbearably anxious she might be jostled by a passerby or jabbed in the eye with a parasol spoke.

Wham
.

Julian was broadsided. An anonymous shoulder and elbow conspired to give him a firm, swift shove that sent him careening off-balance. Despite his best efforts, he stumbled against Lily, slamming her into a shop’s display window. She cried out in surprise, and no doubt some measure of pain.

Julian righted himself and took Lily by the shoulders, assessing the soundness of her arms and wrists. “Are you hurt? I’m so sorry. There was a—”

“I’m fine,” she said, patting down her dress. “Just a bit rattled.”

Rattled. The word made him see red. Julian was going to find the man who’d pushed him so rudely and rattle him to the bones.

As Lily adjusted her cape, he wheeled to search the crowd. No one figure particularly leapt out. It had happened so fast. He’d formed no impression of the arm that shoved him, much less the man to whom it belonged.

Frustrated, he clenched his hands into fists.

Something crumpled in his left palm.

He opened his hand. There, on his gloved palm, lay a crunched card with writing on it. Someone must have slid it into his hand during the confusion. With a quick glance around, he grasped the card in his fingertips and pulled the creases straight.

Hold your tongue, if you wish to keep holding your lovely bride
.

A clanging Bell will be silenced
.

The ground buckled beneath his boots. The words on the card fuzzed, as though grown over with black mold.

A clanging Bell will be silenced
.

Someone knew. Someone knew everything.

Chapter Twenty-one

That card … it was more than a blow to the stomach. More than a shot to the heart. More than a lightning strike, or even a grenade. It was a split-second deluge of ten thousand tons of snow. The obliteration of everything. Life as he knew it, replaced by cold, blank, oppressive silence.

For a fraction of time, Julian’s world ceased to exist.

And then it rushed back, in a million crystalline facets. His senses opened like floodgates, taking in every available stimulus. The myriad sights and sounds and smells that typically melded into a patchwork of “city street” sorted themselves out, announced themselves one by one in his consciousness. Especially the sounds. He heard everything. The clop of each individual horseshoe against the cobbled street. Rats scrabbling in the gutter, their tiny claws shredding through autumn’s last few desiccated leaves. The cries of street merchants hawking apples, posies, herbs, newspapers, snuff, and “Ink, black as jet! Pens, fine pens!”

Across the street, some dozen doors down, hinges creaked. An old man coughed and spat.

Julian’s heart pounded through his whole body, beating down the encroaching panic with grim, steady blows.

With frantic composure, he scanned the vicinity.
Who? Who knew? Who’d done this?

“Goodness,” Lily said, leveraging his grip on her arm to steady herself. “That was unexpected. Are you well?”

No. No, he wasn’t well, and this was hardly unexpected. How could he have ever relaxed his guard? He was a fool. A bloody goddamned fool. He’d wanted to believe, so badly, that Leo’s death was mere coincidence and he had no mortal enemies. That he’d escaped his squalid past and left it behind to embrace a bright future with Lily. But he’d been wrong, all wrong.

“Julian?” She tugged at his sleeve. “Really, I’m perfectly well. Let’s just go on.”

They couldn’t continue to walk in the open street like this, with Devil-knows-who following them. He needed to get her home, but could he even risk a hackney? The drivers perched atop their boxes peered down at him, vulturelike, their necks sunken into their high, black collars.

Threat menaced from every direction. The wrinkled old fellow with his box of doubtless tainted fruit. The gray clouds looming overhead, squashing them all. Even the wind’s cold bite made him want to snap back.

He trusted no one.

He put one arm about Lily’s shoulders, bent to slide the other under her thighs, and with a small grunt of effort, swept his wife into his arms. As he made his way down the street, he barked at the people before them. “Make way. My wife is ill. Let us pass.”

“Julian,” she insisted, “I tell you, I’m fine. No injury whatsoever.”

He paid her no mind, simply continued striding down the center of the walk, forcing all others to scramble out of his path. It was unreasonable. The behavior of a madman. He didn’t care. This woman was his responsibility, placed into his keeping by sacred vows, and he’d exposed her to danger. Now he was going to personally rescue her from it, if it exhausted all the strength in his body.

If it killed him.

He carried her all the way back to Harcliffe House. After the first quarter-mile, Lily gave up protesting and concentrated on being portable. None of her objections had any effect. Her husband was a man possessed. He didn’t even seem winded from the exertion. His heartbeat thumped against her body, almost preternatural in its unflagging, deliberate rhythm.

Goodness. As they finally approached the square, she made a mental note to save the news of her next pregnancy for a location closer to home.

He carried her up the steps of the house. A footman opened the door, and Julian swept her inside, barely acknowledging the servant or Swift, who stood slack-jawed in the entryway.