To Catch A Duke (17 page)

And seeing her with Landover would
destroy him.

She should tell him of the
confrontation, but what then?
 
He would,
of course, challenge the marquess to a duel, and she could not allow that.
 
Or was she simply afraid of what would come
next?
 
Was she the coward Nicholas had
accused her of being?
 
If she told the
duke the truth, he might insist on marrying her if for no other reason than to
protect her.
 
What then?
 
She would be forced to live in society,
rather than hidden away at Seldon Park.
 
The very thought terrified her, but then, did it really or had she
simply been in seclusion so long that she no longer knew how to move among
people?
 
Was she simply better at hiding
because it was the coward's way out?

There were no easy answers and her
head was throbbing.
 
Still, Landover had
been right about one thing.
 
She had
long suspected that someone still living knew the truth of her scars.
 
Only she had assumed that it was
Nicholas.
 
Maybe he did know, but the
marquess had hinted that Radcliffe was the one with the answers as well.

If that were true, why had he not
told her?
 
Why hide it?
 
Better yet, why had her parents hidden the
truth?

In that moment, Julia was sick of
it all - the lies, the deception, the hiding.
 
Much of her life had been built on a lie.
 
From the lie of the animal attack, right down to her lie about
not being in love with Benjamin.
 
Everything that her life had been thus far was dictated by that single,
long-ago event, including her preference to hide away from the rest of the
world.
 
Now, however, she'd had a small
taste of freedom, of the wonders that existed beyond Sussex.
 
Could she truly return there and be
happy?
 
Or was it time to finally let
got of the past and begin again?

She was angry, hurt, and above all,
sadder than she had ever been in her entire life.
 
She was so sad that her heart literally ached with accumulated
pain.

She honestly didn't know the
answers to any of her questions, but she knew where she had to start.
 
With the Duke of Radcliffe.

Benjamin searched the crowd for
Julia, but he could not find her.
 
She
was here somewhere, he knew, because the gray-clad lady still stood sentinel in
the corner, but he had not seen her in the last half hour or so.
 
That was unlike her.
 
Even on her worst days out in society, she
did not hide.
 
At least, not like this.

Finally, he had a glimpse of her,
lovely in an ice blue gown that set off her beauty exquisitely.
 
He could tell her that, of course, but she
would not believe him.
 
All she could
see, despite his and Nicholas' repeated attempts to convince her otherwise,
were those damnable scars.
 
It was not
fair.
 
If it were in his power, he would
change that.

You could,
a little voice in
his head whispered.
 
If you married
her, she might begin to believe in herself.
 
After all, you're a duke.
 
You
love her.
 
Remember?

He shushed the voice.
 
He did not want to hear it.
 
In his mind, he'd been through all of this
before.
 
He could not have her and that
was that.
 
He refused to start a life
with the woman he loved based on a lie.

Love?
 
Woman he loved?
 
Marry
her?

He considered that for a moment,
allowed the thought to roll around a bit in his mind, testing it out.
 
Oddly, it didn't scare him as much as he had
thought it might.
 
Rather, it was more
of an acknowledgement of what had been there all along.

He'd thought the words before,
true, but somehow, they hadn't seemed quite real.
 
Tonight, however, they were far more real than he'd ever
imagined.
 
He wanted her for his
wife.
 
Forever.
 
He would tell her the truth.
 
He was no longer afraid.
 
He loved her.

For as long as he could remember,
Julia Rosemont had been a fixture in his life.
 
He couldn't even pinpoint the exact moment that he'd begun to love her,
but it didn't really matter.
 
Somewhere,
in the tangled mess of their shared past, the first seeds of the delicate
emotion had been sewn, and, even with prolonged absence, they had grown.

Love was the reason why he'd
insisted that she have a season.
 
Love
was the reason he had helped Nicholas all of those years, helped him set the
Candlewood dukedom back to rights.
 
It
wasn't guilt.
 
Well, part of it had
been, perhaps, but not all of it.
 
No
the greater, overriding reason was love.

It was also the reason he had
agreed to the seduction, why he had taken Julia to his bed, even when he'd
known it was a very bad idea.
 
His head
had thought it a bad idea, anyway.
 
His
heart, apparently, felt differently.
 
But now, both were in harmony, and he was left feeling strangely happy.

"Are you well, my
lord?"
 
He looked down to see Lady
Amy Cheltenham looking up at him quizzically.
 
"You are, well, smiling.
 
You do not usually do so."

"So I am," he replied
with a bit of wonder.
 
"So I
am."

Lady Amy studied him them, as if
trying to ascertain whether or not he'd lost his mind.
 
She apparently decided that he hadn't and
offered her own smile in return.
 
"It looks good on you, Lord Radcliffe.
 
A welcome change."
 
She paused, as if deciding how far to press the issue.
 
"Might I think that a certain Lady
Julia has put that smile there?

"Indeed you might."
 
There was no reason to deny it now,
especially since Benjamin had just made up his mind to propose properly to
Julia.
 
He would tell her the truth, and
pray that his love would be enough to overcome any anger she might feel towards
him.
 
After all, she loved him, or he
hoped she did, anyway.

Nodding, Lady Amy scanned the crowd
as well.
 
"That is wonderful
news.
 
Though we have not spoken much, I
have always admired you.
 
You do not
much care what others think, and are forthright and honest, even when it might
be easier to lie.
 
That is quite
commendable."

"I see no reason to be
otherwise," he replied, a lightness in his heart that he hadn't felt in
quite a long time.
 
Perhaps it was time
for all of them to begin again.
 
"I
understand that you have befriended Lady Julia.
 
Is that true?"

Lady Amy dipped her head in
acknowledgement.
 
"To an
extent.
 
Most here have been unkind to
her, so it is often difficult for her to sort out those with true intentions
from those who would be unkind simply for sport.
 
Still, if given the chance, I would like to know her better in
time, and I do hope that she returns to London for the Little Season."

"As do I."
 
Benjamin truly meant that.
 
He wanted to see Julia shine brightly, the
way she always should have.
 
"Perhaps I can help with that in some small way."

Lady Amy's lips twitched.
 
"I believe you can, my lord."
 
Then she clearly spied someone across the
room who wanted her attention.
 
"Forgive me, but my mother has requested that I join her.
 
I should like to speak with you again
another time, Lord Radcliffe.
 
Until
then."
 
She gave a small curtsey
and was gone, sailing across the room to where her mother, Lady Evanston
waited.
 

He assumed that Lady Amy's dragon
of a mother would be breathing fire because her innocent daughter had been
caught conversing with a notorious man like him.
 
However, she merely offered him a small smile and inclined her
head in greeting.
 
It was a welcome
gesture, yet another in a night full of surprises.

"I believe we need to speak,
my lord."

Benjamin was surprised to see Julia
at his elbow for he hadn't heard her approach.
 
His heart jumped a bit at the sight of her, and once more, he knew that
this curious feeling in his heart was love.
 
Or something near to it.

"As you wish, my lady,"
he replied, certain that a stupid expression was still on his face.
 
He led her around the perimeter of the
ballroom, stopping here and there to chat, trying to make their disappearance
seem casual.
 
For he knew that once he
had her alone, he would not be able to let her go.
 
Not without kissing her, at least.
 
And far more if he had his way.

When he was finally able to guide
her out onto the terrace, he was fairly itching to place his hands on her once
more.
 
He hadn't had her since
yesterday, which was, in his opinion, entirely too long.
 
Yet when he moved to pull her into his arms,
he stopped, the expression on her face one of pure fury.

"You lied to me, Ben."

As opening lines went, it wasn't
precisely what he wanted to hear.
 
Especially when he was about to propose marriage to her.

"I'm sorry, Jules, but I don't
understand.
 
What have I lied to you
about?"
 
There was honestly nothing
that he could recall.
 
Other than the
obvious.
 
Which she didn't know about.

Oh, God,
he thought.
 
No.
 
Then another thought followed the first.
 
Landover.

Tears sparkled in her eyes as she
looked at him.
 
"All this time,
Ben, and you never told me.
 
How could
you?
 
How could you let me believe those
lies?
 
Why didn't you tell me?
 
Why did you leave it up to Landover?"

There was no question now what she
was referring to.
 
"How much do you
know?"
 
He had no idea where to
begin.
 
There had been no classes at
Eaton on situations such as this.

"All I know is that you
lied," she sniffed dejectedly, but still with a hint of anger about
her.
 
"About the scars.
 
About how they came to be there.
 
How did they, Ben?
 
All of it.
 
I need to
know."
 
She snorted, so much like
the child he had known for years, when he didn't immediately reply.
 
"He was right.
 
Damn him.
 
Landover was right.
 
You
do
know."

Pulling her deeper into the
darkness, he made certain that they were alone, for this was a tale that was
not meant for ears other than hers.
 
"Before your parents married, your mother was the darling of the
ton
,
even in her very first season.
 
She was
an Incomparable.
 
A diamond of the first
water and every man was in love with her, even those that were already
married.
 
That was what my mother always
told me."
 
He leaned back against
the balustrade and crossed his arms.
 
"My father was one of those men."

"But she did not choose
him," Julia supplied, her anger at bay for the moment, willing to listen
to whatever he had to say.
 
For the
first time, she was certain that she would hear the truth of that night.
 
Now was not the time to fight.
 
Some battles were better left for later.

"No, she chose your father,
and that was something that my father could not accept."
 
Benjamin sighed and looked off into the
distance.
 
"Some of my earliest
memories were of my father comparing my mother to yours.
 
And never kindly.
 
Still, it was not something I paid much attention to.
 
At least until you were born."

"Me?"
 
Julia frowned, not certain how her birth had
further complicated already messy matters.
 
"What did my birth have to do with anything?
 
I was a baby."

The duke looked at his boots before
looking back up at her.
 
"For my
father, you were everything.
 
You
represented everything that he would never possess.
 
He truly believed that once Nicholas, the heir, was born, that
your mother would leave your father and turn to him.
 
My father had pursued her relentlessly during her season, even though
he knew she did not favor him.
 
Even
after she married, he could not accept that he had lost her."
 

He gave her a sad look and her
heart ached for what he must have witnessed as a child.
 
"Your birth was definitive proof that
she preferred her husband to him.
 
She
gave him a second child.
 
Until then, my
father had convinced himself that she was only doing her duty and then, once
she had borne the required heir, would turn back to the man she truly
loved."

"Your father."
 
A sick feeling had begun to twist in Julia's
stomach, even worse than the one Landover had caused.
 
"But she didn't.
 
She
was happy where she was.
 
She and my father
were in love.
 
Everyone knew it."

Benjamin shook his head and closed
his eyes as if attempting to shut out the memories.
 
"And that was something my father could not accept.
 
He tolerated it for a time, I suppose you
could say.
 
Or he was simply biding his
time.
 
Five years to be
precise."
 

When he opened his eyes, Julia
could see fresh pain there and felt a bit of her feelings of anger and betray
melt away.
 
What must it have been like
for a little boy to see his father chasing after a woman who did not love him,
the mother of his best friend?
 
To have
to witness his father turning on his mother, chastising her for not being
another woman?
 
She knew it could not
have been easy, and she felt herself soften even more towards the man she still
loved.

"Tell me the rest.
 
Please."
 
They had come this far in the tale, and Julia knew she needed to
see it through to conclusion.

Benjamin reached out to stroke her
cheek and sighed softly before continuing.
 
"He did so much during those years.
 
Tempting, offering himself to her year after year with promises
of diamonds and jewels, and trips to the Continent.
 
Anything she wanted.
 
All
she had to do was leave her family.
 
But
she refused.
 
The last time she refused
was on his birthday, the same day he announced his intention to divorce my
mother.
 
So he did the only thing that
seemed reasonable to him.
 
He kidnapped
you with the intent to kill you."