Touch of Rogue (13 page)

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Authors: Mia Marlowe

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Fantasy, #Historical Romance

BOOK: Touch of Rogue
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A man was curled into a snug ball, his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms raised to trap his head between his elbows. He moaned and pressed his elbows together as if his skull were a nut he was trying to crack.
Julianne couldn’t see the man’s face, but she recognized the cut of his coat and was tempted to offer to crack his head for him.
“Jacob Preston,” she hissed. How dare he compromise her in his cousin’s house by sneaking into her bedchamber. “What are you doing here?”
He rolled onto his back and stared up at her, without the slightest hint of recognition in his eyes. Alarm jangled up her spine.
“What’s wrong?” She scrambled off the bed and knelt beside him.
His mouth moved but she couldn’t make out the words. She bent down to press her ear close.
“No,” he whispered over and over. “Don’t.”
Viola had hinted at some mysterious ailment and now Julianne saw the truth of it firsthand. Jacob was ill. Terribly ill.
When fresh pain made him grimace, Julianne’s heart ached in sympathy.
“No, Julie,” he repeated. “Don’t go.”
He still looked past her as if his eyes couldn’t focus. She wrapped her arms around him, pulling his head to her chest. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He slipped his arms around her waist and clung to her. His great body shuddered and another groan of pain escaped his lips. Then his head fell back and he lapsed into unconsciousness.
Suddenly, Julianne didn’t give two figs what anyone thought about the propriety of finding a man lying at the foot of one’s bed.
She called out for help at the top of her lungs. If she woke the entire household and ruined her reputation for all time, she didn’t care one bit.
C
HAPTER
12
 
I
f anyone was surprised to find Jacob unconscious at the foot of Julianne’s bed, they gave no sign of it. His cousin Viola and her husband Quinn took charge of matters immediately. Quinn and his valet lifted Jacob’s inert form and carted him off to his own bed.
Viola sent Julianne to the kitchen to roust the cook, who gave her some smelling salts and a decanter of wine. By the time she returned to Jacob’s chamber, the valet had stripped him and settled him in bed. His cousin used the smelling salts in order to rouse him enough to take a glass of wine.
Jacob didn’t try to speak. He merely did as Viola bade him, meek as a lamb. Then he sank back into the pillows, his face pale and drawn, his eyes closed.
“There,” Viola said. “Dinner parties are always so difficult for him. The silverware, you know. Perhaps he’ll sleep now.”
“What happened to him?” Julianne asked. Lord Kilmaine seemed to understand what Viola meant about the silverware for he nodded grimly. Julianne suddenly remembered that Jacob had brought his own to the King’s Arms, but it still made no sense. “How could using someone else’s fork and knife result in these dire straits?”
“Ordinarily, it wouldn’t be this bad. He says silverware rarely has anything of importance to share. More of an irritant than anything. If I didn’t know better I’d say he—oh!” Viola noticed one of his hands was balled into a fist. She uncurled his fingers and pried something from him. “That’s what he was doing in your chamber. This is yours, I collect.”
Julianne took the cameo from her. “What did he want with this?”
“So I guess it wasn’t the silverware at the dinner party that devastated him this evening. That cameo is what happened to him.” Viola shook her head. “The foolish man. I warned him about this, but would he listen?”
“Warned him about what?’
“About using his gift to spy on someone.”
Julianne’s brows tented in a frown. “What are you talking about?”
“Obviously there’s something about you he wished to know and either you wouldn’t tell him or he simply wished to bypass discussing the matter.” Viola rolled her eyes. “Men are like that sometimes.”
Her husband Quinn raised his hands in mock surrender. “Leave me out of this. I’m going back to bed.”
“I’ll join you soon.” Viola called after him with a smile of promise that told Julianne theirs was a happy marriage. Then Lady Kilmaine looked back at her cousin, whose dark brows were drawn in pain even in sleep, and shook her head. “Jacob should have known better.”
“Better than what? You’re talking in riddles,” Julianne said. “How could my cameo make him this ill?”
“Oh!” Viola stared at her for a moment and then put a hand to her mouth. “So you don’t know, after all. Oh, I feel so stupid. From our previous conversation, I assumed he’d told you everything. Oh, dear. This is really something you should hear from Jacob.”
“Viola, please. As you said, men often like to skip over talking about things. Why don’t you just tell me?”
“I suppose I shall have to now.” Her hostess huffed out a long breath. “Jacob has the gift of touch.”
A ripple of agreement surged through Julianne’s body, but she realized Viola couldn’t possibly mean his ability to undo a woman, body and soul, with only his talented fingers.
“Some people are exceptionally keen of hearing. Others have eyes like hawks. What Jacob and I have is a little like that, but ... more so.” Viola sank onto the foot of her cousin’s bed. “You see, the things we all surround ourselves with take on a bit of us as we use them. Our lives leave an imprint on the objects.”
Julianne blinked in surprise. She’d never heard such an outlandish idea, but didn’t want to offend her hostess by saying so.
“And if an item can be imprinted, it stands to reason that there is a way to retrieve the impressions. That’s what Jacob and I do. When I touch a gemstone, or when Jacob touches metal, we are able to glean more information from it than most. We tap into the object’s memory, if you like,” Viola explained. “We see visions, remnants of the object’s past, snippets from the life of the current owner. Jacob can even sense emotions swirling around the metal.”
Julianne stroked the old cameo in her palm. “So when he touched this he ... did what?”
“It looks as if you’ve had that piece for quite a while. Plenty of time for it to collect memories,” Viola said. “Jacob was probably using it to peep into your past.”
Julianne’s spine stiffened. Even if such a thing were possible, he still had no right to her private pain.
“Oh, I’m not condoning it,” Viola said. “Though I confess I did it once myself, to my sorrow. The problem is our visions may or may not be complete. It’s easy to misconstrue what we see. That’s why I warned him against using his gift to spy on someone close to him.”
Julianne traced the yellowed profile on the cameo. Could it contain imprints of things past? If so, what had the ornament shared with Jacob?
“If it’s any consolation to you”—Viola ruffled the shock of hair that had fallen forward on Jacob’s forehead—“he’s paying for his curiosity quite handsomely now.”
“What do you mean?”
“Whenever we use our gift, Jacob and I are stricken with blinding headaches. They can last for days.” Viola sighed in sympathy with her cousin. “Quinn says it proves the old Spanish proverb. ‘Take what you want, God said to Man, and pay for it.’ I suppose it makes sense that there’s a price to be paid for using an ability few possess.”
Jacob groaned in his sleep and flopped a forearm over his closed eyes.
“This is as bad as I’ve ever seen him,” Viola said.
“Something in my past did this to him?”
“No,
looking
at something in your past did this to him,” Viola corrected. “This is not your fault. He knew full well what would happen. But please don’t be angry with him. He must love you quite a lot if he’s willing to subject himself to this sort of torture to learn more about you.”
Love?
Jacob had never said anything about love. If he had, she’d probably do what she usually did when a man tried to get too close—cut him loose.
It was what she should do in any case. If she didn’t allow herself to need him, he couldn’t hurt her, but something inside her couldn’t bear the thought of separating from Jacob.
“I’d better join Quinn or he’ll come looking for me,” Viola said, stifling a yawn. “Jacob will probably sleep well enough now, but I hate to leave him alone after one of these episodes. If you’d rather not sit with him, I can wake one of the servants.”
“No, I’ll stay for a while,” Julianne heard herself saying. The words surprised her, but she wouldn’t call them back. She knew she ought to withdraw to her own chamber, but when she’d discovered him on the floor of her room, the only thing he could say was “don’t go.” That simple plea wrapped itself around her heart and wouldn’t turn her loose. She wouldn’t abandon Jacob if there was a chance he might need her.
After Viola left, Julianne carried a straight-backed chair over next to the bed and sat down to watch him sleep. She ought to be angry with him for invading her past, but instead, tenderness bloomed in her chest.
No, she couldn’t let herself care for him. Had she forgotten what had happened each time she opened her heart to someone? No matter what they promised, she had always ended up alone. It was better, safer not to have expectations of anything else.
She had to be strong.
Jacob stirred in his sleep, jerking his arm back down by his side. A muscle in his cheek ticked and his eyes scrunched more tightly for a few heartbeats. Then his face went slack in the relaxation of sleep again. After a few more moments, the pained expression returned and didn’t abate this time.
Julianne padded over to the washstand and wet one of the small cloths. Then she wrung it out and folded it so it would fit neatly across Jacob’s forehead.
He relaxed visibly under the cool touch. Julianne smoothed his hair back and his lips lifted in a quick half-smile, but his eyes didn’t open.
“What in the world did you see in that old cameo, Jacob?” she whispered.
His eyelids twitched. “You.” His lips formed the word without a sound. Then he gathered his strength and found his voice. “You and ... Mary.”
He opened his eyes and looked at the cameo she’d set on the bedside table, his gaze drawn to it as surely as a lodestone to true north. Julianne wondered if the piece was still giving him some sort of view into her past. Then his gaze wandered back and focused on her face.
“So. You know about me now.” He licked his lips as if his throat were also dry. “Viola explained it to you?”
She nodded grimly at him.
“Be angry at me tomorrow if you like, but for now, get me a drink, will you?”
She poured another goblet of wine and helped him sit to drink it. “There’s no laudanum.”
“Just as well,” he said, his lips white with pain. “After what I saw, I understand why you hate it. I won’t ever take it again.”
The wall of protection she’d so carefully constructed around her heart crumbled a bit. He was in obvious agony the wine couldn’t begin to touch, but he’d bear it without opiates for her sake. She blinked back tears.
“How much did you see?” she asked.
He related the events of the last time she ever saw her sister with such clarity, such knife-sharp detail, there was no question in Julianne’s mind that Jacob’s gift of touch was real.
“I lost you when you ran away,” he said, trying to sit up but failing. Jacob settled for propping himself slightly more upright on his pillows and caught her hand so she couldn’t move away from him. “Did you ever find Mary?”
Her chin trembled. “No.”
His mouth tightened into a hard line. “What happened?”
In halting tones, she told him. She’d wandered all night, looking for her sister and the man who’d taken her. She’d dodged shadows and kept out of sight of the riff-raff that prowled the narrow streets. When dawn broke, she curled up in an alley doorway and fell into exhausted sleep.
“It turned out to be the stage door of the Drury Lane theatre,” she said. “About mid-morning, some of the stage crew arrived. It had started snowing so the costume mistress took pity on me and let me come in to get warm.”
The theatre was like a magical world. The rabbit warren of small dressing rooms and property closets, of flying flats that soared upward for quick scene changes and scrims that lowered to bathe the stage in hazy light, the wardrobes filled with outlandish costumes—it was as if Julianne had stepped into another realm, a place where nothing was as it seemed and perhaps losing her sister was simply a bad dream. Her loss was temporarily assuaged as she took stock of that new undiscovered country.
No one had the time or the inclination to take full responsibility for a small child, but she was quiet and undemanding. And constantly on her best behavior, lest they send her back to the streets. Gradually, they became used to her presence. Julianne was little more than a pet to the backstage crew. She was better fed than the tabby they kept as a mouser, but not much more noticed.
Julianne had soon realized finding Mary was a lost cause, so she worked to make a place for herself among the ragtag troop of players. She painted flats, sewed costumes, and kept track of props—anything to make sure she wouldn’t be tossed aside to fend for herself again.
There was no going back to her aunt, the woman who’d cared for her and Mary after their mother died. Aunt Nell had been kindness itself at first, before the opiates poisoned her soul. After she fell into that brown bottle, she wasn’t the same woman. She’d sell Julianne for more laudanum if she got half a chance.
Mary had taught Julianne her letters, so she practiced them by copying scripts and reading the alternate parts to help the actors rehearse their lines.
“The director overheard me one day and decided to use me for some bit parts after that,” she told him. “As I got older, the parts got bigger. I suppose you could say the theatre gave me a life.”
It stole one from her as well. Over time, she lost all sense of what normal was like, what was real and what was pretend. The niggling sense of impermanence, of being one bad performance from the streets, kept her belly roiling with panic, but she learned to control and hide her fear.
Eventually, she turned that nervous energy into the driving force behind her performances and the effect was electrifying. Julianne slid into her character’s skin with unmatched ease because her own life was such a cipher. She thrilled audiences with her portrayals. She became a lead player.
And someone whom she herself no longer recognized.
But when she imagined what had likely become of Mary, she considered she’d gotten the best of the trade.
She still looked for her sister, peeping out from behind the curtain each night, hoping to recognize her in the milling crowds before the show started.

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