Chapter Four
It was late when Julian returned to Bedford Square, but Cam was still awake, pacing in the entrance hall. He jerked the front door open before Julian could reach the top step.
“Well, cuz.” Julian shoved his hands into his breeches pockets and slouched against the doorframe. “If I’d known you’d answer the door dressed only in your banyan, I would have gone through the servant’s entrance.”
Cam opened the door wide and stood aside so Julian could enter. “I expected you back hours ago.”
Julian followed him into the entryway. “You’ve had hours to dress and you still answered the door wearing that? A bloody frightening sight. I suppose Mrs. West chased you from her bedchamber?”
“What do you mean? Ellie adores the sight of me in my banyan.”
“Does she? It’s true love, then.”
Cam turned down the hallway and entered his study. “It is, indeed.”
Julian dropped into one of the leather chairs in front of the fire—his chair—and accepted a glass of whiskey from his cousin. “Is Ellie asleep?”
Cam poured himself a measure and settled into the chair next to Julian’s. “Yes. She went to bed hours ago. You can speak plainly, Jules.”
“All right, then. Plainly speaking, you sent me on quite an adventurous chase this evening.”
Cam gave him a hopeful look. “A chase? Does that mean she wasn’t there, after all?”
“No. Sorry, cuz. She was there. I have quite a whorehouse tale for you, but I’m not sure you’ll find it amusing.”
Cam sighed, but he didn’t look surprised. “Go on, then. Let’s hear it.”
Julian took a swallow of his whiskey. “It was a strange bit of business—”
“Christ. That kind of place, was it?” Cam leaned forward in his chair. “I’ve heard stories, of course.”
“Bloody hell, Cam. Not that kind of strange. I didn’t think the marchioness was going to appear, after all, so I was on the verge of disappearing upstairs with a little blonde wench—”
“For God’s sake Julian, whatever for?”
“What for? Think hard, Cam. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
Cam dismissed this with an impatient wave of his hand. “Of course I know what for. I’ve just never known you to frequent whorehouses, that’s all. But let’s have your tale, amusing or not.”
“As I said, I was on the verge of disappearing upstairs, eager to conclude my business when I was prevented by a sudden uproar.”
“An uproar? Was it one of those performances, where the ladies—”
“No! I told you, it wasn’t that sort of strange, though now you say it, there was a performance of sorts, and it did involve ladies. Aristocratic ladies.”
Cam’s grin faded. “Aristocratic ladies?”
“Yes. There were four of them. Two blondes, one petite, the other tall and slender, and a fair-skinned redhead. I didn’t recognize those three, but the fourth—”
“Let me guess. Dark hair? Tall, too thin, and known to you?”
“I’m afraid so. My God, Cam. I didn’t truly think she’d be there, but you don’t look shocked.”
Cam shot to his feet, went to the sideboard, and poured himself more whiskey—a hefty measure this time. “I’m not. What happened?”
“They strolled in, seated themselves on a divan, pulled out four cheroots, and sat there and smoked them, as cool as you please.”
Cam downed his whiskey in one swallow. “Jesus. What else?”
Julian came to his feet and joined Cam at the sideboard. He felt a sudden need for another drink, as well. “Charlotte had touch papers with her to light the cheroots, so they obviously planned the entire thing.” He held out his glass and Cam poured him a measure. “You were right about it being a wager. The petite blonde mentioned someone named Devon.”
“Ethan Fortescue, Lord Devon.” Cam smiled grimly. “Yes. He was undoubtedly involved. Did anyone recognize them?”
Julian shook his head. “I can’t be sure, but I don’t think so. They wore masques. As soon as I discovered Charlotte I bundled her into a carriage and took her home.”
That wasn’t all he’d done, but it didn’t seem a good time to confess he’d dragged her upstairs to a private bedchamber, nearly stripped her gown from her back, and told her to hike her skirts. He doubted his cousin would find that information reassuring.
“Thank God.” Cam released a long breath. “At least the worst didn’t happen. Not this time, at any rate.”
“This time? Does the marchioness make a habit of frequenting whorehouses?”
Cam ran a hand through his hair. “This is her first whorehouse, but not her first brush with scandal. She hasn’t been herself since she returned to London for the season. You know Hadley died not even four months after they wed, and that in itself was an awful enough business—”
“No.” Julian held up a hand. “I don’t want to know the details, Cam.” The Marchioness of Hadley wasn’t his concern, and he would keep it that way.
Cam gave him a measuring look, but he didn’t argue. “Ellie’s going to go mad when she hears of this.”
“Don’t tell her, then.”
“Spoken like a naive bachelor, cuz. I don’t keep secrets from my wife. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. Wives always find out. Besides, if I don’t tell her, Sarah will.”
“Who’s Sarah?”
“Sarah is Charlotte’s lady’s maid. Earlier this season when it became clear Charlotte wasn’t, well…wasn’t herself, Sarah agreed to keep an eye on her and report anything of concern back to Ellie.”
Keep an eye on her? For God’s sake. Cam spoke as if Charlotte were a rebellious child. “Tell Sarah to keep it quiet, then. It might be better if Ellie didn’t know.”
“It might be better if Ellie didn’t know what?”
Julian whirled around, and his whiskey sloshed over the edge of his glass. “Good Lord, Ellie. You’ve made me spill whiskey all over myself. Where did you come from?”
Ellie stood by the door, one eyebrow raised and her arms folded across her chest. “The hallway, and not a moment too soon, it seems. It might be better if Ellie didn’t know about what, Julian?”
Cam chuckled. “I told you, Jules. There’s no point in trying to hide anything from them. They always find out. What are you doing awake, love?”
“I couldn’t sleep until I knew the worst about Charlotte, and from what I just overheard, I gather the worst is awful, indeed.”
“If by awful you mean I found her in a brothel with nothing but a flimsy mask standing between her and ruin,” Julian said, “Then yes, the worst is awful.”
Ellie paled. Cam crossed the room to her at once, took her arm, and led her to his chair. “Sit down, love.”
“She takes it further every time, Cam.” Ellie gripped his arm as he leaned over the chair. “Dear God. I shudder to think what she’ll do next.”
Cam took her hand and sat down on the chair’s arm. “Perhaps there won’t be a next.”
Ellie shook her head. “There will be. We’ve tried everything we can think of to stop this, but she won’t listen.”
“Not everything.” Cam fixed his gaze on Julian. “We haven’t tried Jules.”
Julian froze. Tried Jules? He didn’t like the sound of that.
“Ellie, Alec, and Robyn have exhausted themselves trying to rein Charlotte in,” Cam said. “Nothing they’ve said has made any difference, but tonight you managed to coax Charlotte from a brothel and deliver her safely to her door. You’ve had more success in one night than the rest of us have had in months.”
Coaxed her? Certainly, if lying and blackmail could be called coaxing.
“What of her mother? Surely Lady Catherine can make Charlotte see sense.”
“Our mother has been in Bath all season with my aunt, who’s taking the waters there for a chest complaint,” Ellie said. “Mother has written to Charlotte again and again, but a letter is easy enough to ignore, and it’s done no good.”
“How unfortunate,” Julian murmured.
“It would be unfortunate indeed if Charlotte became a scandal,” Cam said. “But thankfully you’re here now.”
“No, I’m not. Not for that.”
Ellie regarded him steadily. “But it’s so perfect. You’re a single gentleman. You can follow her about London without attracting any attention, and—”
“Follow her about London? I can’t think of anything worse than trailing about after a wild, spoiled marchioness—”
“And you’re a Captain in the 10th Royal Hussars, London’s most gallant regiment,” Ellie rushed on, as if Julian hadn’t spoken. “A hero—”
“Hero?” Julian made a disgusted face. “Hardly.”
“But we’ve heard such stories. All of London’s heard them.” Ellie’s mouth turned down at the corners. “I do hope you’re not going to say they aren’t true.”
“All right.” Julian dropped back into his chair. “I won’t say it.”
“The gossip has it you carried mangled bodies on your back across raging battlefields, saving men in your regiment from certain death despite the great risk to your own safety.”
“Rot. I helped a few wounded men to a field hospital. That’s all.”
Cam sipped at his whiskey. “Ah, yes. Well, I can certainly see how that’s different than what we heard.”
“Damn it, Cam.” Julian reached out a stiff arm and set his glass on the sideboard. “I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”
“It’s well past the end of the season, Julian.” Ellie’s voice was quiet. “But Charlotte refuses to leave London. Unfortunately, a good many of the ton linger as well, hoping for a grand scandal, and it’s only a matter of time before they get one.”
“I’m sorry,” Julian said again. “But I don’t have time to chase Lady Hadley from one London whorehouse to the next. I’m in London for a few weeks only, to… Well, you’ll know soon enough, I suppose. I’m betrothed.”
Cam stared at him, his mouth open. “You’re betrothed? How can you be betrothed? You’ve just returned home. Who is she?”
Julian frowned down into his glass. “Her name is Jane Hibbert. Her brother, Colin, was a Lieutenant in my regiment, and one of my friends. My best friend.”
Cam searched his face. “Was?”
“Yes. Was.” Julian drew in a quick breath. “He was killed at Waterloo.”
Cam ran a hand down his face. “Julian—”
“Jane is Colin’s younger sister. Their mother died years ago and their father passed away unexpectedly while Colin was in France. Now that Colin’s gone she’s alone, aside from an elderly aunt.”
Cam seemed not to know what to say to this. “I see,” he managed after a long hesitation. “Is she—what’s she like?”
Julian shrugged. “I’ve never met her.”
There was a shocked silence, then Ellie said, “I don’t understand. You’re betrothed to a lady you’ve never met?”
“I wrote to her, after Colin…” Julian cleared his throat. “It wasn’t proper, of course, but Colin made me promise I’d write to Jane if the worst should happen, and I couldn’t bear for her not to know how he spent his final days. In any case, we struck up a correspondence. She’s a kind, decent young lady, and I doubt she’d understand if I became entangled with a notorious marchioness.”
Ellie gazed at him for a moment, her expression unreadable, then, “Does Miss Hibbert know you’re in London?”
“Everyone in England knows I’m in London, thanks to the newspapers.”
“Have you called on her since your return?”
“No,” Julian admitted. He could see where this was going, and he didn’t like it.
“Well, then. Write her and explain you have urgent family business to attend to, and you’ll come to her when it’s concluded.”
Damnation. “But I don’t have urgent family business to attend to.”
“This situation with Charlotte is urgent, Julian,” Ellie said. “We travel to Bellwood at the end of this week, with or without her.”
Julian raised an eyebrow. “You can’t be as concerned for her welfare as you pretend, then, if you’ll leave her in London alone.”
“We don’t want to leave her,” Cam said, “but we haven’t any choice.”
“There’s always a choice.”
“Not this time. Ellie’s increasing, Julian.”
Julian fell silent for a moment as Cam’s words sunk in, and then he smiled. “I can’t think why I didn’t guess it. You’re glowing, Ellie, and Cam, you look smugger than I’ve ever seen you.”
Ellie smiled. “The doctor confirmed it just this week. Sometime in mid-March, he says.”
“Ah. Well, that explains why Cam’s wandering the house at midnight in that ridiculous banyan.”
“I can’t sleep. Ellie is fatigued and I don’t like to keep her awake, but I also don’t wish to be denied my wife’s bed until March.”
“Seven months is a long time to sleep alone.” Julian grinned. “And it will feel longer for us all if you plan to haunt the house in that banyan the entire time.”
Cam looked worried. “But my sleeplessness will pass, won’t it?”
“You’re not asking me, I hope. I can regale you with the usual bachelor’s tales—drink, wagering, brothels and the like—but ladies who are increasing? I haven’t the faintest idea there, cuz.”
“Well, I don’t either, damn it.”
Ellie laughed. “You will soon enough, and it’s no good grumbling about it, because I have the hardest bit by far.”
“I won’t grumble to you, my love, but Julian is another matter. How fortunate that you should arrive home just in time to comfort me in my distress, Jules.”
“I draw the line at sharing my bedchamber with you.”
Cam grinned. “We’ll see.”
Julian crossed to the sideboard and helped himself to more whiskey. “What does Amelia say?”
Ellie smiled. “We just told her this evening, and she’s thrilled, of course. It’s a very grown up thing to become an aunt.”
“She’s grown a great deal while I’ve been gone.” Julian couldn’t quite suppress a wistful sigh. “She’s almost a young lady now.”
“Not to worry.” Cam gave him a reassuring grin. “There’s still a good bit of the little girl about her, for all that she’s nearly thirteen years old. There are some things a child never outgrows, thank God.”
“And since we’re back on the subject of growing children…” Ellie began.
“Yes. I fail to see what this”—Julian gestured vaguely at Ellie’s belly with his whiskey glass—“has to do with the marchioness.”
“Ellie’s exhausted, Jules. The ordeal with Charlotte, the heat and grime of London—it’s unhealthy for her in her condition. I don’t want to leave Charlotte here alone, but Ellie and Amelia and my unborn child are my first concern. We need to leave the city before Ellie becomes truly ill.”
Ellie reached forward and took Julian’s hand. “Lord Devon is a dangerous man, Julian. Certain of the ton even whisper he murdered his elder brother so he’d be first in line to inherit the fortune and title when his father died, and now he’s dangling after Charlotte. If the worst should happen, if Charlotte should be hurt, I’ll never forgive myself.”
Julian opened his mouth to tell them for the third time he was sorry, he couldn’t help them, but then Ellie squeezed his hand, and he fell silent. If Charlotte should engage in further antics…
What had that tall blonde lady said? There’s always tomorrow night.
Oh, there would be further antics. Judging by the devilish gleam in the blonde’s eye, they’d come sooner rather than later, and now there was a murderous earl to consider.
There was Ellie to consider.
He owed her.
Ellie loved Cam with all her heart—she’d loved him even when he’d tried to blackmail her into marriage. Even when his behavior toward her had been nothing less than barbarous, she’d loved him against reason, against logic, and against self-preservation. She’d saved him, and now…
Julian owed Ellie a rescue.
One sister.
Christ. Maybe he was a bloody hero, after all. “What do you want me to do?”
Cam rose to his feet to pace the room. “Persuade her to leave London. She’d be safe at Hadley House for the winter, or Bellwood, if she prefers it. We think she stays here for Devon. Get in his way. If you can make it difficult for him to get access to her—”
“He’ll give up,” Ellie said. “Then she’ll have no reason to stay in London.”
Christ. What an ungodly mess. A drama worthy of a cold, selfish marchioness. Or a cavalry captain, for it seemed the mess was about to be dumped in his lap, whether he liked it or not. “One week. That’s all. I’ll do what I can to see Lady Hadley is at Bellwood by the end of it.”
Ellie clasped his hand tightly in both of hers. “Oh, thank you, Julian!”
Cam stopped pacing. “How will you do it? I warn you, Julian, it won’t be easy—rather like chasing an extremely clever fox down every alleyway in London.” He gave Ellie a fond look. “The Sutherland women are wily.”
But Charlotte wasn’t a Sutherland anymore. “I’ll think of something.”
Ellie rose to her feet and kissed Julian on the cheek. “You’re a wonderful cousin, Julian.” She turned to Cam. “I think I can sleep again now.”
“I’m going to stay up with Jules for a while.” Cam pressed his lips to her forehead. “Good night, love.”
After the door closed on Ellie, Cam and Julian returned to their chairs and stared into the fire until Cam roused himself. “What’s the truth about your heroics on the battlefield, Jules?”
Julian gave a bitter laugh. “Let’s just say the truth doesn’t make for a pretty headline, and leave it at that.”
Cam considered this, then shook his head. “Even the most exaggerated story contains a thread of truth.”
“Not this one. There was nothing so grand in it. Any other man would have done the same thing I did.”
“Perhaps, but it wasn’t any other man. It was you.”
“Oh, yes, it was me.” Julian downed his whiskey, but the bitterness still burned his throat. “And while I was running about the battlefield that day, dozens of men were slaughtered in my place. But London doesn’t seem to care much about who was left behind.”
“Who was left behind?” Cam’s voice was quiet.
Julian shrugged, but his fingers tightened around his whiskey glass. “It doesn’t make any difference now, does it? One rotting corpse looks much like another.”
“It sounds as if it makes a great deal of difference to you.” Cam placed his own glass on the table with a careful click. “But as tragic as those deaths are, you aren’t responsible for them. You couldn’t save them all, Julian.”
Not all. One. I should have saved one.
But he wouldn’t tell the rest of that story tonight. It was hardly a bedtime story. He rose and set his glass on the sideboard. “I’m for bed.”
“Jules?”
Julian was halfway out the door, but he turned back. “Cuz?”
Cam cleared his throat. “I’m damned glad you’re home at last. I can’t tell you…” His voice grew thick, and he trailed off into silence.
“I’m damned glad to be home.” God knew he owed a debt of gratitude to whatever higher power had kept him alive this past year. He shuddered to think how many times he wouldn’t have wagered a farthing on his own life. “I don’t care for the idea of my corpse rotting away on some battlefield.”
Cam flinched. “No. But here you are, not a whiff of rot about you, and it’s as if you’d never left.”
Julian stiffened. Is that what Cam thought? That he was the same man he’d ever been?
He gazed at his cousin. Cam’s legs were stretched out before him, his feet close to the fire as he sipped at his whiskey. He and Cam had sat in these same chairs in front of this same fireplace more times than Julian could count, and yet the moment felt strangely foreign to him, as if he’d slipped through a tear in time, or as if he were watching the scene unfold from a great distance.
No matter how much he wanted it to be the same as it always was, he hadn’t been home more than a day before he felt like he’d stolen this life from the man he used to be—the man who should have it. The old Julian would never have grabbed a woman the way he had that dark- haired doxy, and he’d never have treated Charlotte like a whore, no matter how angry he was. This man he’d become—he had a dark, ugly thing living inside him, and there was no telling when it would get loose, or what it would do when it did.
It never could be the same as it had before, because he could never be the same.
But he couldn’t explain it to Cam. He wouldn’t even know where to begin. “Yes. It’s just as if I never left. Good night, cuz.”
He left Cam to finish his whiskey alone, mounted the stairs to his old bedchamber, and fell across the bed, too exhausted to remove his clothes.
God, I’m tired. So tired.
As his eyes began to close an image crept into his mind of long, dark strands of hair against the white skin of a woman’s back, but then the picture dissolved and he fell deeper into the darkness that lured him with lies, with promises of a peace that never came. He struggled against it before he let it take him, but then he stopped fighting and collapsed into it, because there was nothing else he could do….
Bodies, the twist and tangle and heave of them. Missing hands, fingers. Pieces of men half buried in gluts of blood and mud. He tries to make sense of the pieces, but no one can make sense of them because there are too many hands, an impossible number of them, and so many arms without hands, and hands without fingers, but if he can only put them together again, the fingers with the hands and the hands with the arms and the arms with the torsos… If he can fit all the pieces back together like a puzzle, the bodies will be whole again, but there are too many and there’s too much mud and too much blood and he can’t find all the hands or all the fingers dear God, there aren’t enough fingers—
Julian jerked awake with a gasp and shot straight up in the bed, icy sweat pouring down his back. Jesus. He ran a trembling hand down his face. Had he screamed? He must have. He always did. The scream was what tore him from the dream. For all the good it did, he screamed at the end.
Colin’s watch. Julian clawed at the bedclothes around him in a sudden panic. Where—?
His fingers closed over the hard metal, still in his waistcoat pocket; then he fell back against the pillow until numbness stole over him. He lay there with his eyes open for what was left of the night, the watch clutched in his palm.