“There are a number of things that he must consider . . .”
Her anger began to rise. “What kind of things? You mean his future bride?”
Nick looked confused. “Among other things.”
“Don’t you think she deserves to know? Isabel? Wouldn’t you have wanted to know before you married Nick?”
Isabel thought for a moment. “Perhaps . . .”
Juliana’s eyes went wide. Had everyone in the family lost their minds? “Perhaps?” she squeaked.
Isabel looked surprised, then hurried to correct herself. “All right, yes. I suppose I would have.”
“Precisely!” Juliana looked to Nick. “You see?”
She couldn’t believe that Nick would even consider accepting less than acknowledgment from Leighton. This was his child. Legitimate or no, she deserved to know from whence she came.
She deserved to know that she had a family beyond her little world.
It was hard for Juliana to comprehend the idea that Simon might not acknowledge his child. Perhaps this was the way it was done here, in the British aristocracy—this perverse universe where people were less inclined to accept an illegitimate child than they were to accept a father who admitted his mistakes.
Mistakes.
She winced at the word.
The perfect duke, who surveyed with undeniable arrogance the failures of everyone around him, had made the worst kind of mistake.
She would never have dreamed he would be the kind of man to consider walking away from his own child.
It shouldn’t matter.
As it was, she had no claim to him. He was pledged to Lady Penelope. What would change if he’d had an illegitimate child in the country?
Everything.
She knew it was true even before the word floated through her mind.
He would have been less than the Simon she knew. The kind of man who sent a woman away to bear his child was not the kind of man she believed him to be. Was not the kind of man she wanted him to be.
The kind of man she wanted for herself.
Juliana wanted to find him and shake him.
“Where is he? I want to speak with him.”
Nick hesitated. “Juliana. There is more to it than that. It’s not so simple. He’s a duke . . . and a highly respected one at that. He has options to consider. A family to think on.”
Her eyes narrowed. Perhaps she would begin the shaking with her brother.
“Well, he should have thought of that before he shipped the child and its mother off to Yorkshire!”
Isabel’s jaw dropped, and Juliana realized that she had near-bellowed the words. She gave a little huff of indignation. If they thought she was going to apologize for being outraged at his typical, horrible arrogance, they were absolutely wrong.
“Juliana.” Nick’s voice was low and calm.
“Don’t try to change my mind, Nick. Illegitimacy is a sore topic for me at the moment, as our mother has just thrown my own into public question. I won’t let that . . . impossible man simply wave his hand and send his own flesh and blood away without recognition. It’s unacceptable. And if you haven’t the courage to tell him, I will.”
She stopped, breathing heavily after her tirade, and met Nick’s gaze, seeing the frustration there. Perhaps she should not have suggested he was a coward.
“Obviously, I did not mean—”
“Oh, I think you absolutely meant, sister, and you are lucky I am the good twin,” he said. “If you feel so strongly about it, speak to Leighton. I’ve no interest in soliciting your ire. You will see him at dinner.”
Something about the words did not sit right with Juliana, but she was still too angry and eager to face down Simon to even think twice about her brother. They had reached the foot of the wide stone steps leading up to the manor house, and Juliana looked up at the enormous door at the top, which stood open, beckoning her inside.
She was not willing to wait for him.
She’d had enough.
When Juliana found him, Simon was standing at the end of a long room, staring out a window, back to the doorway. She’d almost missed him, silhouetted by a brilliant blue sky that belied the storm building in her heart.
She stepped inside the room—taking note of his sheer size, tall and broad and devastatingly handsome—and hating that even now, in her anger, she was so very drawn to him. She wanted to run to him and wrap herself around him and beg him to be the man she thought him to be.
He was not for her.
She must remember that.
She headed across what appeared to be a sitting room; she cared little for her surroundings, as she was too eager to speak to Simon—to tell him precisely what she thought of his latest ducal decision.
She approached him from behind and offered no preamble. “I thought you were different.”
He turned only his head toward her, his features vague in the afternoon shadows, making it easier for her to speak her mind. She waited for a moment, but he did not speak, did not refute her point, and so she continued, letting her ire rise. “I thought you a gentleman—the kind of man who made good on his promises and cared deeply for what was right in the world.” She paused. “My mistake. I forgot that you only truly care for one thing—not honor or justice, but reputation.”
She laughed, hearing the self-deprecation in the sound, the shaking in her voice as she continued. “I suppose I thought that even as you laughed at me and criticized me for having too much passion or being too reckless or not having enough care for my own reputation—I suppose I thought that maybe I—That maybe you—”
I suppose I thought that maybe you were different.