The room came into stark relief. Not a sitting room. A nursery.
And he was here, holding a sleeping child so small that she fit easily in his hands.
She swallowed, stepping closer, peering into the little round, red face and the bluster went out of her. She no longer wanted to scream or shake him. She did not feel vindicated. She felt . . . lost.
In a different world—another time—they might have been in a similar nursery. Might have had a similar moment. A happier one.
Her voice caught as she spoke, looking at the baby and not the man. “I know what it is like to grow up knowing that a parent doesn’t want you, Simon,” she whispered. “I know what it’s like to have the world know it, too. It is devastating. Devastating when you are four, when you are ten, when you are . . . twenty.
“I know what it is to be ridiculed and rejected by everyone.”
What it is to be rejected by you.
Suddenly, his acceptance of this child meant everything to her. She did not know why—only that it was true.
“You must acknowledge her, Simon.” There was a long silence. “You must. So there is scandal. You can weather it. You can. I—” No. There was no I. She was nothing to him. “We . . . we will stand beside you.”
There were tears on her cheeks, and she knew she should be sorry for them. “You’re here for her, Simon. You came to meet her. Surely that means something. You can want her. You can love her.”
She heard the plea in her words, knew that she was talking about more than this child.
She should be embarrassed but could not find the energy to care.
All she cared about was him.
This man who had ruined her for all others.
From the beginning.
“Simon.” she whispered, and in the name was an ocean of emotion.
He was everything she’d always sworn to hate . . . an arrogant aristocrat who had ruined an unsuspecting female and had a daughter whom he might not acknowledge.
She hated herself for noticing the strength and perfection of him.
For wanting him even as she should despise him.
He took a step toward her, and she stepped back, afraid to be closer to him. Afraid of what she might do. What she might allow him to do.
“Juliana, would you like to meet my niece?”
His niece.
“Your niece?”
“Caroline.” The word was soft, filled with something she instantly envied.
“Caroline,” she repeated, taking a step toward him, toward the cherub in his arms, with her little round face and her little rosebud of a mouth, and swirls of golden hair just like her uncle’s.
Her uncle.
She let out a long breath. “You are her uncle.”
One side of his mouth lifted in a barely there smile. “You thought I was her father.”
“I did.”
“And you did not think to confirm it before making such accusations?”
Warmth flooded her cheeks. “Perhaps I should have.”
He looked down at the baby in his arms, and something tightened in Juliana’s chest at the incongruous portrait they made—this enormous man, the portrait of propriety and arrogance, and his infant niece, barely the length of his hands.
“Caroline,” he whispered once more, and she heard the awe in his voice. “She looks just like Georgiana. Just like she looked when she was born.”
“Your sister.”
He met her eyes. “Georgiana.”
Understanding dawned. “She is the secret. The one you have been working to protect.”
He nodded. “I had no choice. I had to protect the family. I had to protect her.”
Juliana nodded. “How old is she?”
“Seventeen.”
Not even out.
“Unmarried?” She did not have to ask the question.
He nodded once, stroking one finger along Caroline’s tiny hand.
The baby was the reason for everything . . . for his anger at Juliana’s recklessness . . . for his insistence that her reputation was paramount . . . for his impending marriage.
A knot formed in Juliana’s throat, making it difficult to swallow.
“I thought I would get here and the answer would be clear. I thought it would be easy to send her away. To send them away.”
She was transfixed by his soft, liquid voice, by the way he held the infant, so carefully.
“Then I met Caroline.” In her sleep, the child grasped the tip of his finger tightly, and he smiled, wonder and sadness breaking across his beautiful features—features that so rarely betrayed his emotion. He exhaled, and Juliana heard the weight of his responsibility in the sound.
Tears pricked, and Juliana blinked them away.
When society heard, the scandal would be unbearable. Did he really think he could hide from them forever?
She knew she must tread lightly. “You sent your sister here to keep her . . . situation . . . a secret?”
He shook his head. “No. She ran. From the family . . . from me. She did not think I would support her. Support them. And she was right.”
She heard the bitterness in his voice, saw how one side of his mouth curled in a grimace before he turned to cross the room and return the baby to her cradle.
From where he had lifted her.
Suddenly, Juliana realized the enormity of this moment upon which she had intruded; aristocratic males did not linger in nurseries. They did not hold children. But Simon had been here. Had been holding that baby with all the care she deserved.
There was such uncertainty in him—in this man who never doubted himself. Whom no one ever doubted. She ached for him. “She will forgive you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do . . .” She paused. How could she not forgive him? “I know it. You came after her. After them both.”
To take care of them.
“Do not make me into a hero, Juliana. I found her . . . discovered her situation . . . she would not tell me who the father was . . . and I was furious. I left her here. I wanted nothing to do with her.”
She couldn’t believe it. Wouldn’t believe it.
“No . . .” She shook her head. “It’s not true. You are here now.”
He turned away from her and returned to the window to look out over the heath. He was quiet for a long moment. “But for how long?”
She moved toward him.
He spoke before she could. “I only came to decide what to do next. To make her tell me who the man is. To make arrangements to hide the child. To hide my sister. Do you still think me a hero?”
Her brow furrowed. “Do you still plan to do those things?”
He turned back to her. “I don’t know. Perhaps. That was certainly an option when I was on my way here . . . but now . . .”
He trailed off.
She could not remain quiet. “Now?”
“I don’t know!” The words echoed around the room, frustration and anger surprising them both. He thrust both hands through his hair. “Now, my well-laid plans seem completely unreasonable. Now, my sister won’t speak to me. Now . . . now, I’ve held the damned child.”
They were inches from each other and when he looked at her, she could see the anguish in his eyes. He reached toward her, the backs of his fingers trailing along her cheek, the movement so soft and lovely that she closed her eyes against the feeling. “You have made everything more complicated.”
Her eyes flew open at the accusation. “What does that mean?”
“Only that when you are near, I forget everything that I am meant to remember—everything I am meant to be. And all I want is this.”
He settled his lips to hers, the softness of the kiss enhancing the ache that had settled deep in her heart during their conversation. She let him guide the way, his lips moving against hers, desperate and gentle all at once. His tongue brushed against her and she opened for him, allowing him entrance, giving herself up to the slide of the caress.
This was not a kiss of celebration, but of devastation. It was a kiss that laid them both bare, and it tasted of regret as much as it did of desire. And even as she hated the emotion in it, she could not resist it.
Did not want to.
Her arms came up, fingers slid into the soft curls at the nape of his neck, and she kissed him back with everything in her, passion and emotion and longing. She met him stroke for stroke in the hopes that she could somehow convince him, with movement instead of words, that things could be different. That things could change.
And then they did.
He broke away with a curse, and she grew cold even before he stepped back from her, putting several feet between them—feet that felt like miles. They stood there for a long moment in the dimly lit space, breath coming in twin, harsh bursts.
He wiped the back of one hand across his mouth as if to erase the memory of her, and she winced at the movement. “I have to protect my family, Juliana. I have to do what I can to protect our name. To protect my sister. From them.”
“I understand.”
“No. You don’t.” His beautiful eyes betrayed his emotion. She could not look away from the emotion there, so rare, so tempting. “You can’t. This cannot happen. I am the duke. It is my duty.”
“You say it like I have asked you to deny that duty.”
He closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. “You haven’t.”
“No,” she protested. “I haven’t.”
“I know. But you make me want to deny it. You make me want to throw it all away. You make me think that it could all be different. But . . .” He trailed off.
This is how things are done.
She heard the words even though he did not speak them.
She wanted to rail at him. Wanted to scream that it could be different. That he could change the way things were done. That he was a duke, and the rest of his silly world would forgive him most anything—and who cared what the horrible lot of them thought anyway?
But she knew better. She had said as much to him before, countless times. And they meant nothing. They were mist on cold marble.
He pressed on. “I am not free to do as I please. I cannot simply turn my back on the world in which we live.”
“The world in which you live, Simon,” she corrected. “And yes, I think you are free to do as you please. You are not a god, not even a king, but just a man, just flesh and blood like the rest of us.” She knew she should stop, but she was down this road now, unable to turn back. “This isn’t about your sister, or your niece, or about what is right for them. This is about you. And your fears. You are not trapped by society. Your prison is of your own making.”
He stiffened, and the emotion was instantly gone from his eyes—the cool, aloof Duke of Leighton returned. “You do not understand that of which you speak.”
She had expected it; nonetheless, the words stung, and she moved away from him, to the cradle. She ran one finger down the soft, mottled skin of the sleeping baby’s cheek. “Some things are more powerful than scandal, Simon.”
He did not speak as she crossed the room, brushing past him to the door, where she turned back, and said, “I only hope you see that before it is too late for her.”
She left the room, back straight, head high, determined not to show him how much she ached for him. The moment the door closed behind her, she sagged against it, the truth hitting her, hard and fast and cruel.
She loved him.
It changed nothing. He was still engaged to another, still obsessed with propriety and reputation. Still the Duke of Disdain. She would do well to remember it.
Perhaps, if she remembered it, she would love him less.
Because she did not think she could love him more.
She took a deep breath, a tiny sound catching in her throat.
They had lied, those who had extolled the virtues of love—its pleasures, its sublimity—those who had told her that it was beautiful and worthwhile.
There was nothing beautiful about it.
It was awful.
A battle raged in him, propriety and passion. Reputation and reward. And Juliana knew now, with sickening clarity, that it was this battle that she loved the most about him.
But now he was hurting her.
And she could not bear it.
Could not bear another moment of not being good enough for him.
And so she stood straight, coming away from the wall, and she did the only thing she could do.
She walked away.
Chapter Fifteen
Too-familiar servants are the worst kind of offense.
Refined ladies do not abide gossip in the kitchens.
—A Treatise on the Most Exquisite of Ladies
At long last, the appeal of the country has returned . . .
—The Scandal Sheet, November 1823
Simon wanted to put a fist through the wall of the nursery.
He’d left for Yorkshire the moment he’d received word that Georgiana’s baby had come; he’d told himself he was coming for his sister and his niece and to ensure that the family’s secrets remained just that—secret. And he had come for those things.
But he had also come to escape Juliana.
He should have known that once he arrived here, in this house filled with women, that he would be reminded of her. Should have known that when he drank scotch with Nick, he would see Juliana in Nick’s eyes, in the way he laughed. Should have known that near her family, he would think of her constantly.
But what he had not expected was how much he thought of her when he was near his own family: when his mother had left the house, with barely a word of farewell; when his sister had refused to see him upon his arrival to Townsend Park; when he held his niece in his arms, consumed with how her slight weight could seem so heavy. He’d thought of Juliana at all those moments.
He’d wanted her by his side. Her strength. Her willingness to face down any foe. Her commitment to those for whom she cared.