And then he was gone, having disappeared into the crowd. The man was rather good at that—disappearing.
The carriage thrust into motion again, and Julian let his head fall back against the tufted leather. What a day. He had answers to Leo’s murder. He had the assurance that no one was trying to kill him.
He turned his head, letting his gaze slide to his wife. Fading daylight gilded her delicate profile. A dark tendril of hair caressed her pale cheek.
And he had her. Beautiful, generous, brave, intelligent Lily. His dearest friend. The mother of his child. How could he ever want for more? Tenderness unfurled in his chest as he reached for her, brushing the lock aside. She turned to him, her eyes dark and sweet.
“Let’s go home,” he signed, before reaching to draw her close.
“No.” With a firm touch, she pushed him away. “No, Julian. I can’t go home with you.”
Chapter Twenty-five
“What?”
Julian’s shock was evident. It was so evident, Lily found it mildly annoying. How could he fail to understand what he’d put her through today?
Transferring to the opposite seat, she said, “I can’t go home with you and just pretend that nothing’s happened. Only to wake up to another tragic letter the next time you’ve decided your unstarched cuffs make you unworthy of me, and thus you’ve exiled yourself to the Arctic Circle.” She tried to mimic a gruff, masculine voice. “‘Farewell, Lily. You must be strong.’”
All the pain and betrayal of the early morning caught up with her, smothering her like a wave. She fought through tears to continue speaking. “You abandoned me, Julian. You lied to me, withheld information that I had a right to know. I was so desperately afraid. And now I’m furious at you for making me feel that way. Why does Peter Faraday know more about your life than I do? Why didn’t you tell me about him in the first place, let me know he was in London? If I’d known of his role in Leo’s attack, we might have pieced together the truth months ago.”
“Yes, but … you were keeping secrets, too,” he replied. “You might have told me Leo had a lover.”
“I did. Or at least, I asked you if he had someone special, that night of the play. When you made it clear you knew nothing …” She shrugged. “It wasn’t my secret to divulge. If Leo had wanted you to know, he would have told you.” She paused to calm herself and take a deep breath. “And then this morning, Julian. Really. You left me with a letter.”
“A letter that said how much I love you. How dearly I hoped to fix this madness and come home to you.”
“A letter that tells me I don’t even know the half of your life,” she countered. “A letter that says you’re unworthy of me.”
“Lily …” He threw up his hands in frustration. Then blew out a breath and began again. “The thing of it is, I just am. But I’m determined to make myself worthy. I promise you, I will devote my life to making you happy. You are everything to me.”
“I don’t want to be your everything!”
He actually recoiled, as if she’d shot him. His gaze was wounded, bleeding out hope in rich shades of blue.
“Julian.” She softened her expression and signs, trying to make him understand. If there was one thing she’d learned from losing Leo, it was the danger of depending on another person for everything. “I love you. But I don’t want to be your reason for living. I want to share your life. There’s a difference between the two.”
“There are vast chasms between the two. Worlds between them. Whole galaxies and nebulae.”
“So?”
“So we should stay in your world. Where it’s all bright and rich and dazzling.”
Oh, yes. A bright, rich, dazzling pack of lies. “I thought we already had this conversation. You were going to stop treating me like a child who can’t know her own mind.”
“Of course I know you’re not a child. You’re so clever, Lily. Your mind is one of the things I most admire about you.”
“Well, you certainly don’t trust my judgment. Not enough to tell me the truth. Can you possibly understand how lowering it is—how abjectly humiliating—to beg a bird for information as to your husband’s whereabouts? A bird.”
“That’s how you found us? Did Tartuffe mention the Jericho?” He stared at her with open admiration. “I’m sorry I called you clever just now. It was a profound understatement. Obviously, you’re a genius. A brave, beautiful genius.”
“I’m a perfect simpleton, judging by your treatment of me. Again and again, I’ve told you I love you. I wanted to marry you. I am carrying your child. And you continue to insist you’re unworthy of me. How is that not an insult to my intelligence? Am I so stupid, I can’t even know who’s worthy of my love and who isn’t?”
He clearly had no idea how to respond to that.
“When we married,” she went on, “I was so foolishly full of my own emotion. I thought, if I only held you very, very tight and whispered enough words of love in your ear, you would move past the hurt in your past. But kisses don’t truly heal wounds. It’s just a fiction nursemaids pass along.”
He was still for a long moment. Finally, he signed, “You’re right. If we go on like this, I’m always going to feel a fraud.”
It was what she’d suspected. And his admission was a small victory in itself. Even so, Lily couldn’t help but wither in her skin. He seemed to be telling her they couldn’t be happy together, or apart. That didn’t bode well. “So where do we go from here?”
He turned to the window and was silent. Lily tried not to stare at him. She didn’t want to seem as though she was desperately hanging on the hopes of his reply. Even though she was.Suddenly, he swore. “Fine. Let’s do this.” He rapped smartly on the carriage roof, calling for a halt. Gesturing for her patience, he opened the window to call up to the driver. With his head turned, she couldn’t make out what he was saying.
But he resettled in his seat, and the carriage resumed its journey. Lily watched out her window. Where they normally would have turned on Oxford Street, the coach continued straight. She considered asking him their destination but then decided against it. Wherever he was headed, she was along for the ride.
They rattled on past Mayfair and turned into Bloomsbury. She recognized the street name instantly from addressing so many invitations and notes to Julian over the years.
“We’re going to your house?” she asked.
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “We’re going to Julian Bellamy’s house,” was his cryptic reply.
The carriage rolled to a stop, and Julian opened the door himself, reaching to hand her down. Day was quickly dwindling, giving way to a cold December night. Lily shivered in her traveling cloak as she followed him to the doorstep of a nondescript row house. The home was largish, but not especially grand.
From his breast pocket, he withdrew a pair of keys and fitted one into the lock. She watched with absurd fascination. In all honesty, she could not recall ever locking the front door of her home. There was always a footman standing at attention, waiting to open or close the door for her.
He used the second key to turn another lock, down near the bottom of the door. And then he used his shoulder to push the panel inward.
The entry was cold and dark, and stairs loomed directly before them. They climbed the steep flight, then emerged into a spacious corridor. From what she could see, peering into adjacent rooms, the furniture had all been covered with Holland cloth.
“Wait,” he signed. He ducked through a door and returned a minute later, candelabrum in hand. Two lit tapers burned in the holder, casting flickering light around the room. He offered the candelabrum to her, and she took it, holding it between them to throw warm illumination on his face.
“So,” he said. “This is Julian Bellamy’s house. Here on this floor, we have library, drawing room, dining room, parlor.”
With the exception of a pile of correspondence in the library, there was little evidence of habitation. No half-read books with ribbon markers or unfinished letters lying about. No cozy rug to throw over one’s lap while sitting by the hearth. In fact, the hearth was so absent of ashes and soot, she wondered if it had ever been used.
Perhaps this was Julian Bellamy’s house. But no one lived here.
She followed him up an even narrower staircase, her sense of unease mounting with every step. What with the encroaching darkness and the flickering fingers of candlelight and the eerie desolation of the place, Lily began to feel as though she were living some horrific legend, like Bluebeard. Perhaps he would show her upstairs to his private room of horrors, where on the wall were mounted the severed heads of his first six wives … soon to be joined by her own.
Don’t be ridiculous, her practical nature chided.
Her heart, on the other hand, drummed a repetitive two-beat warning: Beware. Beware.
When she reached the top of the stairs, turned into a small antechamber, and spied a vaguely human shape on the settee, heaped over with newspapers … Lily gasped.
When the heap of newspapers suddenly moved—she screamed.
A man bolted upright, shoving papers to the floor. “What’s all this, then?”
It took all Lily had not to drop the candelabrum. She plastered herself to Julian’s side.
“My valet,” he explained for her, spelling out, “Dillard.” To the man, he said, “What are you still doing here? Didn’t I pension you off with the others when I married?”
The slovenly heap of a manservant shrugged, sending one last sheet of newsprint sliding to the floor. “I like it here. And I reckoned there was an even chance it wouldn’t work out. And here you are, back.” He gave Lily an insolent, appraising leer. “Very nice, guv. A step up from your usual. Whose wife is this one?”
“Mine, you lackwit.” Julian shook his head, obviously disgusted. “Useless clod. Get out.”
Dillard blinked at him, the very embodiment of inertia.
“Oh … just go back to sleep.”
That much the valet could manage. Leaving him to his settee and newspapers, Julian ushered Lily through the antechamber and into the next room.
“So this,” he said, gathering the candlelight and her attention with a tug on her wrist, “is Julian Bellamy’s private suite.” He gestured toward their immediate surroundings. “Dressing room.”
Most of the shelves and racks were bare, their contents having been exported to Harcliffe House some weeks ago. Lily’s eye went to a row of hats on a high shelf. She recognized some of them from years past, though she had not seen them in recent memory. Out of fashion now.
“For bathing and such,” he said, pulling her through another small chamber, equipped with washstand, mirror, and copper tub.
“Bedchamber.”
Well. And so it was.
Lily lifted the candlestick high, taking a good look around. The room was twice as large as Harcliffe House’s largest bedchamber. Surely some hapless, well-meaning walls had been sacrificed for its creation. It was furnished in an eclectic frenzy of Oriental, Egyptian, and Continental décor. An obelisk here; a rounded bowl there. Sensual shapes, all. Rich color saturated the room, and ornate patterns danced on every surface.
In the center lounged a bed. No, not a bed. A monstrosity of velvet draping and sturdy posts and firm pillows and mattresses of no doubt specially-ordered size. Not much sleeping went on in it, she would wager. It looked more like an erotic gymnasium. She cringed, hoping he didn’t wish to make love to her here.
But he skirted the bed entirely, heading for a bookcase in the far corner of the room.
He beckoned her close. “So you’ve seen Julian Bellamy’s house. Now I’m going to show you where I live.”