But before he could decide, Lily surprised him.
“I think I’m pregnant,” she signed.
And with that, his world stopped. Went still as a painting.
It was as though some invisible, divine hand had forced him, and this moment, into a small, square frame. He didn’t feel hemmed-in or constrained. No, never that. Just … put into perspective. Within the borders of this picture, this precious vignette, resided everything of true meaning: the two of them, and the promise of a child. The world outside it was just noise, nothing but meaningless distraction.
At a loss for words, he laid a hand to the small of her back.
She didn’t turn to him, but her cheek dimpled with a shy smile. “I can’t be certain yet.”
Julian was certain. He knew. Within a year’s time, the world would include another plump, squirming, rosy-cheeked creature, and that infant would be part him and part her, forever intermingled and impossible to separate. Looking at the domestic Madonna in the painting before him, Julian felt he understood why God had introduced His greatest miracle to the world in the form of a helpless infant. He couldn’t conceive of a more humbling, awesome thing than a child.
Not just a child. Their child.
This was his chance to start fresh and do everything right. For so long he’d chased revenge. Now true redemption was in reach. He wasn’t a bastard child any longer. He was a grown man, a husband, soon to be a father. His family would have every advantage Julian had never known. His wife would never be driven to sacrifice her own comfort or nourishment for the sake of their child. His son would be tutored in Latin and Greek, would never even learn the signs for “hungry” or “cold” or “frightened” or “penny.”
“We’ll take this one,” he told the gallery owner.
Once the purchase had been settled, they left the shop together and began strolling aimlessly down the crowded street. Lily suggested they walk the short distance to their new residence before returning to Harcliffe House.
“I’d like to see how the blue toile is working in the parlor.”
Julian was thinking of the house, too. But he wanted a look at the nursery. He needed to check it for drafts. Had there been enough bars on the window? “Just wait until it’s all done,” he told her. “It’s too dusty right now.”
“And what is a touch of dust?” Lily shook her head. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you. Now you’ll be insufferably protective.”
Of course he would be protective. And if she thought he was insufferably so today, she ought to wait for tomorrow. Once Leo’s killers were brought to justice, safeguarding Lily would become his paramount purpose in life. Ridiculous as he knew it to be, part of him wanted to wrap her in cotton wool and confine her to bed for the next eight months.
With one arm draped around her shoulders, he steered her through the river of humanity, banked by shop fronts on the one side and carriages on the other. He was unbearably anxious she might be jostled by a passerby or jabbed in the eye with a parasol spoke.
Wham.
Julian was broadsided. An anonymous shoulder and elbow conspired to give him a firm, swift shove that sent him careening off-balance. Despite his best efforts, he stumbled against Lily, slamming her into a shop’s display window. She cried out in surprise, and no doubt some measure of pain.
Julian righted himself and took Lily by the shoulders, assessing the soundness of her arms and wrists. “Are you hurt? I’m so sorry. There was a—”
“I’m fine,” she said, patting down her dress. “Just a bit rattled.”
Rattled. The word made him see red. Julian was going to find the man who’d pushed him so rudely and rattle him to the bones.
As Lily adjusted her cape, he wheeled to search the crowd. No one figure particularly leapt out. It had happened so fast. He’d formed no impression of the arm that shoved him, much less the man to whom it belonged.
Frustrated, he clenched his hands into fists.
Something crumpled in his left palm.
He opened his hand. There, on his gloved palm, lay a crunched card with writing on it. Someone must have slid it into his hand during the confusion. With a quick glance around, he grasped the card in his fingertips and pulled the creases straight.
Hold your tongue, if you wish to keep holding your lovely bride.
A clanging Bell will be silenced.
The ground buckled beneath his boots. The words on the card fuzzed, as though grown over with black mold.
A clanging Bell will be silenced.
Someone knew. Someone knew everything.
Chapter Twenty-one
That card … it was more than a blow to the stomach. More than a shot to the heart. More than a lightning strike, or even a grenade. It was a split-second deluge of ten thousand tons of snow. The obliteration of everything. Life as he knew it, replaced by cold, blank, oppressive silence.
For a fraction of time, Julian’s world ceased to exist.
And then it rushed back, in a million crystalline facets. His senses opened like floodgates, taking in every available stimulus. The myriad sights and sounds and smells that typically melded into a patchwork of “city street” sorted themselves out, announced themselves one by one in his consciousness. Especially the sounds. He heard everything. The clop of each individual horseshoe against the cobbled street. Rats scrabbling in the gutter, their tiny claws shredding through autumn’s last few desiccated leaves. The cries of street merchants hawking apples, posies, herbs, newspapers, snuff, and “Ink, black as jet! Pens, fine pens!”
Across the street, some dozen doors down, hinges creaked. An old man coughed and spat.
Julian’s heart pounded through his whole body, beating down the encroaching panic with grim, steady blows.
With frantic composure, he scanned the vicinity. Who? Who knew? Who’d done this?
“Goodness,” Lily said, leveraging his grip on her arm to steady herself. “That was unexpected. Are you well?”
No. No, he wasn’t well, and this was hardly unexpected. How could he have ever relaxed his guard? He was a fool. A bloody goddamned fool. He’d wanted to believe, so badly, that Leo’s death was mere coincidence and he had no mortal enemies. That he’d escaped his squalid past and left it behind to embrace a bright future with Lily. But he’d been wrong, all wrong.
“Julian?” She tugged at his sleeve. “Really, I’m perfectly well. Let’s just go on.”
They couldn’t continue to walk in the open street like this, with Devil-knows-who following them. He needed to get her home, but could he even risk a hackney? The drivers perched atop their boxes peered down at him, vulturelike, their necks sunken into their high, black collars.
Threat menaced from every direction. The wrinkled old fellow with his box of doubtless tainted fruit. The gray clouds looming overhead, squashing them all. Even the wind’s cold bite made him want to snap back.
He trusted no one.
He put one arm about Lily’s shoulders, bent to slide the other under her thighs, and with a small grunt of effort, swept his wife into his arms. As he made his way down the street, he barked at the people before them. “Make way. My wife is ill. Let us pass.”
“Julian,” she insisted, “I tell you, I’m fine. No injury whatsoever.”
He paid her no mind, simply continued striding down the center of the walk, forcing all others to scramble out of his path. It was unreasonable. The behavior of a madman. He didn’t care. This woman was his responsibility, placed into his keeping by sacred vows, and he’d exposed her to danger. Now he was going to personally rescue her from it, if it exhausted all the strength in his body.
If it killed him.
He carried her all the way back to Harcliffe House. After the first quarter-mile, Lily gave up protesting and concentrated on being portable. None of her objections had any effect. Her husband was a man possessed. He didn’t even seem winded from the exertion. His heartbeat thumped against her body, almost preternatural in its unflagging, deliberate rhythm.
Goodness. As they finally approached the square, she made a mental note to save the news of her next pregnancy for a location closer to home.
He carried her up the steps of the house. A footman opened the door, and Julian swept her inside, barely acknowledging the servant or Swift, who stood slack-jawed in the entryway.
“I’m fine,” Lily called out to the butler, as Julian carried her straight past and mounted the stairs. “Don’t be concerned.”
When they reached the door of her suite—now their suite—Julian temporarily transferred her full weight to one arm and opened the latch with the other. Off-balance, he lurched through the open door, kicked it shut, and collapsed against it, still holding her fast against his chest.
She felt his lungs expand with a deep, gasping breath. His knee shook, fluttering her draped skirts. Her hand flew to his face, and she found his skin clammy to the touch. He was so pale.
He looked as though he’d come face-to-face with Death.
“Julian, truly. I understand a bit of male protective impulse, but this is nonsensical. Women have babies every day. It’s hardly cause for alarm.”
He swallowed hard and gave a little nod. “I know. I know.”
Seeming to recover a bit of his strength, he stood once again and carried her into the bedroom, laying her gently on the bed. Straightening, he shrugged out of his coat and paced back and forth, patrolling the bedposts.
“Julian?”
He pushed a hand through his hair and continued pacing, mumbling something to himself.
“Julian.”
He halted mid-step, still staring straight ahead, glaring a hole in the wainscoting.
Lily rose to her knees, pulled off her cape and tossed it aside. Leaning forward, she took him by the wrist. “Come,” she said, tugging firmly.
He gave in with numb resignation, sitting on the edge of the mattress and reclining to join her on the bed halfway, wrapping an arm about her waist. Even in this moment of emotional upheaval, she could tell he was trying to keep his boots off the counterpane, unwilling to muddy the lace. A pang of tenderness wrenched her heart.
“Never mind it,” she said, pulling him down beside her. “Just be with me.”
At last, she had his full surrender. He stretched out alongside her, and they tangled together, holding one another tight.
She tried to calm him, stroking her fingers through his dark hair and pressing kisses to his temple. “It’s all right,” she said. “I understand. Parenthood is rather overwhelming to contemplate, isn’t it? I’ll admit to being a little scared, too. There’s so much to be anxious about. Not just the pregnancy and birth, but after. What if our …” Her voice faltered. Perhaps she should have held her tongue, but the words came out anyway. “What if our baby needs me, and I can’t hear his cries?”
With a quick flex of his arm muscles, he drew her close and tight.
Lily took refuge in his strong, secure embrace, allowing herself a few private teardrops. There were so many fears, more than she could possibly express. Fears she’d been tamping down for years, preferring to remain unmarried just so she wouldn’t have to face them. What if she inadvertently neglected her own child, when he was in pain? What if she needed to call out in warning, and her voice failed? There was already deafness in Julian’s family; what if their baby was born deaf, too? What if he wasn’t, and he grew to be ashamed of his mother?
Julian’s arms released her, and he maneuvered back, putting just enough space between them to sign. His leg remained thrown over her hips, holding her close.
“Never think,” he said, his eyes fierce with sincerity, “that I doubt you. You will be the kindest, best, most capable mother to ever live. I am certain of it.”
She nodded. If Julian’s mother could give birth to him in a vacant warehouse and raise him alone in the streets, surely Lily could cope with this. She had a comfortable home; she would have nursemaids to help. Most of all, she had a husband who would always understand, as few people could.