Page 129 of The Meaning of Love
“Oh, slander would be the very least of it,” Veronica assured him. She caught his gaze. “But will he, do you think? Publish the letters, thinking to harm the family?”
“I think,” Julian said, “that your revelations significantly alter the board on which the captain thinks he’s been playing his game.” He looked at Damian. “It appears that, no matter what bombshell Findlay-Wright thinks he has, we’re in a position to call his bluff.”
Damian met Julian’s gaze, then his jaw firmed. “There’s only one way to deal with scum like Findlay-Wright.”
Melissa wholeheartedly agreed.
“Be that as it may”—Julian swept the gathering with his gaze—“I’m very much in favor of honoring Papa’s stance on this matter. As head of the Delamere family, I never ever wish to hear of Damian’s paternity being questioned in any way whatsoever.”
Veronica smiled in approval, and Frederick looked relieved. “Obviously, that’s what your father wanted.”
Everyone looked at Gordon.
Abruptly realizing he’d become the center of attention, looking faintly alarmed, he held up his hands, palms out. “No argument from me. I assure you I won’t say a word.” Then his features hardened. “And I especially won’t say a word or lift a finger to help Findlay-Wright. I don’t want anything to do with the man. I’m going to put my foot down and turf him out of the London house. It is mine, after all. And even if I have to sit her down and explain in words of no more than two syllables, I’ll make sure Mama understands that he’s a very bad man and that she shouldn’t indulge in sympathy for him because he most definitely doesn’t deserve it.”
Julian inclined his head. “Well, it’ll be up to you to break the news to her that your lodger, for want of a better description, is going to be put on trial for attempting to murder me, Melissa, and Felix.”
Gordon almost demurred—they all saw it in his eyes—but then he squared his shoulders and nodded. “All in all, it’s the least I can do. Mama was the one who introduced Findlay-Wright into the family circle, so to speak. Only reasonable I do my part to put things right.”
Melissa studied Gordon. She’d seen more signs of maturity in him over that day than at any time before.
“So,” Veronica asked, addressing Julian, “how do you plan to proceed with that horrible man?”
“And,” Melissa hurried to say, “his pawns.” She caught Julian’s gaze. “Given what he told us, regardless of what they tried to do, I can’t help but think they’re his victims, too.”
He held her gaze for several seconds, then raised a hand and looked around the circle. “It’s been a long day, and it’s almost time for dinner. I vote we leave our prisoners where they are for tonight, safe in the cells. We can meet over breakfast tomorrow and decide on our next steps, and then we can tell Findlay-Wright that, contrary to his arrogant belief, he will be tried for all his attempted crimes. All in favor?”
“Aye, aye!” rang out around the room. With the motion carried unanimously, the entire company determinedly turned their minds to less-fraught subjects.
Later, as the moon rode the sky and the castle settled to sleep, swathed in his silk robe, Julian walked into Melissa’s bedchamber.
She was standing before the window, her arms crossed beneath her breasts. Clad only in a single layer of delicate silk, she was absentmindedly surveying the night-dark landscape.
The lamps were already doused, and the moonlight limned her face and her figure.
The sight caused something in him to clutch and tighten, and he slowed.
An inexorable, irresistible wave of yearning—of need and hunger and something so much more—rose and crashed over him.
It washed through him, scouring away all pretense, all ability not to recognize and own to the power of what he felt for her.
His step had hitched, the realization sharp enough to momentarily shake him.
Resuming his steady pace, he approached her.
She sensed him and half turned his way. Through the dimness, her shadowed eyes, dark as midnight, met his.
He sensed more than saw her knowledge reflected in the star-laden depths of her eyes—her newfound understanding of him, of herself, of what they had become, each to the other.
He halted, but before he could speak, she did, her voice low, husky. “Today, when I saw him fell you, then raise that sword to strike you dead…” She paused, then drawing in a breath, tilted her chin upward and went on, “Until that moment, I hadn’t known I could feel what I did. I hadn’t had any inkling that the full gamut of emotions encompassed so much more or that the power emotion can wield could compel so utterly.”
They were, it seemed, consumed by the same realization, dwelling on that single revelatory moment.
“I wasn’t entirely unconscious,” he replied, his own voice low and uncharacteristically rough. “I saw you strike him with that branch…then you stepped over me and faced him, and I nearly died, drowned by my panic.”
Even the memory jarred him to the core.
Moving slowly, he gripped her upper arms and drew her to face him, then he forced his fingers to gentle and soothingly stroke her bare skin. “I couldn’t protect you.” He could barely get the words out. “I couldn’t even help you.”
