Page 129 of Better Love Next Time
Kitty had kept the truth hidden for five years. How sanctimonious he was to have forgiven her for leaving him.
How long they remained on the settee sharing their grief, Kitty spilling her harrowing tale, he didn’t know. The fire waned. Icicles dripped from the eaves as the afternoon sun broke through the clouds.
She smelled of cherries, like the fairy he had fallen in love with years ago. The girl he had promised on his twentieth birthday would have many more happiest days.
“God, I am sorry,” he said. “I asked my father here to call him out for spying on me. To introduce you as my wife. Not… for this. We will leave as soon as you are ready.”
She shuddered as he smoothed a hand slowly up and down her slim back.
Slowly, she pulled from his embrace. She wiped the tears from her face, but more came. “No. It will not bring Andrew back, nor the years we missed, but I would confront him. Ineedto confront him.”
Julian started. Could he confront his own father without killing him? But this was not his fight. Not really. This was Kitty’s chance to face the monster. To be free. He could almost feel the lightness it would bring her. He saw it in her bloodshot eyes. A glimmer of steel and hope.
He canted his head to peer fully into her face. “Are you certain?”
“We will end the earl’s tyranny. Your family will learn of his treachery, and he will be disgraced. Yes. Yes, I am certain.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
God himself could not have commanded a morepicturesque setting for the earl’s disgrace. The scene as Julian entered the drawing room looked like heaven’s handiwork. The sun, low in the sky, reflected off the ice clinging to earth and shone through the expansive windows like heaven’s beacon. It bathed Georgiana’s infant son’s gold hair as he gnawed on the lace hem of the countess’s petticoat. His mother sat in deep conversation with Oliver’s wife, Lady Acomb, who sixteen years later, still clutched a hanky and alternately sniffed and sipped sherry.
The sun burnished the brandy in Oliver’s hand, his brother’s wig askew and grumbling on colonial troubles with Nicholas Eastwick who dwarfed a glowing gold-upholstered chair. His sister Caroline frowned at her children who flitted and laughed across the vast room with Oliver’s daughters. Next to Caroline was Julian and Georgiana’s aunt Charlotte. And Julian’s grandmother, the Dowager Countess of Tindall, a calculating woman who brought misery to all those she visited on her annual tour of her family’s homes like Torquemada.
Further enhancing this scene of golden domesticity, Oliver's eldest, Sophia, played a lively Italian song on Kitty’s mother’s pianoforte.
Georgiana saw Julian first, arching a brow with Stephen at her hip.
And there was the Earl of Tindall, his back to the door, warming his hands at the fire with Caroline’s husband. The fiend who had thrown a cigar to Kitty’s skirt and ordered her killed. Who had torn her and his son from his life. Who had terrified Kitty so she would rather have him think the worst of her instead of divulging her secret horror.
Julian asked Georgiana to remove the children, and his cousin herded the brood and sent them off with a nurse. Outside the door, he pulled Kitty into his arms, wishing he could turn back time and rescue her.Nothing bad will happen, he had once assured her.I won’t allow it. Why hadn’t he eloped with her before leaving for Southampton? Because he had wanted the money his father had held from him.
“If you don’t want to see him,” he said, “we will leave right now.”
“No. I must see him. I must do this.” She stared ahead as if reliving her horror. Her hand sliding down his sleeve, she led him into the room.
His mother lifted her gaze and gasped. “Miss Babbington. Is it you?”
His father turned and Kitty’s nails clawed into the back of his hand. The bastard paled. His eyes flashed fury. Then, arrogance. And finally, cool indifference. All these emotions directed straight at Kitty.
The room quieted.
“Thank you for joining us for this joyous occasion,” Julian said. “May I present to you the girl I have known for sixteen years, my friend, my love, the woman with whom I have chosento spend my life, my wife of two years”—he added that for the earl—“the former Miss Katherine Babbington of Notfelle, Huntingdonshire.”
The room filled with applause. Those sitting, stood, even his surly grandmother, who clutched the rubies at her wrinkly throat and praised God and coming heirs.
“Two years,” his mother exclaimed. “Ah, what a joy you kept from me.”
Footmen dispersed flutes of champagne amongst the guests.
The earl hadn’t applauded. He twitched. Georgiana’s gaze worked back and forth between Kitty and the earl.
Kitty’s nails dug deeper.
Julian murmured in her ear, “Does Georgie know?”
“I told her I wasn’t safe. I think she is putting it together.”
Oliver toasted Julian with a wink. “To my brother. Ever the rogue. Two years, you say? I wish you most happy. And to you, Kitty, I wish you patience and understanding.” Oliver cocked a brow to their father. “My lord?”
