Page 131 of Better Love Next Time
Cecil shuffled in over the stone floor, rubbing his rheumy eyes, and took their coats. “Dinner’ll be served in a trice.”
The entirety of her memories of her mother were here. Next to the fresh flowers should have been the pair of Vincennes porcelain-and-gilt vases Sir Jeffrey had sold long ago. She went to the brass lantern and unlatched the miniature door. Her mother had lit it before she had guided Kitty into the parlor and wove her stories of phantoms and faraway lands.
Julian soothed her shoulders from behind, brushing a kiss to her cheek. “Notfelle is yours, Kitty, if you want it.”
She turned in his arms, and he grinned at her parted mouth.
“The money I lost at the tables? Let’s just say the negotiations were tense, your brother trying his best to earn a facer with sneers and an excessive need to examine his fingernails. But in the end he needed the funds for a wife and a captain’s commission in the Horse Guards. Thousands for a heap of stone, fallow fields, and your mother’s memory. Happy Christmas.”
Kitty managed an “oh.”
“Come with me,” he said, gently as if she might break. But the worst was over. The best yet to come. Yes, surely the best.
His arm solid and safe about her, Julian guided her up the staircase where the railing’s wood stain, once worn thin from the hands gripping it, had been sanded away and refreshed. Aboveher hung a portrait of Mary Babbington that had been stuffed in the garret after her death.
They walked to the nursery, the scene of many happy nights where she had learned the complexity of love and its pleasures. She sat at the edge of the narrow bed with the faded pink coverlet where she had become a woman.
Julian, tall and masculine in a coal-black suit, looked adorably out of place pacing the childish surrounds with its small chairs and pink peeling wallpaper.
“Lovett was my father’s man,” he said. “I suspected it until Cyril Murray came forward for the reward. I gave him double for a signed statement. After you told me what he’d done to you, I wish I’d slit his throat.”
“He didn’t kill Clara. She was already gone when…” She shook her head at the memory. “When I ran back to my horse. And he did allow me to live.”
“Cyril must have seen you in Southampton and quit his position, knowing if the earl discovered he hadn’t disposed of you, he’d be done for. And Miss Dixley. She was one of the earl’s spies. I should have trusted my gut. A serving wench would never have a prayer book. And likely not a prayer book. Did you ever see her open it?”
Kitty reared back. Althea had been the earl’s spy? Not her friend? She knew why Cyril Murray had kept her identity from the earl but… “How could the earl have been ignorant of our marriage if Miss Dixley was a spy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Could she have changed her mind?” Had Althea become her friend? Maybe she had come to like Kitty or seen the earl’s wickedness beyond her task.
Julian grunted. Then he told her the most fantastical tale of Althea Dixley being an assassin. It made some sense. Herfeigned upbringing as a parson’s daughter. Her deft lies and able handling of pistols.
“Did Georgiana read you my letter?” he asked. “On Madame Féline?”
“You made her cry, Julian.”
He paused his pacing, his expression like a cat in a dovecote. “She deserved it, you know. Ripping my character. Demanding I marry you.” He shifted his feet. “She read the good parts? How much I loved Madame?”
“Georgiana did not see them as the good parts.” Kitty dipped her chin. “But yes, she did. And it did… warm my heart.”
In long strides he came to her, sitting down beside her, his knees high on the little bed. And it was like the night they had first made love. So awkward on her part.
“Dearest Kitty.” He placed two fingers on her chin, lifting her face to meet his gaze. “I am glad you left me. I deserved it and more, it gave me time to think, to see how I hurt you and the habits ingrained in me. I won’t ask for your forgiveness, but I promise you, Iwillroot these demons out of me. Because I love you. I never stopped loving you since the day I met you.”
“I love you.” Her voice was soft, hollow. “And I am so very ashamed.”
“Do not grovel, Kitty. That is my job.”
“But I did not go to you. You said courage is going forward when the outcome is uncertain, and I was not courageous. I broke your heart in my cowardice. I knew you would suffer when I wrote out that letter. That is the worst part of it.”
“Never be ashamed. You did what you had to do. To live.” He searched her face, his eyes wet with regret. “I only wish I could have known my son. Andrew. Did he look like me? A future scoundrel?”
“He had your hair and eyes.” Tears welled in her eyes to replace those streaming down her cheeks and falling past her jaw.
Tentatively, she slid her trembling hand into his and kissed him. Her lips parted his, softly tugging and pressing until Julian overcame his surprise and let go of his guilt.
He felt nothing, nothing but pure joy.
