Page 109 of Better Love Next Time
“Did you walk in the parks? I’ve read the afternoon is the fashionable hour, but for me, I would much prefer the early morning. So much more private, you see.”
“I ran through St. James nearly every morning. Alone.” He inhaled long through his nose, and suddenly he smelled Louisa’s perfume clinging to his coat. Damn him! Damn him to hell. That was what she had smelled on him when he had stood close to her at her bedroom window. He wanted to rip off his clothes.
“Kitty,” he started, “I spent the majority of my time in business dealings. Anthony can attest?—”
“How is Anthony? In good health?”
“He is. He sends you his regards. In London, there was a woman?—”
“Anthony was always a friend to me,” she said into her glass with an actual smile, a wistful smile. “You know, he came upon the name Madame Féline.”
This and the smile sent his reeling brain in a jealous direction. “Did he? Why?”
“A jest. You know Anthony.”
His voice was bitter and jealous to his ears. “You could have been a countess.”
“I never cared for titles.”
He lifted his arms wide. “As evidenced by your choice.”
She finished her wine and rose unsteadily from the table. He shoved back in his chair and reached for her as she passed, catching her hand and pulling her to his chest. She looked up at him with wide eyes, her legs pressed to his, the slim softness of her body stirring within him desire, regret, pain. Memories assailed him of each moment provided where he could have told his pride to go to hell and tried to make something of his marriage. Just simply remembered who Kitty was and not selfishly defined her by one act.
He warred with letting go of her. If he didn’t, he would do more. She was drunk. He wouldn’t take advantage. And it felt cheap and desperate to attempt a seduction on account of guilt. Not for the crimes he didn’t commit, but for the ones he did. Proposing a marriage in name only and sticking by it. Accusing her of being unlovable, undesirable. For telling her he did not love her. How many times had he thrown that in her face?
“Nothing happened in London,” he said. His wife, starkly beautiful in black, gazed back in aplomb. “I was a saint. No, I should clarify. I was as close to a saint as I can ever be. This perfume you smell—I’m sorry. It’s from a woman who I did nothing with. Nothing. Except escort her, with Anthony, to various events I’d rather have forgone. I did try to?—”
“Please stop.” She pulled slightly against his hold.
“I forgive you. Whatever your reasons for leaving. I forgive you. I should have forgiven you two years ago.” He held her tighter, and then he was done for, clasping her head to his shoulder and murmuring into her hair, “Do you believe me?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters. It damn well matters.”
His jaw clenched uncontrollably. Was he going to cry? How could Kitty not break down and cry? What a mess he had made.
He released her. She stepped back on her heels and walked from the dining room, leaving him alone to eavesdrop on her light tread through the hall. He dropped to the chair with his head in his hands. He couldn’t spend the rest his life like this. Or, knowing there was more than his own feelings involved, the rest oftheirlives.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The followingmorning Julian stretched from his bed naked at an ungodly, very un-London hour, with a crackling fire awaiting him. At the window, he braced an arm at the casement and felt the urgent stirrings of what he assumed poets spoke of when they described homecomings. The river glinted steely grey in the dawn light and through the glass, he could hear the brittle rustle of leaves before they lofted in the wind and floated down to earth. Ahead the banks of the River Itchen sloped upward into turning trees and brush. South, in the distance, through sycamores, he spied the cutters in their slipways and men already at work.
He opened the window and breathed in the cold air. He needed to do something about his marriage soon. But what recompense was available to him that Kitty could believe his motives genuine? If he asked her to join his bed, would she see it as a desperate act of atonement?
He remembered the last time he had been inside her as if it had been an hour ago, and his body responded in kind.
The door opened.
He twisted around and Kitty froze in the threshold clutching a tray of steaming coffee. Her gaze immediately pinned to his erection. She stammered and hurried to the low table before the fire and stuffed the tray down, spilling the milk. Her back to him, she mopped up the milk and blurted out an apology.
“I should have knocked,” she said. “I assumed you would be abed at this hour or—or I would have had Abigail bring it to you.”
“Would she have knocked?”
She straightened, saying to the fire, “Of course.”
“Good. Or we might be less one maid and paying for a surgeon to stitch her head when she swooned.”
