Page 113 of Better Love Next Time
“And Miss Dixley’s biscuits,” Jeffrey Dillon said.
“She don’t cook those,” Wyatt Percy countered with a scowl.
“But she walks about with her basket,” Jeffrey said with a wiggle of his brows, “and delivers them to every one of us. She gave me a sampler too.For the wages of sin is death, it says. All pretty-like in red and blue. She stitched a flower too.”
Harry hooted. “What you be needin’ a sampler for?”
“I got a wall. Besides, it reminds me of her.”
“You ain’t prying those godly legs open ’less you got a crowbar.”
Jeffrey shrugged. “A man has to dream.”
Julian and Kitty’s dream came a little closer to coming true when a letter arrived from Mr. John Gilbert from South Audley Street, London, inquiring on a suitable time to visit St. Clair’s Shipyard. Julian waited a week to answer him. Barring bad weather and impassible roads, he invited Gilbert to enjoy the St. Clair’s hospitality in February and wished him good health and a happy Christmas.
Julian came to her every night. He loved her with his body. They drifted asleep, his arm possessive about her waist and her cheek reclined on his shoulder listening to his heartbeat. Sometimes they talked for hours on the yard or Southampton society.
He never said he loved her, but she could feel him trying. She understood that what the earl had done, that coldhearted letter he had forced her to write, had done something irrevocable.
November had been unseasonably cold and December came in colder. The riverbank and slipways iced over. A fortnight before they scheduled to close the yard, Althea forced Kitty to stay in bed with a dreadful case of the sniffles. Before leaving for rehearsal, Althea piled a stack of religious tracts on her nightstand, and Kitty arched a brow, having discovered the previous week, the salacious novel,Fanny Hill, in the library settee cushions after Althea had departed the room.
“When will you admit who you really are?” Kitty asked.
“All things are not expedient, the apostle Paul once wrote.” Althea departed with a regal turn.
After blowing her nose, Kitty searched out the scandalous novel from her youth and cozied into her bed withFanny, a cup of tea, and multiple handkerchiefs. Her face didn’t flame nearly as hot as it had when she was young, but she did feel very warm reading Fanny’s escapades. She drifted into sleep and at a sharp rap on her bedroom door, awoke with a start.
Julian entered the room, still in his greatcoat and his boots crusted with ice. Without taking his eyes from her he undid the coat’s buttons and tossed it to a chair.
She rubbed the last of the sleep from her eyes and searched for a handkerchief amidst the rumpled linens while Julian yanked off his boots without the help of his new valet. He left each boot where it fell and still stared directly at her.
“Is something wrong?” She sneezed into her handkerchief.
“Why did you not tell me of a Mr. Lovett visiting the yard?”
She looked up in surprise. “You know him?”
“Before dawn this morning, someone broke three windows on the loft. They fled on horseback before the watchmen could catch them. And no, I do not know Lovett. But you should have told me. Why didn’t you?”
“The things he said about you?—”
“What did he say that you believe I would do?”
“He said—” She could have sliced a knife through his hostility. “I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t.”
“And yet you said nothing. You told my men to keep it from me.”
She swallowed at his controlled fury, the pulsing muscle in his jaw. Too late, she understood that she had made a terrible error by concealing Lovett’s visit and trying to protect Julian’s pride.
“I did keep it from you,” she said.
“Why?”
To tell him now she wished to protect him would only serve to infuriate him further. She had also been trying to prove herself. Which was equally damning.
“I thought,” she said, “that if I were to acknowledge his assertions, I would lend credibility to them. So I directed that Mr. Lovett be forgotten.”
“Except he was not forgotten. The men have known and others outside of the yard know. Do you know who told me? The glazier when I had him called to the yard this morning to assess the damage. And then the magistrate. Everyone has been waiting for me to confront Childers, who is obviously in league with Lovett, and at minimum find Lovett and rearrange the bastard’s face.”
