Page 124 of Better Love Next Time
Sam peered down at his shoes. With a deep breath, he looked Julian in the eye. “I ain’t gonna lie. Her being a woman and all, and you lettin’ her lead the yard?—”
“When you felt it was your place.”
Sam swallowed. “I didn’t like her much, though she never did nothing for me not to like her. So when Lovett came to the yard, I didn’t help her. Defend her like I should’ve. If she fancied herself the man for the job, then I wanted her to prove her mettle.”
It was a predictable but awful truth, one for which Julian could only blame himself. The men had kept quiet expecting Lovett and his ilk would strike again and knowing Julian would be furious and retaliate.
Sam shifted on his heels. “When Lovett called her a French whore, I knew where he was going. I should have chalked him good, and none of this would have happened.”
The top of Julian’s head lit like a cannon wick. “He called my wife a French whore? Specifically?”
“Aye. A Frenchy too. Alice says I don’t deserve my position for not defending her.”
Like a fist planted in Julian’s abdomen, the truth hit him.
The earl had referred to Kitty as a French whore, aFrenchy. Whores all of them, his father had said. He detested Julian dirtying his hands in trade. What easier way than to discourage a son who would capitulate at a challenge as he had before? It made perfect sense. How far would the earl go? He had admitted to having men watching him disembark in Southampton.
Julian swerved his gaze to Miss Dixley.Just like your father, Dixley had yelled at him.
Miss Dixleywashiding. As his father’s spy.
The prayer book hanging from her waist by a thin silver chain, had she ever once opened it? What was in it? Not scripture, Julian was sure. Now he had a decision to make. Confront her in the midst of a Christmas Eve celebration or let Anthony have at her.
Julian was at Anthony’s bedroom door in a trice. He knocked once and braced in the threshold when his friend called out to enter.
“Dixley’s not on holiday,” he said to Anthony lounging in his shirtsleeves with Ollie and a book. “She’s my father’s spy. I suggest you discreetly remove her from my home before I scar some thirty-odd children for life by strangling her under the mistletoe.”
Anthony leapt from the bed, scooping into his waistcoat and buttoning it in haste. That was the best quality in his friend. When it mattered, he left off his biting wit and did what needed to be done. Shrugging into his coat, Anthony strode from the room.
The earl would pay for this. Bringing a spy into his home. Julian had paid Dixley. Paid her to spy on him and Kitty. How much did the earl know? Why hadn’t he confronted Julian on his marriage? More, if his father didn’t know he was married, why had Dixley not told him?
He cranked open the casement for a dose of freezing air when he wanted to smash something.
Nothing good came from anger. All his regrets, they stemmed from it. Was he like his father? He had uttered crushing statements to Kitty and then turned about, just like his father, and acted as if it had never happened. He was cold. Then he was warm. All his life?
All his life.
He was the bloody spit of the earl.
Staring out into the cold night, his gaze hardened on the leafless treetops and the grey-metal river rippling toward the Southampton Water. A frisson coursed up his spine. Kitty’s sketchbook. The rendering he had recognized as his father along the riverbank and had decided was Uncle William.
A gust of wind hit his face, coalescing his thoughts into a reality he grasped. Kitty knew his father, and he had done something to her. Something very, very wrong. Something that had put what he now recognized as fear in Kitty’s eyes whenever he spoke of his family. He had been too blind with self-righteousness to see it. That was his father too.
His anger turned cold in his stomach. He closed the window and with Ollie at his heels, he returned downstairs to find Miss Dixley gone and Anthony nowhere in sight. He joined in singing Christmas carols at the fireside and contemplated how to ensnare the earl without him knowing of the trap.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
January 1766
Farendon Estate, Huntingdonshire
December 28, 1765
Southampton
Dearest Kitty,
Greetings from Hell, where you kindly avoided telling me to go when I made a wreck of our lives. In fact, I have provided you a million opportunities to wish me there.
