Page 98 of Better Love Next Time
He had accompanied Louisa Daniels to the theater three days prior and had met her a few years before, when she had been married to a dry old stick. She had no children, and she had told him tonight before dinner that she did not believe in love.
How they had fallen upon the subject was Anthony’s doing. His friend lazily approaching and inquiring on Kitty’s health, the arse had then proceeded to announce to Lady Daniels that Julian was head over feet in love with his own wife. He had thought Anthony had wrecked his chance. Instead, Lady Daniels was a woman who relished a challenge.
A woman who did not believe in love was a rare thing. Julian had decided then he would have her this night. He had told herso. And she had challenged him to a wager: how long before he did. She had laid one hundred on midnight. He had countered with a half hour before.
Meeting Lady Daniels’s gaze across the room, his determination grew tenfold. Her face was long, her forehead high, and her mouth small. The shape of her lips lent a primness to her expression. She couldn’t pout if she tried. Her eyes were a blue of no account, but the widow was, by current standards, quite lovely.
He needed to get on with his life. No matter his puritanical leanings in regard to fidelity, he needed this.
The entire journey to London he had replayed his last evening with Kitty. He admitted to himself after the fact that it had been a last effort. Despite everything he had said and done to her, to have Kitty and avoid the encumbrance of a mistress would be easier. Fool that he was, when he had watched Kitty as she sat on the settee, he had thought he detected desire in her eyes.
And so he had sat next to her. She hadn’t moved a muscle.
He had offered her wine. She had declined.
He had asked her to join him in London, had actually lowered himself with that leading question,we could enjoy ourselves, couldn’t we?His wife hadn’t the courtesy to even answer him. Still, he had tried. He had laid his hand upon her thigh and had felt nothing, no response at all in her soft flesh.
He had waited out the silence, hoping she might say something. She had. She wanted a permanent residence.One I may entertain in. Host visitors. Spend holidays.
He had sought her pretty, kissable mouth with his eyes. He had slipped his palm up her thigh until he was at the juncture where he knew the warm, silken drug waited. She had jumped to her feet, spoke ofbudgets.
His wife was cold. Would she grow colder when she learned Sir Jeffrey was dead?
Julian stretched to his feet. In a quarter hour he would be a hundred pounds richer if he held the lady to her wager, and satisfied. He side-stepped Anthony and, swooping up a bottle, strode from the room.
He walked the balcony over the reception hall and turned in to a service corridor. He passed a twitchy maid, and pushing through a door, he entered the unlit smoking room, thick with the sweet scent of tobacco. Farther, he entered a reading room. He left open the door, and there he waited, inclined against the window casement and drinking from the bottle of smuggled Scotch whisky.
Nothing save purpose existed while he waited. Not lust nor anticipation nor worry. Soon the second thoughts, the anger for what could have been, would be gone. Like all things—hope, love, life itself—any misgivings for his infidelity would soon cease to exist. He was, as his father had foretold, no good. What was the point of trying to prove otherwise?
He heard a woman’s heels click on wood, murmur on carpet, and Lady Louisa Daniels came into his line of sight.
She emerged from the shadows with an underhanded smile. “You hid well. You owe me a hundred guineas.”
“I almost retired to my bed,” he drawled, remembering how this went, how women liked a man who only halfway cared. Leaning back, he set the bottle to a parson’s table to free his hands.
“Perhaps I walked slower than need be,” she said. "To win.”
“Ah, you like it slow.” He yanked her into the room against the window, a cloud of lilac perfume striking him.
Her face burned with lust’s anticipation. In a second’s time, her voluminous skirts would be about her generous hips and herthighs open. He would be inside a willing woman who wasn’t Kitty.
She circled his neck in invitation and lifted her face. She was making it easy. So why did he lean down and… kiss her forehead?
“We should return to the party,” he said. “We will be missed.”
Her hooded eyes snapped open. “Missed?” She laughed. “You’re mistaken, you see. I am the one who plays hard to get.”
His hands planted lightly on her shoulders as he stepped back.
Her arms held tight to his neck. “Oh, you poor man. Marriage has put you to pasture, hasn’t it? You wish to be seduced. Fall in love. Have you ever?”
“Ever,” he murmured.
“Never?” It wasn’t what he said or meant, but he didn’t clarify. “You know what you are, Mr. St. Clair? You’re a romantic.”
“I had no idea.”
“When do you return to this wife whom Anthony claims you love? How absurd! I imagine she’s a feather-headed saint. A man always seeks a wife opposite of himself, and you have the look of one buried in staid convenience. But I will show you life is not so hopeless. A man like you?—”
