“That detail wasn’t included in the note, but I think it’s a sound wager.” Julian brought a woolen blanket and tucked her in, his touch gentle, his smile tenuous, his aura speckled with azure and gold. Love and concern. Like a mother hen, he worried incessantly about his chicks. He and Humphrey shared this preoccupation. “That was quite a kiss we interrupted,” he noted, taking the empty spot next to her and drawing her into the comfy nook against his chest she’d been trying to locate. Coming at it from the side instead of the front solved the problem. A clever man, her husband, she thought with a smile.
It had been a startlingly sensual kiss, Finn pressing Victoria Hamilton to the wall, their bodies so close you couldn’t have slipped a feather between them. However… “She’s the loneliest person I’ve ever met.”
Julian flinched. “Who?”
“Lady Victoria, silly, who else? I thought I was forlorn until the thunderbolt struck, and you realized I was the light of your life”—she laughed as Julian gave her a teasing shoulder knock—“but the way she looked at me, oh, she’s in much worse shape. At least I had a family with you and Finn and Humphrey, even then.” Piper ironed the blanket with her fingers and faced his questioning gaze. “The baby kicked, and I let her feel it, which I’m sure goes against every tenet in society’s blessed book. But I did it anyway like I always do—and her face just crumbled. She has no one, Jules, no one. Nothing to do with reading her aura because I can’t. I wanted to cry, which comes easily as you know, but I held off for fear of embarrassing her. Then I wanted to cry again when I remembered the Grape is going to be her someone. She’s giving herself away because she doesn’t believe in love enough to fight her family for the chance to experience it.”
Julian looked to the fanciful mural he’d painted on the nursery walls as if it was suddenly of great interest. “She can’t marry Rossby. When it comes to her needing protection, as it did for you, he can’t provide it. Someone, someday, will find us again. In my gut, I know this. We’ve had recent warnings from the continent in the letters Finn is translating. The blocker is too tempting a target. The Duke of Ashcroft would be a suitable choice for her. He’s in the League, and being a former soldier, has men at his beck and call. He needs an heir, a wife, even if he wants neither.” Julian counted off the positive points on his fingers. “Society placated, Ashcroft not setting fires, Lady Victoria protected, her ridiculous father spared from debtor’s prison. Check, check, check, check.”
Piper harrumphed beneath her breath. “There’s no check for love. Did you not hear what I said? My word, does the woman get any say in her future?”
“Typically, no, they don’t. This isn’t America, Yank. Consider the dilemma with your suppressed British half.”
“If this is about money…”
“It isn’t. Thanks to my father’s corrupt solicitor, Finn’s inheritance is secure, and without a hint of scandal attached to it aside from the malicious byblow business none of us can change. Better bastard of a viscount than rookery orphan, that much I’m sure of. He has enough to save her family, Piper. It’s the societal discrepancy. Which, even with the lies I’ve been telling since Finn was a boy, is considerable.”
“I was a walking scandal, and you married me.”
Julian rolled his head to look at her. “You were a hellion but granddaughter to an earl, daughter of a viscount. Finn has no such lineage. This issue will always matter to the ton and be exemplified in the most hypocritical ways. Most ladies in our circle wouldn’t dare attach themselves to him for more than a brief time. A liaison, a flirtation. Although we’re staunch champions of women’s rights in this house, what about Finn? Does he want Lady Victoria for more important reasons than not being able to read her mind? I told him all this, and call me a killjoy, but I’m not sure. Although he did offer to steal Rossby’s thoughts for her, which sounds like more than a simple case of desire to me.”
Piper thought back to that kiss, the dazed expression on Finn’s face when he’d glanced over his shoulder and seen them standing in the doorway. The way his gaze lingered on Victoria after they’d hastily separated, murmuring inane explanations and brushing at their clothing as if a swarm of bees had lit upon them. “I think he wants her.”
“Yes, and a thousand others. Or the reverse, I suppose, is the more accurate statement. Blasted hell, if I had a face like his, I’d never leave the house.”
Linking her fingers with Julian’s, she brought their hands to her lips and placed a tender kiss on his knuckle. Her husband was more than a little handsome himself, and he knew it. “He let her cut his hair.”
Julian sputtered a laugh. “He what?”
Piper giggled and pressed her cheek to his chest, the steady rhythm of his heart the most reassuring manifestation in her universe. “Love can change him, give him a sense of security and hope. Lead him home in a way we can’t. As it did for me, for you. He’s smiling for the first time since the accident on the wharf. Writing in his journal. Growing into the man you hoped he would. And, wonder of all wonders, he can’t read this lively, fascinating, discarded woman’s mind.” At Julian’s doubtful look, she pinched his arm, then soothed the spot when he growled. “She was the first to reach him when he took that tumble off his horse. Opera glasses to watch the birds, my foot. He’s her bird, a dazzling azure one! I’m not fooled.”
Julian tipped her gaze to his, his grin digging that dimple she so loved deep in his cheek. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. You understand that, right?”
“If I say trust me, will you?”
He frowned, his arm tightening around her. “Trust you to do what? That’s never worked well before.”
“Engineer a little magic?”
“Will you still respect me if I admit I’m scared?”
She slid her hand behind his neck and brought his lips to hers. “Love is always dangerous, darling. Don’t be frightened.”
Chapter 11
The plink of a stone striking her bedchamber window pulled Victoria from a restless slumber. Dazed from half-sleep, she wondered at the hollow ache in her chest. In a flash, the look of stark betrayal on Finn’s face returned, an image she’d had no success wiping from her mind, even with the tray upon tray of pastries she’d baked after he stormed from the house. To find that this sophisticated man, admired beyond measure although for wholly superficial reasons, had a heart she could injure surprised her as nothing else this remarkable summer had.
Even with honorable intent, she didn’t like knowing she’d hurt him. Banter, parry, thrust, the teasing game of trading insults and innuendo was all well and good, but throwing a dart that wounded was unacceptable to a woman who urged her staff to release spiders into the wild. A killer of insects or feelings or hope, Victoria Hamilton was not. She was, in truth, not quite the misanthrope she portrayed herself to be.
Not deep in her heart anyway. A place she invited no one.
The second dink sounded, and she slid from the bed, grabbed a dressing gown, and slipped it over her night rail as she crossed the room. Her feet were bare, the floorboards chilled from the draft seeping through the panes, and she shivered as she raised the window high and leaned out, squinting to get a better view.