Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke’s Heart (25 page)

That had not sounded at all casual. It had sounded as though she were being strangled. Juliana was beginning to wish that her carriage had been set upon by highwaymen on the way there. Yes. Abduction at the hands of criminals would have been a better fate than this.

“It is not clear,” Nick said.

She stopped again, turning back to Nick. “I beg your pardon. Did you say it is not clear?”

“There are a number of things that he must consider . . .”

Her anger began to rise. “What kind of things? You mean his future bride?”

Nick looked confused. “Among other things.”

“Don’t you think she deserves to know? Isabel? Wouldn’t you have wanted to know before you married Nick?”

Isabel thought for a moment. “Perhaps . . .”

Juliana’s eyes went wide.
Had everyone in the family lost their minds?
“Perhaps?” she squeaked.

Isabel looked surprised, then hurried to correct herself. “All right, yes. I suppose I would have.”

“Precisely!” Juliana looked to Nick. “You see?”

She couldn’t believe that Nick would even consider accepting less than acknowledgment from Leighton. This was his
child.
Legitimate or no, she deserved to know from whence she came.

She deserved to know that she had a family beyond her little world.

It was hard for Juliana to comprehend the idea that Simon might not acknowledge his child. Perhaps this was the way it was done here, in the British aristocracy—this perverse universe where people were less inclined to accept an illegitimate child than they were to accept a father who admitted his mistakes.

Mistakes.

She winced at the word.

The perfect duke, who surveyed with undeniable arrogance the failures of everyone around him, had made the worst kind of mistake.

She would never have dreamed he would be the kind of man to consider walking away from his own child.

It shouldn’t matter.

As it was, she had no claim to him. He was pledged to Lady Penelope. What would change if he’d had an illegitimate child in the country?

Everything.

She knew it was true even before the word floated through her mind.

He would have been less than the Simon she knew. The kind of man who sent a woman away to bear his child was not the kind of man she believed him to be. Was not the kind of man she wanted him to be.

The kind of man she wanted for herself.

Juliana wanted to find him and shake him.

“Where is he? I want to speak with him.”

Nick hesitated. “Juliana. There is more to it than that. It’s not so simple. He’s a duke . . . and a highly respected one at that. He has options to consider. A family to think on.”

Her eyes narrowed. Perhaps she would begin the shaking with her brother.

“Well, he should have thought of that before he shipped the child and its mother off to Yorkshire!”

Isabel’s jaw dropped, and Juliana realized that she had near-bellowed the words. She gave a little huff of indignation. If they thought she was going to apologize for being outraged at his typical, horrible arrogance, they were absolutely wrong.

“Juliana.” Nick’s voice was low and calm.

“Don’t try to change my mind, Nick. Illegitimacy is a sore topic for me at the moment, as our mother has just thrown my own into public question. I won’t let that . . . impossible man simply wave his hand and send his own flesh and blood away without recognition. It’s unacceptable. And if you haven’t the courage to tell him, I will.”

She stopped, breathing heavily after her tirade, and met Nick’s gaze, seeing the frustration there. Perhaps she should not have suggested he was a coward.

“Obviously, I did not mean—”

“Oh, I think you absolutely meant, sister, and you are lucky I am the good twin,” he said. “If you feel so strongly about it, speak to Leighton. I’ve no interest in soliciting your ire. You will see him at dinner.”

Something about the words did not sit right with Juliana, but she was still too angry and eager to face down Simon to even think twice about her brother. They had reached the foot of the wide stone steps leading up to the manor house, and Juliana looked up at the enormous door at the top, which stood open, beckoning her inside.

She was not willing to wait for him.

She’d had enough.

When Juliana found him, Simon was standing at the end of a long room, staring out a window, back to the doorway. She’d almost missed him, silhouetted by a brilliant blue sky that belied the storm building in her heart.

She stepped inside the room—taking note of his sheer size, tall and broad and devastatingly handsome—and hating that even now, in her anger, she was so very drawn to him. She wanted to run to him and wrap herself around him and beg him to be the man she thought him to be.

He was not for her.

She must remember that.

She headed across what appeared to be a sitting room; she cared little for her surroundings, as she was too eager to speak to Simon—to tell him precisely what she thought of his latest ducal decision.

She approached him from behind and offered no preamble. “I thought you were different.”

He turned only his head toward her, his features vague in the afternoon shadows, making it easier for her to speak her mind. She waited for a moment, but he did not speak, did not refute her point, and so she continued, letting her ire rise. “I thought you a gentleman—the kind of man who made good on his promises and cared deeply for what was right in the world.” She paused. “My mistake. I forgot that you only truly care for one thing—not honor or justice, but reputation.”

She laughed, hearing the self-deprecation in the sound, the shaking in her voice as she continued. “I suppose I thought that even as you laughed at me and criticized me for having too much passion or being too reckless or not having enough care for my own reputation—I suppose I thought that maybe I—That maybe you—”

I suppose I thought that maybe you were different.

That maybe you had changed.

That maybe I had changed you.

She could not say any of those things to him.

She had no right to say them.

He turned to fully face her, and she realized that he was holding an infant in his arms.

The room came into stark relief. Not a sitting room. A nursery.

And he was here, holding a sleeping child so small that she fit easily in his hands.

She swallowed, stepping closer, peering into the little round, red face and the bluster went out of her. She no longer wanted to scream or shake him. She did not feel vindicated. She felt . . . lost.

In a different world—another time—they might have been in a similar nursery. Might have had a similar moment. A happier one.

Her voice caught as she spoke, looking at the baby and not the man. “I know what it is like to grow up knowing that a parent doesn’t want you, Simon,” she whispered. “I know what it’s like to have the world know it, too. It is devastating. Devastating when you are four, when you are ten, when you are . . . twenty.

“I know what it is to be ridiculed and rejected by everyone.”

What it is to be rejected by you.

Suddenly, his acceptance of this child meant everything to her. She did not know why—only that it was true.

“You must acknowledge her, Simon.” There was a long silence. “You must. So there is scandal. You can weather it. You can. I—”
No. There was no I
. She was nothing to him. “We . . . we will stand beside you.”

There were tears on her cheeks, and she knew she should be sorry for them. “You’re here for her, Simon. You came to meet her. Surely that means something. You can want her. You can love her.”

She heard the plea in her words, knew that she was talking about more than this child.

She should be embarrassed but could not find the energy to care.

All she cared about was him.

This man who had ruined her for all others.

From the beginning.

“Simon.” she whispered, and in the name was an ocean of emotion.

He was everything she’d always sworn to hate . . . an arrogant aristocrat who had ruined an unsuspecting female and had a daughter whom he might not acknowledge.

She hated herself for noticing the strength and perfection of him.

For wanting him even as she should despise him.

He took a step toward her, and she stepped back, afraid to be closer to him. Afraid of what she might do. What she might allow him to do.

“Juliana, would you like to meet my niece?”

His niece.

“Your niece?”

“Caroline.” The word was soft, filled with something she instantly envied.

“Caroline,” she repeated, taking a step toward him, toward the cherub in his arms, with her little round face and her little rosebud of a mouth, and swirls of golden hair just like her uncle’s.

Her uncle.

She let out a long breath. “You are her uncle.”

One side of his mouth lifted in a barely there smile. “You thought I was her father.”

“I did.”

“And you did not think to confirm it before making such accusations?”

Warmth flooded her cheeks. “Perhaps I should have.”

He looked down at the baby in his arms, and something tightened in Juliana’s chest at the incongruous portrait they made—this enormous man, the portrait of propriety and arrogance, and his infant niece, barely the length of his hands.

“Caroline,” he whispered once more, and she heard the awe in his voice. “She looks just like Georgiana. Just like she looked when she was born.”

“Your sister.”

He met her eyes. “Georgiana.”

Understanding dawned. “She is the secret. The one you have been working to protect.”

He nodded. “I had no choice. I had to protect the family. I had to protect her.”

Juliana nodded. “How old is she?”

“Seventeen.”

Not even out.

“Unmarried?” She did not have to ask the question.

He nodded once, stroking one finger along Caroline’s tiny hand.

The baby was the reason for everything . . . for his anger at Juliana’s recklessness . . . for his insistence that her reputation was paramount . . . for his impending marriage.

A knot formed in Juliana’s throat, making it difficult to swallow.

“I thought I would get here and the answer would be clear. I thought it would be easy to send her away. To send them away.”

She was transfixed by his soft, liquid voice, by the way he held the infant, so carefully.

“Then I met Caroline.” In her sleep, the child grasped the tip of his finger tightly, and he smiled, wonder and sadness breaking across his beautiful features—features that so rarely betrayed his emotion. He exhaled, and Juliana heard the weight of his responsibility in the sound.

Tears pricked, and Juliana blinked them away.

When society heard, the scandal would be unbearable. Did he really think he could hide from them forever?

She knew she must tread lightly. “You sent your sister here to keep her . . . situation . . . a secret?”

He shook his head. “No. She ran. From the family . . . from me. She did not think I would support her. Support them. And she was right.”

She heard the bitterness in his voice, saw how one side of his mouth curled in a grimace before he turned to cross the room and return the baby to her cradle.

From where he had lifted her.

Suddenly, Juliana realized the enormity of this moment upon which she had intruded; aristocratic males did not linger in nurseries. They did not hold children. But Simon had been here. Had been holding that baby with all the care she deserved.

There was such uncertainty in him—in this man who never doubted himself. Whom no one ever doubted. She ached for him. “She will forgive you.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do . . .” She paused.
How could she not forgive him?
“I know it. You came after her. After them both.”

To take care of them.

“Do not make me into a hero, Juliana. I found her . . . discovered her situation . . . she would not tell me who the father was . . . and I was furious. I left her here. I wanted nothing to do with her.”

She couldn’t believe it. Wouldn’t believe it.

“No . . .” She shook her head. “It’s not true. You are here now.”

He turned away from her and returned to the window to look out over the heath. He was quiet for a long moment. “But for how long?”