When they plunged out of the smoke and into the rain, there was a moment of deathly quiet, then the night exploded with cheers. Julian turned so Izzy could see the jubilant crowd surrounding them.
"Look, Isadorable! Everyone's glad to see you." Though dazed and limp in his embrace, Izzy managed a wan smile for her well-wishers.
Not everyone was jubilant, however.
"Eppingham!"
Julian blinked at the sight of his grandfather—out of his chambers for the first time in years. The duke lay twisted painfully in his chair, his face contorted with the effort of staying upright as the wheels tilted and rolled over the uneven ground.
"What is the meaning of this? Why are you out here playing with your damned ponies while the house burns?" Pushed by a breathless footman, the high-backed wicker conveyance lurched to a stop in front of Julian, blocking his route to the house.
"Answer me, you useless fop! Why are you messing about? Put the wench down and see to your duty!" The old man swung his cane at the footman who tried to straighten his twisted legs. "Get off!"
Julian looked down at the man he had feared and respected his entire life. Old fury should be smoldering, hatred should be blooming. Instead, he felt nothing but the urgent need to get his wife indoors.
"She is not a wench. She is my wife." Tucking Izzy more securely into his arms, he stepped around the chair. Izzy needed her warm dry bed and probably a physician. The duke would keep.
"Eppingham!
Eppingham
! Don't you turn" away from me, you worthless popinjay! You had best see to your duty, if you know what's good for you." Rain and spittle sprayed from his twisted mouth as he shrieked at Julian's back.
"Worthless rotter! Scapegrace! First Mandelfred, now you. The both of you are the biggest disappointments in my life!"
Julian paused to look back at his grandfather, and when he spoke his voice was cold. "Manny dying in a hunting accident 'disappointed' you? How odd. Myself, I was only deeply grieved."
The duke's mouth opened to snarl a response, then he cast a look at those watching and visibly bit back his words. Eyes full of bitter frustration, he banged his cane on the chair as if it restrained rather than supported him.
Julian turned away. His grandfather would never change, and the thought of pressing the argument wearied him beyond belief.
"Eppingham!
Eppingham
! " came a last strangled bellow.
"My lord! The duke!"
From behind him came the servants' horrified cries. Julian stopped once more. What now? He turned to see his grandfather's two footmen struggling to lift the twitching form of the duke from the rain-soaked ground. The man writhed in their grasp, still spitting vitriol with each agonized breath. Julian had to hand it to the old fellow. If nothing else, he was unwavering.
"My lord? What should we do?"
All eyes turned to Julian and he realized that for the moment, he was in charge.
"Julian?"
The whisper came from where Izzy was tucked into his collarbone. He smiled down at her. "I'll have you warm in just a moment, my dear."
"I know," she said. "But I think your grandfather needs a doctor."
Julian sighed.
"Get His Grace inside immediately. Go for a physician at once, for my wife as well!"
He looked back down at Izzy. "He'll be well taken care of, I promise. Unfortunately, they cannot give him a new heart."
She made no reply, just lay limply in his arms, eyes closed. The blood still seeped from the knot on her brow, the rain washing it down her face. Holding her tightly, Julian made for the house at a run.
Izzy asleep was an Izzy he had never seen. Her face was so open and sweet, her lips slightly parted, the corners of her mouth tilted as if she dreamed of a marvelous surprise. He tried to imagine what she had been like as a child, before loss, before Hildegard, before… him.
Julian stretched his legs out before him and leaned against the high back of the chair, rolling his head to one side to see her. The stillness of her room was profound, with only the crackle of a small fire in the grate and the blessed easy sound of Izzy's breathing to break the silence.
The bump on her head had proved minor, and she had been spared the worst of the smoke. She was well and safe, from everything in the world.
Julian rubbed his hands over his face and looked down at his wife. Well-dosed by the reassuringly unconcerned physician, she had been sleeping for hours. He had been unable to leave her, though, even long enough to wash.
He had almost lost her. He couldn't bear to contemplate the black pit of loss her death would have brought him.
A few more minutes, and nothing could have survived the inferno in the stable. She had needed help, needed
him
, and he had almost missed it. He had stood there, congratulating himself on his minor heroics, while her life had been burning away with the straw.
Would he never stop failing Izzy? Would he never be the man she had once thought him to be?
He was no knight, no fine and noble creature, yet he could be better than he was. He could attempt to not be the man his father was convinced he was. Perhaps a life such as that, a manhood neither heroic nor wicked, was attainable by him. Perhaps a man such as that was a man Izzy could love. Could he ever be that man?
Yes, he thought abruptly, sitting up. It was their only chance for happiness. If their marriage was to be anything but a cold, indifferent union, he would have to make Izzy fall in love with him.
The way he had fallen for her.
Stunned by the realization, he sank back into the chair. He was in love with her. Love. He had never thought to experience it, never really believed in it, at least not for himself. Love was for other people, finer people, not the dark, twisted men of Dearingham.
On their holidays from school, he had often accompanied Eric home to Greenleigh. How often had he watched from outside the magic circle as Lord and Lady Greenleigh had embraced one another and their children? Like an urchin, freezing in the snow outside, watches as a family gathers in the warmth of its home.
They seemed from another world, sometimes, a gentle, generous world so very unlike his own home of severity and bitterness.
As a boy, seeing the true bond that existed between Eric's parents, he had once wondered at it aloud, it being so far from his experience. Lord Greenleigh had looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, then told him that love made all the good things twice as fine, and all the bad things half as hard.
Young Eppie had buried that bit of wisdom deep in his heart, not dealt with it. But apparently he had believed it after all.
Julian laughed at himself, a scornful sound. So he loved her. She most definitely did not love him. He had quite a task before him, to gain her love.
But he wanted it. He rose from his chair, sparked by restlessness, to stare out at the sheeting rain.
Good God, how he wanted it!
He wanted her to look at him the way Lady Greenleigh looked at her husband. With more than respect, or distant fondness, or simple friendship. He wanted her to need him, to desire him. He wanted her to ache for his happiness the way he ached for hers.
Standing at her chamber window, he recalled the day he had stood before the window at Marchwell Manor, waiting to meet Izzy. He had been desperately unhappy about the situation. All he could think of was how unfair it was that he was being made to marry an unknown woman. He rolled his forehead against the cold glass. Who could have predicted that he would be even more miserable knowing that same woman did not love him?
That she very likely loved his best friend?
Izzy lay swaddled in multiple blankets, and even one fur, tucked mercilessly about her in a confining tangle. The fire roared in the grate, and wrapped clay bottles full of steaming water lay against her feet. One would think she had been caught in a snowstorm rather than a fire. It was nearly noon, and the sun poured brightly into the room, last night's rain a memory. The doctor had come and gone, pronouncing her well enough, considering, and calming her concerns about the babe within her.
Betty bustled about, filling a bath with such a quantity of steaming water that Izzy decided it was an even wager whether she would boil first or drown. However, she was not about to pass on the bath. She would take her chances on being soup if it meant washing the smell of smoke from her skin.
Julian was nowhere to be seen. Betty had told her that he had been up all night, "seeing to things," and had just now gone to his own bath. Izzy sighed, wishing she could speak to him.
Though she knew not what to say. Their easy conversation had died that night in the garden, never to return. It must be her fault, since Julian seemed to be changed not at all by that tumultuous event.
Her tongue was useless around him, and she could do little more than nod. The one thing she wanted to tell him, she could never reveal.
She could not tell him of her love. Pathetic enough was it to love someone who did not return her feelings; it was wholly unnecessary to expose her weakness to his kindly disinterest.
She remembered the night she had gone to him in his study. His painful words of rejection still haunted her, and she would not put herself in that mortifying position again.
Really, she thought to herself grumpily, why did she love him at all? He was selfish, and stubborn, and more than a little manipulative, and… and generous, and strong, and utterly beautiful. She sighed, acknowledging the hopelessness of untangling her heart from his heedless grasp.
As she sank into the all-but-boiling water of her bath, she felt the tension of the last weeks begin to seep from her shoulders. When Betty began to gently rub her aching neck, Izzy nearly sank under the surface in sensual bliss. Her headache began to fade and she was nearly asleep when
the
sense of what Betty was saying struck her.
"Plucked you right out of the fire, he did! And him having just come out a moment before…"
In seconds, Izzy was out of the tub and semi-dressed in a voluminous nightgown and half-tied wrapper. She flung open the door between their suites. She had often passed the door, and knew where it led, though she had never risked trying the knob, fearful of finding it locked from Julian's side. She flung open the door of a smoothly tiled bathing chamber, the likes of which she had heard of, but never seen.
Julian sat naked in a giant tub, his valet pouring a pitcher over his glistening dark head.
Startled by the report of the banging door, Julian jerked his head up sharply. It crashed into the pitcher above it, sending the contents of the vessel to drench the appalled valet.
Julian's surprise at her arrival notwithstanding, he nearly smiled at the picture she made, color high, surrounded by that magnificent mane of dark hair. It coiled over her shoulders, with tiny ringlets pressed damply to her face. She looked adorable.
"Julian! Are you well? Are you burned? What were you thinking, you great idiot? You could have died!"
She stopped, breathing hard, her fear beginning to fade after her outburst.
Abruptly, she became aware of his nudity and her eyes widened in shock. With parted lips, she let her eyes travel from his face down his chest, following the last runnels of rinse water as they trickled through the dark mat of hair on his upper body and gathered in a stream to wet the trim path that arrowed down past his navel.
Her breath arrested in her throat, she could not tear her fascinated gaze from the swirling bath water at his waist. Tainted with soap, it was not very clear until he shifted, sending a small wave to wash away the suds obscuring her vision.
Her jaw dropped as she took in his very large,
very
evident response to her shameless scrutiny. With a tiny squeak of mortification, she flung herself about, racing from the room even faster than she had entered it.
Julian sat, pondering the encounter. Trying to erase the lust awakened within him by her comely disarray and her wide-eyed perusal of his body, he thought about the change in her. Despite his exasperation with her irrational outlook, he was delighted with the dressing-down he had received.
Izzy in a passion won out over a distant Izzy anytime. His valet stood beside the tub, still mopping at his formerly immaculate self with a towel. A wide grin stretching slowly across his face, Julian looked up at the man.
"Her ladyship is quite fetching in a temper, is she not?" he asked.
Simms harrumphed sourly. "Is she likely to burst in here often, my lord?"
"Oh, I hope so. I dearly hope so."
The sweep of her hair over his groin was cool silk over fire. He wrapped the coiling strands gently around his fists and held on as if his sanity depended on it. She moved up his body, whispering an inaudible vow between each kiss she pressed to his shuddering, sweating form. He could not hear her words. He wanted to. He
needed
to know what it was she so fervently promised him against his flesh. He pulled her lips to his, then demanded to know. She only laughed at him, that warm sweet laughter that snared his heart so long ago. He opened his eyes, determined to discover her secret.
Julian lay alone in his giant bed. Once more he had dreamed her. Once more he had awoken with an ache in his stiffened loins. His desire for Izzy was going to drive him mad. Not since his youth had he been so long without a woman.
It had become so extreme that the mere hint of her scent in a hall where she had recently passed would arouse him instantly. Spending a moment in her company threw him into such sexual confusion he could barely speak. And once, when escorting her into the dining room, his arm had brushed her swelling bosom, nearly causing him to burst on the spot.
His dreams were wreathed in sex. Wild, hot, panting visions that left him throbbing with lust every morning. If he did not find release soon, he would have to take himself in hand, humiliating though it might be.
He could not live with her, see her, smell her fragrance every day and not have her. Neither could he live in this state of suspended craving. He feared the lust rising in him. Once before he had given in to it, lost control and taken, her, and it had not helped. The need had only grown, as had his doubts about her feelings for him. No, when he and Izzy came together again, it would be because she wanted him,
loved him
, as madly as he did her. In the meantime, he was quietly losing his mind.