Chapter 19

Achorus of shouldn't-have-dones whirled through Julian's mind.

He shouldn't have brought Tessa with him to Suffolk.

He should have deposited her at her brother's St. James's Square mansion—the man was a duke, after all, and could command an army if he chose.

But he hadn't been able to make himself do it.

He'd needed to have her with him—to see she was safe with his own eyes.

So, he'd brought her here, and after introducing her to Mrs. Morningstar, Nonsuch's capable housekeeper, he'd taken himself off to the study, grabbed a decanter of whiskey, and made his way to the family plot.

Almost too many shouldn't-have-dones in that last sentence to enumerate.

Of course, all those shouldn't-have-dones paled when compared to the whopping shouldn't-have-done running riot and wreaking havoc through his mind.

He'd tupped her.

Again.

Hadn't been able not to.

And, still, he wanted to do it again…and again…and again…Wanted to spend the rest of his days tupping Tessa…properly.

Better not to focus on the shouldn't-have-dones.

Presently, he was stretched on his back on a gently sloping hillside beneath a sprawling, five-hundred-year-old oak tree. Sun-dappled light filtered through breeze-fluttered leaves and soaked into his outstretched body.

This was the single thing in his wasted life that Father had done right—Clarissa's gravesite, placed on this hillside, overlooking the estate's stables and Thoroughbred training track…giving her this, her favorite view for eternity.

Julian propped himself onto an elbow and took a swig of whiskey, the decanter now half empty.

A shouldn't-have-done, of course, but he'd found no better way to slog through this day than to seek and find blackout oblivion and wake the next day feeling like utter shite, of course, but having the previous day done and behind him.

Until the Earth circled the sun three hundred and sixty-four more times and he did it all over again.

He'd made his peace with the inevitability.

Unlike Father.

Julian took another swig. The thing was he couldn't actually stand the taste of whiskey. But the only other method for blackout oblivion that he knew of was opium, and that was a step too far. Unlike whiskey, he suspected he would like it too much. A risk he couldn't take.

So, whiskey.

Clarissa would have been thirty-three years old today. She would've been a wife…a mother…likely the owner of a horse racing stable and Julian's fiercest competitor on the track.

Or perhaps, she would have been none of those things.

Perhaps she would've gone her own way.

Perhaps she would've led a surprising life.

As long as it would've been a happy life, it wouldn't have mattered to Julian. The point was she would've been here, sitting beside him, instead of lying beneath a headstone. Perhaps at this very moment offering running commentary about various horses as the jockeys took them through their paces. Over the years, that was the hardest fact for him to reconcile—Clarissa's life, unlived.

He turned his head and caught sight of a figure at the bottom of the hill, hand held to her forehead as her gaze cast about the grounds. Recognition had him rising to a fully seated position.

Tessa.

She was looking for something or…someone.

Him.

He waited, tension twisting through his gut, and saw the instant her gaze lit upon him. She stilled for half a beat of time before she began marching up the hill, determination in each stride. Of course, she wouldn't take the hill any other way.

Quite a woman was Lady Tessa Calthorp, former Siren.

He snorted and propped onto both elbows as he took in her approach. The whiskey should've provided a barrier, a remove, from which he could watch her and maintain a distance. But whiskey had no dulling effects when it came to Tessa. It wasn't how matters worked with her. When she entered his orbit, it was he who circled around her. Her pull was that strong.

She looked her usual self in many ways, with her usual attire, her hair pulled back into a prim knot. Except the wind caught at it and tempted it free, wispy tendrils burnished gold in the sunshine, her eyes bright and silver as the puffs of cloud above, her full mouth soft and tempting as ever.

A pulse of desire thrummed through him. Complicated, this desire. Physical, yes. Overwhelmingly so, at times. But more than physical. A feeling inside him, like a yawning black chasm that wanted to take all her sunshine and light and swallow it whole—wouldn't be satisfied until it did…until he had it for himself…

No former about it—the woman was a siren through and through, tempting him toward the rocks…toward his destruction.

When she was halfway up the hill, she called out, "There you are."

"Here I am."

An only slightly civil response. But he wasn't yet sure how he felt about her joining him here. Even the servants knew to keep respectfully clear of him on this day.

She didn't stop until she'd come within ten feet of him, a little winded, hands planted on her waist. One half siren—the other half harridan.

He didn't mind.

In fact, he rather liked it. That she could look the way she did—diamond of the first water, if anyone peered closely enough…and he had—and be the way she was…It was rare thing in a woman.

Her gaze raked over his supine form, missing nothing as it hesitated on the decanter of whiskey, but didn't rest until it fell upon the headstone to his right.

"Clarissa," he said.

"Your sister," she said, soft, all harridan vanished.

"She would've liked you."

He hadn't the faintest idea why he'd said it, except he thought it would be true.

Tessa lowered herself to the grass and settled a few feet away. Far enough that she wasn't within easy reaching distance, but close enough that he could feel her presence…the restless vibrancy that ever radiated from her, so bright were the cells that constituted her being.

"It's lovely here," she said, taking in the view below of Nonsuch's Thoroughbreds going through their paces on the practice course. "They're so strong and fast…so beautiful with their shiny coats and the muscles working beneath." Her voice held a note of self-consciousness. "I didn't grow up around horses or this." The sweep of her arm indicated this was all of Nonsuch—grand English country estate.

"As a child," he said, picking up the thread, "I was a scrawny little lad."

This got a lift of her eyebrows. "Oh? I would've assumed you a boy who was always large for his age."

"Nay, I didn't grow until I was eighteen. Then it was six inches that year and another three at nineteen."

"That must've come as a welcome surprise."

She didn't know what he was on about, so she was humoring him.

"Scrawny," he repeated, "and scared of everything. Clarissa hadn't a fearful bone in her body. And horses? She loved them. Amongst my earliest memories are her riding her pony and me watching, her little shadow."

"How much older was she?"

"Three years," he said. "I didn't like horses. They were too big. Made me feel too small."

"How did that change?"

"One day, Clarissa led me to her pony and just had me look into his eyes. Wouldn't let me stop for ten straight minutes. Stop whining and tell me what you see there, she commanded. Does he want to harm you? I shook my head, hoping for reprieve. Then she had me run my palm along his nose. The pony's eyes went soft, and he swayed forward, into my hand, and I experienced this sensation in the center of my chest, like my heart was trying to lift free of my body. Now you won't ever be afraid again. Her words." Julian shook his head. "If only it were that simple."

"You were still afraid of horses?"

A bitter laugh escaped him. "Oh, no, that fear was cured." His smile fell. "But there's so much more out there, you know?"

He caught Tessa's silvery gaze and saw she might—and, further, he hoped it so.

So much more out there…

To fear.

Julian left it unsaid, but Tessa heard it anyway.

They hadn't experienced similar upbringings, not by a mile, but they'd had upbringings fraught with the sort of dangers and uncertainties that caused the ground to wobble beneath their feet.

Which, of course, didn't at all square with the golden lord she'd thought him when they'd first met, but it did with the man sitting beside her now. This golden lord knew of pain and struggle. Not in the ways she knew, but in ways she sensed were somehow worse.

His gaze skimmed across the racing course below. She intuited he couldn't be looking into her eyes when he continued. "Clarissa began getting tired. Where her skin had always been sun-kissed from so much time spent outdoors, it became pale and wan. In the course of a few months, she was a shadow of the lively girl she'd been all her life." Before Tessa could ask, he said, "A disease of the blood according to the doctors." He shrugged, a gesture helpless to the past. "A trip to the coast was prescribed. When that didn't do any good, Father took her to a spa village in Switzerland. No joy there, either. She just kept growing more and more frail." He lifted empty hands. "Then, one morning, she didn't wake up."

The words, full of grief and helplessness to the cruel whims of the universe, held a note of surprise, as if all these years later, he still couldn't quite believe them.

"And you were a devastated boy, alone in the world."

He swallowed. "No one was more grief-stricken than Father. Clarissa had been his favorite. I never held that against him. She'd been my favorite person in the world, too."

"I'm sorry."

The words felt so paltry Tessa felt almost embarrassed to speak them. They were what one said in the face of utter devastation. Yet they were necessary for their very simplicity. What else sufficed when an entire universe had been blown to bits?

"Father responded by diving straight into the sea of iniquity and never resurfaced, the meaning to his life obliterated." No masking the pain that yet remained. "Nonsuch has long stood as one of the preeminent racing stables in England. Father almost ran it into the ground by making one bad bet after another. It was as if he wanted to set it, everything, and everyone ablaze and wreak utter devastation. I took control before it could entirely implode."

That he remained in possession of one of the finest racing stables in England spoke of his grit, determination, and talent. Qualities he didn't wear on his sleeve as the golden lord of the ton, but were there, nonetheless.

"And your mother?" It only struck Tessa now that he hadn't yet mentioned her.

Julian gave a dry snort. "Mother did come for the funeral, I'll give her that."

Tessa's eyebrows burrowed into her forehead. "Came for the funeral?"

"Oh, yes, Mother and Father had an arrangement. Their marriage had been decided at birth, but Mother didn't like the man her family determined she would marry. The only way she would agree to marry the Marquess of Ormonde, whose debaucheries were breathlessly reported all the way up in Edinburgh, was that once she delivered his heir, she could return to Scotland and set up her own household."

Tessa nearly gasped. "What woman would do such a thing?"

"All parties involved must've thought exactly that, for they agreed. After all, what mother would leave her newborn babe behind, especially when she had a three-year-old daughter, as well?" He was unable to contain a bitter snort. "Mine, it turned out."

This time, Tessa did gasp, her gaze flying to meet his, but all he gave her was his profile. "No. She left you when you were a babe?"

Though she'd been young when her mother had died, Tessa remembered her—her scent…the feel of her affection. Julian had been denied that, and she experienced an ache for him.

"Without a backward glance," he said. "The aristocracy plays their games by rules they make up as they go along."

Tessa felt no surprise at that last part. Long nights at The Archangel had taught her as much.

"Can't say I blame her," continued Julian, resignation to the past clear in every syllable. "You've yet to meet a wastrel aristocrat as debauched as my father. Born that way, so why wouldn't his heir be the same? She didn't stay to find out."

"No one is born debauched," said Tessa. "You aren't debauched."

"No?" He took a long swig of whiskey, his face etched in defiance.

A warning, that swig of whiskey. He wanted her to understand who she was dealing with.

And she did.

But she wasn't at all sure they were seeing the same man. He'd been left to raise himself, without the guidance only a parent could offer. And even so, he'd become a man who was resilient and kind, capable and possessed of grit.

Yet he didn't acknowledge those qualities in himself.

A question came to her, one she very much wanted to ask—whose answer she sensed lay beneath the way Julian managed his life and saw himself when he looked in the mirror.

He cut her a glance, his expression telling her he was waiting for her to ask it.

"Your father," she began, "he…"

Oh, how to ask such a question?

Julian knew how to answer it, though. "Took his own life."

He spoke the words—flat…distant—as if he'd long locked any feeling related to it in a deep, inaccessible corner of his mind.

The statement settled into the air for a few beats of time before she asked, "When?"

"Three years ago." He blew a harsh breath. "On the anniversary of Clarissa's death."

Tessa's hand flew to her mouth. Julian cut her a hard glance. "He'd been working up the courage to pull the trigger on that death for twenty years." The facts emerged in no particular order and without emotion. "A single gunshot to the head. In a cheap East End bedsit. A small blessing, that."

"How do you mean?" None of Julian's life sounded like a blessing. Tessa didn't believe in family curses, but the history of the House of Ormonde might tempt the possibility.

"So he would be found by strangers."

Tessa glanced at the all-but-forgotten decanter in Julian's hand. No one would blame him for downing a bottle of whiskey every day.

But he didn't.

And that said something about him. Life had made him strong, yet he didn't seem to know it.

"We have bad blood in this family, in case you hadn't figured that out yet."

"Bad blood?"

"The sort that dies with me."

Tessa's stomach fell to her feet. "How do you mean?" Before he could answer, she said, "Is that why you don't court ladies?"

He didn't need to nod. The flex of his jaw was answer enough.

"Is that why you don't…" Oh, she couldn't make herself finish that question. "Why you pleasure women in ways other than…" Another sentence she couldn't finish.

He cut her a penetrating glance. "I won't father children."

"But…" Oh, she had no right to say this, but it was occurring to her that this impressive man was harboring some beliefs that needed to be challenged. "Isn't that your one job as a marquess? To marry and breed?"

He shrugged his indifference. "They can give the marquessate to someone else for all I care."

She wasn't letting him off the hook that easily. This man definitely needed challenging. "Did Clarissa have bad blood?"

"Of course not."

"But she had the same blood flowing through her veins as you. The logic only follows…"

How she hoped he would follow it.

"She was the white sheep of the family," he said, as if he'd given it some thought. "Every family has one exception, even bad families."

Oh, he was clinging onto this belief with both hands. Well, he wasn't the only one who could latch onto a notion and not let go. This man needed a good shaking up.

And she was the woman to give it to him.

"Would Clarissa have liked that?" She pointed at the decanter of whiskey lolling loosely in his hand.

"She hadn't yet developed a taste for drink," he said, dry. "She was ten years old when she died."

He was deliberately misconstruing her question…which only meant she'd hit close to the mark. Time to move even closer…"Would she have liked you feeling pity for yourself?"

His head whipped around, his summer-blue eyes sparking heat. "I don't pity myself."

"Don't you?" Tessa wasn't about to let up. "What is that whiskey all about?"

"It's about getting through the day."

"You mean, it's about avoiding the day."

He flinched.

Now, she had the bit firmly between her teeth. "I see it every night at The Archangel. Lords using every vice at their disposal to avoid the reality of their lives. How is that"—her finger turned accusing—"any different?"

He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled a frustrated breath.

He didn't have a ready answer.

But Tessa did.

"Has it ever occurred to you to do something different with this day?"

Defensiveness shimmered off him. "I won't have Clarissa spending it alone."

"But is this what she would want? You wallowing in drink and grief? You could give her the birthday she would want. You're here, Julian. You're alive."

He went utterly still, a riot of conflicting emotions passing behind his eyes, as he turned her words over in his mind and tested them for truth.

She could say more, Tessa understood that. But the fact was Julian had a right to his feelings—and how he got through this day was his business.

It was no worse than what others did.

How utterly alone he was in the world, forced to navigate his life alone, without the care and love of family—family that Tessa took for granted every day of her life. How he was able to get out of bed and put one foot in front of the other, day after day, she wasn't sure. He might appear weak in this moment, but he was the strongest man she knew.

And this wasn't the moment to say any of that to him.

She pushed off the ground and stood. While she dusted off her skirts, he settled onto one elbow, his long body half twisted at the torso, and silently watched, contemplative. She met his eye, all brisk efficiency. "Mrs. Morningstar sent me out here to inform you that the evening meal will be served at seven of the clock—sharpish, she instructed me to say."

The suggestion of a smile hovered at the corner of his mouth. Already, the world felt brighter. "I make it a point to always do as Mrs. Morningstar instructs."

"And she said to remind you there will be guests."

He gave a slow nod, as if he'd forgotten, but now remembered. "Rake."

"Rake?"

"The Duke of Rakesley. He's my oldest friend, and his Somerton estate shares a border with Nonsuch." He hesitated before adding, "He always takes the evening meal with me on Clarissa's birthday."

An unexpected feeling of relief strummed through Tessa. Relief that Julian had someone in the world who cared about him—who saw him through this day.

Relief that Julian understood that, to at least one person in the world, he mattered.

Not just onesuggested a small voice.

And Tessa didn't try to deny it.

Julian mattered.

To her.

"Then," she said, "I'll see you at supper."

His head canted subtly, his gaze inscrutable and searching. "You don't have to join us. If you prefer to take your meal in your room, that is."

"Is this your way of gently telling me not to join the meal?"

An unspoken yes echoed in the air between them.

"After your ordeal with those ruffians, I thought you?—"

"It was your ordeal, too," she cut across him. "I wouldn't miss this evening meal for the world."

And it was true.

She wanted to meet this Duke of Rakesley…Rake. This man who cared about Julian.

The expression on Julian's face shifted into one more serious and intent. "Speaking of the ordeal," he said. "We need to discuss Jagger. I hired a Bow Street Runner, and?—"

"You had him investigated?"

"Aye."

Irritation prickled through her and found its way into her voice. "You had no right. It's none of your concern."

"Tessa," he said, low and intense, "it concerns you. It's my concern."

She swallowed against the sudden lump in her throat.

"There's information you need," he continued. "That's why I came to your townhouse this morning."

This morning?It felt like a lifetime ago. Nonsuch Castle seemed to exist in a realm so very far away from London and all its concerns.

"It can wait."

With that, she swiveled, her skirts swishing about her ankles and made her way down the hill, her long legs wanting to gain momentum with every step. Out here in the Suffolk countryside, the blood ran lighter in her veins. This air…She was a London girl, born and bred…through and through…but this Suffolk air, diffuse with golden sun, that star's warmth soaking through cloth and skin and into every fine cell of her being, it could almost convince her of exotic possibility…That she could be another sort of woman…The sort of woman whose feet picked up that momentum and kicked into a gallop to match the Thoroughbreds in the distance. If she could get her feet moving fast enough, perhaps they could race faster than her mind.

But she tamped down the feeling as best she could.

Julian's eyes were following her all the way.

They were also why the blood fizzed in her veins and untamed thoughts whirled through her mind.

Julian.

With everything that had happened to him in his life, his brain had somewhere made a faulty connection. It was like when one arrived at the wrong answer at the end of a long algebraic equation. One had to retrace each and every step to find the error. For the solution was there, in the open, waiting to be fixed.

Yes, a flaw existed in Julian's thinking.

All one had to do was trace back and nick the error that had led him to the wrong conclusion about himself.

And she was the woman to do it.