No Earls Allowed (The Survivors #2)(45)

What she couldn’t have known was how the boy and the man would melt her heart. She’d never particularly liked Walter. He wasn’t sweet like James or adorable like Charlie. He wasn’t smart like Michael or helpful like Robbie. And he certainly didn’t want her love like Sean or Chester. Walter had always pushed her away. No matter which method she employed to get to know him, he’d wanted nothing to do with her.

But he’d embraced the Warrior. Julia wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t seen it. She almost hadn’t, as she should have been hiding and not sticking her head out to watch. What made it even worse was all the weeping. When Wraxall had talked about his friends, tears had streamed from her eyes. She could hear the sorrow in his voice and knew that though he made war sound heroic and glorious to Walter, the Warrior found it anything but.

And that could only mean one thing—Wraxall cared about these children. He might say he couldn’t look at them. He might dislike that the orphans reminded him of the circumstances of his own birth, but they were winning him over. Just as the boys had won her over—not that she had been a difficult case. She could grudgingly admit she had a soft heart.

Unfortunately, Wraxall was winning her over too. He’d touched her heart tonight when he’d told Walter to look around and to think what he had. The man really did see and understand what she was trying to do here and what she wanted to give these boys. And the way he’d put his arm about Walter, the way he’d spoken to him softly but firmly, the way he’d counseled him had melted her heart—Wraxall reminded her of her own father before her mother had died. Then he had been a different man, one who had always taken the time to listen to Julia’s stories and praise her childish drawings and encourage her in piano and singing, even though every instructor had declared she had no musical talent.

Not all men were kind like her father, though. She’d come to think of him as the exception, not the rule. Damien Holbrook, Viscount Lainesborough, had showed her what most men were truly like. And who was to say the Warrior was not the same as Lainesborough once the layers were peeled back? Hadn’t Damien been charming and kind when he’d courted Harriett? Hadn’t he been everything genteel and charming even after they married? Then he’d grown tired of his new wife and Harriett had come home, weeping and inconsolable because the man she’d fallen in love with was not the man she’d married. The man she’d married was selfish, callous, and lecherous. He’d gone to Town for the Season, leaving her at his country home because she had been too ill with the first symptoms of pregnancy to join him at routs and balls.

Instead, he’d found a mistress and all the papers had reported their great love affair, making Harriett look like a complete fool.

And yet, Julia might have forgiven him that behavior. She was not the sort of person to hold a grudge. But she could never, ever forgive what he’d done after Davy had been born.

And now, Julia was tempted to trust this Warrior, this Mr. Wraxall. Though she feared she would be making the same mistake Harriett had made. The sisters had grown up in the ton. They had been weaned on scandal, raised on gossip, and educated early as to the differences between rumor and innuendo. That men—and women—were often unfaithful in their marriages was no surprise. Their father had not been quite as censorious with the papers as he ought to have been, and so Julia and Harriett always knew when the Duke (or Earl or Marquess) of Somewhere and the new actress from Drury Lane (or the new opera singer or the new viscountess) took up together, leaving their respective spouses to hold their heads high and ignore the liaison.

It was simply that Julia and Harriett had always considered that sort of behavior to belong to other people. Never in their wildest imaginings did they suppose the men they married would be the one to flaunt his paramour. And when Harriett came home in just such a situation, Julia was not as shocked as her sister, but it didn’t make the blow any less painful.

If only she’d known that wasn’t the worst outrage her brother-in-law would perpetrate on the family.

Wraxall might not look as though he was made from the same cloth as Viscount Lainesborough, but how could she be certain? She’d known him but two days, and she could not allow one dizzying kiss to completely addle her brain and weaken her resolve.

With that thought in mind, she retired to bed. Unfortunately, she did not sleep well, and she was still rather groggy the next morning when Mr. Wraxall knocked on her bedroom door at barely half past seven.

She’d been finishing dressing her hair and thought it must be Charlie, as he was always awake first. “Charlie?” she asked through the door.

“It’s Wraxall.”

Julia closed her mouth. She’d been about to invite Charlie in, but she could not extend the same invitation to Wraxall. “One moment.” She gave her image reflected in the cheval glass an annoyed frown, then hurried to the door, her hair pinned on one side and loose on the other. “Yes?”

Wraxall stared at her. “Is that a new style?”

She blew out a breath. “You know very well it is not. I supposed you had come to my room with a matter of some urgency. If the matter can wait—”

He stuck his hand in the gap between the door and the casement, stopping her from closing the door. “It is a matter of concern. You have a line of women at the kitchen door. As the rain hasn’t slowed, I told one of the boys to let them in. They’re currently dripping on the kitchen floor.”