Three Nights with a Scoundrel (Stud Club #3)(103)

He turned to the window and was silent. Lily tried not to stare at him. She didn’t want to seem as though she was desperately hanging on the hopes of his reply. Even though she was.

Suddenly, he swore. “Fine. Let’s do this.” He rapped smartly on the carriage roof, calling for a halt. Gesturing for her patience, he opened the window to call up to the driver. With his head turned, she couldn’t make out what he was saying.

But he resettled in his seat, and the carriage resumed its journey. Lily watched out her window. Where they normally would have turned on Oxford Street, the coach continued straight. She considered asking him their destination but then decided against it. Wherever he was headed, she was along for the ride.

They rattled on past Mayfair and turned into Bloomsbury. She recognized the street name instantly from addressing so many invitations and notes to Julian over the years.

“We’re going to your house?” she asked.

He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “We’re going to Julian Bellamy’s house,” was his cryptic reply.

The carriage rolled to a stop, and Julian opened the door himself, reaching to hand her down. Day was quickly dwindling, giving way to a cold December night. Lily shivered in her traveling cloak as she followed him to the doorstep of a nondescript row house. The home was largish, but not especially grand.

From his breast pocket, he withdrew a pair of keys and fitted one into the lock. She watched with absurd fascination. In all honesty, she could not recall ever locking the front door of her home. There was always a footman standing at attention, waiting to open or close the door for her.

He used the second key to turn another lock, down near the bottom of the door. And then he used his shoulder to push the panel inward.

The entry was cold and dark, and stairs loomed directly before them. They climbed the steep flight, then emerged into a spacious corridor. From what she could see, peering into adjacent rooms, the furniture had all been covered with Holland cloth.

“Wait,” he signed. He ducked through a door and returned a minute later, candelabrum in hand. Two lit tapers burned in the holder, casting flickering light around the room. He offered the candelabrum to her, and she took it, holding it between them to throw warm illumination on his face.

“So,” he said. “This is Julian Bellamy’s house. Here on this floor, we have library, drawing room, dining room, parlor.”

With the exception of a pile of correspondence in the library, there was little evidence of habitation. No half-read books with ribbon markers or unfinished letters lying about. No cozy rug to throw over one’s lap while sitting by the hearth. In fact, the hearth was so absent of ashes and soot, she wondered if it had ever been used.

Perhaps this was Julian Bellamy’s house. But no one lived here.

She followed him up an even narrower staircase, her sense of unease mounting with every step. What with the encroaching darkness and the flickering fingers of candlelight and the eerie desolation of the place, Lily began to feel as though she were living some horrific legend, like Bluebeard. Perhaps he would show her upstairs to his private room of horrors, where on the wall were mounted the severed heads of his first six wives … soon to be joined by her own.

Don’t be ridiculous, her practical nature chided.

Her heart, on the other hand, drummed a repetitive two-beat warning: Beware. Beware.

When she reached the top of the stairs, turned into a small antechamber, and spied a vaguely human shape on the settee, heaped over with newspapers … Lily gasped.

When the heap of newspapers suddenly moved—she screamed.

A man bolted upright, shoving papers to the floor. “What’s all this, then?”

It took all Lily had not to drop the candelabrum. She plastered herself to Julian’s side.

“My valet,” he explained for her, spelling out, “Dillard.” To the man, he said, “What are you still doing here? Didn’t I pension you off with the others when I married?”

The slovenly heap of a manservant shrugged, sending one last sheet of newsprint sliding to the floor. “I like it here. And I reckoned there was an even chance it wouldn’t work out. And here you are, back.” He gave Lily an insolent, appraising leer. “Very nice, guv. A step up from your usual. Whose wife is this one?”

“Mine, you lackwit.” Julian shook his head, obviously disgusted. “Useless clod. Get out.”

Dillard blinked at him, the very embodiment of inertia.

“Oh … just go back to sleep.”

That much the valet could manage. Leaving him to his settee and newspapers, Julian ushered Lily through the antechamber and into the next room.

“So this,” he said, gathering the candlelight and her attention with a tug on her wrist, “is Julian Bellamy’s private suite.” He gestured toward their immediate surroundings. “Dressing room.”

Most of the shelves and racks were bare, their contents having been exported to Harcliffe House some weeks ago. Lily’s eye went to a row of hats on a high shelf. She recognized some of them from years past, though she had not seen them in recent memory. Out of fashion now.

“For bathing and such,” he said, pulling her through another small chamber, equipped with washstand, mirror, and copper tub.

“Bedchamber.”

Well. And so it was.

Lily lifted the candlestick high, taking a good look around. The room was twice as large as Harcliffe House’s largest bedchamber. Surely some hapless, well-meaning walls had been sacrificed for its creation. It was furnished in an eclectic frenzy of Oriental, Egyptian, and Continental décor. An obelisk here; a rounded bowl there. Sensual shapes, all. Rich color saturated the room, and ornate patterns danced on every surface.