Three Nights with a Scoundrel (Stud Club #3)(62)

Arm in arm, they hurried up the steps. Lily floated, scarcely feeling the stone beneath her slippers. She couldn’t wait to get upstairs and continue where they’d left off.

When they reached the landing, she paused before rapping on the door. “Why doesn’t the hack driver leave?”

Julian held back. “He’s waiting for me. I asked him to stay.”

Suddenly, she wasn’t floating any longer, just … hollow inside. Surely those words were just a trick of the flickering lamplight. He couldn’t mean to leave her. Not considering what had just happened in that carriage—and more to the point, what hadn’t happened yet, for him.

“I have to go,” he said. “You don’t understand. Someone wants to kill me.”

“Someone wants to kill you?” she repeated. “Well, I want to make love to you. My goodness, Julian. With two such compelling alternatives, however will you choose?”

“I can’t be seen going into your house. I must leave you here, at the door.”

She took a deep breath and forced herself to be calm. “Julian, look around you.” She turned a pointed, slow gaze around the deserted square. “There is no one following us. No threat to your life or mine. No danger, unless you go in search of it. Don’t leave me tonight. Come to my bed, make love to me, and stay safe the whole night through.”

“I can’t do that. I’ve already done too much. I can’t engage you in a sordid affaire.”

“This is love. Love isn’t sordid. And I’ve already told you, I want more than just an affaire.”

“What, marriage?” He seemed to choke on the word. “To me? Lily, we are from completely different worlds. I shouldn’t have to remind you of that. You saw my childhood—the best part of it, mind—with your own eyes, just the other day.”

“I don’t care.”

“I’ve eaten scraps you would not throw to dogs. I spent a month picking oakum in Bridewell. For Christ’s sake, I didn’t even learn to read properly until I was nineteen years old.”

“I. Don’t. Care. About any of it.”

“Others will. Your relations, your friends.”

“Then I don’t care about them.”

He pushed a hand through his hair. “You make it sound so simple, but it’s not. Not for you, and not for me. I’ve spent my life hating the very notion of the aristocracy. The ton and I … we hold one another in mutual contempt. You would ask me to become a permanent part of it?”

She blinked. For a moment, she found it difficult to speak. “Oh,” she managed. “I see. So the problem isn’t that I’m too good for you. It’s that you’re too good for me.”

“No, Lily. Never. That’s not it at all. The problem is that someone murdered Leo, and that same someone may want to kill me. Until I have answers, I can’t promise you a future. I can’t even promise you a tomorrow.”

If she didn’t love him so much, she could hate him for speaking that way. Didn’t he know what a toll this constant anxiety took on her state of mind? There could be no peace for her, if this continued.

“Let me make this easier. Out there”—she nodded toward the square, and the city beyond—“there is danger, mystery, violence. And maybe … just maybe … an elusive answer or two. Meanwhile, in here”—she gestured behind her, toward the door of Harcliffe House—“I am offering you love, pleasure, comfort. A home. And perhaps, one day, a family.”

The cool night air took his sigh and made it a coil of vapor. A visible expression of his hesitance.

She grabbed the lapels of his coat and pulled him close, pressing her brow to his. “Choose me,” she said, in a tone that she feared was too close to pleading. “Choose us. I can’t go on like this, bidding you farewell over and over, not knowing what will become of you once you’ve left my sight. If you desert me tonight, Julian …”

Dear God, was she really saying this? In principle, Lily abhorred ultimatums. They made a woman look desperate and manipulative. But she was desperate, no denying it. And since reasoning, arguing, and outright begging hadn’t convinced him, manipulation seemed her only option left.

Before she could lose her nerve, she said, “Walk away from me right now, and I don’t want to see you again. Ever.”

Then she pulled away to wait for his answer. It was a lonely, unbearably quiet wait.

Everyone assumed that because she was deaf, her world was silent. But that wasn’t the case. She lived with a steady, cycling murmur of sound—much like the effect she’d experienced as a girl, pressing a seashell to her ear. A muted roar, forever washing and ebbing at the edges of her consciousness. For one hideous summer, a high, shrill whistle had lodged just inside her left eardrum, and its ceaseless whine had nearly driven her mad. She’d wept with relief the morning she awoke to find it mercifully gone. But even afterward, total quiet was something she’d never known.

Until now.

There was absence of sound—and then there was silence. Julian’s pause fell into the latter category.

After a long, soul-wrenching minute, he kissed her. So lightly, her lips trembled under his. As they ended the kiss, he cupped her chin in his fingers and stared deep into her eyes.

“God be with you, then.” His thumb stroked a tear from her cheek. “Good night, Lily.”