Three Nights with a Scoundrel (Stud Club #3)(85)

Julian righted himself and took Lily by the shoulders, assessing the soundness of her arms and wrists. “Are you hurt? I’m so sorry. There was a—”

“I’m fine,” she said, patting down her dress. “Just a bit rattled.”

Rattled. The word made him see red. Julian was going to find the man who’d pushed him so rudely and rattle him to the bones.

As Lily adjusted her cape, he wheeled to search the crowd. No one figure particularly leapt out. It had happened so fast. He’d formed no impression of the arm that shoved him, much less the man to whom it belonged.

Frustrated, he clenched his hands into fists.

Something crumpled in his left palm.

He opened his hand. There, on his gloved palm, lay a crunched card with writing on it. Someone must have slid it into his hand during the confusion. With a quick glance around, he grasped the card in his fingertips and pulled the creases straight.

Hold your tongue, if you wish to keep holding your lovely bride.

A clanging Bell will be silenced.

The ground buckled beneath his boots. The words on the card fuzzed, as though grown over with black mold.

A clanging Bell will be silenced.

Someone knew. Someone knew everything.

Chapter Twenty-one

That card … it was more than a blow to the stomach. More than a shot to the heart. More than a lightning strike, or even a grenade. It was a split-second deluge of ten thousand tons of snow. The obliteration of everything. Life as he knew it, replaced by cold, blank, oppressive silence.

For a fraction of time, Julian’s world ceased to exist.

And then it rushed back, in a million crystalline facets. His senses opened like floodgates, taking in every available stimulus. The myriad sights and sounds and smells that typically melded into a patchwork of “city street” sorted themselves out, announced themselves one by one in his consciousness. Especially the sounds. He heard everything. The clop of each individual horseshoe against the cobbled street. Rats scrabbling in the gutter, their tiny claws shredding through autumn’s last few desiccated leaves. The cries of street merchants hawking apples, posies, herbs, newspapers, snuff, and “Ink, black as jet! Pens, fine pens!”

Across the street, some dozen doors down, hinges creaked. An old man coughed and spat.

Julian’s heart pounded through his whole body, beating down the encroaching panic with grim, steady blows.

With frantic composure, he scanned the vicinity. Who? Who knew? Who’d done this?

“Goodness,” Lily said, leveraging his grip on her arm to steady herself. “That was unexpected. Are you well?”

No. No, he wasn’t well, and this was hardly unexpected. How could he have ever relaxed his guard? He was a fool. A bloody goddamned fool. He’d wanted to believe, so badly, that Leo’s death was mere coincidence and he had no mortal enemies. That he’d escaped his squalid past and left it behind to embrace a bright future with Lily. But he’d been wrong, all wrong.

“Julian?” She tugged at his sleeve. “Really, I’m perfectly well. Let’s just go on.”

They couldn’t continue to walk in the open street like this, with Devil-knows-who following them. He needed to get her home, but could he even risk a hackney? The drivers perched atop their boxes peered down at him, vulturelike, their necks sunken into their high, black collars.

Threat menaced from every direction. The wrinkled old fellow with his box of doubtless tainted fruit. The gray clouds looming overhead, squashing them all. Even the wind’s cold bite made him want to snap back.

He trusted no one.

He put one arm about Lily’s shoulders, bent to slide the other under her thighs, and with a small grunt of effort, swept his wife into his arms. As he made his way down the street, he barked at the people before them. “Make way. My wife is ill. Let us pass.”

“Julian,” she insisted, “I tell you, I’m fine. No injury whatsoever.”

He paid her no mind, simply continued striding down the center of the walk, forcing all others to scramble out of his path. It was unreasonable. The behavior of a madman. He didn’t care. This woman was his responsibility, placed into his keeping by sacred vows, and he’d exposed her to danger. Now he was going to personally rescue her from it, if it exhausted all the strength in his body.

If it killed him.

He carried her all the way back to Harcliffe House. After the first quarter-mile, Lily gave up protesting and concentrated on being portable. None of her objections had any effect. Her husband was a man possessed. He didn’t even seem winded from the exertion. His heartbeat thumped against her body, almost preternatural in its unflagging, deliberate rhythm.

Goodness. As they finally approached the square, she made a mental note to save the news of her next pregnancy for a location closer to home.

He carried her up the steps of the house. A footman opened the door, and Julian swept her inside, barely acknowledging the servant or Swift, who stood slack-jawed in the entryway.

“I’m fine,” Lily called out to the butler, as Julian carried her straight past and mounted the stairs. “Don’t be concerned.”

When they reached the door of her suite—now their suite—Julian temporarily transferred her full weight to one arm and opened the latch with the other. Off-balance, he lurched through the open door, kicked it shut, and collapsed against it, still holding her fast against his chest.