Always a Rogue, Forever Her Love (Scandalous Seasons #4)(43)

“I do.”

And suddenly the little game they played became all too real. She made to pull her hand free.

“Are you turning coward on me, afraid of learning what the future holds in store for you? Surely you must wonder at the man who’d become your husband.”

She laughed, the sound aching and sad to her own ears. “You are incorrigible, Jonathan.”

He tapped his finger over the bridge of her nose. “Mustn’t have you laughing. I’ll remind you this is very serious business we are about, Miss Marshville.”

“Juliet,” she corrected. In the privacy of the moments they managed to steal for themselves, she’d have him call her nothing but Juliet.

“Juliet, then,” he murmured. He turned a too-serious frown on her. “May I carry on?”

She inclined her head. “My apologies,” she said with false seriousness. “Go on, then. What do you see?”

“I see your cottage, of course, with a garden of flowers and…” he tapped the lines of her palm, “five, six, seven children.” He counted.

A sharp bark of laughter burst past her lips. “Seven? Well, I say that is rather a lot!”

Jonathan ignored her. Instead, he turned her hand slightly, availing himself to some other crisscrossing lines, and continued counting. “Eight, no nine, children.”

“Oh, splendid. I was concerned when you said I had only seven children. What are—?”

“Five lovely girls, four boys,” he interjected, correctly interpreting her next question.

“I hope they’re not terribly naughty.”

Jonathan appeared as if to study her hand for another moment, before clucking his tongue at whatever he’d seen, giving her a pitying look. “I’m afraid to report they appear rather precocious.” He lowered his brow to hers and relinquished her hand. “Enough of the future. Why spend so much time there when the present is so much more ideal?”

Except, she found she preferred the future. For the future wasn’t real. It was nothing more than a pretend world she could dare dream of. The now represented loneliness, and an agony for all the things she’d never know.

The pain of her stark reality pierced at her like a dozen arrows being shot through her person. She and Jonathan belonged to two very different worlds. He saw the now as pleasant, ideal, harmonious. Juliet, however, lived in terror of the now. She held her breath with fear of when her blissful, serenity of employment with his family would end and she’d be off in the world, an unwed woman, alone in her cottage. What had once sounded so very splendorous mere days ago now filled her with an aching sadness. And her employment here would end—because she’d learned more than a year ago that all good things, they ultimately died.

She would leave. And wait. Wait in dreaded anticipation for the day Baron Williams found her and demanded justice for the harm she’d done him in her brother’s parlor.

“What is this, now,” he whispered. Touching his fingers to her chin, he angled her back to face him. “You’ve gone all quiet on me, Juliet.”

She pulled away from him, and slashed the air with her hand, suddenly angry with herself for having grown to care so very much for him. “It is how you see the world, Jonathan. You see it as ideal, uncomplicated. That is not how the world truly is.” She detected the slight stiffening of his broad shoulders, and knew she’d done a deplorable job in concealing the bitterness carried in her heart, and underscoring her words.

“You think I’m a self-absorbed nobleman without any real cares, don’t you?” He didn’t allow her to respond but plowed ahead. “What do you see when you look at me? A gentleman who lives for his own pleasures? One who doesn’t take responsibility all that seriously?”

She shook her head, at the unexpected harshness to his tone. “No…I—”

“The day my father died, I assumed the mantle of responsibility for my family. Poppy and Penelope were just babes, Prudence and Patrina but girls.” Guilt filled her at having passed judgment of him. “I became the one to see to my mother’s security and my sisters’ every happiness. You might see my sisters as indulgent, spoiled—”

“No! I don’t…” She didn’t see the girls that way. How could he believe she did?

“Young girls,” he went on as though she’d not spoken. “But they are my responsibility and I love them as though they’re my own daughters, spoiled though they may be. So do not condescend to me with your eyes, madam, or—”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Your mocking words, and erroneous assumption that I see the world as ideal.”

Juliet folded her arms in front of her to ward off the chill in his usually kind, teasing eyes. She sidled over to the sofa and placed the cream embroidered seat between them.

“Are you hiding from me?” The silken whisper, a question, belied by the hard glint in his eyes.

She glanced down at the sofa. Unbeknownst to her, she’d sought purchase from the thick mahogany back of the seat. She let go of the rich fabric. “I do not hide.” She interrupted him as he opened his mouth to speak. “And this was your game, Jonathan.”

He raked a hand through his midnight black waves. “This isn’t about the game, Juliet.”

“Then what is it?” the question exploded from her on a soft cry. She threw her hands up. “I don’t know what you want of me.” But she could not carry on living here if he continued to treat her more like a cherished lover than as the governess he employed to care for his sisters. Not when she knew he’d undoubtedly wed his perfect, English miss while Juliet went off to her cottage.