Always a Rogue, Forever Her Love (Scandalous Seasons #4)(46)

With her, he wanted to be more. He wanted her to see him as more than merely Sin, hopeless rogue.

A strand of hair fell over his brow, and Juliet brushed it back. “Forgive me,” she said quietly. “I did not mean to insult you.”

He nodded, and spanned his hand around the lower portion of her calf. “What happened?” he murmured, wanting to know everything about her life before this moment.

She shrugged. “Hardly anything exciting. I was thirteen. Albert and I were climbing a tree at Rosecliff Cottage, and I fell to the ground. The doctor set it, and it, of course, never healed the exact same.”

Pain knifed into his heart. She would have been the same age as Penelope at the time of her accident. He imagined a crimson-curled, freckle-faced Juliet of thirteen with wide eyes filled with tears of pain.

Around the time of her accident, Jonathan had been recently out of university, a young gentleman of three and twenty who’d recently assumed the mantle of responsibility for his family…and he’d also established his reputation of rogue, and master at the faro tables around that time.

Shame twisted at his stomach. “Your brother was with you,” he murmured, finding some solace in the idea that she’d not been alone. Even if she had been in company with the boy who’d grown into the wastrel, reprobate Albert Marshville.

Juliet stiffened, her gaze skittered away. “Yes, he was with me.” Bitterness laced those five words.

Jonathan had a sense that she withheld something more to the story of her fall. He ceased his line of questioning, and they fell into a comfortable silence better suited to a companionable couple long wed. He resumed running smoothing circles over the small of her back.

Juliet steepled her hands together and placed them upon his chest, then leaned back while looking up at him. “Do you know how very angry I was after I’d fallen? When I woke up and learned what had happened, I hurled every item within my reach at the walls of my room.”

Suddenly, he wished he could go back and sit beside her as she’d learned the truth of her leg. Wished he could go back and take her hand in his and assure her that he’d glimpsed into the future and spied the twenty-two year old Juliet Marshville and she was a courageous, beautiful, spirited woman, in spite of the injury she’d sustained.

A wistful smile played at her lips. “I look at Penelope and see just a girl, and yet, when I was very nearly her age, I’d already learned the truth.”

He stilled. “The truth?”

“That I would never wed. I knew I’d never have a husband or nine children,” she smiled up at him as if he could find amusement at the reminder of their earlier game, even with this pain bleeding through her words.

“Of course you’ll have a husband and nine children,” he added gruffly. And he would abhor the man with everything inside him.

Her eyes took a faraway quality. “Perhaps,” she said unconvincingly. “Know what I shall have though?”

He locked his gaze with hers. “What is that?”

“Rosecliff Cottage,” she said on a smile.

The unwitting reminder tugged at his insides. There would come a time, not very far from now when she would leave. She’d pack her valise of her gowns and sketchpads and disappear from his life. Ah God, what was to account for this dull ache at his chest? He forced a half-grin. “Ah, yes, but then that requires your converting my sisters into proper, demure, English ladies.” His teasing had the opposite effect. The sparkle in her eyes dimmed, and her smile faltered. Determined to restore the gentle ease between them, Jonathan rescued the sketchpad from the floor, and with Juliet on his lap, awkwardly flipped through the pages.

“Jonathan,” she murmured, and made a grab for it.

He held it aloft, just beyond her reach. There was the drawing of his three, somber sisters that existed as nothing more than a pretend image upon a page. He grinned.

“Jonathan,” she insisted, her tone imploring.

“Tsk, tsk,” he scolded. “As a governess you should know to obey one’s employer.”

She swatted at his arm, and made another ineffectual grab for the book.

He came across the sketch she’d done of him. And… He paused, glancing down at Juliet.

She’d buried her gaze in his now, limp cravat.

Lady Beatrice Dennington. “It’s a remarkable likeness,” he said into the quiet. Then, all of Juliet’s work seemed remarkable in nature. She’d captured the demure, lowered gaze, the perfectly arranged ringlets. Even the blush upon Lady Beatrice’s cheeks managed to shine through the dark charcoal. “What is it, Juliet?” He lowered the sketchpad and his knuckles to force her chin up.

Her mouth set at a firm line. “Nothing. It is nothing.”

Except, he’d come to know women rather well these years and knew when a woman uttered ‘It-is-nothing’ in that particular tone, well, it usually happened to be a very big something. He tread cautiously. “Did Lady Beatrice do or say something to offend you earlier this day?” He fisted his hands at his side.

Juliet sprung to her feet, and her rumpled nightgown and wrapper fluttered about her ankles. She began to pace. “It is nothing,” she repeated.

Which only confirmed his suspicion that Juliet concealed something from him.

He climbed to his feet, with a frown. He didn’t like the idea of Juliet concealing anything from him. “Did she—?”