Always a Rogue, Forever Her Love (Scandalous Seasons #4)(72)

“This…” Mother gestured to his rumpled garments, “is all about Miss Marshville, isn’t it?”

This is about how little my life means without her. Jonathan said nothing. He expected his mother to launch into a diatribe about all the ways in which Juliet was an unsuitable match, fully prepared, nay looking forward, to launching into a defense of the woman who’d claimed not on his heart but the hearts of his sisters. So he was startled at her next words.

“I’ve come to the realization that we—”

Patrina cleared her throat.

Mother blushed. “Very well, I came to the realization that Juliet, she…” She paused, as if searching for the right words.

“You love her,” Patrina put forth. “You love her, and you’re not the same man without her, and…you really do need to go get and bring her back, Jonathan.” She glanced over at their mother. “Isn’t that what you were trying to say, Mother?”

His mother nodded. “It is.” Her lips tightened. “Furthermore, it has come to my attention,” she fixed her disappointed stare on Prudence. “That lies were told where you and Juliet were concerned.”

Prudence glanced down at the tips of her slippers, head hung in shame.

It had only been a lie because Juliet had too much honor to agree to a position as his mistress. Otherwise, Pru would have been right. He’d have been the roguish scoundrel Society took him for and ruined a respectable young lady’s reputation.

Mother sighed. “Juliet is a good woman, Jonathan. She sacrificed herself without question to salvage Patrina’s reputation. I am sorry I sent her away.” She turned her hands up. “At the time, I believed I was acting in the best interest of all my children.”

The knife twisted again in his stomach. Then, that was the kind of woman Juliet Marshville happened to be. Selfless, fearless, and uncowed by any man.

“I don’t, in all my years, remember you this way,” Mother said.

“And what way is that, Mother?” he asked tiredly.

“Broken.”

A humorless chuckle escaped him. Broken seemed a rather apt way to describe a shell of a man with a broken heart and a broken conscience and—

“You need to go to her, Jonathan,” Patrina’s interruption cut into his musings.

He dragged the back of his hand over his eyes. “I can’t. She’s gone. I don’t deserve her.” He would never stop loving her. She would forever occupy every last corner of his useless heart. Jonathan raised his glass to his lips, but his mother strode over, and snatched it from his fingers. She set it down on the nearest table so hard it sent liquid drops spraying onto the Aubusson carpet.

“Then you don’t love her,” she snapped.

“Don’t,” he cried and then took a calming breath. “Don’t. I…” He glanced at his sisters and then back to his mother careful with his words. “I have not been honorable where Juliet is concerned.” That was the safest admission he could make in front of four young ladies.

Poppy sighed and flung herself into a nearby leather-winged back chair. “I don’t like Jonathan. I preferred Sin. Why, Sin who would simply go and take back his Miss Marshville because he loved her and couldn’t live without her and didn’t care…”

Mother glowered at her.

“What?” she grumbled. “I do. This Jonathan fellow is stodgy and proper and will suffer a broken heart for it.”

He blinked. By God, he must be going mad, or perhaps he already was, but Poppy’s words penetrated the agonized stupor he’d lived in for nearly three months and actually made sense.

She was right.

He might have wronged Juliet and set her free out of love for her, but he needed to see her, needed the decision to be hers and not one he made for her.

And if she chose to send him on his way then…

Jonathan shoved aside the thought. He’d not let himself think of any other possibility but one that involved her becoming the Countess of Sinclair.

He smiled.

“You’re going for her,” his mother said with a nod of approval.

“I’m going for her.





Chapter 21


Juliet knelt in the soft earth and snipped back the overgrown pink rose bush. She brushed back her wide straw bonnet. A bead of moisture dotted her brow and she dashed it away.

Once upon a lifetime ago, Jonathan Tidemore, the Earl of Sinclair had spoken to her of warm summer days in her gardens of Rosecliff Cottage. He’d tantalized her with forbidden thoughts of making love under the glittering stars. He’d teased her with the promise of what-ifs. In her heart, she’d wanted him to be her gentleman under the stars.

She touched a purplish-pink rose and palmed the satiny smooth bloom. Now, she could never gaze upon another night sky without thoughts of him.

With a sigh Juliet looked around at the overgrown garden. Her poor cottage had been woefully neglected. Then, when there was no prideful owner in residence, disrepair tended to occur. The opened sketchpad on the ground snagged her attention.

The grinning gentleman stared back up at her—he, the true owner of this cottage she’d commandeered without his knowing…or perhaps without his caring.

A gentleman of his vast wealth would have little need for a modest dwelling such as Rosecliff Cottage.