The Belle of Belgrave Square (Belles of London #2)(10)

She exhaled an unsteady breath. “If you must know, my circumstances are complicated. My parents are in poor health. And my own health is often indifferent.”

“You’re ill?”

“Not ill. I suppose you might say I’m . . . fragile.”

He regarded her steadily. “You didn’t look fragile on that horse of yours this morning.”

“That’s different. Cossack makes me stronger. Without him, I’m generally viewed as inadequate. Except in one respect.” Her pulse throbbed in her ears. A voice in her head warned her to hold her tongue. She didn’t heed it. “I have a sizable dowry.”

Captain Blunt said nothing in reply. He merely looked at her, still holding her gaze, even as the tension crackled palpably between them.

She pressed on against all better judgment. “Perchance you’ve heard of it?”

“I have,” he admitted.

Naturally, he had. Why else would he be paying her any attention? She’d known that from the moment he’d first requested an introduction to her at Lady Arundell’s ball. Even so, his confession left Julia deflated.

So much for thrills and danger.

The infamous Captain Blunt was, when it came down to it, nothing more than a garden-variety fortune hunter.

“I expect you’ve heard a thing or two about me as well,” he said.

She couldn’t deny it. “I have.”

The silence grew between them. It was too painful to endure.

She rose abruptly from the bench. Captain Blunt was immediately on his feet. She took a step back in a futile attempt to put space between them.

He closed the distance. “Miss Wychwood.”

“Captain Blunt,” she uttered at the same time.

He paused, allowing her to proceed.

She made herself continue, despite the anxiety tightening her chest and the scorching blush burning its way up her throat and into her face. “I hope you won’t trouble yourself to pursue me. We’d never suit.”

His gray eyes flickered. “You think not?”

“I-I do. That is, we wouldn’t.” She stumbled a little over her words. “I have a substantial dowry, it’s true, but no amount of money lasts forever. And after you’ve run through it, you’d be stuck with me.”

His expression hardened. “An observation that flatters neither of us.”

“You asked for plain speaking.”

“So I did.” He offered her a rigid bow. “Miss Wychwood.”

“Captain.” She inclined her head to him and, catching up her heavy skirts in her hands, swiftly took her leave. As she exited the room, she sensed him staring after her just as he had that morning in Hyde Park.

She hastened her step, once again reminded of myths and fairy stories. Of dark, brooding villains abducting young maidens who were guilty of doing nothing more than minding their own business.

And Captain Blunt was a villain. Everyone said so.

She would do well to remember it.





Four





Sunlight shone through the tall morning room windows, warming Julia’s bent head and shoulders as she sat at her mother’s dainty Boulle-inlaid writing desk. She dipped her sharpened quill pen into the open inkpot, tapping away the excess before marking a heavy X through yesterday’s date in her diary.

Only three more days until her friends returned to London.

Three more days of society events to get through alone.

She set down her pen. She’d gone riding this morning, half expecting to run into Captain Blunt again. But he seemed to have heeded her request. There had been no sign of him in Rotten Row. None that she could see.

And she’d looked for him.

Looked and looked. As if she was disappointed by his absence.

Which wasn’t the case at all.

She was glad to be free of his interest. She wasn’t some featherheaded heroine in a novel to be lured in by his imposing height and his magnificently broad shoulders. By his raven-black hair, with its faint threads of silver at the temples, and by his piercing eyes as cold and gray as the Thames in winter.

Goodness. If not for his scarred face and his black reputation, he might almost have been handsome.

Almost.

But this wasn’t a novel. No adventure awaited her in the arms of a villain, only ruin, misery, and disgrace. If she was to find a husband this season, it must be among decent men. Men who weren’t bloodthirsty former soldiers, and who didn’t live in haunted Yorkshire estates with their brood of illegitimate children.

Strange, that. She couldn’t imagine Captain Blunt keeping a mistress. There was nothing of tenderness about him. Nothing terribly romantic. Although . . .

He had admitted to reading Lady Audley’s Secret.

She wondered what Anne would have to say about it.

Lady Anne Deveril, only daughter of the late Earl of Arundell, had been Julia’s best friend for as long as she could remember. They were opposites in every way—Anne was bold, confident, and opinionated where Julia was shy, uncertain, and often tongue-tied in company. Yet together they fit, each of them providing what the other lacked.

In many ways, Anne acted as Julia’s protector. It was a role that was almost mother-like, guarding Julia from impertinent men, and saving her from her own self-indulgences. Only recently, when Julia had been tucked in her bed with chocolates and a novel, pleading illness to avoid her social obligations, it had been Anne who had persuaded her to get up and face the London season.