sensed a renewed tension in the confining space as Miss Woolcott began facing the implications of what she’d seen upon her arrival at Wadsworth’s estate. As far as he was concerned, not much had changed since he’d left England five years earlier. The lives of the aristocracy were still devoted to, in no particular order, hunting, whoring, and billiards. From his vantage point, the middle-aged rutting—a confirmed group sport among the male upper classes—was as ingrained as cannibalism in pigmy tribes or riding to hounds among the gentry.
The best he could hope for, when the Wadsworth debauchery concluded, was not to be forever haunted by the specter of sagging jowls, swollen paunches, and worse, bent over their pleasurable labors. He surmised that the female guests were harvested from the countryside surrounding Wadsworth’s Eccles House or let from the demi-mondaine or the theater.
Miss Woolcott had yet to back away from him. “I am assuming,” she said, “or rather hoping, that this was all a misunderstanding. That Sir Wadsworth had no intention of inviting me to his”—she paused—“soiree and that, in my confusion and shock, I panicked and, as it turns out, unreasonably struck out at a footman before I could think…before I knew….” She trailed off, unable to convince herself to continue.
He made a low sound in the back of his throat. “Whatever gives you most comfort, Miss Woolcott. It doesn’t truly signify. You’re here now.”
“Why?” That one word whispered through the dark.
“I don’t know why.” It was a lie and it was the truth. They both knew it.
The dark was strangely liberating for Julia. “I find that difficult to believe. Your tone leads me to surmise that you’re not the type of man who does anything on a mere whim. Why not simply put me in a carriage and allow me to return to London?” She was standing so close to him, her skirts brushing his knees, that he could simply encircle her neck with his hands and end it there, if it were not for his overly precise instructions and the convincing tableau he was to construct.
He laughed, an incongruous shot in the dark. “You’re in no position to inquire, Miss Woolcott.”
“I’d hazard a guess that being one step away from certain death entitles one to ask questions, sir.”
“Certain death? That’s a trifle melodramatic.” Only it wasn’t.
“Is it?”
“You’re convinced that someone wants you dead. Now why is that?” Miss Woolcott knew far more than she was willing to disclose.
“You can hardly expect me to believe Sir Wadsworth invited me to join in…in his…peculiar…gathering.”
He decided to continue the game. “Why is that so improbable?”
Heat emanated from her, from the masses of fabric, crinolines, and whalebone that encircled her body. She could be developing a fever, courtesy of the wound no doubt beginning to suppurate on her lower leg.
“I am a woman of a certain age and disposition, hardly the sort to participate in…”
“Participate in what, precisely?”
“Whatever it is that you must keep me in good health for.” She took a step away from him and into the darkness. “Please let’s dispense with this unfortunate misunderstanding,” she added, suddenly all crispness and efficiency, lying to him and most of all to herself. “I shall tell no one about your involvement, rest assured. After all, I don’t even know your name or circumstances.”
It would be better to keep her compliant, he decided. The truth would come, right at the end. He closed the space between them and took her arm. She flinched away from him. “Let’s have a look at the cut on your leg, shall we, before we decide upon anything else.”
He pulled her none too gently behind him, his hand reflexively finding the seam in the wall a few feet before them. Sliding his fingers beneath the hidden hinge, he felt the clasp release. The door swung open, the soft light of dusk as harsh as the noon sun after an eclipse.
He watched Julia Woolcott turn her face to the light pouring through the casement windows, her eyes squinting against the assault, and he wondered suddenly how he could have ever considered her plain. Her violet eyes were set wide and tilted between arced brows. She had a straight, assertive nose, a subtly clefted chin, and a mouth too wide for true beauty. Her features communicated a wary vulnerability and an unsettling intelligence. The mahogany hair that had been strictly scraped into a low chignon fell loose.
She tried not to favor her leg but he could see the spasms of pain tighten her features. Soon, the pain would be gone, he silently promised her.
“And now?” she asked, not bothering to struggle from his grip.
There was no answer that she would want to hear. He knew she remembered what she’d attempted to forget—the women and the men in the glittering salon with its unforgiving chandeliers illuminating every dark corner of lust and licentiousness. It was important she be seen that evening, at one of Wadsworth’s infamous country-house weekends, that there be witnesses to her outrageous behavior as a more than willing participant.
A spiral staircase waited at the end of the hallway, leading to a suite of rooms, a copper tub, appropriate clothing. He would ensure that her wound was taken care of, that she was costumed and prepared in a few hours’ time. There would be no more mistakes. No more struggles.
He would see to it himself.
Julia wished the staircase would go on forever, despite the jolts of fire at every step she took. She watched the broad shoulders looming before her, leading the way to what she was certain would be her doom. A large hand still spanned her arm, and she imagined those fingers could choke the life from the most powerful of men. Despite his voice and disengaged manner, she sensed a heavy undercurrent. His size alone prompted claws of fear to tear at her belly.
A pulse pounded in the back of Julia’s eyes as she wondered what her sister would make of her present predicament. You’re ever so bookish, Jules. Put down your spectacles and come riding with me! Rowena, just a fortnight ago, exhorted Julia to rouse herself from her ink-stained studies. How many governesses had paled under the onslaught of that head-strong willfulness?
What Julia would do to have her small, tightly constrained world returned to her. A life punctuated by visits to the vicarage or closely chaperoned outings to London with their aunt. She was the careful, patient, older sister who spent most of her time attending to detail, on the printed page or on her copper plates. In this, at least, she had some small advantage.
Julia’s eyes swept over the broad back and the arrogant tilt of the head in front of her. Dressed simply in trousers and a white shirt, he was not what he seemed: a wayward rogue of Sir Wadsworth’s unsavory circle. She recognized the man was of another sort of Englishman, with his aggressive jaw, the slight hook of his nose, and the gray eyes whose intensity was unseemly. Built like a fortress but with the sleek movements of someone half his size, he was no ordinary man subject to a quotidian world.
That he was sent by Montagu Faron was a certainty. The name soured on her tongue. Unbidden, Meredith’s alarms rang in her head.
The man stopped, on the landing, and she nearly tripped on her skirts and catapulted into his broad back. She froze and moved as far away as his grip would allow. She was gazing up at an enormous hall, two storeys high, with vast oriel windows facing gardens on both sides. Four colossal fireplaces framed priceless chairs and banquettes, richly panniered in dark red velvet. It was the room she had glimpsed the evening before. Luscious silk damask curtains, lined in bronze and white brocade stripes, had been tied back with huge silk tassels to better frame entangled limbs and flashes of skin. It was empty but she sensed they were far from alone.
Walking down corridors she realized the house was ostentatious, even by the standards to which she was accustomed at Montfort.
Moments later, after being abruptly left alone by her captor, she surveyed the vastness of a room dominated by a raised four-poster bed. He had left her there without a