Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke’s Heart (16 page)

She had fought back, proud and magnificent.

And suddenly, he wanted to tell her that.

He wanted her to know that he did not find her common, or childish, or troublesome.

He found her quite remarkable.

And he wanted to start over.

If for no other reason, than because she did not deserve his criticism.

But perhaps for more than that.

If only it were so easy.

The door to the dining room opened, and an older servant entered, discreetly moving to Ralston. He leaned low and whispered in his master’s ear, and Ralston froze, setting his fork down audibly.

Conversation stopped.

Whatever the news the servant brought, it was not good.

The marquess was ashen.

Lady Ralston stood instantly, rounding the table toward her husband, caring nothing about her guests. About making a scene.

Juliana spoke, concern in her voice. “What is it? Is it Nick?”

“Gabriel?”

Heads turned as one to the doorway, to the woman who had spoken Ralston’s given name.

“
Dio
.” Juliana’s whisper was barely audible, but he heard it.

“Who is she?” Simon did not register who asked the question. He was too focused on Juliana’s face, on the fear and anger and disbelief there.

Too focused on her answer, whispered in Italian.

“She is our mother.”

S
he looked the same.

Tall and lithe and as untouchable as she had been the last time Juliana had seen her.

Instantly, Juliana was ten again, covered in chocolate from the cargo unloaded on the dock, chasing her cat through the old city and into the house, calling up to her father from the central courtyard, sunlight pouring down around her. A door opened, and her mother stepped out onto the upper balcony, the portrait of disinterest.

“
Silenzio
, Juliana. Ladies do not screech.”

“I’m sorry,
Mama
.”

“You should be.” Louisa Fiori leaned over the edge of the balcony. “You are filthy. It is as though I had a son instead of a daughter.” She waved one hand lazily toward the door. “Go back to the river and wash before you come into the house.”

She turned away, the hem of her pale pink gown disappearing through the double doors to the house beyond.

It was the last Juliana had seen of her mother.

Until now.

“Gabriel?” their mother repeated, entering the room with utter poise, as though it had not been twenty-five years since she had hosted her own dinners at this very table. As though she were not being watched by a roomful of people.

Not that such a thing would have stopped her. She had always adored attention. The more scandalous, the better.

And this would be a scandal.

No one would remember the Serpentine tomorrow.

She lifted her hands. “Gabriel,” there was satisfaction in her tone. “My, what a man you have become. The marquess!”

She was behind Juliana now, not having realized that her daughter, too, was in the room. There was a roaring in Juliana’s ears, and she closed her eyes against it. Of course her mother had not noticed. Why would she expect such a thing?

If she had, she would have looked for Juliana. She would have said something.

She would have wanted to see her daughter.

Wouldn’t she?

“Oh! It appears that I have interrupted something of a dinner party! I suppose I should have waited until morning, but I simply could not bear being away from home a moment longer.”

Home.

Juliana winced at the words.

The men around the table stood, their manners arriving late but impeccable. “Oh, please, do not stand for me,” the voice came again, unrelenting, dripping with English politesse and a hint of something else—the sound of feminine guile. “I shall simply put myself in a receiving room until Gabriel has time for me.”

The statement ended on a lilt of amusement, and Juliana opened her eyes at the grating sound, turning her head just slightly to see her brother, jaw steeled, ice in his cold blue gaze. To his left stood Callie, fists clenched, furious.

If Juliana had not been at risk of becoming utterly unhinged, she would have been amused by her sister-in-law—ready to slay dragons for her husband.

Their mother was a dragon if ever there was one.

There was an enormous pause, silence screaming in the room until Callie spoke. “Bennett,” she said, with unparalleled calm, “would you escort Signora Fiori to the green parlor? I’m sure the marquess will be along momentarily.”

The aging butler, at least, seemed to understand that he had been the harbinger of what was sure to be the biggest scandal London had seen since . . . well, since the last time London had seen Louisa Hathbourne St. John Fiori. He nearly leapt to do his mistress’s bidding.

“Signora Fiori!” their mother said with a bright laugh—the one Juliana remembered as punctuation to a lie. “No one has called me that since I left Italy. I am still the Marchioness of Ralston, am I not?”

“You are not.” Ralston’s voice was brittle with anger.

“You are married? How wonderful! I shall simply have to do with Dowager Marchioness, then!”

And with that simple sentence, Juliana was unable to breathe. Her mother had just renounced a decade of marriage, a husband, a life in Italy.

And her own daughter.

In front of a dozen others who would not hesitate to recount the tale.

Juliana closed her eyes, willing herself to remain calm.

Focusing on her breath, rather than the fact that her legitimacy had, with a few words from a long-forgotten woman, been thrown into question.

When she reopened her eyes, it was to meet the one gaze she did not wish to find.

The Duke of Leighton was not looking at her mother. He was watching Juliana. And she hated what she saw in his normally cold, unreadable amber eyes.

Pity.

Embarrassment and shame coursed through her, straightening her spine and reddening her cheeks.

She was going to be ill.

She could not remain in the room a moment longer.

She had to leave.

Before she did something thoroughly unacceptable.

She stood, pushing back her chair, not caring that ladies did not leave the dinner table midmeal, not caring that she was breaking every rule of this ridiculous country’s ridiculous etiquette.

And she fled.

T
he dinner party disbanded almost immediately upon the arrival of the Dowager Marchioness or Signora Fiori or whoever she was, and the rest of the attendees had made hasty retreats, ostensibly to allow the family time and space with which to address her devastating arrival, but much more likely to have been in the foul hope of spreading their first-person accounts of tonight’s dramatics.

Simon could think only of Juliana: of her face as she listened to her mother’s high-pitched cackle; of her enormous, soulful eyes as the wicked woman had made her scandalous pronouncement that she was not a Fiori, but a St. John; of the way she’d left the room, all square shoulders and straight spine, with stunning, remarkable pride.

He watched the other guests’ conveyances trundle down the street, listening with half an ear as the Duke and Duchess of Rivington discussed whether or not they should remain or leave their family in peace.

As they climbed into their coach, Simon heard the duchess ask quietly, “Should we at least look in on Juliana?”

“Leave her for tonight, love,” was Rivington’s idiotic reply before the door closed, and the carriage set off in the direction of their home.

Simon clenched his teeth. Of course they should have sought out Juliana. Someone had to make sure that the girl was not planning a midnight return to Italy.

Not him, of course.

He climbed up into his own coach—full with the memory of her on another scandalous evening.

She was not his concern.

He could not afford the scandal. He had his own family to worry about. Juliana was fine. Would be, at least. The woman had to be impervious to embarrassment by now.

And if she wasn’t?

With a wicked curse, he rapped on the ceiling of the coach and instructed the coachman to turn around. He did not even question his destination.

She was in the stables.

There were several stableboys loitering outside, and they came immediately to their feet at the sight of the Duke of Leighton. He waved them back and entered the building, thinking of nothing but finding her.

He did not hide his footsteps as he made his way down the long row of stalls to where she was, following the soft whispers of Italian and the smooth rustle of her clothes.

He stopped just outside the stall door, transfixed by her.

Her back was to him, and she was brushing her horse with a hard-bristled brush, each short, firm stroke coming on a little puff of breath. Periodically, the mare would shuffle and lean toward her mistress, turning her head for extra attention. When Juliana stroked the animal’s long, white muzzle, the horse was unable to contain its pleasure, nuzzling Juliana’s shoulder with a snort.

Simon could not blame the animal for preening under the affection.

“She did not even know I was there,” Juliana whispered in Italian as she worked her way down the mare’s broad back. “And if I hadn’t been, if I’d never come here, she would not have acknowledged her time with me at all.”

There was a pause, the only sound the light rustle of her bold, silk gown, entirely counter to her soft, sad whisper, and his heart went out to her. It was one thing to be deserted by a mother, but what a crushing blow it must have been to have her mother reject the life they had shared?

The sound of the brush slowed. “Not that I care if she acknowledges it at all.”

He heard the lie in the words, and something deep in his chest constricted, making it difficult to breathe.

“Perhaps now we can return to Italy, Lucrezia.” She put her forehead to the high black shoulder of the horse. “Perhaps now Gabriel will see that my staying was a terrible idea.”

The whispered words, so honest, so rife with sorrow and regret, were nearly his undoing. From the moment he’d met her, he’d thought she enjoyed the scandal that followed her everywhere. Thought she embraced it, invited it.

But as he stood in this darkened stable, watching her brush her enormous horse, dressed in a devastatingly beautiful gown and desperate for some way to escape the events of the evening, Simon was overcome with a single realization.

Scandal was not her choice.

It was her burden.

Her bold words and her brave face were not borne out of pleasure but out of self-preservation.

She was as much a victim of circumstance as he was.

The awareness hit him like a fist to the gut.

But it changed nothing.

“I would not place a wager on your brother allowing you to leave,” he said in Italian.

Juliana spun toward him, and he registered the fear and nervousness in her wide blue eyes an instant before it was gone, replaced with irritation.

Her fire was not gone.

“How long have you been there?” she asked in English, taking a step back, pressing herself against the side of the horse, who sidestepped once and gave a little, distraught nicker.

He stilled, as though moving closer to her would scare her off. “Long enough.”

Her gaze darted around the stall, as though she were looking for an escape route. As though she were terrified of him. And then she seemed to remember that she wasn’t terrified of anything.

Her eyes narrowed on him, blue and beautiful. “Eavesdropping is a terrible habit.”

He leaned against the doorjamb, giving her space. “You may add it to my list of unpleasant traits.”

“There isn’t enough paper in England to list them all.”

He raised a brow. “You wound me.”

She scowled, turning back to the horse. “If only it were so. Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

So it was to be this way. She did not want to discuss the events of the evening. He watched as she resumed the long, firm strokes of the horse’s flanks. “I was invited to a dinner party, but it ended early.”

“It sounds like it was a terrible bore,” she said, her voice dry as sand. “Shouldn’t you be at your club? Recounting the devastating blow to our reputation to other arrogant aristocrats in a cloud of cheroot smoke as you drink scotch stolen from the North Country?”