The Rake's Redemption (17 page)

Dinner had been nearly impossible. Without George, Charlotte was almost silent, except to deflect one or two of her mother’s most tiring observations. The duke and duchess tried, with help from Sophia and Rodney, to keep the conversation lively with wedding plans. Even the duchess’s grand idea of allowing a dozen pairs of turtledoves to fly overhead in the church during the nuptials, quickly and firmly squelched by the duke, failed to divert. And any chance look at Dominic or Juliana was enough to dampen the evening. Dominic, grim and determined, replied to any observation in a monosyllable; Juliana, eyes brightened with unshed tears, merely smiled and heard nothing. The entire company was relieved when the duchess dismissed them all early to seek their own amusements.

After a brandy by himself in the study, Jules pushed open the door to his sitting room. His valet, holding a thick candle, came out of a doorway at the far end of the corridor.

“I shan’t need you. Go to bed,” Jules called to him softly.

Alone, Jules passed through the sitting room, entered and closed the door to his chamber behind him.

Inside, waiting for him, was Juliana.

He stopped as if he had walked into an invisible wall. Juliana stood in a gown of softest spring green dimity, her rich auburn hair cascading over her shoulders and down her back, looking for all the world as if she had begun preparing for bed, and then changed her mind.

He came several steps into the room and stood looking at her guardedly.

Her eyes, wide and open in the beauty of her face, rested upon him. “I can’t go on like this, Jules. I have come to help you.”

She walked toward him, her hands outspread in entreaty. “But first I must know it all, Jules. All of the ghosts that haunt you and Dominic.”

“I see,” he said. In that moment he paled. He had not expected this and for a moment was set adrift. Finally he moved to stare down into the fire, his fingers resting lightly against the mantelpiece. “Why have you decided to help me?”

“Because I love Dominic. And it seems … what I feel for him … he also feels for me. But there is something keeping us apart. Something besides his rakehell past which makes him feel unworthy of me.”

Jules turned from the fire and sank into the depths of the deep crewel wing chair beside it. He knew Juliana could not clearly see his face in the dimly lit chamber.

“I’m sorry, Juliana. But I was wrong and you were right. We cannot help Dominic. Only he has the key.”

Juliana’s face muscles trembled, but she stilled them. “I cannot let him throw away this gift we have been given.”

“There is only one person who can finally put a stop to the legacy of pain our parents left us. And it is not me. Or you,” Jules said, not unkindly, after a short silence.

At that Juliana turned to the fire and sank down before it as if seeking its small warmth. “Then you have decided not to entrust me with the truth that will enable me to reach him.”

“I find that I, like Dominic, cannot easily lay open that wound to others,” he said evenly.

“I see. Then you, like Dominic, choose to continue wallowing in self-pity,” Juliana said contemptuously.

He moved swiftly, pulling her up and around to confront him. The he saw the ceaseless tears pouring unheeded down her lovely face. Jules found that he could not turn away from the appeal in Juliana’s wide, tear-filled eyes.

“My mother and Charles were an unsuitable match from the moment they met,” Jules began slowly. “They were two people trapped in the net of a grand passion. Leticia’s for my late father, and Charles’s for my mother. It was a tragedy that grew until it affected everyone and everything around them. For as Charles tried to possess my mother, she became more possessive of my father’s memory … while taking lover after lover. She told Charles she was searching for someone who made her feel as my father had.” Jules took a deep breath trying to calm his pulse. Even after all these years it still was not easy.

“After she began to drink, she sometimes imagined me to be my late father, for I greatly resemble him. Charles became so bitter, so disillusioned, that his grand passion turned to hatred. He called her the black widow … soiled by her marriage to my father. Soiled by her lovers.” He hesitated, then the words came swiftly. “Dominic and I were caught in the net with them—pawns in their game of tragedy. Although I tried to keep most of it from Dominic. He was so young then and often away at school, and Leticia spent so little time with him I thought he had been spared the worst. I was wrong. Maybe I made a mistake. It might have been better to acknowledge it, to help him understand.”

Jules stopped when he saw the color rise in Juliana’s cheeks and her soft mouth begin to tremble.

“Please, I must know how it ended,” she whispered.

“That night … my mother and I fought because I could no longer support her possessiveness. I thought if I went away it would somehow help, make her more receptive to Charles. She … she became overwrought. She came to my chamber as I was preparing for bed. She had been drinking deeply. She … she knelt before me, begging me not to leave her … I think she believed me to be my father.” Jules found that he had to turn away from the expression on Juliana’s face to be able to continue.

“That is how Charles and Dominic found us … like lovers.” Forcing himself, he once again looked at Juliana. “It wasn’t true. Juliana! You must believe me—and make Dominic believe me! Charles went mad and shot Leticia and me. He died believing that Leticia and I were lovers. Cursing us. Cursing Dominic. For in his madness he accused Dominic of being tainted like me. That is why he has become what he is. And this is why he feels unworthy of your love.”

Jules’s breathing stopped for a heartbeat at the pity in Juliana’s eyes.

“There is no guilt for either of you, Jules. Somehow we will make him understand.”

Then, for the first time in Jules’s life, a woman embraced him in compassion and friendship, and he rested his wet cheek against the fragrance of her hair.

Dominic could wait no longer. His brother had said to come to him for the truth. If there was to be any hope for him and Juliana, it lay in the truth. He knew what that was, but found he couldn’t resist taking the chance to change his life. Juliana loved him—any risk was worth taking for that precious gift. He had only to walk to Jules’s chamber.

He touched the paneled wooden door to the west wing and found it was not locked. For a moment he heard his father whisper over his shoulder, but he did not look around. Instead, quite softly and steadily he pushed the door open and entered the west wing for the first time since he was eighteen years old.

The quiet and darkness of the corridor was absolute. Dominic Crawford stood in the doorway listening, and allowing his eyes, like a cat’s, to enlarge. Slowly, windows grew into his sight, gray against the blackness. Little flares of light in the sky showed him a chest and a large chair placed neatly against the wall. This time he was quite alone. But not then…

His father’s grip on his shoulder was sending a hot ache down his arm, but he did not pull away. Instead he quickened his steps to match his father’s strides. “Come along, boy. Time we found out how the black widow and her son are spending the evening!” His father’s breath reeked of gin and the scent hung about his clothes
.

The scent of the corridor was pleasant now. As if the servants had aired it recently and used beeswax on the wainscoting. In the silence his own fitful breathing echoed. It was not how he wanted to sound, but if he could hold back all of the memories, this show of weakness would not matter.

He walked through the dark empty passage and, at last, reached the apartment doors. They were closed, but not locked, he found, and he pushed them open. They had been locked that night…

“Damn her
…
damn her to hell!” His father raged, beating against the heavy doors with his fist
.

“
Father, don’t, please!” The young Dominic
pleaded and was rewarded with a shove that sent him hurling painfully against the stone wall
.

“Leave me be, boy!” His father shouted
“
I’ll be damned if she is ever again going to lock a door against me.” With that he began kicking at the latch, gripping the dueling pistols, one in each hand Kicking and kicking until, at last, the lock had surrendered to him. The doors swung open to reveal his wife’s sitting room
.

Inside it was warm. The flames in the fireplace had sunk to embers giving a rosy glimmer to the room. That night the fire had blazed, lighting the room so that Dominic and his father had immediately seen that the doors to Leticia’s bedchamber were open and there were no candles lit within, but the entrance to Jules’s room was closed to them.

Tonight Dominic did not look toward his mother’s chamber, but instead turned to his brother’s room. Then, as now, voices could be heard from behind the wooden doors.

But this time, there was no drunk madman shoving the doors open with such force they shook on their hinges. This time it was Dominic who pushed them wide.

Time ceased to exist, for the door to the past stood open before him.

Two people were in the center of the bedchamber. His brother, shirtless, his trousers half-unbuttoned, his face rigid, an expression upon it Dominic had never seen before. And his mother, her unbound hair falling about her shoulders, kneeling before him, her wet cheek pressed tightly against his thighs. Her hands feverishly stroking the taut muscles of his
chest and stomach as she pleaded, “Do not leave me, my darling. I have waited so long for you.”

His father screaming, “You slut! You have soiled all of us! Dominic! Jules! All of us! But no more!” The gunfire, the screams, and then, the sudden quiet
.

This was the room that held the living well of his torment. All the dark waters of his grief rose and moved to flow over him until in complete surrender, Dominic closed his eyes.

When he opened them two people stood in the center of the bedchamber. His brother, an expression on his face Dominic had never seen before. And Juliana, embracing him, her unbound hair falling about her shoulders, her cheek wet with tears.

He shook his head in denial. He knew what he saw wasn’t right. His Juliana would never stoop to this. Out of the quiet a voice spoke.

“You thought you saw something quite different, did you not,
mon frère
?”

Dominic lifted his head to face Jules, and Juliana stepped away from him. By an incredible force of will, she hid her shaking hands in the folds of her gown and stood apart from the brothers, for in this she had no part.

“What are you saying, Jules?” Low and filled with pain, Dominic’s voice echoed through the stillness.

“You thought you saw a lover’s embrace.” Jules looked at him and Dominic paled, and then slowly colored. “You thought you saw our mother … and me … in a lover’s embrace, didn’t you, Dominic?”

Dominic’s eyes widened and the bones of his face seemed to sharpen. “She was kneeling in front of you, like a lover. Begging you not to leave her. Father saw it, too. That is why he could bear it no longer.”

“I was leaving the Towers to take up residence in Greece. You know that. That is why she was begging me not to leave her,” Jules said wearily. “Your father saw only the nightmare his life with her had become. Think back, Dominic. You say I failed in trying to keep the worst from you … then remember how it was between them!”

As memories crowded into Dominic’s mind, clouding the beauty of his eyes, Juliana could almost feel his agony. Jules must have seen it, too.

“The course of misery they set for one another was forged only between them,” he continued, his voice softening. “We were only pawns. Until that night. Then we became their victims.” Jules straightened and walked forward until he stood directly before his brother. “Once you gave me my life. Now I return yours to your keeping. The taint belongs only to them. Believe me, and close this door forever.”

Jules stepped back and turned to Juliana, lifting her trembling fingers, pressing them gently to his lips before walking from the bedchamber.

She had to go to Dominic and offer her comfort. From halfway across the room she could see the jewels on his silk coat sparkle blindingly, showing that he was breathing like a fox bayed down by hounds. He had at some time pushed his hands through his fair hair, for wisps of it dampened his brow. He was as pale as the pristine white of his satin evening shirt. The only color showing in the light spilling onto him was the incredible blue of his eyes. He closed his lids and it was gone.

At the gentle touch of loving fingers on his cheek, he opened his eyes to find his love, his life.

“Juliana?” he asked wonderingly, in the voice she had come to love above all others. “I thought…”

“Dominic, I am here,” she murmured softly.

His eyes were clouded a blue she had never seen, but his mouth curved in understanding before he took her hand and held them. “You know what happened here ten years ago.”

At her nod he looked away, his eyes moving slowly around the room. “I could believe anything of my mother, and my father. Although I loved them in spite of their faults, as a child will. But Jules … he taught me to ride, you know … and hunt. I, I worshiped him. When I thought Jules was like them, something snapped inside me. Perhaps if I’d been older I could have dealt with the pain. And the guilt that I stood here and let it happen—that I could not, somehow, save … my mother or my father.” At last his eyes rested on her face. “At eighteen the only life that seemed open to me was the one I’ve lived. Because of the actions of that foolish boy, I am considered beyond redemption by the
ton
.”

“Is that why the Duke of Monmouth wishes you to take your place in the House of Lords?” she asked gently, sure now that she would allow nothing, and no one, especially ghosts from the past, to stand in her way of happiness.

He did smile then. “Some of the worst reprobates in the
ton
sit in the House of Lords.” He tightened his grip on her fingers. “You know of what I speak. The stories are mostly true. My former mistresses litter every social event. The whispers, the gossip, it is not what a man should bring to you.”