Читать книгу The Deadliest Sin - Caroline Richards - Страница 8

The light dimmed. The aroma of burning wax scented the air. Julia shivered. Strathmore’s hand held her arm in a firm commanding grip as he eased her back into her chair. The huge double doors parted, candlelight falling upon and then playing with a set of flowing curtains.

“Follow my lead.” His breath was hot in her ear as he stood beside her. She didn’t have to turn her face toward his. His image burned behind her eyes, hitching her breath as when he’d first appeared on her threshold in his elegant evening clothes, clean shaven, stark featured, his gray eyes unfathomable.

“I am quite willing to go through with this, Strathmore,” she said stonily, her mind focused on the goal of gaining purchase into the world of Montagu Faron.

“That remains to be seen.” His voice was low, unassailable with a hint of aggression coloring his usual inexpressive tone. Suddenly, she was all too aware of the diaphanous dress clinging to her body in the most tenuous way, reminding her of why she was there. She glanced around furtively, at the intense profiles of the men and women in the room, their mouths slack with lust as they watched the scene unfolding before them.

Julia swallowed hard, counseling herself to become the observer, the eye behind the lens as she watched a group of three men and two women embracing on an oriental carpet. They were slick with some kind of unguent, offering their nakedness to each other to caress and play. Their bodies were like the Greek and Roman statues she had seen at the National Gallery in London, the men taut and rippled with muscles, the women subtly rounded with high, bouncing breasts.

She watched, her muscles tensing with each movement and each caress, unbearably aware of Strathmore’s strong hard hand at the nape of her neck, conscious of the fleeting stabs of pleasure, invading her senses. Her mouth dry, she watched the two women twisting and bending to give the men purchase to every orifice of their bodies. She tried to avoid the obvious—the hard upthrust appendages of the men, the shadowed hollows of the women.

Was it a dream? Or a nightmare? Her exposure to the opposite sex had been limited to a string of tutors, one paler and more harmless than the next and Randolph Codger, the son of the local vicar. She forced herself to focus on the memory, anything to take her mind from the abomination taking place in front of her. She and Randolph were more excited by their passion for William Gruber’s Stereopticon view camera they shared than a passion for each other. She recalled one furtive kiss, after a Christmas reverie, buoyed by mistletoe and rum punch.

She kept her eyes half closed. Her gaze was riveted on the scene before her, setting her mind reeling, the memories of Randolph Codger dissipating like dew in the heat of the salon. It was nothing like she had ever read, nothing like the books in the library at Montfort. Even the specter of marriage had never hinted at such unholy fusion of writhing bodies. The prospect of matrimony had never been on the horizon. Meredith’s disquiet dictated they rarely move in London circles, which didn’t allow much opportunity to meet possible matches. If she and Rowena had harbored such desires deep in their hearts, they would never have let their dear aunt know. Julia had lost herself in her studies and photographic pursuits and Rowena in her love of the outdoors.

She had boasted to Strathmore just hours earlier of her sophistication. How absolutely absurd. She flushed at the memory and at the two women offering their breasts to the men who began sucking them noisily while they rooted their hands in the women’s nether regions. They appeared as one twisting, sinuous beast, one body merging with the next.

Julia’s pulse pounded in a combination of burning shame and desire. Need, as unfamiliar as rain in a parched desert, flooded her chest. She yearned to regain control. Watching was unimaginable, unconscionable, impossible—as the two men grabbed one of the naked women, slick with oil, and pushed her to her knees.

Julia squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, the woman was being serviced from behind while she attended to the other man with her hand and her mouth. The remaining man and woman, beautiful and naked as Adam and Eve, walked hand-in-hand into the room toward the spectators.

Toward her. Spots danced before her vision and she felt faint, she who prided herself on her quiet, cool reason, her unflappable calm.

She bit back a moan of pleasure and shock. Worse, she was blindingly aware of Strathmore so close to her she could feel the heat from his body. She licked her dry lips. Good lord, he was watching her every reaction, from the pulse jumping in the hollow of her neck to her thighs that she squeezed tightly shut in an attempt to halt the flow of sensation raiding her body.

She dared herself to take in the scene immediately around her. Robertson had seated himself on one of the settees and pulled the naked woman onto his lap, immediately latching onto her breasts. Julia jerked her gaze from the sight only to see Wadsworth and Felicity join the nude man in one of the alcoves. Before she could look in the other direction, Julia saw Beaumarchais make his way toward her, already loosening the complicated knots of his cravat until it billowed like an unmoored sail behind him.

She made a sound of alarm at the back of her throat. Suddenly, she was pulled violently to her feet.

“Play along.” Strathmore’s breath was hot at her ear and on the soft skin of her neck. He covered her mouth, and she let him. He kissed her with an urgency that startled her more than the bacchanalian scene transpiring a few feet away. He cupped her head and drew her mouth to his in a slow kiss that sent shock waves from the top of her head to the soles of her feet.

She could scarcely absorb the sheer sensuality of it, and her legs spread to receive him—the flawless connection of their two bodies, hip to hip, groin to groin, perfect complements. Breathing was an impossibility. Pulling back slightly, he brushed his lips over hers, back and forth until he felt them tremble. He kept his hands on her shoulders, using only his mouth to arouse her. “Give me more,” he said so quietly she thought she misheard. “We must be convincing, unless you want company.” Then he took her lower lip between his teeth.

Julia was dying, the breath robbed from her lungs. She was convinced bursting into flames would be next, as Strathmore’s lips feathered their way to the base of her throat. He directed his attention to the sleek slope of her shoulder, and she thought his evening coat slid to the floor. A loud roar hummed in her ears as heat shot through her veins, and whether Beaumarchais or the devil himself was at her heels, she didn’t care.

“I shall try.” Her voice was husky close to his ear. She felt her fingers curling around his waist in exquisite anguish. Instinctively, she drew his head to her breasts amazed to see that with one flick of his fingers, the clasp on her gown gave way, allowing the silk to fall from her shoulders to linger on the upper swell of her breasts. She couldn’t believe simply one hour earlier she had cowered behind the heaviness of his suit coat and now she was directing her aching nipples toward him.

Strathmore drew back, resisting, playing some ungodly trick to keep her in languorous suspension, his eyes flickering with need as he took in the swelling of her breasts against the silk.

“Oh yes,” she breathed, dissolving when he pressed his lips to the base of her throat. She wrapped her arms around him possessively, and instantly his mouth came down on hers with a violence that spoke of some submerged exasperation. She felt his hands down her back, stroking her buttocks as he maneuvered them against a wainscoted wall on the far end of the room, the weight of his body illogically reassuring and alarming at the same time.

Thoughts no longer mattered. Reason had flown through the high mullioned windows into the dark night air. Everything was mired in sensation, an incandescence that glowed from the depths of her abdomen to her highly sensitized skin.

Coming back down to earth, not gradually but abruptly, she felt another pair of hands—strange hands, not Strathmore’s—grasping her buttocks. She drew back from the arms that held her, turning her head away to see Beaumarchais, his palms sliding insinuatingly over her waist and backside.

“I believe I know what kept you two so long from dinner,” Beaumarchais said unctuously, his grasping fingers slicking over Julia’s silk sheathed hips. The candlelight gleamed on his pomaded hair, brushed back from a narrow forehead. “You have had your fill of each other, surely. Now is the time to share, no?”

Before Julia could register the demand, Strathmore slid his body between her and Beaumarchais. “As a gentleman, perhaps you should ask the lady,” he said smoothly. Other voices, as though coming from a long way away, intruded. All the while Strathmore’s hands grasped her hips in a show of possession as he pulled her tightly to his body. “What would you like, darling?” he asked for the benefit of their audience when he knew exactly what she craved.

A thousand champagne bubbles burst in her head. You, she wanted to answer. The rest of the room dissolved leaving only the two of them in a nimbus of light. Her lips parted but no words came.

Wadsworth and Felicity, her dress pooling around her waist, her torso completely naked, followed in Beaumarchais’s wake. The small, rotund man had his arm around her shoulders, slipping down over a pendulous breast to finger a rouged and swollen nipple. Felicity arched her back against him and ran her hands over his generous waist like the enthusiastic actress that she was.

“Well, my darling, what shall it be?” prompted Strathmore. “Remember,” he murmured in a low growl, placing a hot, lingering kiss on the skin of her neck, “we are not alone.”

It was almost as though he wanted her to declare it, state her need publically to the people crowding around them, the musk of sex scenting the air. How could she ever have believed she could find her way to Faron through that thicket of depravity? Confused, hovering between an incendiary desire she had never experienced before and a pulsing revulsion mixed with dread, she forced herself to form the words.

“I want…” she whispered. What did she want? And did it matter? What had taken her there and why? Faron. She thrust the thought aside. “I like…” she tried again.

“To take your pleasures slowly, isn’t that right my pet?” supplied Strathmore, coolness in his eyes despite the heat surrounding them, despite the heat of his hands on her shoulders, sliding up her arms, smoothing the midnight silk and, with dexterous fingers, covering her bare shoulders.

The small coterie moved closer, a bath of fetid breath and unslaked lust. Julia burrowed further into the warmth of Strathmore’s body and watched as he flicked his gaze over Felicity who returned his glance with sharp appetite.

“Alas, my friends”—the words rumbled from his chest while his eyes lingered deliberately on the sultry blonde—“my sweet Julia has suddenly developed a certain possessiveness. Most unfortunate.”

“She will change her mind soon enough,” said Wadsworth, his arm still resting about Felicity’s shoulders, his eyes bulging like a carp’s, upon Julia.

Strathmore made a low sound in the back of his throat. “You would not wish to see her upset, trust me Wadsworth. Speak with your footman if you’d like to know more. She exhibits a nasty temper when provoked, like a veritable wildcat in a temper.”

Beaumarchais’s lips thinned. “Then why did you bring her as your guest, Strathmore, if she won’t play?” He narrowed his eyes. “She’s a good enough looking piece, young, firm-fleshed from what I can see. And those legs, a man can’t help but wish to see what heaven lies between them.”

Julia’s head swirled. Despite the vastness of the hall, the walls were closing in around her, robbing her of air. She took a deep breath, sagging against the hard chest and arms that held her. It had to be an illusion. She was an actor without a script in a mad piece of theatre. Nothing was real. Except Strathmore.

If only she could follow the thread of his logic, if it indeed did exist. Wildcat, temper, possessive.

“You’ll get your chance, Beaumarchais.” Strathmore’s assurance, and his words, burned through the thin silk of her gown. “She will prove much more biddable if I indulge her for the moment. Take the edge off the lady’s appetite, as it were, prepare her for the main event.”

The image was obscene. Julia turned in Strathmore’s arms, forcing herself not to bolt from the room like a child fleeing from monsters. Desperation washed over, suddenly clearing her mind. Strathmore wanted to be alone with her. Alone. Without Beaumarchais, Wadsworth, and the others.

At that moment, it was like savoring the sweetest salvation. She lowered her lashes and pursed her lower lip, hoping she was the picture of hot-blooded truculence. Sighing long and loudly, she improvised, “I want you, Strathmore. Now.” It was a voice that was not her own. Her heart pounded wildly. “You know how much more tractable I am when I’m given free reign.” The last three words were delivered in what she hoped was a sultry tone.

Strathmore gave a short laugh and dropped a casual, stinging hot kiss to her lips. “We’re not finished here, my darling, that’s true, but you know I cannot deny you when you’re in one of your intriguingly volatile tempers. I still bear the scars of last night’s passion, you’ll recall.”

“We have never even started,” growled Beaumarchais too close for comfort.

Desperation made her brave. She had eyes only for Strathmore, cutting Beaumarchais with a chilly glance. “You know how I get…and you know what I want,” she directed a pout at Strathmore with the imperiousness of an empress. Forcing her movements to slow, she languorously swept her palms down the front of her breasts, past her waist to the apex, just above her thighs. And held his gaze.

For a moment, she thought she’d almost had him convinced. A slow fire glinted in the gray of his eyes before he turned to Wadsworth and his coterie. “Believe me ladies and gentlemen,” he said slowly, his voice lower than usual, “we shall all be better off if I first slake the lady’s prodigious enthusiasm. After which, I’m certain, we shall continue our play with renewed vigor and appetite.”

“By God, you had the whole afternoon with her in your rooms, Strathmore.” Felicity spoke in a high breathy voice.

Something about the woman pulled Julia’s nerves taut. “And it clearly wasn’t enough,” she said throatily, deliberately dismissing the older woman. “With Strathmore”—she emphasized pointedly, wondering if desperation could make an actress of her after all—“it can never be enough.” She didn’t have to feign the rising anger in her tone.

Strathmore smiled wolfishly, the picture of a man with his hands full of demanding woman. “Hush, no need for one of your outbursts,” he said pulling her closer for the benefit of their intimate circle. With the fog of desire and revulsion beginning to lift, Julia felt the cool air on her bare skin just as Strathmore tilted her face toward him for a kiss. He began moving them, a slow languid dance, toward the hall’s entranceway. Miraculously, the small crowd parted.

“Perfect,” he said, sounding like a caress in her ear. “Now say something. As though you’re angry or quite thoroughly mad.” Together they edged their way through the room, stopping at intervals so he could kiss her—small, delicious incursions, his lips on hers.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, just as Felicity’s arm snaked around Strathmore’s waist.

“Strathmore, my love, you are entirely too hasty,” pouted the older woman, her crimson-tipped hand extending downward to caress his chest.

Strathmore ignored the questing fingers but Julia did not. For the second time in twenty-four hours, she wondered at the woman she had become. And whether she was acting at all. “I should advise you to desist, madam,” she said, each word as distinct as a knife’s thrust.

The buxom blonde’s sloe eyes widened. “My, my, Strathmore, your kitty certainly has claws. Wherever did you find her? You are welcome to her for the time being.” Felicity took quick measure of the situation with the sharpness of a fishwife. “But please do hurry back,” she said, recovering her composure, lips curved in promise, “as I shall make it worth your while.”

Julia did not have a moment to react. Wrapping a firm arm around her waist, Strathmore marched them both from the hall. Candles blazed and the chandeliers floated past, a blur of light in the dark.

When Julia looked around again, he had deposited her in a music room, with a piano at its center surrounded by a half dozen gilded settees. Glancing at the double sets of French doors, her world began to right itself, fueled by a sudden overwhelming urge to flee. The thought crept in beneath the panic, despite a small voice that told her the evening at Eccles House was not yet finished.

For a moment she’d forgotten Strathmore’s presence. Heat rushed to her face at the thought of what she had witnessed and what they had done. Her hands fluttered around her neckline, hastily securing the fragile ribbon that held her bodice in place. She’d scarcely taken one step toward the French doors when her body was jerked backward. There was nothing at all amorous about the grip.

Julia tilted her head back willing herself to look into the deep set eyes above the strong cheekbones, dark hollows carved beneath. The mask had slipped. It was not Alexander Strathmore, passionate lover.

“This is hardly necessary,” she said frowning at Strathmore’s large hand encircling her arm.

“You’re mistaken, Miss Woolcott. It’s more than necessary.” The formality of his tone after what had transpired just moments ago made her feel as though she’d fallen into a deep, dark well. In the brief, silent impasse that followed, Strathmore’s grip did not loosen.

“Very well. What now? I can tell you’re eager to tell me of your plan. You do have one, I suspect,” she said. She decided to appeal to his sense of reason, even as her pulse beat in time with the overwhelming need to get away from him.

His eyes narrowed. “Perhaps you’d like to rejoin Wadsworth’s guests.”

“Indeed. With a desire beyond my wildest dreams. Isn’t it what one would expect from a tempestuous wildcat?”

He smiled. “Don’t tell me you’re offended, Miss Woolcott. The gambit worked, didn’t it? Otherwise, you’d already be splayed like a ripe peach for the delectation of at least several gentlemen. If you don’t believe me, we can rejoin the gathering.” To his credit, the last words were delivered with a trace of irony.

Unsuccessfully, she tried to wipe out the outrageousness of the last hour. Worse, she could not reconcile the man manacling her wrist with the man she had touched, tasted, and all but devoured with a desire that scared her. “That’s utterly ridiculous and you well know it. I’m hardly here out of my own free will.”

“Then follow my lead and I shall extricate you from this situation.”

She shook her head, exasperation mingling with a desperation to understand. “Why ever would you do that? I’m here because of you, after all. You’re the one who invited me to Wadsworth’s little party, as I gleaned earlier this evening. I should like to know why the youngest son of the Dunedin duchy, vaunted traveler and explorer, would find it in his interests to forge a liaison with a woman of a certain age with no reputation—”

“A country mouse,” he supplied bluntly.

She glared. She was not herself. Truly. She licked her lips, trying to recall the quiet, even-tempered Julia, preoccupied with books and daguerreotypes, she had once been. Although it hardly seemed relevant anymore. All of the torturous, serpentine debauchery began and ended with Faron. She would do well to remember that.

Strathmore watched her closely, his eyes on her mouth.

She flushed. “Very well, then. Why all the subterfuge? Why do we not simply leave? I don’t believe Wadsworth has barricaded the doors to keep us here with him.”

“You will simply have to trust me.”

“Not very likely,” she snapped. “But since we find ourselves at yet another impasse, what is it you have in mind?”

“What is required is a lover’s spat. A loud, violent one, if you please.”

She gazed into those cool eyes and gave a reflexive tug at his hand at the same time. She could think of no other way to respond to his illogical demand. “You are not making any sense, sir. They expect us to fall into each other’s arms not engage in fisticuffs.” She gave another small tug of her wrist for emphasis unable to reconcile his calm demeanor with the heated nature of their exchange.

“It’s not what they want that I’m interested in. It’s what I want.”

She stilled, suddenly exhausted beyond all reason. “Which is what?” Never mind what he wanted. She didn’t know what she wanted anymore. To launch herself back into Wadsworth’s debauchery, to follow the thin skein back to Faron, or to flee through the French doors a few feet away?

Strathmore let go of her wrist with an unnerving suddenness. With fluid motions, he leaned over to push aside the right leg of his trouser. A black pistol appeared unexpectedly in his hand which he cradled with the familiarity of a lover. “Prepare yourself,” he said bluntly. He looked briefly up at the ornate plaster moldings encircling the ceiling. “Pity.” And shot three perfect holes into a trio of rosettes.

A shower of fine dust rained down upon them. It confirmed what she had instinctively known. She was next. He was going to kill her. She turned toward the French doors but his words stopped her more effectively than any bullet ever could.

“Do you want to find Faron?” he asked.

Shock bolted through her. Her throat constricted with emotion, rendering her silent.

“Do you want to find Faron?” he repeated. The door rattled, the handle moving slowly. She realized with dismay she had moved back beside him.

The door opened slightly. A low whisper hissed through it. “Whatever’s the commotion, Strathmore?” The voice belonged to Wadsworth, a little slurred from brandy and champagne.

Julia was mesmerized by the pistol sitting so casually in Strathmore’s hand. “There’s been an unfortunate occurrence, Wadsworth. Simply give me a moment or two.”

“I should say so. Those were gunshots we just heard. Sure of it.”

Strathmore lowered his voice and held her gaze with his own, daring her to contradict him. “I shall look after everything, Wadsworth, rely on it.” He motioned her toward the French doors. Before they could slip through the opening, she felt a hard hand lifting the hem of her garment. Without saying a word, he quickly unwound the strip of white linen from her lower calf. Stained with streaks of drying blood, the bandage was tossed across the piano bench.

“I shouldn’t advise entering at this moment,” said Strathmore. It was the voice of command. The door creaked shut. The shuffle of footsteps could be heard echoing down the hallway.

Julia’s leg burned from his touch, the silk of her skirts brushing against the freshly exposed wound. Sanity was becoming a distant memory.

“You’re very quiet.” He slanted her a glance. “And you haven’t answered my question.”

It had happened only three times in her life—a stone in her throat, holding back all words. When she had first arrived to live with Meredith, she had not spoken a word for a year. And once, when Rowena had nearly been taken from them by fever, she had felt the same suffocating thickness lodge in her throat.

She felt the room darken, her mouth opening abruptly. Then she closed her lips at whatever she wanted to say, her brows coming together in frustration. Strathmore studied her for a heartbeat until some sort of realization gradually lit his eyes. As though he understood something about her that she didn’t want him to know.

“It’s the only way,” he said. “You are most likely feeling the aftereffects of shock so I will cut to the chase. We haven’t much time.” He didn’t have to gesture to the closed door behind them for her to understand. “I am looking for Faron. As I surmise, you are, too.”

It seemed to be both an acknowledgement and a warning. When she still didn’t respond—couldn’t respond—she focused on the door behind him, the handle turning slowly and ominously. She pointed mutely.

Strathmore took in the situation instantly. “Now is the time to scream, Miss Woolcott,” he said tightly.

“Do what?” The words finally came, hoarse and tentative at the same time. It was some kind of macabre test. He aimed his pistol at the door. A charged second followed. He kept the pistol trained on the door and expertly wedged the back of a chair under the doorknob. With a quick move, he removed the pin anchoring his cravat and jammed the lock with an expert thrust.

“Give us a moment, will you, Beaumarchais?” He made his voice low and furious. “Miss Woolcott isn’t herself.”

How could he possibly know it was Beaumarchais lurking behind the closed door? Julia’s mind spun.

“Is the lady unwell?” It was Beaumarchais’s voice.

“I shall manage.”

Time was suspended as they both listened to receding footsteps. Julia swallowed hard, convulsively, before finding her voice. She needed to leave. “Your honesty is timely, sir,” she said aware of the French doors behind her as well as an overriding and competing compulsion to know him—the man who could bring her closer to the shadow that threatened her family. “What is your connection to Faron?”

“You mean our mutual connection to Faron.” His response was curt and distant.

Very well, then. The throbbing in her lower leg kept time with her rising pulse. “Did he hire you? Promise you something in exchange for harming me and my family?”

“This is not the time for this discussion. But clearly we want the same thing—otherwise neither of us would be here this evening.”

“Who arranged to hire you, then, if it wasn’t Faron?”

Strathmore hadn’t the time or patience for discussion. “Look here, Miss Woolcott. If I were to fulfill my obligations you would be dead by now.”

“You are to kill me,” she said in a rush, and took two steps backwards.

“However, I decided not to.” It was a simple declaration. His face was in partial shadow. There was no regret, anger, or weakness in his expression.

Panic accelerated her thoughts. She glanced at the piano, the blood-stained bandage and then at Strathmore. It was all beginning to add up with a strange logic. “So we are to make it appear as though a murder has taken place. Hence, the directive that I scream bloody murder, as it were.”

“It’s a way out, although you don’t appear grateful.” Strathmore, the infuriating man, seemed distantly amused. It was Julia’s turn to make a quick decision.

“We have yet to quit this place successfully,” she said, “so gratitude is not yet in order. Against my better judgment, I have no choice but to wait for your explanations. I can see for myself that we have no time.”

“And I for yours,” he said, the words taut.

Julia’s thoughts were a pattern of images and emotions, fatigue making it difficult to shape them into coherence. She barely recognized herself. She had left her home against her aunt’s wishes, attacked a footman and, dear lord, pressed herself into Strathmore’s long hard body with a flagrancy and need that was completely foreign to her. And she’d listened to that same man declare his intention to kill her.

Delirium. There was no other explanation. She tried to imagine looking at the tangle of events through the frame of her camera. The lens never lied, she told herself. What she saw was Strathmore at the center of the composition, the axis that would lead her to Faron. She felt a sickening dread that Faron would not desist, that her involvement in the debacle was just the beginning, that Meredith’s and Rowena’s demise stood at its tragic end.

She said, “I shall follow your lead.”

He didn’t bother to reply, gesturing to the floor by the piano bench. “Lie face down, turned away from the door. The story is that we argued, you produced a pistol, shot wildly in anger”—he gestured to the splintered plaster overhead—“and proceeded to shoot yourself whilst aiming for me.

“Clearly, a lover’s spat,” she said wretchedly as she crumpled to the floor, favoring her injured leg with a quickly stifled wince. The carpet against her cheek was soft, the oriental pattern swirling around her like a whirlpool.

“I tried to staunch the blood,” Strathmore continued, gathering up the discarded linen from the piano bench before bunching it at the indentation of her waist.

Julia partially closed her eyes, willing to shut out the sheen of his booted feet as they rested by her head. She heard him step away, remove the chair from underneath the doorknob. A quiet click as the lock turned and then Strathmore’s low growl. “Have my carriage sent around.”

Julia slowed her breaths, watching through her lashes. Four pairs of eyes appeared at the door, staring at the scene—the woman on the gleaming parquet floor, bleeding onto the carpet. Whether they were breathing hard in lust or shock, she couldn’t tell. But Robertson had gone so pale the spots on his face were as vivid as the scarlet waistcoat he wore.

“There has been an unfortunate accident,” Strathmore said. He ostentatiously waved the pistol in his hand as evidence.

Wadsworth’s eyes, beneath the purple pouches, were the size of billiard balls. “I say, old boy, this is entirely unacceptable. I should have expected that you could manage the woman, histrionics and all. I can’t have this type of scandal getting out,” he blustered, his multitudinous chins wagging in disbelief.

“Is she dead?” asked Beaumarchais abruptly. He was to the side of the doorway, outside Julia’s sight.

“I presume so,” said Strathmore with supreme unconcern and to no one in particular. “I shall see to it that nothing mars your evening or your reputation, Wadsworth.”

“Perhaps I should have a look myself,” said Beaumarchais. Julia held her breath.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” For emphasis, Strathmore added, “I find myself quite unaccountably irritable. Any untoward movements will put you at risk of seeing one of your body parts summarily removed.” There was a collective inhalation of breath. The threat was casually delivered but hit its mark.

Felicity gave a high, tinkling laugh, totally at odds with the tension in the room. “All’s well that ends well. Miss Woolcott was not to my liking in the first place.”

“The feeling was entirely mutual,” Strathmore said. “And in part responsible for Miss Woolcott’s uncontrollable outburst of jealousy.”

Julia clenched her teeth.

“I do have that effect on men, I’m told,” Felicity purred, choosing to interpret the words as a compliment, not in the least concerned or discomfited by the drama unfolding before her eyes. “Whenever you find yourself at loose ends, Strathmore—”

“She shot herself accidentally?” Beaumarchais interrupted, impatience tightening his tone.

“There was a struggle—I tried to take the pistol from her,” Strathmore said just as curtly. “I presume my carriage has been brought around.”

The discussion came to an abrupt end. Cool night air rushed into the music room as the French doors opened. Strathmore scooped Julia from the floor, holding her fast, his arm snug beneath her knees and her shoulders. She kept her breathing shallow and low, trying to ignore the half-cocked pistol riding hard against Strathmore’s thigh or the rise and fall, rise and fall of his chest against her back.

Surrendering was all she could do.