Page 23 of Unmasking a Wicked Marquess
“What?”
Yet he didn’t answer her. He guided his horse onto the very edge of the long gravel driveway that extended before him, but he didn’t ride all the way down it. Instead, he brought the horse to a halt and looked at the house.
Its vast white Palladian structure was one he knew well. The yellow-stone frames on the windows and the huge trees that stood either side of it, framing the building as if it was all part of some vast landscape painting, were all familiar to him. How often had he ridden past this house with his father pointing towards it, reminding him who lived here and that they did not mix with them?
“What’s wrong?” the lady asked, peering around his shoulder.
“What’s your name?” His mouth was suddenly dry. “Please.” He jerked his head towards her. “Tell me now.”
She must have been able to tell there was more to his question than just a longing to know her better now, for desperation tinged his voice.
“Juliet.”
“No.” He closed his eyes and jerked his head away.
“What?” She laughed. “Not a fan of Shakespearean names? After the passion you show in conversation, I half thought you might like the allusion to the most famous love story ever told.”
“Lady Juliet Beaumont,” he spoke without hesitation, and she went quiet.
Edward stepped down from the horse and reached towards her, offering to help her down. She placed her hands on his shoulders as he reached for her waist, and she slid off the saddle. He could have put her down at once, but he didn’t. He let the moment linger, staring into her eyes as their bodies brushed, and he put her down on the ground.
That blush was now madly crimson across her cheeks, and when she briefly bit her lip, he thought of colliding their lips together, stealing another one of those kisses, and this time not holding back but introducing her to a truly indulgent kiss.
She is Lady Juliet Beaumont.
Then he released her.
“What is it?” she asked again. “Why do you look so uncertain of me now but still hold me like that?” She released him, too, her hands looking as if they shuddered a little.
“My name is Edward,” he said slowly. “Edward Welton, the Marquess of Ashton.”
She backed up from him, her eyes wide, and her lips parted. She knew. She knew as he knew what was now so wrong between them, why sharing anything like the kiss they had shared before was wrong indeed. They were divided. Her eyes darted away and returned to him, as if she found it impossible to look away for long.
As he waited in that silence, finding himself pleading to hear any other words from her, the moment was abruptly over all too fast. She turned and fled, sprinting towards the house as quickly as she could. Edward stared after her, knowing he couldn’t blame her for it.
Chapter 7
“Juliet? Juliet!” Violet raged and banged her fist on the door. “It has been two days. This is pathetic. You must come out of this room.”
“I am perfectly capable of escaping this room. It is just I have chosen not to,” Juliet called back to her sister. She knew very well she was being ridiculous. No good could come from confining herself to one room and refusing to come out.
She just needed time to understand what had happened, to understand why her carriage had crashed and put her in the path of the one man who was forbidden to her, why that night at the ball she had tipped her drink onhimof all people. “Bloody impossible.” She cast a glance up at the clouds through the window beside her and glared at the heavens above. “If this is your doing, you have a funny idea about twists of fate.”
“Juliet!” Violet called again. “You know I was always able to open this lock, don’t you?”
“I know.” Juliet sighed and shifted in the window seat. It was a trick they had discovered when they were children that it was actually rather easy to open one another’s locked doors. She heard the familiar click of the lock being popped out of place, and the door swung open, revealing her sister’s face.
Violet stood there with her hands on her hips, an eyebrow curved.
“You going to explain yourself?” Violet asked, striding into the room and kicking the door shut behind her. “Father says you are unwell, yet our mother looks at me with a knowing smile as she says it.” Then her eyes darted down to the warm cushion Juliet was holding over her lower abdomen, that the fire had warmed. “Ah, I see. A lady’s sickness, is it?”
“Pah! Sickness. Why do we call it a sickness when it comes every month?”
“No idea.” Violet sighed loudly and sat down beside Juliet in the window seat, comically pushing out her stomach and rubbing it as if she had the same problem. “Yet you hardly ever hide away in your chamber when it is your time of the month. Why are you doing it now?”
Juliet didn’t answer right away but looked out the window once more, accusingly glaring at the heavens. The clouds had gathered darkly today, the murky grey and black clouds circling as if some storm was building. She had a feeling she knew that storm, for her gut swirled in the same way, with anger.
She could not explain to Violet that for the last two days, her mind had been completely absorbed with thoughts of Lord Edward Welton of Ashton. She couldn’t explain that she had thought scandalous things and those heated dreams where she woke in the night covered in sweat, imagining he was in the room with her, clutching to her waist as he had done when he helped her down from that horse was making her ache to be with him again.
