Standish?’
Marcus stilled. ‘Perhaps...’
‘Was it?’ Julianna persisted determinedly.
‘Yes!’ A nerve pulsed in his tightly clenched jaw.
She looked up at him searchingly. ‘Marcus?’
He turned away to walk across and stare sightlessly out of his study window, unable to withstand that penetrating gaze a moment longer. ‘You should know, I did not...agree to our arrangement these past few days because you blackmailed me, Julianna.’
Julianna stared at the uncompromising set of Marcus’s shoulders, the stiffness of his spine beneath the flowing white shirt, wondering if she had misunderstood him, if it were not merely wishful thinking on her part that she thought he might care for her.
Whatever the outcome of this conversation, Julianna knew that there were things between them that needed to be said, and that if they were not said now they might never be.
Her pride dictated that she not open herself up for the same rejection she had suffered in her marriage. At the same time, the memory of the difficulties she had placed herself in the last time she let pride dictate her actions mocked that reluctance. There must be truth between the two of them now, even if that truth resulted in her humiliation. Surely, after these past three days, she owed Marcus that much, at least.
She drew in a deep breath before speaking softly. ‘And I have realized these past few days that I did not blackmail you, and only you, because of a sudden need for sexual knowledge.’
Marcus turned slowly, eyes searching the pale calm of Julianna’s face. ‘Then why did you?’ he finally asked.
She smiled ruefully. ‘Forgive me, but even I had not realized my true reasons until a few minutes ago.’ She closed her eyes briefly as she gave a shake of her head. ‘Do you even remember that night all those years ago when you danced a waltz with me at Almack’s?’
He nodded. ‘It was the night of your eighteenth birthday. You looked... you were so beautiful that night, Julianna, that just to look at you took my breath away.’
‘I fell in love that night,’ she revealed softly.
He scowled. ‘With Armitage? I do not remember seeing you with him—’
‘You were the one I fell in love with that night, Marcus,’ Julianna corrected him softly, having no intention, after the things she had learnt today, of so much as mentioning her deceased husband’s name ever again. He was the past, and it was only the future that concerned her now. With or without Marcus in it.
She could never love another as she now realized she loved Marcus, as she had always loved him, but if he did not want her then she would at least know that she had told him of the feelings she had for him, before she had to leave him to find what future she could without him.
She straightened her shoulders determinedly as she looked steadily across the room at Marcus. ‘I loved you then, I have loved you every day since, and I love you still. I say this not because I expect you to be able to say the same to me,’ she added hurriedly as Marcus looked stunned by her words. ‘But because I have wronged you these past three days, have made demands upon you which must have shocked and dismayed you—’
‘Did you listen to anything I said to you earlier, Julianna?’ Marcus demanded impatiently as he quickly crossed the room to her side, coming to a halt just inches in front of her as he looked down at her. ‘I am neither shocked nor dismayed. And I only allowed you to believe you had blackmailed me into teaching you of lovemaking, when in reality I never laid so much as a finger on Emily Proctor.’
Julianna started. ‘She lied?’
‘She lied.’ He nodded as he reached down to take both of Julianna’s hands in his. ‘I could not—I did not want her. Not even when the woman I really wanted, the woman I ached for, wanted, was in love with, was denied to me. You were denied to me, Julianna,’ he revealed.
She gasped softly, wonderingly. ‘Me?’
‘You,’ he repeated firmly. ‘I fell in love with you the night of your eighteenth birthday, possibly even before that, but that was the night I realized my true feelings for you. But in my arrogance I believed it best that I wait until the war with Napoleon was over before coming to you and declaring my love for you, that it was unfair to you to do otherwise, when I might make you a widow so soon after becoming a bride. You married Armitage in my absence.’ He gave a humourless smile at the irony of events.
Julianna could barely breathe as she listened to Marcus telling her of how he had realized his love for her on the very same night she had acknowledged to herself the deep love she felt for him. ‘I believed, when you went back to war without seeing me again, that you did not want me, and that I would never become a bride at all if I did not accept John’s offer when it was made. But all the time, all these years, it was you I loved, Marcus. You I wanted to be with. As I want to be with you now. Fully and completely,’ she added breathlessly. ‘As your lover—’
‘As my wife,’ he insisted.
Julianna looked up at him in shock. ‘You wish to marry me?’
‘More than anything! I know you were unhappy in marriage the first time, that you have decided not to marry again, but I assure you marriage to me would not be like that. Not ever! I love you, Julianna.’ Marcus swept her into his arms. ‘I will always love you.’
‘And I love you!’ she assured him fervently as she clung to him. ‘Make love with me, Marcus, please? Here, or in your bedchamber, I do not care where, as long as you allow me to make love with you as I have long wished to do. As you have so pleasurably taught me to do,’ she added huskily.
Marcus moved back slightly to look down at her wordlessly for several long seconds before laughing happily at the unwavering love he saw shining in those beautiful grey eyes. ‘Then I choose the privacy of my bedchamber.’ He swung her up completely into his arms, pausing only long enough to allow her to open the door. ‘In the knowledge that I will always love you, Julianna,’ he told her throatily.
‘Let us show each other our love.’ Julianna glowed up at Marcus as she allowed him to carry her up the stairs.
To heaven.
‘Sight,’ Julianna murmured longingly just minutes later as she looked at the muscled contours of Marcus’s bared chest.
‘Sight,’ he echoed huskily. Both of them were naked as they stood so close but not quite touching, having quickly undressed each other, their clothes scattered on the floor about them.
‘Scent.’ Julianna laid her cheek against that perfect chest as she breathed in the lemon and sandalwood, the musk that was so uniquely Marcus.
‘Scent.’ Marcus nuzzled against the delicate curve of her throat, breathing in her essence before slowly, oh-so-slowly, dropping to his knees in front of her. ‘Scent,’ he repeated hoarsely as he buried his face gently against the silky red-gold curls between her thighs.
Julianna’s breath hitched in her throat as she looked down at him.
