his, making him sweat beneath his evening dress. His body had been cold for as long as he could remember. Now he was heating up.
Brilliant light exploded around him. The glare of it froze him. His brain registered two words—scandal-mongering newspapers—just as Zoe Gifford pulled out of his embrace.
Sebastian shouted something at him in an inebriated slur, and his brother hit him for the second time in two days.
AT THE SAVOY HOTEL
Several hours later, Nigel pressed a towel filled with ice against his eye, the ice chipped from a block in the kitchens of the Savoy Hotel around the corner from Murray’s. If he were to open the door of his suite, he would hear the strains of the orchestra in the ballroom downstairs, playing jazz for the partying crowd. Drunken laughter. And witness more couples stumbling through the hallways, sinking to the floor to kiss passionately and indecently before they even reached a bedroom. Indecent.
He had ripped off his tie. Now he paced his hotel room like a caged cat.
He had told reporters he was Oswald Warts, Oxford student, and the girl he’d kissed was an actress’s understudy. Luckily, none of the press recognized him, as he was practically a hermit at Brideswell—except for the few times he came up to London to see his man of business and to visit his friend Rupert, who had been badly wounded at the Somme and was in a charity hospital. Given the late hour, he’d insisted they spend the night at the Savoy, and he had taken two suites: one for Julia and Miss Gifford, one for Sebastian and him.
A snore sounded from the adjoining bedroom. Sebastian was sprawled across the bed, fully dressed and unconscious.
“I don’t know what in hell to do.” He wouldn’t sleep tonight. After what had happened, he was certain he would have nightmares. He didn’t want to wake his brother with his screams and have Sebastian witness them.
What could he do? He couldn’t let the wedding go ahead, but what could he do with Sebastian? The problem was not just the rumors; it was Sebastian himself. He was drinking more. He’d grown even angrier, edgier.
Nigel didn’t know how to give his brother any peace. He couldn’t just say: do your duty and prefer females. Father had tried that and it had sent Sebastian on a self-destructive path that had seen him spend much of his time dead drunk.
If the blasted marriage ended in divorce, wouldn’t that lead to more rumors about Sebastian? Of course his wife kicked him out—he was batting for the other team.
Sebastian wasn’t going to be able to fool Zoe Gifford. Her kiss had been hot enough to melt the soles of Nigel’s shoes to the sidewalk. He had never been kissed like that.
It made him hot, when he was so accustomed to feeling empty and cold. It made him hunger for more. But—
“It cannot happen again,” he muttered to his brandy glass. “Not with my brother’s fiancée.”
A soft knock sounded at the door. It was 3:00 a.m. The party in the ballroom was still roaring at full speed—he could feel the rhythm of the music through the floor.
Groaning, he got up. What if he hauled the door open and faced bobbed blond hair, huge violet eyes and painted lips? He remembered discovering traces of her red lipstick on his mouth.
Heat seared him just thinking about it. Perhaps he had better not answer that door. He’d never had his control snap like that. Was it another symptom of shell shock—hauling unsuspecting women into scorching kisses? He didn’t think so, but losing control like that left him stunned.
Another knock. “Langford, open the door. It is Zoe and Julia. We want to make sure you haven’t beaten each other senseless.”
Both of them. At least it meant he wouldn’t be tempted to—
No. Hell, he would never be tempted to do that again.
He took his bag of ice from his eye and opened the door. Miss Gifford walked in, beautiful in a dark blue silk robe tied at her waist and frothing around her ankles. Feathers adorned the neckline and the cuffs. Julia wore a new robe of scarlet silk.
“You have quite a shiner, brother,” Julia observed. “I’ll go check on Sebastian.” She quietly went into their brother’s room.
Miss Gifford walked up to him with her arms folded over her chest. Her face was scrubbed free of makeup. Soft pink lips. Unusual purple eyes with long, gold lashes. Soft, ivory skin.
She was beautiful. Luminous.
Then her finger jabbed his chest. “Julia is afraid she has made you angry. She’s worried she hurt you. Don’t you think she’s grieved enough?” she asked in a quietly furious voice.
She always put him on the defensive. “Of course Julia has not made me angry,” he said. “And of course I want her to stop grieving.”
“Then tell her that. She can’t live in the past. She believes she won’t have a home to live in once you are married. She fears she will be displaced by your wife, and that if she is very lucky, she might be allowed to live in a cottage.” Miss Gifford’s voice vibrated with indignation, though it stayed low in tone. “If this is true,” she went on, “Julia’s only hope for a future is marriage. And she doesn’t want to marry because she is still in love with the man she lost. I can understand what that is like. But she needs to fall in love again, and she can’t if you insist she must act as though it is still 1914. You are like that madwoman in Dickens—Miss Havisham or whatever her name was. Let your sister brush off the cobwebs and take off her unused wedding dress and find love!”
He gazed into her snapping violet eyes. “Thank you.”
“What does that mean? Will you do something? Or are you going to tell her to drop her hems back below her knees this instant?”
“I will talk to her,” he said stiffly. Without the ice on his eye, it stung again.
“Then do it now.” Miss Gifford turned and walked out.
Damn it. All he wanted to do was kiss her. He slapped the bag against his black eye. The pain of doing that helped cool his ardor. Just barely.
Then Julia came out of Sebastian’s room. Cautiously, and that in itself broke his heart.
“Are you very angry? I shouldn’t have done it.” Julia sank down to the wing chair and she looked up at him with tear-filled eyes. “Is it very wrong to go dancing when Anthony never will?”
He didn’t want her to spend her life mourning. He felt like a wretch. She had been grieving, and he was making her worry about his reaction. “It’s not wrong to go on living. Miss Gifford is right about that.”
His little sister looked so different. She had always been elegant, even as a little girl. Now even the way she tilted her head looked lively. Her bouncing hair drew his gaze. She looked freer, lighter, and she glowed in relief from her worry.
“You are extraordinarily beautiful, Julia. You look even lovelier with bobbed hair.” And he meant it. “Do you want me to take you home tomorrow?”
Julia
