Page 11 of Atone, Adonis

“No? You’ve endeavored to throw me out twice in under half an hour, despite the both of us knowing you’ve not the slightest chance of succeeding. What would you call that if not stubborn?”

“Please leave, Fred. You cannot be here. I cannot have you here. To force me to look at you—to speak to you—is beyond cruel.”

For the first time since he’d strode inside Farrow Cottage, Julianna saw her words have some effect on his expression. He clenched his jaw, which made his dimples appear. A detail she had not needed to witness.

“Do you think,” he said, almost too low to hear, “that you are the first to call me cruel? It is an accusation I know too well to let it affect me, Miss Farrow.”

“Stop.” Thomas’s breathing was labored, but he made himself heard from up the stairs. “Julie-bug, stop.”

Julianna closed her eyes and thwarted her desire to bury her face in her hands. Even if this was Thomas’s dying wish, she could not do it. She could not marry this man. He’d killed her parents for heaven’s sake!

But she lowered her voice nonetheless. “I’d rather rot in hell before I sign anything that pledges myself to you.”

“Luckily, you won’t need to sign anything. Your brother will.” She noticed he kept his voice quiet now too, only for her ears. “We’ll wed when the license has been procured, and then you may rot wherever you’d like. Hell or otherwise.”

Julianna truly could not breathe. It felt as if the walls were closing in on her. As if the fire in the hearth had died and leeched all the warmth from her bones. Damnation, she might actually swoon.

But then she took one more look into his awful face and said, “I won’t do it. I won’t marry you.”

“You will.” He turned from her, once more striding for the door. The parting blow came from over his shoulder. “Oh and Miss Farrow, do try to wash the dirt from your face before the wedding. One does like a bride to look presentable.”

Chapter

5

Fred stood in the grand entryway of Sedgewick Manor. Like Farrow Cottage where he’d just been, it was the first time he’d stepped foot in the Manor in a decade. His boots scraped against the marble floor, layered in dust. The thick scent of mildew clung to everything: the banisters, the draperies, even the walls. He looked around, shocked that the great house was in such an utter state of disrepair. It looked, he couldn’t help but notice, exactly as bad as he currently felt.

There was no one to greet him, so he removed his gloves himself, and then his hat and his coat. The housekeeper had retired long ago and the footmen had gone on to other service, each with an adequate reference written by his solicitor on his behalf.

The caretakers he’d paid to close up the house had done the job, barely. The roof had not collapsed, nor the foundations crumbled, but that was the best he could say of them. Outside, the gardens had grown thick and wild. Inside, it was as quiet as a crypt.

His footsteps echoed as he made his way down the long corridor toward the study. The portraits on the wall watched him as he went, those long-dead Sedgewicks with their cold, imperious eyes. He looked like them now, in a way he never thought possible when he was the Darling of Dorset. The bright-eyed, thick-thighed eighteen year old who had rambled through these halls, laughing at all those unsmiling faces that peered down at him. More fool him.

He’d had an unhappy childhood, certainly, but his teenage years, spent in the company of Thomas and other bosom friends, had once felt like happiness. He had been praised, indulged, wanted. Close enough to happiness, at least, that everything before and after now seemed grimmer by comparison.

He found the master study quickly, not knowing where else to go. The smell hit him first as soon as he stepped inside. Old paper and stale brandy. The faint, haunting trace of Eva’s rose soap that still clung to the edges of the room.

May she rest in peace.

She, like everyone else in his life, had deserved more than he’d given her.

Fred crossed to the window and pulled back the heavy curtain. Light speared through the filth on the glass and spilled across the covered furniture, glancing off the empty decanter on the desk and filtering onto the stack of yellowing papers beside it.

He coughed as dust, aroused by his entrance, bloomed into the air. The loud, sudden sound of his hacking broke the silence that pressed in all around him. Tomorrow he’d call for Gilbert to bring the London staff to Dorset. He’d have brought them himself if he’d had any intention of staying.

He hadn’t, of course. But then he’d strode into that cottage and it had broken his heart. Thomas was dying. He’d said so in his letter, but Fred hadn’t—Christ—he hadn’t believed it. He’d imagined exaggeration or a joke. Perhaps a ploy to force the matter of Julianna’s betrothal. That was cynical of him, but no more so than he usually was. And usually, he was right.

But nothing about Thomas’s condition had been faked. His cheeks, which Fred remembered as always laughing and round with joy, were hollowed out such that he appeared nearly skeletal. His teeth, which had always flashed a bright, blinding white when he smiled, looked gray now, encased in purple, inflamed gums. And that rattling cough. By Christ, that cough could wake the dead.

Fred couldn’t very well hand the man a bag of coin and walk back out the door again, no matter what he’d intended. He couldn’t. He was an arsehole, truly, but not so dastardly as that.

And Julianna.

He’d hardly remembered her at all, except as a child. She wasn’t that any longer. She was a woman now and an unexpectedly exquisite one.

Not that he’d allow himself to think of her in that way. Not only did she hate him, which she’d made more than evident this morning, but Thomas had made him promise.

He would marry her and he would not touch her. Ever.