Page 12 of Atone, Adonis

What Thomas didn’t know was that he needn’t have bothered extracting such an oath. Fred had maintained his own chaste celibacy since the accident. It was his libido that had gotten them all into this mess—he’d only been at that dinner the evening of the accident to spend time with the Baroness. And so it was his libido that he’d wrestled to the ground afterward.

At first it had been difficult, certainly. He had been a man of appetites in his youth, but only his wanting for a good meal remained now. He hardly thought of sexual relations at all these days.

So he could not account for the way his breath had caught in his throat when Julianna opened that door and stared at him, her dark eyes liquid and furious. She’d looked at him as if he were the most despicable thing she’d ever seen: a worm washed up by a storm and then burned to a crisp by the sun. A mouse gutted and turned inside out by some bird of prey.

And he’d reacted to her horror with a jolt of arousal. The reaction was so abrupt, so out of place for him, that his body had felt for the briefest of moments like it belonged to some other wanton fellow entirely. One who always walked around half-mast. Not Fred.

But then disgust, his old familiar friend, had flared hot in his stomach. Not at her, but at himself. That he had had that reaction at all. It was…inappropriate. And certainly not something he expected to suffer again. He had simply been surprised, he told himself now. Taken off guard by the sheer ferocity of her beauty.

Fred pressed a palm flat against the cold windowpane and stared at the cracked, empty fountain outside. There was only ruin around him now, which truly was befitting, wasn’t it?

He remembered what the Manor had once been. What he’d once been. Before the night of the accident broke his heart and he’d skulked off to the Continent where it grew back twisted and hard. Its rough edges still sometimes scraped against the inside of his chest, removing any chance it might ever heal itself again.

He closed his eyes against the memories that tried to overtake him. Farrow Cottage had always been where he was happiest but it would do him no good now to dwell. He crossed the room to the fireplace instead and picked up the old poker to shove aside the ashes that hadn’t been cleared in years. But there were too many of them, too thick and damp to even consider starting a fire, so he just watched them scatter instead.

Tomorrow. He’d deal with all of it tomorrow. He’d call for his staff, send word to his solicitor to draw up the marriage contracts, and visit the Bishop in person to request the license.

Tonight, he’d go stay in a coaching inn. But first he sat down at his desk and lit the single candle that still remained in the single silver candlestick he found there. He rummaged around for a quill he then dipped into the dregs of the inkwell.

He’d taken to writing letters to Eva when they were in France, as some kind of outlet for the intense, all-encompassing loneliness of that time. He never gave them to her just as he would never give this one to Julianna, but he found some comfort in the habit nonetheless.

Jules,

Julianna,

It is a strange thing to be summoned to marry a woman who loathes me by a man who once called me brother. Stranger still that I should comply.

You would not believe it of me, but I am not a man who generally complies with the wishes of others. In truth, I came here intending to tell Thomas his idea of marriage could go to hell.

But I needed only one look at him—and one at you—to know I could not walk back out the door of Farrow Cottage without doing what he asked of me. I owe him that at least, the last vestige of what was once a friendship.

You think me a monster but your opinion of me will not weigh heavily. I have borne worse these past ten years.

I will sign my name beside yours in the parish register. I will stand beside you before God. But I will never reach for you. I will never claim what Thomas forbade. I will never place a hand upon your skin—not in love, not in anger, not even in kindness.

This is my vow to you. Not the one I’ll recite in front of the Bishop, but the one I utter to you from the depths of my damaged heart. Where, I believe, it matters.

Yours,

Frederick Sedgewick

Earl of Chester

Fred took the letter and slipped it into his desk drawer. When he stood to leave, his eyes landed on the floor where his footprints had been preserved in the dust there. Ghostly artifacts, staring back at him.

He shook his head. There were too many ghosts here. He made for the door and the coaching inn.

Chapter

6

The knock came just after dawn. Julianna had not even made it out of doors yet to feed the chickens nor collect the eggs. Should any be left. The fox was at it again, no matter how many stones she hurled in its direction.

Last night had been a restless one for Thomas. She’d passed it dozing upright in the chair by his bedside, too afraid to leave him even for a moment, in case his fever spiked. So she was practically in a stupor now. She’d nearly dozed off in the act of setting the kettle on, when the knock came at the front door.

And then it came again. Firmer this time, and with it a breath of cold wind that raised the gooseflesh on her arms. Would this infernal cold spell ever end? Thomas would never recover when the icy air froze his lungs with every breath he managed to take.

She wrapped her shawl more tightly around her and answered the knock, surprised to find a man in a long coat, bag in hand, on her doorstep. He was an older gentleman, with an iron-gray beard and spectacles. Dust covered his boots.