Page 66 of Atone, Adonis

“Well,” the Baroness said, her voice drifting lazily down to them. “If it isn’t Lord Chester. Restored at last to polite society, I see.”

Her gaze swept over him with unhidden familiarity before settling on Julianna. It lingered there on his wife.

“And Lady Chester. Good to see you again.”

That startled him. But of course Julianna knew the Baroness. She was from Dorset too, as much as he was. And they’d both been at Madame Tremaux’s yesterday.

Julianna inclined her head. “Baroness.”

A faint smile curved the Baroness’s lips. “I’m glad to see you promenade so openly. After everything that’s been said, much less printed, most would not show their faces.”

Fred felt Julianna’s fingers tighten on his arm before she replied. “London is quite pleasant today. It would be a pity not to enjoy it.”

The Baroness laughed but no mirth reached her eyes. “Indeed.”

She looked again—briefly but quite deliberately—to where Julianna’s gloved hand rested against Fred’s sleeve. The young man behind her shifted in his saddle, clearly uncertain about this social interaction and any role he ought to be playing in it.

None, thought Fred. He was only a child. Sixteen probably. Slightly older than he had been when the Baroness first seduced him. And that stopped him for a moment. He’d never thought of it as such, because at that age he hadn’t thought of himself as a child. But of course he had been. And that realization…sat very uneasily in the pit of his stomach.

He watched the young man hover just behind the Baroness’s shoulder and more truths pressed in on him with uncomfortable force: He’d been a child and she’d been an adult. Whatever he’d been to her had not been equal. He’d not been a partner but an…accessory. Just as this young man nervously huddled behind her was.

He felt his breathing speed up and his fist clench. Julianna, beside him, noticed. She leaned into him slightly, as if to let him know she was there. And then she said briskly, “Take care in London, Baroness. We must be off.” And began to walk.

For a heartbeat, the Baroness only stared at their departing figures. But then she smiled at them both and gathered her reins. “Come along, Harold,” she said to the young man who trailed her. And then she called over her shoulder to Fred, “Enjoy your little lark, Chester. While it lasts.”

Conversation around them swelled again as the crowds swallowed up the Baroness.

“Well,” Julianna said quietly after a moment, “she is unpleasant.”

Fred tried to laugh, but it came out too thin. “Yes, she is.”

Julianna was tilting her head again and looking at him oddly. “Fred,” she finally said. “If there is anything you’d like to discuss with me about what happened with the Baroness, I’d be glad to listen.”

“Nothing, dearheart,” Fred replied, unease still churning in his stomach even as he said the words.

He was so different now than the boy he’d once been with her. A boy who had been desperate for companionship and flattered by attention. A boy who had given and given while she took. A boy who had become a man twisted by guilt.

In his mind he’d always thought his guilt over Eva and the carriage accident was different, separate somehow, from his guilt over letting the Baroness seduce him. But he could see now that they weren’t different. That his feelings were all mixed up together in some kind of knot of remorse and shame he didn’t know how to begin unpicking.

He could see too, looking at Harold, how young he’d been. He hadn’t known it because young people never do. But he had been.

And if he could feel for Harold, could he not also feel for the young Fred? He shuddered at the thought. Just that single soft tendril of forgiveness for the boy he’d been sliced right through him.

When they’d left for Rotten Row earlier that day, he’d done so knowing that blood might be spilled. Now he realized it had been—but the wound had been inflicted a decade ago, before he had even known what to call it.

Chapter

22

They did not speak much on the ride back to Chester House but Julianna could see Fred’s mind was awhirl. She didn’t press this time. The Baroness’s words, that boy, from the modiste’s shop kept ringing in her ears.

Whatever had happened between them had been harmful to him. That was obvious enough. And she would support him as well as she could until he was ready to speak with her about it, if he ever was.

In the meantime, her body still hummed with the residue of Rotten Row that wasn’t just the Baroness. There had been other stares, other sharp words. And Fred had stood with her because she’d asked him to, even though it was clear that he’d hated being there, even before they’d run into that abominable woman.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to him. “That I asked you to come today.”

He reached for her hand and squeezed it. “I’m not.”