Page 50 of Discovering Her Earl

“You do not need another chance. Nothing that happened today was so egregious as to end your trial arrangement prematurely. We still have another two weeks before we leave for London. I can only recommend that we continue on as we were.”

“Thank you, Miss Bantham.”

“You are quite welcome, my lord. For the record, I would much prefer someone who cares maybe too much over an extraction than to deal with someone reckless. Once something is broken it can be repaired but it can never be made whole again.”

She may have been speaking a little of herself rather than an artifact.

She had been broken five years ago and had not been whole since. She’d gone into her come out an eager, naïve girl and a few hours later she’d faced a harsh dose of reality.

Silence fell over them again, not as uncomfortable as before, but she found she didn’t want to go back to how they’d been. For whatever reason the young man who had hurt her years ago was not the same man that was here with her now.

Or at least she’d seen no evidence of the cruel person who’d caused her to give up on her plans for a husband and family of her own.

“My parents died when I was eleven,” she blurted out, feeling the need to share something intimate to maintain the closeness they’d managed to build in the last few minutes.

Julian’s eyes went wide as he waited for her to continue.

“They drowned in a carriage accident. I was in the carriage with them when it ran off a bridge and landed on its side in the river. My mother was killed instantly, but my father was alive and fairly unharmed. As the water rushed into the carriage, he tried to open the door but he couldn’t get it open. I was small enough to fit through the window. So, he boosted me through the opening and told me to swim for the shore.”

She felt the chill as if she was soaked to the skin standing on the riverbank on that dreary October evening.

“I stood there crying and shivering. I didn’t run for help. I did nothing except exactly what he told me to do.” She took a steadying breath. “Not a day goes by that I don’t wonder what might have happened if I’d found someone to help rescue him. I might have saved him. But I didn’t.”

“That is why you tensed when we went over a bridge during our journey.”

“Yes. That’s why. My point is, that I am haunted as well. My father was a wonderful man who loved me, so I don’t understand that element of what you suffer with. But I still grow anxious when I go over a bridge after all these years.”

He nodded and placed a hand over hers. Offering comfort as she had done for him.

“When I remember how useless I was that night, I feel that same sense of panic as if it were just happening in that moment. They say time heals all wounds, but some are so deep they remain. We all have demons. Maybe sharing what brings them about with a friend means we have someone to help us when they try to pull us down.”

“But—”

“If you are about to tell me you are a formidable man and shouldn’t be stricken by memories the same as a woman, I will thump you in the nose, Julian Huntly.”

He chuckled.

“I would never say such a thing.” He tilted his head to the side. “I was going to ask… Are we friends? For I was certain you hated me for some unknown and unjustified reason.”

“Unjustified?”

“Yes. I used that word specifically so you would prove me wrong and therefore justify your dislike for me.”

He was smiling as he said it, and she decided they had spoken enough about emotional demons and baggage. Including the past she’d shared with him.

“Let’s just say, I thought you were someone else. And now I think I know the real you.”

He blinked in surprise.

“Is that a good thing? That would mean you disliked the person you thought I was? But how would you have known me?”

“It is not important now,” she said and found it was true. Whatever his crimes back then, he hadn’t even had the title yet. He was still struggling to come into himself and find out who he was.

She was certain the man before her now had paid his punishment tenfold at the hands of his worthless sire. The vengeance Lainey had originally sought was unnecessary.

Aunt Rose often accused Lainey of wanting to help every downtrodden soul she came across, and it was possible this was the reason she was willing to forgive Lord Melville so easily. Whatever the reason, Julian was no longer a villain, but a damaged soul that needed her assistance.

Or perhaps her willingness to forgive him had more to do with the way his smile made her stomach flutter.