Page 61 of After the Abduction

“I was not—” He scrubbed his hand over his face. “We were talking. About the gossip in London. One thing led to another and…we got carried away.”

Uncle Lew raised an eyebrow. “Do tell. My nephew making an error in judgment and getting carried away, all in one day. Will wonders never cease.”

“You’re not making this any easier,” Sebastian snapped.

“I am not trying to, my boy.” He strolled over to the benches that lined the circular area and sat down. “Since Lady Juliet’s guardians seem unaware of what you two have been doing, I am trying to step in on her behalf, to discern what your intentions are. Because I find that I like the young lady quite a lot. And I should hate to see you ruin her life twice.”

“I don’t wish to ruin her life. Until today, I wanted to marry her.”

“So you could defuse her need for vengeance and assuage your own guilt, I suppose. How crafty of you.”

Put like that, his aims sounded less than admirable. “Those weren’t the only reasons.” He wet his dry lips. Admitting these things to his uncle was hard, yet he hated being thought the same sort of seducer his father had been. “I’d forgotten how delightful she can be. You didn’t know her before, but sometimes I glimpse the younger Juliet, the one who smiled at everyone, welcomed every attention, anticipated every need.”

“If that was the younger Juliet, I would say she has not changed that much. When she is not plaguing me with questions about you, she is a perfectly charming woman.”

“Charming, perhaps, but distrustful. She used to be open and artless, never suspicious of anyone. How the devil do you think I carried her away so effortlessly?” He glanced away. “And now she suspects everyone. Especially me. It makes her unpredictable and dangerous. She’ll use any deceit to unmask me.”

“That is your own fault. You taught her that men are betrayers, so what else can she do but use deceit to learn the truth?”

He had a point. “That’s why I was foolish to think courtship would work.” He paced back and forth, wracked by restless energy. “She’ll never trust me, and I can never trust her. Even if she agreed to marry me, it would only be another of her little ploys. My first instinct was right—I should stay the devil away from her until the Knightons leave. Knighton has already said he doesn’t believe her suspicions, so as long as I’m not around for her to trick into admitting I was her kidnapper, there’s nothing she can do.”

His uncle chuckled. “You weren’t terribly successful in staying away from her before. I suspect you won’t manage it any better this time.”

He bristled. “And why not?”

“You want her. That changes everything. Because once a man wants a woman, he will do any number of foolish things to secure her.”

Like risk putting his neck in a noose. He shook off the thought. “I’m not my father. I can control my physical urges.”

Uncle Lew idly stroked the ivy streaming over one end of the bench. “I am by no means certain that is true. But even if it is, the physical urges are not what will trap you. It is the other urges that will prove your downfall.”

“What other urges?”

“The temptation of having a soft woman to confide in. The lure of a companion who understands you. The need for love.”

He shook his head. “Then you have naught to worry about. I outgrew the need for love the day I discovered what havoc it wrought in the life of my mother—your sister. It won’t govern my own actions.”

“One does not outgrow the need for love, my dear nephew. One merely twists it elsewhere, toward secondary passions.” Uncle Lew twined the green ivy around his gloved finger. “But like a vine, it will always creep back around your heart when you least expect it, and if you do not take great care, it will seize such hold of you that only by satisfying the need can you cut yourself free.”

That was precisely the possibility that alarmed him. “You’ve become tediously philosophical in your old age, Uncle Lew. Thank God one of us is immune to such sentimentality, or else we’d all be lost and done for.”

With that, he turned and strode out of the conservatory.

So he didn’t hear his uncle murmur, “Who says you are not lost and done for already, my boy?”

Chapter 13

According as the man is, so must you humour him.

Terence’s The Brothers, embroidered by Juliet

Laverick on her personal washcloth at seventeen

A week later, Juliet paced her bedchamber, tired of plying her needle and ferreting out what little dirt she could find. She’d run out of things to wipe, scour, or straighten. The silver, which had already been well polished, now reflected her image with startling clarity. She’d even banished all dust from the canopied top of her bed.

Thanks to Rosalind’s scheme, sneaking out was nearly impossible. Somebody was always in the halls, and the servants had been told she was ill. Only Rosalind’s maid had been taken into their confidence, since she was supposedly taking care of Juliet. So after a week Juliet was going steadily insane, with no one to talk to but her sister and Polly.

It was her own fault, too. She’d driven Sebastian out of her reach by her emotional outburst at their last encounter. He’d avoided her entirely all week. Even if she could find him, he’d never confess now.