The Proposition Part 3

They reached the coach and he pulled open the door. Handing her into the dimly lit interior, he explained, "Calling you 'darling' didn't seem like the thing to do when Giles was alive. I thought it might create a problem or two we'd be better off to avoid if we could."

"Actually, that wasn't the one I was referring to," she said as he dropped down on the facing seat and pulled the door closed. "I've heard you call countless women 'darling' over the years. But I don't recall having ever heard you utter the word 'promise' before tonight."

It was one of those he'd always considered to be perilous to use in the company of women. If inadvertantly used in proximity to other words, it could well result in being snared, skinned, and served up as the main course on the altar of Holy Matrimony. That he'd used it with Julia without so much as a conscious thought. .. "I'm not quite the same man who left here three years ago." Or who returned here two weeks ago for that matter, he silently amended.

"Is that good or bad?"

He knew it was for the better, but also knew just as well that simply proclaiming it wouldn't convince her. "You'll have to be the judge of that."

The carriage rolled forward and he sighed in something akin to contentment. Julia hadn't fought him for nearly as long or as hard as he'd feared she might. Largely, he knew, because Lawrence Morris wasn't the great love of her life. No, her heart still belonged to him. If only he could get her to freely, openly give it. If only sitting there drinking in the wondrous sight of her would be enough for her to know how deeply and forever he loved her.

"You look as though you're desperately searching for something to talk about."

He shook his head and confessed, "I have so many questions to ask you, so many things I've been wanting to share with you for so long ... I'm trying to decide where to begin."

"You could just blurt out the first thing that comes to mind."

"All right," he said crisply, surrendering himself to the tide of hope. "How's Christopher? How's Emma? Are they both well and happy? Where are they?"

Julia smiled. Of course he'd start with her children. They both considered him something between an older brother and a fun-loving uncle. And in the time before he'd had to flee, he never came through the door without some sort of little present for them, without a hug for Emma and a wink for Christopher. "They're both fine," she supplied. "Christopher is at Eton. Emma is off to Bath this week with her cla.s.smates on holiday."

He c.o.c.ked a brow. "Isn't she just a bit young to be charging about the country?"

Julia chuckled, thinking that he sounded positively paternal and how he'd wince if he could hear the notes of it himself. "She's fourteen, Rennick. In just a few years she'll be presented and she'll be a wife within a year or two after that."

"Fourteen? Somehow, in my mind, she hasn't aged one day since I last saw her."

"Well, she has. And you'd hardly recognize her. She doesn't look much like a little girl anymore." Julia watched his brows knit. And then he blinked, looked stunned for a second, horrified for another, and then angry.

"She doesn't have suitors yet, does she?"

"Rennick!" she exclaimed, laughing outright. "Are you remembering your own youthful pursuits?"

"Yes. And at that age, they're not pursuits, they're obsessions. She needs to know how to protect herself from the predatory little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

He scowled at the seat beside her and Julia grinned, thinking that he indeed seemed to have changed since she'd last seen him. The Rennick St. James of old wouldn't have condemned a fellow rake for anything short of criminal behavior. "And Christopher?" she asked. "Is he still a boy in your mind?"

He gave her a chagrined smile and shook his head. "No, I've always been acutely aware of how old your son is getting to be. Sixteen, right? And looking more like Giles with every pa.s.sing day?"

"I think he's going to be taller than Giles was. He's already broader across the shoulders. And his feet... Lord, keeping him in shoes has been a major expense the last year. I swear he needs a larger pair every month."

"A boy that age needs a firm hand, Julia. Who's been guiding him since Giles pa.s.sed?"

"My brother."

She couldn't tell whether Rennick groaned or snorted. The sound seemed to be a bit of both.

"James is a fop. What does he know that a normal, hot-blooded boy of sixteen needs or wants to know?"

"Apparently not much," she had to admit. "I'm afraid that Christopher's taken to running at the sight of James's carriage coming up the drive."

"Your son has always had uncommon good sense. What does he think of ol' Lawrence as a potential

stepfather?"

Christopher thought Lawrence had all the charm of a stick and Lawrence always called him Christian.

"I think that it might be for the best if we didn't talk about Lawrence."

"Why?" Rennick pressed, his smile quirking. "As a presence in your life, he's a bit difficult to ignore,

you know."

"True," she granted. "But you're not at all likely to cast him in anything approaching a positive light and he's not here to defend himself or counter your a.s.sertions. It's hardly fair."

"I'm not interested in fair."

"My point, precisely."

He tilted his head to consider her and then asked, "Why did you choose him?"

It appeared that his sense of persistence hadn't changed one whit. "I'm not discussing it with you,

Rennick. Ask another question. Something that has nothing whatsoever to do with Sir Lawrence

Morris."

He sighed, then leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. His hands clasped, he met her gaze and quietly said, "I haven't yet expressed my condolences on Giles's pa.s.sing. Very poor manners of me to have delayed in doing so."

"Yes, it was."

He nodded in acceptance, gave her a weak, apologetic smile, and then said, "I am sorry that he's gone, Julia. He was a good-hearted, decent, caring man."

"And a good husband and father."

Again he nodded. Looking down at his hands, he chuckled softly. "He was also one of the most tolerant

and trusting men I've ever known. I never will forget the day he looked over his cards at me and told me that he was perfectly aware that I was l.u.s.ting after his wife."

Her heart skipped several beats. "Dear G.o.d!"

"He was so incredibly affable about it," Rennick went on, apparently unconcerned with her horror.

"No anger at all. Just a pa.s.sing statement of fact. Which, in hindsight, I can see amused him greatly."

"I hope you had the good judgment to deny the a.s.sertion."

"Darling," he drawled, looking up at her, "Giles might have been old, but he wasn't blind or stupid. I could have denied until pigs fly, but it wouldn't have been believable." He straightened and sat back in

his seat, shaking his head. "No, the only thing I could do under the circ.u.mstances was admit the obvious truth and pray like h.e.l.l that he didn't call me out for it."

"Giles would never have done that," she said. "It wasn't in his character."

"And he knew that it wasn't in yours to accept my advances. Which is why he found my hopeful persistence so entertaining." He leaned his head back in the squabs, closed his eyes and grinned. "G.o.d, he even wished me the best of luck. And then laid down a flush. In hearts. I always thought there was an incredible irony in that."

Giles had never said one word to her. Not one. She'd always thought that she'd been successful at protecting him from the unpleasantness of it all. To learn now that she'd failed at that important task ... "I'm sorry that I wasn't here when you both needed me. When the children needed me," Rennick said quietly, his voice tight. "I hope his pa.s.sing was swift and peaceful. He deserved it."

In a way he had been there, Julia remembered. Late at night, when she'd been alone and facing the uncertainty that lay ahead, she'd pretended that he was, crying and confessing her fears and her regrets. And in the darkness and solitude, she'd been able to imagine what he'd say and found comfort in it.

Julia swallowed down the lump in her throat and found a rea.s.suring smile for him. "Giles gently faded over the course of a single month and then, one night in his sleep, silently slipped away. There was no pain until the very end and the opium tinctures freed him from the worst of it."

Clearing his throat quietly, he asked, "Were Christopher and Emma devastated?"

"They were saddened, of course," she supplied. "But we all knew the end was rapidly approaching.

The goodbyes had been said, the instructions given and the promises made. We laid Giles to rest according to his wishes and with no regrets."

"And then moved on with life," Rennick added, the tightness in his voice easing. "As should be done."

"Giles had insisted that we do so."

He opened his eyes and met her gaze. "He made you promise to marry again, didn't he?"

"Yes," she admitted, wondering how Rennick knew of that private conversation. Did he also know of

how painfully difficult it had been? "He said I was much too young to be a widow for the rest of my life."

"And so," he drawled, "after you'd mourned him, you dutifully injected yourself into the London social whirl and saw it done."

"You make it sound like a bad thing."

He didn't shake his head. He didn't nod or shrug, either. He simply looked at her and said softly, "Giles

was right. You are too young to be a widow."

"But?" she offered, tensing. "I should have waited for you?"

His smile was a weak effort. "Well, yes. That."

"And?"

He hesitated, considering her. And in that pause, the carriage rolled to a slow stop.

"Ah, we've arrived," he announced with what seemed to be a great deal of relief. "We'll have to finish

this conversation some other time."