No Earls Allowed by Shana Galen

Author:Shana Galen
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2018-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

Fifteen

Julia wondered what Wraxall had said to the women to cause them to glare at her with such malice. She had been giving him warning looks from the moment Lady Sutcliffe waylaid him. The quartet of ladies were overly fond of gossip, and they were not overly concerned as to whether the gossip was true. The last thing she needed was Wraxall making the wrong comment about where she had been living or where he had been sleeping. She could no longer claim—to herself, at least—that she and Wraxall were not involved romantically, or at least physically, but she had no desire for that knowledge to become public.

She let out a relieved breath when he finally reached his friends—the big blond soldier and a handsome man who dressed better than she did.

“Is everything all right?” her father asked.

Julia quickly pasted on a smile. “Of course. Why do you ask?”

“You seem tense.” His kind green eyes assessed her. “I worry about you, Juliana. That is why I want you to come home.”

“Papa, please. Not tonight.”

He sighed. Julia hoped the discussion was over, but her father spoke again, his eyes on something across the room. “I am sorry, you know.”

“Sorry?” she asked.

“For my neglect of you and Harriett after your mother died. I should have been there for you both, but instead I retreated into the only thing I knew—work.”

“I suppose we all must cope with tragedy in the best way we can. Harriett and I never doubted you loved us.”

He looked at her, his eyes bright. “Don’t you see? That was the exact cause of my anguish. I loved your mother. Not when I married her.” He waved a hand. “I barely knew her, but I grew to love her. When she died, it was so sudden. One day a fever and the next she was gone. Julia, I never told her.”

Julia blinked in shock. He had never told her mother how much he loved her? “I am certain she knew, Papa.”

“Are you? I am not. And not a day goes by that I don’t wish I had but one more hour, one more minute with Mary so I might be certain she knew how I felt.”

Julia took his hand, squeezing it tightly. “She knew, Papa. Harriett knew you loved her, and I know you love me.”

“I only want the best for you, my darling. I only want another chance to be the father I should have been. Will you please consider coming home?”

Julia wished she could tell him yes, but she could never go back to the life she’d lived as an earl’s daughter. The orphans needed her, especially now with Slag threatening them all. She could not leave them. “I will consider it, Papa,” she said, but the way he looked at her told her he knew she did not mean it.

“Lady Juliana?” A servant appeared at her elbow with a silver tray holding a slip of foolscap.

“Yes.”

“This came for you, my lady. A man delivered it and said it was urgent.

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