Lord of the Masquerade by Erica Ridley
Chapter 16
For a brief second, the anger vanished from the duke’s eyes, replaced by an anguished look of such deep sorrow, Unity immediately regretted having pried.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “You don’t have to tell me.”
He turned from her and poured a glass of wine, then set down the bottle without taking his goblet. Instead, he sank back in his seat and lifted a pocket watch from his coat.
“My father gave this to me. I haven’t wound it in years. The hands are frozen at six o’clock.” Julian’s voice was gravelly. “He was angry at me for misbehaving. The last thing he ever said to me was, ‘We’ll be home at six. Have yourself under control by then.’”
Her throat tightened in horror. “How old were you?”
“Eight.” He cleared his throat. “My uncle was my last remaining family member and my interim guardian. I could not act as duke until I reached my majority.”
“What happened?”
“Uncle took over my childhood home and began making changes. Rearranging rooms my mother had decorated. Claiming my father’s bedchamber and study as his own. Acting like a king, even though he was not. Ordering me about as though I were a pageboy, and not the Duke of Lambley.”
“Oh,” she whispered. Oh.
No wonder he could not withstand the feeling of not being in control of his environment. He would forever associate powerlessness with the grief of loss and all the hurtful changes it had wrought. His need for control had also saved his life. Perhaps to Julian, it still did. And to let go of that control would feel like diving into the sea without knowing how to swim.
“I outranked my self-important uncle, but was underage and unable to stand in his way. Despite an out-of-control affinity for gin, Uncle had my ‘best interests’ at heart. He sent me away from the small comfort of my family home and off to school.”
Unity nodded. Another abrupt, unwanted change.
Julian smiled grimly. “The old spotted fool died from too much drink. Mere months before I was to gain my majority. Chaos erupted. There was no other family member to serve as guardian, no man to take the reins of the estate.”
“And then it was your turn,” she said softly.
He’d gone from powerless to all-powerful overnight, without the benefit of years of tutelage at his father’s elbow. He would have been forced to learn on his own and quickly. By experimenting, by refining, by foregoing sleep until he reached the impossible aim of perfection.
Julian looked down at the watch in his hand. “If I had listened to my father... If I had been able to control myself, back then...”
“What could you have done if you had gone with them?” she asked. “You were a child, not a god. You could not have saved them. The accident would have claimed one more victim.”
“We would have left earlier,” he said. “If we’d set out on time as planned, we would have crossed the bridge before it fell. My lack of self-control...”
“Did not kill your family,” she said firmly, sick at the heavy guilt a helpless child had been carrying since that awful day. “It was an accident, Julian. A terrible one, a horrible one. But an accident. Accidents can happen to anyone.”
“Not to me.” He drew himself tall. “Not if you plan properly and control everything around you. I haven’t lost a loved one since.”
Because he didn’t have any.
Her heart wrenched. Julian had lost everyone he cared about, everyone he was close to, in one ghastly moment. Since that day, he’d surrounded himself with people, without ever allowing any of them close. He was the ton Bacchus, patron saint of anonymous encounters with strangers. And what he longed for most were real connections.
The one thing he could not allow himself to have.
No wonder he never repeated his liaisons. He would not risk his heart becoming involved. Julian already knew what the pain of losing someone he loved was like. He could not control accidents, but he could wall himself up and never love again.
“I was seven when I was orphaned,” she said softly. “Old enough to remember what it was like to have a family. To be loved.”
His hazel eyes met hers.
“And then I became the ward of my cousin.” Her mouth tasted sour. “He didn’t want me. He had a better chance of moving up without me hanging on, weighing him down.”
Julian’s lips tightened, but he did not interrupt.
“I had thought my family extremely well off,” she said with a humorless laugh. “I didn’t know what extravagance was until the day I moved in with Roger. He spared no expense—on himself. I was a fly to be swatted away.”
“But you were family.”
“He wished it were not so. Roger Thorne is white and a man, both of which characteristics gave him a significant advantage over me, and the maternal half of my family. Though he and I are paternal first cousins, Roger was not my friend.”
Julian inclined his head. He was white and a man and a duke, but he’d had a taste of the dangers power imbalances could cause.
“Roger does not have friends,” she continued, “because Roger is insufferable. Which was a big part of the reason the fashionable gentlemen’s club he built sat unvisited for years, costing more to maintain than it raised in dues.”
“I’ve heard of his club.”
She smiled. “I’m not surprised. When it first opened, I was my cousin’s ward. It would have been scandalously improper for a young lady to attend a gentlemen’s club as a guest, but Roger saw no ethical argument against dressing his adolescent cousin as a maid and saving a few pence on servants’ wages.”
Julian grimaced. “He didn’t pay you?”
“A pittance. He felt I should be grateful for room and board.” Her lips twisted. “I was an excellent maid. The other staff said I had the skills to become a housekeeper at a grand estate and earn more money in a month than the entire lot of us did all year working for Roger.”
“Did you try to find a post in a better house?”
She shook her head. “The thought of being ‘rich’—which is what a housekeeper’s two hundred guinea per annum sounded like to a fifteen-year-old girl—was attractive, indeed. But I didn’t want to take orders from someone else. My mind moved too quickly, and I had ideas of my own.”
“What you didn’t have was an opportunity to use them.”
“Until I did. It all started when my cousin’s man of business walked out after one of Roger’s fits, never to return. Roger hadn’t the least idea what his man of business did or how to decipher the journals of accounts.”
“But you did?”
“I did. Being a maid didn’t take all day—not anymore. My first act had been to restructure and re-delegate tasks so that everyone on staff had more time. Roger didn’t know the difference. I enjoyed frequent conversations with the other employees, most of whose posts I briskly rearranged into easier, more efficient versions of the drudgery they’d once held.”
“I imagine they loved you for it.”
“We were a family of sorts,” she said. “And my gamble worked. When Roger realized I could fill the role of man of business, what purpose was there in scrounging up some other feckless employee to pay, when his cousin could do the task for pennies?”
“No raise in wages?”
“Not a farthing. By then, I was eighteen and long out of the schoolroom. It was Roger who had arranged for my few tutors. By his count, I had a debt to pay, and taking this post would do nicely.”
“You didn’t send him to the devil?”
“I was in heaven,” she admitted. “I was in charge of something for the first time in my life. My first decision was to make all of the decisions. I brought no correspondence to Roger unless absolutely necessary.”
Which had suited him just fine, as it gave him more time to sip his fine brandy and brood sulkily out of the front window.
“Roger said it was unfair that his club was overlooked and ignored. Why, some no-account nobody had opened an embarrassingly gauche gaming hall in unfashionable Cheapside, and it already had more customers than Roger’s fancy establishment.”
Julian raised his brows in question.
“Eshu’s Altar. I didn’t know it then, but its owner, Sampson Oakes, would later become one of the best friends I ever had.”
She took a sip from her wine as the memories washed over her.
“Roger hated him,” she continued softly. “I was never certain if Sampson’s greatest crime was being born poor or Black, or simply luckier than Roger. His humble gaming hell wasn’t taking London by storm, but Sampson was doing better than Roger, which simply could not be borne. It was a travesty. A mockery. A personal attack on Roger’s obvious superiority.”
Unity rolled her eyes in disgust. She had learned to close her ears to her cousin’s endless rants against the good fortune of a mortal enemy who didn’t even know Roger’s name.
“I presume Sampson’s day-old cravat is cleverer than your cousin?”
Unity grinned. “You would win that wager. It was I who began the renovations on my cousin’s club. Oh, how infuriated he had been, then! What was this? What were they doing? Who had authorized these changes?”
“His ‘man’ of business.” Julian’s lips curved. “And he couldn’t gainsay you without looking incompetent himself.”
“Not publicly,” she agreed. “Then came the advertisements, posted without his permission or counsel. I barely ducked the bottle flying at my head for that. Roger might have throttled me with his bare hands, had a fashionable gentleman not chosen that moment to stride through the door and inquire about membership.”
Julian leaned forward. “How did you do it?”
“I had let it be known that Roger’s club was very, very exclusive. So exclusive, it was absolutely not open to new blood unless you had a current member who could vouch for you.”
The duke frowned. “But I thought...”
“You’re right. There were no current members. Which meant no one in the ton had anyone to vouch for them. Not that they would admit this failing to their peers. Instead, they showed up privately to plead their case, happy to pay thrice the annual subscription if Roger would please say, ‘Oh, of course, Lord So-and-so has always been a member,’ if anyone asked.”
Julian burst out laughing. “Well played, man of business.”
She made a little bow. “Once there were honest-to-god members, the nobs wasted no time in lording their status over their peers and doling out nominations and recommendations.”
Roger’s club would never be as crowded as White’s or Brooks’s, but every self-respecting gentleman would have a membership there, whether he made use of it or not. With the beau monde, appearances were everything.
The gamble worked. But Roger no longer needed her.
“When I dared to ask my cousin for a commission, he put me out into the street.”
Julian looked appalled.
“I had no other family. The benevolent grandfather who had once helped those who had needed it most was long gone…as was the family fortune. No one could help me.”
“What did you do?”
“I sought—and achieved—revenge by aiding Roger’s rival: Sampson Oakes of Eshu’s Altar. But that success wasn’t enough. The gaming hell belonged to Sampson, just as the gentlemen’s club belonged to Roger.”
“I can only imagine how hollow that felt.”
She nodded. “I decided I would make it on my own, on my terms. Prove myself. Follow my dreams, rather than build someone else’s. But how? The only post I could manage was at the theatre, applying cosmetics.”
“The beauty spot,” he blurted out. “You had one, and then you didn’t.”
“Of course you would notice. Because you...” She stopped, throat thick, as she realized the reason. “Because you saw me. You looked at me, listened to me. Gave me a chance.” She bit her lip, then pushed ahead. “It is all right to rely on others again, Julian. To have people you love and friends you worry about. It doesn’t make you less.”
“Not anymore.” He rose from his chair without looking at her. “Guests will be arriving soon. I must prepare for the ball.”
“Oh.” She scrambled to her feet. “Of course. I’ll just—”
Julian took a step toward the door, then turned around and pulled her into his embrace. He kissed her as though he drew renewed life from her lips, her tongue, her taste. He kissed her until she was breathless and trembling, until his own breath was ragged and his hands rough and demanding. Then he jerked back and stalked away without a word.
He didn’t speak to her again for the rest of the night.