The Secret Life of Lady Julia by Lecia Cornwall Read Free Book Online Page A

the trouble was, there was nowhere he wanted to be.
    He turned away from the window and picked up the newspaper. It was days old. Donovan insisted on keeping up with London news, in case their crimes were ever discovered and it became necessary to flee, or in the vague hope that Thomas’s brother decided to forgive him and welcome him home, or dropped dead and left an inheritance. Donovan still believed in miracles. Thomas did not.
    He flipped through the yellowed pages. There was no mention of her. He’d gone for months without looking at a newspaper, afraid to read Julia Leighton’s wedding announcement. Now he looked for items of society news that mentioned her. There weren’t any. Had Temberlay shut her away on some country estate for her sin? He wondered what she’d told her husband on their wedding night, or if he’d even noticed. He shut his eyes and saw her face, glazed with passion, heard the soft sighs she’d made as he loved her, smelled the sweet, maddening, luscious scent of violets.
    He was a cad, and a fool.
    He’d wanted to see her again, even after she’d made it clear that she didn’t need him.
    Even now, when he should have long since forgotten her, he was letting himself be distracted, to feel something a man in his position couldn’t afford to feel. He had no right, not where Julia Leighton was concerned. Yet no matter how hard he tried to tell himself she was better off, or to convince himself that she had used him for a momentary thrill, the hard edge of longing never quite went away.
    He’d decided to leave London when he found himself standing outside Carrindale House, staring up at her window for the fifth night in a row, sure it was the only way to stay away from her. He’d departed for Paris on the very day the papers announced that Napoleon had been defeated.
    A breeze came through the window and riffled the pages of the newspaper. He caught it and laid it flat on the table again.
    An announcement caught his eye. It was an invitation, every bit as grand as the ones he used to receive by post when he was Viscount Merritton, a respectable earl’s son and an eligible catch for a peer’s daughter. This invitation came from the Austrian emperor, and was addressed to Europe’s crowned heads and diplomats. There was to be a peace conference in Vienna, and a grand celebration of the end of more than twenty years of war. The sober task of dividing up Napoleon’s conquered territories would be undertaken, of course, along with the difficult task of returning—or not—the priceless art treasures, crown jewels, and estates that Napoleon had stolen.
    Crowned heads and jewels. Thomas grinned. It was almost too easy. In the crush, there would be dozens, even hundreds of thieves. A few big pieces and he’d be free of this life. He frowned. Or he’d be part of it forever. Either way, it was somewhere new, somewhere different, where things just might be better, and he might find a way to be happy, if there was still a possibility of that.
    Donovan returned with two bottles of champagne under his arm.
    “Pack everything. We’re going to Vienna,” Thomas ordered.
    “Vienna?” Donovan said. “You don’t speak whatever it is they speak in Vienna. You barely speak French.”
    Thomas passed the newspaper to his valet, pointed to the invitation.
    Donovan read it and grinned, his green eyes lighting. “When this is over, I want enough to buy a horse farm in Ireland,” he said.
    “We’ll part ways,” Thomas agreed. “Each of us rich.”
    “And where will you go?” Donovan asked as Thomas opened the first bottle of champagne. Froth spilled over the table, and he hastily rescued the newspaper.
    “Italy,” Thomas said, testing it on his tongue. “Or India, perhaps.”
    But neither one sounded right.

 
    Chapter 5

    Brussels
    S tephen watched as Julia Leighton helped his sister out of the coach. Dorothea was pale from the journey, and she leaned heavily on Julia, who bore her weight