Hold Me Close Read online

  A purely physical attraction he could have handled, once the initial impact wore off. He was a military man. He knew how to deny the needs of the body.

  But, as he realized all too quickly, it was something else entirely that drew him to her. That light in her eyes truly came from within—she was bright and quick and clever, and though he did his best to be gruff and standoffish with her, and though he knew he rather terrified her, she made every effort to include him in conversation, to make him feel his presence was wanted, to make him believe he fit into her rarified world.

  Lightning, it turned out, wasn’t at all the right analogy for the brightness of her gaze. What shone from her eyes was sunlight—warm and life-giving and generous, everything he’d lost the day he was orphaned as a boy. She made him crave things he’d spent years training himself not to want: intimacy, coming first in someone’s affections, a sense of belonging fully.

  It was painful to feel it. His throat pinched tight and his chest ached whenever Lady Julia was near.

  His chest ached now.

  Steeling himself, he freed another button on his coat. The weight of his lapel sagged, pulling Julia’s wrist with it, and also pulling at the top of his shirt. With the collar held tight within the stiff circle of his stock, the extra tension against his throat made him almost light-headed.

  “Oh, I can see where it’s snagged you now,” said Julia. “It really has got your coat and linen both—one bit on each side.”

  “Can you pull it loose?”

  Her cheeks pinkened further, but she reached her free hand to the level of his collarbone and gave his linen a hard tug. Once more, and then again. It did no more good than all the pulling he’d done earlier.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “There’s too little room to get my fingers between the bracelet and your collar. Perhaps it would help if—if you removed your stock.”

  Her blush went full scarlet as soon as she said the words.

  Good heavens. The sight of a few square inches of shirt unnerved her, and now the prospect of glimpsing his bare throat had her looking quite ready to swoon. She’d been a married woman for more than six years—shouldn’t she be a bit less skittish than this around a man’s body?

  Then again, he suspected his own color must be up as well—the sight of her cheeks going rosy had his blood pounding almost savagely, making his jaw throb. Damn it all. Why hadn’t all those years in the blazing Indian sun burnt these feelings for her out of him?

  “Get on with it,” Julia said, in the sort of tone men used when bound before a firing squad. “And find an acceptable topic of conversation to distract us in the meanwhile, if you please.”

  He clenched his teeth against the odd pulse of tenderness her imperious tone made him feel. “All right,” he said, reaching behind his neck to unbuckle the heavy black band of his stock. “Here’s an interesting topic: where did you get the bracelet?”

  Her eyes shot to his again, sparking their brilliant blue. “That’s none of your business.”

  Damn those eyes of hers.

  He wasn’t going to think how easy it would be, with her so close, to steal a kiss of his own. He wasn’t. Her marriage to Christopher had truly been a sacred bond, and it would be sacrilege to muddy its purity.

  Besides, any relationship between himself and Julia could only meet with Society’s scorn. He’d been born in the dirt, and he couldn’t imagine dragging her down there with him.

  With a growl, he pulled at the end piece of his stock, and the prong of the buckle popped loose. The release of pressure was a relief, and the veins of his neck gave a grateful throb—though without the stiff band holding his shirt closed, the weight of Julia’s arm made the collar gape wide, exposing not just his neck but a goodly part of his chest as well.

  Julia sucked in an audible breath. “Please suggest another subject for conversation,” she demanded, her voice tight. “Immediately.”

  What on earth was he to say to her?

  He knew what he needed to say, but he’d already spent the voyage from India trying and failing to find a decent way to say it.

  I believe an old friend of your husband’s may have turned traitor in India. Christopher refused to heed my warnings, and now Christopher is dead. And the evidence I left with him may draw the villain here to your home, in hopes of permanently concealing his crimes. So I may have put your life in danger, too.

  No. He couldn’t possibly say all that now.

  Not while he needed every ounce of discipline he possessed to resist pulling Julia into his arms.

  She risked a brief glance up at him. “Tell me about India,” she said with forced brightness, as though that would be a safe topic. “Tell me what your latest victory means. Peace at last, isn’t that so? The stable government Christopher worked so hard for?”

  Oh, Lord. She certainly had a knack for making this situation ever more uncomfortable for him. “It seems so,” he answered.

  Her brow furrowed. “Only seems?”

  “No, not seems—the government is in firm control. And shall be for quite a long time to come.”

  She cocked her head to one side, regarding him curiously. “But you sound less than enthusiastic about that success.”

  He hesitated before answering. “To be honest, Lady Grantleigh, the longer I’ve been in India, the more I’ve wondered whether Britain has any business being there at all.”

  “But the British restored the national government!” She looked stunned by his comment. “Before we arrived, India had splintered into warring kingdoms. It was chaos!”

  Ah, she’d learned those words from her husband. Chris never questioned the righteousness of the British cause. But then again, Chris had never set foot in India.

  “Is Europe so very different?” Marcus asked. “Our kingdoms are often at war, but would you prefer to have an outside power step in and unite us?”

  “Well, I…” Julia’s color deepened once more, this time at least not from embarrassment. “I don’t believe Europe is in need of such interference.”

  “Is India? India was a great civilization a thousand years before Europe stopped burning witches.”

  She stared at him for several long seconds, and he could almost see the struggle going on inside her mind. His words must sound like heresy to her. Dear God, he needed to get this bracelet unhooked and get away from her before he said or did something she’d never forgive him for.

  “Did you ever share these views with Christopher?” Julia asked at last.

  “Yes,” he admitted. “The last time we were together.”

  Strangely enough, she nodded. She looked almost relieved. “So that’s what you argued about.”

  She knew he and Christopher had argued? Surely Chris hadn’t told her everything they’d argued over, or she’d have more questions for him now. About Brayles, about why Marcus had now returned to Devon so unexpectedly. And he truly wasn’t ready for that conversation just yet.

  “The stock’s off,” he said abruptly. “Why don’t you try again to pull your bracelet loose?”

  “Oh,” she said, blinking. “Yes, of course.”

  Dutifully, she took hold of the frilled edge of his collar, though her fingers shook and her blush was furious again. A flurry of emotions assaulted him as he watched her—relief that she hadn’t pushed him any harder with her questions about India, a longing to press his mouth to hers, and another strange, aching, vulnerable feeling he didn’t even know how to name.

  And then suddenly, sharply, he found himself missing Christopher.

  It came on all at once, in a hard wave, the way it had so many times since he’d first learned the awful news—the memory of Christopher’s decency, his unflinching desire to do what was right, the cruelty of a fate that would take the life of such a good-hearted man so young.

  And now he could add to that the sheer wrongness of Grantleigh Hall without its proper master.

  Of course, as always, that sharp grief was mixed with a terrible weight of gui
lt. For…far too many things.

  Now Julia’s knuckles rubbed against his throat and chest as she struggled to work his shirt free of the bracelet’s clasp. She shot him an apologetic look. “I am trying to free it,” she said. “The cloth’s terribly snarled. And wedged in tight. I don’t understand how that tiny seam in the bracelet could have opened wide enough to capture so much of it.”

  He forced his attention to the bracelet, not the woman. With his collar loosened, he could now twist his neck at enough of an angle to see the inscription in full. The script was indeed Devanagari, and the language Sanskrit. He had to decipher the letters upside down, but at least it was a distraction from the other thoughts careening about inside his head.

  He was expecting a name, perhaps, or words of dedication from a gift-giver. Instead the engraving looked to be two lines of classical Sanskrit verse.

  “That’s peculiar,” he said.

  “What’s peculiar?”

  “The inscription on your bracelet. I believe it may be…” He squinted at the swirling script, running through the grammar again to be sure he wasn’t mistaken. “It seems to be some sort of riddle.”

  “A riddle?” Julia’s eyes fixed on the lettering, and she inclined her head closer to his chest, so close he could smell a hint of lavender in her hair. “What on earth does it say?”

  He attempted to translate without inhaling again—her hands touching his chest muddled his thoughts enough without her scent fuming through his brain. “The first line says, Gold cannot buy me, I must be found.”

  Julia gasped, and her eyes went wide. “I must be found? Is that what it really says?”

  “Yes.”

  “I must be found,” she murmured again, as though something about those words was particularly intriguing.

  “Indeed, it does seem a rather odd claim. Gold cannot buy me? The thing’s made of gold—and precisely the sort of thing people spend their money on. And not something they generally leave laying about for others to find.”

  Julia ignored his comment. “And what about the second line?”

  He paused, puzzling over the next bit once more. Something about the rhythm of the words struck him as familiar, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on why. As for the meaning, he came up with nothing more coherent than he had on his first reading. He sighed. “I believe it says, I am yours forever when you give me away.”

  “Yours forever?” she echoed back. “When you give me away?”

  “Indeed. A blatant contradiction in terms. Hence, a riddle of some sort.” Frankly, the nonsense of the words irritated his logical military mind.

  But Julia was breathing rather alarmingly fast, and her cheeks went pale.

  He frowned. “Are you quite all right, Lady Grantleigh?”

  “Yes,” she said, nodding abstractedly, and waved the fingers of her free hand. “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “I wouldn’t ponder it too seriously,” he advised. “To be honest, the whole thing sounds like blather to me—some bit of mysticism a goldsmith thought would catch the fancy of a suggestible client.” He gave the bracelet another futile tug. “I wish we could give the blasted thing away. If it wants so badly to be set loose, it shouldn’t grip hold with such tenacity.”

  Julia stared off into the distance. “Yours forever,” she repeated yet again, a strange edge in her voice. “When you give me away?”

  “Yes. Does that mean something to you?”

  She didn’t answer. She pressed her free hand over her mouth and—good Lord—were those tears forming in her eyes?

  Clearly, the words triggered strong emotion in her. Was she upset?

  Frightened?

  When she’d asked him earlier if he could read the inscription, she’d seemed genuinely ignorant of what it said. And the bracelet was clearly quite old, the engraving done at least a century before Julia was born. The message—if it was a message, and not just a fatuous bit of balderdash—couldn’t possibly have been intended for her.

  So why was it affecting her so strongly?

  “Do you—do you understand the meaning of these phrases, Lady Grantleigh?” His mind began to race through disturbing possibilities. Had that villain Brayles somehow managed to reach this house before he did? Had the treacherous bastard somehow been in contact with Julia already? Threatened her with similar words?

  Had the bracelet somehow come from him?

  “It’s nothing,” Julia said, tears still welling.

  The muscles of Marcus’s body hardened into knots. “Tell me,” he insisted. “Tell me this instant.”

  Julia glanced at him, clearly confused by his harsh tone, and began to draw herself up straight in resistance again. But she must have seen the genuine anxiety in his expression, because after a moment, she relented. “Oh, well,” she said, sighing. “You’ll think me foolish, Major, no doubt. But I—I did find the bracelet.”

  “You what?”

  “I found it. In my—my private chamber.” She was blushing again, unaccountably. “Just this evening.”

  “Found it?” Damn it all. Brayles hadn’t found a way to enter her home, had he? Without her knowledge? Entered her bedchamber? Marcus should have ripped the traitor’s head from his shoulders when he first began to suspect his involvement with the Pindaris.

  Julia’s eyes widened—no doubt his expression had turned ferocious.

  “I never saw the bracelet before tonight,” she hurried to say. “I swear. It was just there. In a box. On the hearth.” Tears shone in her eyes again, and she sucked at her lower lip. “Someone—someone must have left it for me. I thought…”

  “What?” he demanded, rather more forcefully than he intended. “You thought what?”

  “Well, I—I thought for a moment it might have been—” She broke off on a sob. “I thought it was—it was Christopher who left it. Somehow.” Twin tears spilled now and rolled down her cheeks. “I know that’s terribly foolish.”

  Oh, dear Lord. I am the world’s most brainless ass.

  Julia wasn’t upset because of any threat from Brayles.

  She was upset because she missed her husband desperately.

  I am yours forever—no wonder those words affected her so powerfully, if she believed they might be a message from her beloved beyond the grave.

  Marcus wanted to kick himself. He was too used to thinking tactically, like a soldier, not like a civilian. While Julia had lived all her life in the domestic sphere, in a world centered on her loving marriage.

  Once he took Brayles out of the equation, the solution to the mystery came to him immediately, and there was nothing either sinister or supernatural about the business.

  The bracelet was a gift, and it was brought from India, and it was in fact given with affection. But it must have been Lady Eleanor who’d slipped it into Julia’s room.

  Of course it was her. Christopher’s Aunt Eleanor, who meant no harm to anyone, who no doubt found the bracelet’s verses intriguing, in some sentimental, poetical way.

  But, great heavens, what had the old woman been thinking, to leave a surprise gift for her nephew’s widow like that, when poor Julia didn’t even know Christopher’s aunt was back in the country? Surely Lady Eleanor must have understood that a mysteriously appearing bracelet would alarm Lady Grantleigh. Even for Eleanor, who never met a rule she wished to obey, it was an oddly thoughtless impulse.

  And now Marcus had a weeping woman to comfort.

  Bloody hell. His talents were in fending off rampaging bandits and enemy cannon fire, not a lady’s tears.

  “Lady Grantleigh,” he said tentatively, laying a hand on her shoulder.

  Damn it all, why were the sleeves of women’s ball gowns so flimsy and diaphanous? His fingers touched far too much warm, soft skin for the good of his composure, and he felt an answering wave of heat shoot through him.

  Heat he very definitely had to ignore.

  He removed his hand. “I believe I know how that bracelet found its way into your room.”

 
; Julia gave a sudden jolt, and she went pink again. “You know?”

  “Yes. Well, I wasn’t meant to reveal this to you. It was meant to be a surprise. But—the truth is, I didn’t return from India alone.”

  “You…what?”

  “Christopher’s aunt, Lady Eleanor, traveled with me.” He didn’t have to tell Julia the rest of the surprise. Eleanor could hold her other, more startling, news in store.

  Julia stared up at him, mouth agape, blinking away her tears. “Aunt Eleanor’s come home again? From India? But—she sent no word!”

  “She wished to astonish you with her sudden arrival, but when we pulled up to the house and discovered a party underway…” He trailed off, not wanting to reveal more than he had to. Perhaps a small white lie would not hurt in this case. “Well, I believe the fatigue of travel convinced her to conceal herself and rest till morning. But it seems she couldn’t resist astonishing you in the meantime—with that bracelet.”

  “Eleanor?” Julia repeated, her voice gone oddly flat. “Aunt Eleanor left the bracelet for me?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t actually know for certain. But if you don’t know the origin of the gift, the most plausible explanation is that she put it in your room.”

  “Oh.” The color was rapidly draining from Julia’s cheeks, and her shoulders sagged. “That—that makes sense. Perfect sense. Of course. If Aunt Eleanor’s come home from India, she must have put the bracelet there.”

  Blast it. Marcus had a sudden feeling he ought to be apologizing. He’d thought a rational explanation for the appearance of the bracelet would relieve Julia’s distress, but somehow it only dimmed her spirits.

  And that seemed far worse than the tears.

  Earlier, when he’d told Julia she’d grown too thin, it wasn’t just the sharper cut of her cheekbones or the new fragility in her wrists that made him speak. It was the muting of her inner light, the veil that seemed to have been drawn over the brightness of her eyes—the look of mourning, which persisted despite the cornflower-colored gown she wore.

  The change in her had made him want to weep.