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.She set it down on the nearest table so hard it sent liquid drops spraying onto the Aubusson carpet.“Then you don’t love her,” she snapped.“Don’t,” he cried and then took a calming breath.“Don’t.I…” He glanced at his sisters and then back to his mother careful with his words.“I have not been honorable where Juliet is concerned.” That was the safest admission he could make in front of four young ladies.Poppy sighed and flung herself into a nearby leather-winged back chair.“I don’t like Jonathan.I preferred Sin.Why, Sin who would simply go and take back his Miss Marshville because he loved her and couldn’t live without her and didn’t care…”Mother glowered at her.“What?” she grumbled.“I do.This Jonathan fellow is stodgy and proper and will suffer a broken heart for it.”He blinked.By God, he must be going mad, or perhaps he already was, but Poppy’s words penetrated the agonized stupor he’d lived in for nearly three months and actually made sense.She was right.He might have wronged Juliet and set her free out of love for her, but he needed to see her, needed the decision to be hers and not one he made for her.And if she chose to send him on his way then…Jonathan shoved aside the thought.He’d not let himself think of any other possibility but one that involved her becoming the Countess of Sinclair.He smiled.“You’re going for her,” his mother said with a nod of approval.“I’m going for her.Chapter 21Juliet knelt in the soft earth and snipped back the overgrown pink rose bush.She brushed back her wide straw bonnet.A bead of moisture dotted her brow and she dashed it away.Once upon a lifetime ago, Jonathan Tidemore, the Earl of Sinclair had spoken to her of warm summer days in her gardens of Rosecliff Cottage.He’d tantalized her with forbidden thoughts of making love under the glittering stars.He’d teased her with the promise of what-ifs.In her heart, she’d wanted him to be her gentleman under the stars.She touched a purplish-pink rose and palmed the satiny smooth bloom.Now, she could never gaze upon another night sky without thoughts of him.With a sigh Juliet looked around at the overgrown garden.Her poor cottage had been woefully neglected.Then, when there was no prideful owner in residence, disrepair tended to occur.The opened sketchpad on the ground snagged her attention.The grinning gentleman stared back up at her—he, the true owner of this cottage she’d commandeered without his knowing…or perhaps without his caring.A gentleman of his vast wealth would have little need for a modest dwelling such as Rosecliff Cottage.Juliet gave her head a shake and returned her attention to a branch covered in tear-shaped green leaves.Then, she had hoped if he’d not come for his cottage that he mayhap had come to care enough to come for her.She snipped off the excess greenery.In the three months since she’d been escorted to Rosecliff Cottage by Lord Drake and bartered her every happiness for the protection of Patrina’s name, not a day had passed that she’d not thought of Jonathan.On her better days, she had wondered whether he missed her.On her worst days, she railed at him for not having loved her as she loved him.On her very worst days, she sobbed bitter angry tears that he’d either not known or cared to know where she’d taken herself off to.Yet, she had always prided herself on being logical.Logic had told her since the moment she’d met the Earl of Sinclair that nothing could ever exist between them.There was the history between Jonathan and her brother, the loss of Rosecliff Cottage, and then ultimately his offer to make her first his governess, then his mistress.Such thoughts had compelled her to take that which was owed her—Rosecliff Cottage.The beloved brick-front home had always mattered more to her than Albert, and certainly more than it did to Jonathan who’d never even bothered to visit the modest property he’d won in a game of faro.Pain lanced her heart.He’d never come.She had been so very certain that he would, not necessarily to visit the property but because he would surely have known she’d come here.These past months now, she’d managed to tilt her chin back up and live as she had before Jonathan; confidently, boldly, and when she could…happily.She stared blankly down at the smiling visage upon the opened sketchpad.Well, mayhap not happily.Juliet sat back on her haunches amidst the cluster of rose bushes and pink peonies and dragged over the sketchpad.She touched her fingers to the sun-warmed sketch of Jonathan.Had he wed his Lady Beatrice? Was he in fact kissing the lovely young lady with those sinfully knowing lips?A spasm of grief ripped through her body and she tossed the book to the ground.“Enough,” she whispered.A shadow fell over her, and she glanced up at the cloudless summer blue sky with a frown.“Hullo, Juliet.”Juliet shrieked and pitched forward.She landed in a tangled heap amidst her rose bush.Jagged thorns bit painfully into the soft flesh of her palm.She shoved herself upright and turned.Jonathan!Oh God.You are here? Where have you been?He beat his riding crop against his thigh, looking impossibly handsome with his tousled, too-long black locks.Her fingers twitched with a sudden need to brush them back from his forehead.She swallowed hard.“Jonathan.”Their gazes locked and held.A shiver coursed through her body at the desire in his sapphire blue eyes.Then he glanced away, looking at a point beyond her shoulder.“This is my Rosecliff Cottage?” he said, more to himself.She wet her lips.“This is my Rosecliff Cottage,” she corrected.The claim so very reminiscent to that long ago night outside the Hell and Sin Club.He stood before her looking impossibly handsome, and still elegant in his simple buckskin breeches and black tailcoat.Oh God, how she’d missed him.She curled her toes inside her serviceable boots at the contrast she presented sweated, in her mud-splattered fuchsia skirts.He tossed his riding crop down beside her sketchpad and held his hand out.She eyed his outstretched fingers a moment, and then placed her fingertips in his palm.It was like coming home.More a home than this lonely cottage ever had been
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