“Bless you, Ainsley.” Juliana could not unclench herself enough to give Ainsley the hug she deserved.
She let Ainsley guide her to the door of the chapel, which Cameron opened. Cameron and Ainsley stepped back, and Juliana went in alone, the door clicking closed.
The chapel was chilly but dim and peaceful. Juliana stood for a moment in front of the bare altar, looking up at the plain cross hanging above it, alone and unadorned.
Grant, married. To Mrs. Mackinnon.
Juliana now realized things she’d seen in the past few months but had paid no mind to at the time—Grant and Mrs. Mackinnon side by side at Grant’s mother’s piano, their exchanged smiles, the looks between them. Grant gazing pensively at Juliana as though he wanted to speak to her about something important, and then making some joke or inane remark instead.
She knew now what he meant to say. Miss St. John, I’ve fallen in love with my piano teacher and wish to marry her, not you.
Scandal. Humiliation.
Juliana balled her fists, wanting to shout at Providence for being so aggravating. But, even in her agitation, blasphemy in a chapel seemed wrong.
She settled for storming into a pew, her ivory skirts billowing around her. “Blast!” she said and slammed herself into the seat.
On top of something that moved. A man with long legs under a woolen kilt, a broad body that heaved up onto strong elbows. A man coming awake to find a hundred and twenty pounds of young woman in wedding garb sitting on his thighs.
“What the devil?” Gray eyes the same color as Ainsley’s flashed in a face that was too tanned to have been in Scotland long.
Elliot McBride obviously had no compunction about blaspheming in a church. Or sleeping in one.
Juliana swiftly rose, but she couldn’t move out of the pew. She stared down at Elliot as he levered himself partway up and leaned back into the corner of the pew, his booted feet still on the bench.
“Elliot?” Juliana asked, breathless. “What are you doing here?”
“Trying to find some quiet,” he said. “Too bloody many people about.”
“I mean, here in Scotland. I thought you were in India. Ainsley said you were in India.”
Elliot McBride was one of Ainsley’s many brothers, a man the girl Juliana had fallen madly in love with about a hundred years ago. He’d disappeared to India to make his fortune, and she hadn’t seen him since.
Elliot rubbed a hand over his stubbled face, though he smelled of soap and water, as though he’d recently bathed. “Decided to come home.”
Laconic, that was the way to describe Elliot, the untamed McBride. Also large and strong, with a presence that knocked the breath out of her. It had been so when she’d been a child and he’d been the wild brother of Ainsley, and again when she’d been a proud debutante and he’d attended her coming-out ball in his army regimentals.
Juliana sank to the pew again, at the end of it, beyond his feet. High in the tower of the main church, bells rang, striking the hour.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in there, lass?” Elliot asked. He removed a flask from his coat and sipped from it, but unlike Cameron, he didn’t offer her any. “Getting married to whatever his name is?”
“Grant Barclay. I was to have been Mrs. Grant Barclay.”
The flask stopped halfway to his mouth. “Was to have been? Did you jilt the whey-faced bastard, then?”
“No,” Juliana said. “Apparently, yesterday, he eloped with his piano teacher.”
It was all too much. Strange laughter welled up inside her and came pealing out of her mouth. Not quite hysterics, but a hearty laugh she couldn’t stop.
Elliot lay still, like an animal deciding whether to attack or run. Poor Elliot. What must he make of a woman who’d jolted him out of his sleep by plopping down on him and then laughing uncontrollably because her fiancé had abandoned her?
Juliana’s laughter eased off, and she wiped her eyes with her fingertips. Her dark red hair was tumbling down, one of the yellow roses Ainsley had tied into it falling to her lap. “Stupid flowers.”
Elliot sat frozen, his hand gripping the back of the pew so hard he was surprised the wood didn’t splinter. He watched as Juliana laughed, as her glorious hair fell to her bared shoulders. She smiled though her blue eyes were wet, and the hands that plucked the flower from her lap were long fingered and trembling.
Elliot wanted to put his arms around her and cradle her close. There now, he’d say. You’re better off without the idiot. An even stronger instinct made him want to go find Grant Barclay and shoot him for hurting her.
But Elliot knew that if he made the mistake of touching Juliana, he wouldn’t stop at comfort. He’d tilt her head back and kiss her lips, as he’d done at her debut ball, the night she’d permitted the one kiss.
They’d both been eighteen. Before Elliot had gone to hell and back, that chaste kiss would have been enough for him. This time, it would not be enough, not by a long way.
He’d kiss down her pretty throat to her bosom, nuzzle her gown’s neckline with its points of lace, and feather kisses to her shoulders. Then he’d lick his way back up to her ripe lips, seam them with his tongue, coax her to let him inside.
He’d kiss her with long, careful kisses, tasting the goodness of her mouth while he held her and did not let her go.
Elliot would want to take everything, because Lord only knew when he’d have the chance again. A broken man learned to savor what he could when he had the opportunity.
“It will stay with me forever,” Juliana was saying. “Poor Juliana St. John. Don’t you remember? She’d already put on her wedding clothes and gone to the church, poor darling.”
What did a man say to a woman in this state? Elliot wished for the eloquence of his barrister brother, who stood up in court and made elegant speeches for a living. Elliot could only ever speak the truth.
“Let them say it, and to the devil with them.”
Juliana gave him a sad smile. “The world is very much about what they say, my dear Elliot. Perhaps it’s different in India.”
Dear God, how could anyone think that? “The rules there are damn strict. You can die—or get someone else killed—by not knowing them.”
Juliana blinked. “Oh. Very well, I concede that such a thing sounds worse than people expecting me to hide in shame and knit socks for the rest of my life.”
“Why the devil should you knit socks? Do what you like.”
“Very optimistic of you. Not fair to me, but I’m afraid I will be talked about for a long while now. And I am now on the shelf. Thirty years old, and no longer an ingénue. I know that women do all sorts of things these days besides marry, but I am too old to attend university, and even if I did, my father would die of shame that I was such a bluestocking. I was raised to pour tea, organize fêtes, and say correct things to the vicar’s wife.”