Her Secondhand Groom(93)

“I’m not.” She turned back to the three little girls and hugged them each, promising she’d be back as soon as everything was back to rights.

“Why did you lie to my girls?” Drake hissed when they were out of the room and walking down the hall.

“Your girls?” she echoed, matching his tone.

His brown eyes pierced hers. “Yes, my girls. Now answer the question.”

“I didn’t lie. I may have omitted a few things for their own good, but I didn’t lie.”

“Yes, you did,” he countered with a snarl. “You lied to them by giving them a false promise that you’d return.”

“That’s not a lie. I fully intend to come back.”

“Oh, do you now?” he drawled. “When, Juliet? When you’ve had time to accept the fact that nothing is going to change between us? Because that’s when it will be. If you think going away on an ‘errand’ is going to force my hand until I give you what you want, you’re mistaken.”

“Pardon?” She jerked her elbow from his tight grasp and crossed her arms.

Drake mirrored her stance, and when he spoke again, his voice was so low she wouldn’t have heard him had she been more than three inches away from him. “Those girls don’t deserve this, Juliet. If you leave this house today, do not even think of coming back.”

Juliet stood stock-still, waiting. Waiting for a sense of loss to settle over her at his definitive words, but none came. She might have lived in this house for the past few months, but it had never been her home. She’d been nothing more than a glorified visitor. It was the same thing with Drake and the girls. Those were his girls, he’d even said as much not thirty seconds ago. She might love them as hers, but there would always be the unspoken fact that they were the girls he had with Abigail. His, not Juliet’s. Drake and Abigail’s. And as for Drake himself, she’d never had him and never would. He would always belong to Abigail. But then again, she already knew all of this.

“Is that what you really want?” she asked.

“No,” he admitted. “It’s not what I want at all, Juliet. But it’s what will happen if you leave here right now. I’ll not have my girls’ affections played with in that manner.”

There it was again, his girls. A brief wave of sadness washed over her, giving her the smallest urge to cry, and perhaps a savage urge to strangle the man standing in front of her making her choose between the family who loved her and the family she’d grown to love. “Very well,” she said with a swallow.

***

Patrick’s body went numb at the sight of Juliet walking away from him, presumably forever. She’d made her choice, and it wasn’t him.

Unable to force himself to watch from the window as Juliet climbed into the carriage, he spun on his heel and entered the schoolroom. His eyes drifted from a quiet and still Celia to a rather distant-looking Helena, then finally to Kate, the only one of his daughters showing an active emotion. Her lower lip trembled, a clear sign an onslaught of tears was about to transpire. Wordlessly, he picked her up, and nodded to the others an unvoiced message they all understood. With a quick word to Miss Grant about the girls missing their studies to spend the day with him, the quartet quit the schoolroom.

Patrick clutched Kate to him as tightly as he dared as he strode down the maze of hallways to his study, Celia and Helena trailing close behind. His heart hammered in his hollow chest and his mind reliving all the terrible events of the past twelve hours. At first he’d not been able to even determine why she was so upset. Then all her anger ceased to matter as his own filtered through. The crux of it was she wanted her own children, his weren’t good enough. The sudden realization last night hurt to the core. So it was little wonder he’d snapped at her when he saw her playacting with the girls in the nursery after seeing a carriage out front and her valise by the door.

Of course everyone said mothers had a protective instinct, the same could be said for fathers, and witnessing her theatrics with the girls triggered his need to protect them.

“Papa,” Kate wheezed. “You’re holding me too tight.”

“Sorry, poppet,” he said, loosening his grip. “Better?”

She nodded.

“Good.” He opened the door to his study and stood back while Celia and Helena went in and found a seat. While most men wouldn’t even dream of letting their children―especially girls―into their studies, Patrick had never seemed to mind. It was the place he’d taken them following their mother’s death and somehow it had become that comforting place any of them went to when they were in need of some sort of emotional healing. And there was no doubt all four of them needed some sort of healing at the moment. Most likely the kind that would keep them locked in there until midnight.