Her throat tightened in horror. “How old were you?”
“Eight.” He cleared his throat. “My uncle was my last remaining family member and my interim guardian. I could not act as duke until I reached my majority.”
“What happened?”
“Uncle took over my childhood home and began making changes. Rearranging rooms my mother had decorated. Claiming my father’s bedchamber and study as his own. Acting like a king, even though he was not. Ordering me about as though I were a pageboy, and not the Duke of Lambley.”
“Oh,” she whispered.Oh.
No wonder he could not withstand the feeling of not being in control of his environment. He would forever associate powerlessness with the grief of loss and all the hurtful changes it had wrought. His need for control had also saved his life. Perhaps to Julian, it still did. And to let go of that control would feel like diving into the sea without knowing how to swim.
“I outranked my self-important uncle, but was underage and unable to stand in his way. Despite an out-of-control affinity for gin, Uncle had my ‘best interests’ at heart. He sent me away from the small comfort of my family home and off to school.”
Unity nodded. Another abrupt, unwanted change.
Julian smiled grimly. “The old spotted fool died from too much drink. Mere months before I was to gain my majority. Chaos erupted. There was no other family member to serve as guardian, no man to take the reins of the estate.”
“And then it was your turn,” she said softly.
He’d gone from powerless to all-powerful overnight, without the benefit of years of tutelage at his father’s elbow. He would have been forced to learn on his own and quickly. By experimenting, by refining, by foregoing sleep until he reached the impossible aim of perfection.
Julian looked down at the watch in his hand. “If I had listened to my father... If I had been able to control myself, back then...”
“What could you have done if you had gone with them?” she asked. “You were a child, not a god. You could not have saved them. The accident would have claimed one more victim.”
“We would have left earlier,” he said. “If we’d set out on time as planned, we would have crossed the bridgebeforeit fell. My lack of self-control...”
“Didnotkill your family,” she said firmly, sick at the heavy guilt a helpless child had been carrying since that awful day. “It was an accident, Julian. A terrible one, a horrible one. But an accident. Accidents can happen to anyone.”
“Not to me.” He drew himself tall. “Not if you plan properly and control everything around you. I haven’t lost a loved one since.”
Because he didn’thaveany.
Her heart wrenched. Julian had lost everyone he cared about, everyone he was close to, in one ghastly moment. Since that day, he’d surrounded himself with people, without ever allowing any of them close. He was the ton Bacchus, patron saint of anonymous encounters with strangers. And what he longed for most were real connections.
The one thing he could not allow himself to have.
No wonder he never repeated his liaisons. He would not risk his heart becoming involved. Julian already knew what the pain of losing someone he loved was like. He could not control accidents, but he could wall himself up and never love again.
“I was seven when I was orphaned,” she said softly. “Old enough to remember what it was like to have a family. To be loved.”
His hazel eyes met hers.
“And then I became the ward of my cousin.” Her mouth tasted sour. “He didn’t want me. He had a better chance of moving up without me hanging on, weighing him down.”
Julian’s lips tightened, but he did not interrupt.
“I had thought my family extremely well off,” she said with a humorless laugh. “I didn’t know what extravagance was until the day I moved in with Roger. He spared no expense—on himself. I was a fly to be swatted away.”
“But you were family.”
“He wished it were not so. Roger Thorne is white and a man, both of which characteristics gave him a significant advantage over me, and the maternal half of my family. Though he and I are paternal first cousins, Roger was not my friend.”
Julian inclined his head. He was white and a man and a duke, but he’d had a taste of the dangers power imbalances could cause.
“Roger does not have friends,” she continued, “because Roger is insufferable. Which was a big part of the reason the fashionable gentlemen’s club he built sat unvisited for years, costing more to maintain than it raised in dues.”
“I’ve heard of his club.”
