The Black Diamond Read Online Free PDF Page A

expansive library, hands clasped behind his back as he surveyed the formidable room. He saw beyond the oriental rug and mahogany bookshelves, beyond the high walls and gilded ceiling. What he saw were memories: ugly, indelible memories.
     
    He'd nearly forgotten how much he despised this estate.
     
    How many bitter arguments had he and his father engaged in within these very library walls? How many accusations had been fired between them before Julian had stormed off for good?
     
    More than he could count, still more than he chose to remember.
     
    Wearily Julian massaged his temples, then walked over to pour himself a drink.
     
    His father had loathed the very sight of him.
     
    That was fact, not supposition. Heaven only knew how many times Lawrence had bellowed his outrage, his shame, his censure … his remorse that it had been Hugh, not Julian, who'd been taken from him.
     
    The last alone had hurt. Not because Julian gave a damn at being the object of his father's hatred, but because any mention of Hugh brought with it an acute sense of pain and loss. Julian had cared deeply for his kind, gentle older brother, an affection Hugh had reciprocated despite the fact that although separated in age by merely a year, their interests, aspirations—their very natures—had been as different as day and night. So far as Julian was concerned, Hugh had been his only family. When he'd died of a fever during his first term at Oxford, Julian's roots had died with him.
     
    Still, Hugh had been the one thing Julian and his father agreed upon: more specifically, Hugh's suitability as the heir apparent. He would have made a fine duke, fine in a way that Lawrence, with his unprincipled, uncompromising values, couldn't begin to fathom. Hugh's qualities—compassion, decency, fair-mindedness—were the true foundations of nobility.
     
    Julian's goblet struck the sideboard with a thud. What the hell was he reminiscing about? Further, why had he come back—not only to Devonshire, but to Morland?
     
    The answer was laughable.
     
    He'd come back to pay his final respects to a man who'd denounced him and was probably rolling over in his grave at the fact that Julian was the last remaining Bencroft and the sole heir to his precious title. A man who regarded Julian as lower than dirt and little better than a Huntley.
     
    A Huntley.
     
    As a result of last night's disaster, that name conjured up an entirely new image—or rather, an entirely new Huntley. An image that included a swarm of curious onlookers exploding into his room at Dawlish's as he received an unexpected blow from the Earl of Pembourne … and a beautiful, candid, and incredibly exciting woman who'd set his blood on fire and then turned out to be none other than Aurora Huntley.
     
    What had begun as an enchanting diversion had disintegrated into a nightmare worth forgetting.
     
    Except that Julian couldn't shake the memory of Aurora's shocked, pained expression when her brother had revealed the identity of the man in whose arms she'd been caught. Nor the way she'd turned to look at him—not with hatred, nor with accusation, but with bewilderment, as if she couldn't fathom how all this had happened. Her vivid turquoise eyes had searched his face, lingering on his mouth, and Julian had read the conflict in that transparent gaze as clearly as if she'd spoken it aloud: Why hadn't she somehow known who he was? How had a plan she'd devised simply to extricate herself from an unwanted betrothal turned out to be the biggest scandal of her life, hurting not only herself but her entire family? Worst of all, how could she have reveled in the moments she'd just spent in Julian Bencroft's arms?
     
    There wasn't a damned thing he could do about it. No apology could undo the damage that had been done, nor could a thousand avowals that nothing had happened, that they'd each been unaware of the other's identity, restore all Aurora had lost. Not that her brother would have listened