Loving Julia (33 page)

But one day he was going to have to stop running and face himself. And his feelings. But by then it would be too late to regain what he had lost. She had loved him, truly loved him, but she was not fool enough to spend her life mooning over a man who underneath the fondness and passion and friendship secretly held her in contempt. It would kill her to be his mistress until he tired of her. Getting him to marry her was about as likely as having a carriage horse win at Ascot. She saw that now. In his mind he would forever be the lordly earl and she the nameless guttersnipe. A cat could look at a king, but a guttersnipe could never become a countess.

Sebastian had left with only one valise, which most likely meant that he would not be gone for more than a week or so. But, then, he had only taken one valise with him when he had first taken her to White Friars, and he had ended up staying for months. But those circumstances had been unusual. Julia rather expected to see him back in London before two weeks at the outside had passed. Which didn’t give her much time to decide what to do.

Apparently Sebastian was so confident of her obedience to him that he had not considered that she might not break her engagement to Lord Carlyle. But Sebastian’s word was no longer law to her and she
was
going to marry Lord Carlyle—Oliver!—if for no other reason than to spite Sebastian. How he would hate seeing her as a real lady of the ton and another man’s wife! She hoped he would hate it. She wanted him to hate it. She wanted him to squirm every time he thought of it.

But to put him in that satisfying position, she first had to get Lord—Oliver!—to the altar. Unless Sebastian hated the idea of scandal more than he hated the idea of her becoming Lady Carlyle, that might be difficult to do. Julia did not fool herself in thinking that Oliver would marry her if he knew all that Sebastian threatened to reveal. Her lack of birth was a nearly insurmountable obstacle, and if Sebastian were to throw in the fact that she had been his mistress to boot—no, Oliver would not marry her. And Sebastian would have the last laugh.

The thought of Sebastian laughing goaded Julia as nothing else. He would not have the pleasure of seeing her rejected and humiliated! She would become Lady Carlyle, and as she thought about it she saw just how to do it. All she had to do was to persuade Oliver to marry her out-of-hand. If the deed were done before Sebastian returned to town, it would be too late to do anything about it. In all likelihood Sebastian would not even make good on his threat once he saw that it was too late to prevent the marriage. And if he did tell Oliver—well, she would be Lady Carlyle by then, and Oliver would not be able to do a thing about it without bringing down on himself the type of scandal that she instinctively knew he would go to any lengths to avoid. The difficulty was going to be getting him to agree to an over-the-anvil marriage. Oliver was very much a stickler for convention….

“Come, Julia, I know you are only funning, but I wish you would not do so about such a delicate subject. We will of course be married in St. James at the end of the proper three month period. Since you are not a girl but a widow, of course, the affair will be relatively quiet. But still, we will manage to do things up splendidly, you’ll see.”

Oliver’s whisper was audible only to Julia over the commotion of the farce that was taking place on the stage below. She stared down at the gaudily dressed players with unseeing eyes, so annoyed with Oliver’s insistence on propriety and so anxious that Sebastian might turn up again before she had talked him around to her way of thinking that she could hardly sit still.

In the five days since Sebastian’s departure, she had brought up the subject as many times as she had seen Oliver. Each time he treated her hints as to how romantic she would find a runaway wedding like they were a not particularly tasteful joke. Now he was actually sounding irritated with her. Julia chewed on a fingernail and stared out over the darkened theatre while her mind worked furiously. If she truly wished to become Lady Carlyle, she was going to have to think of some way to move this thickheaded lump of a man around to her way of thinking. And fast!

With them in the box were Caroline and her escort, Lord Rowland, a tall thin man of perhaps forty-five with a charming smile. The other members of the party, which had been gotten up at nearly the last minute, were Lord and Lady Courtland. Lord Courtland was small and slight, and he spoke with a hint of a lisp that made him seem slightly afraid of his more forceful wife. Lady Courtland was one of Caroline’s bosom bows. She was a plump woman who had the poor judgment to try to squeeze her too large frame into the most daring of the latest fashions, and the result was not beautiful. But she was most amiable, at least when she was not issuing silky orders to her husband while her eyes flayed him like twin whips.

The play seemed to last forever, so anxious was she to get Oliver out to a place where she could talk to him. Finally she could wait no longer. The heroine of the dramatic piece following the farce had just announced her intention of killing herself if her lover didn’t return to her when Julia leaned over to Oliver and whispered that she had a headache.

Immediately he was all solicitude, offering to take her home at once, and she smiled her thanks at him. With a quick word to Caroline, who nodded and appeared not to have the least objection to Julia going off alone at night in a closed carriage with a man who was not a close relative—something that was considered to be questionable behavior by the ton’s high sticklers. But Julia was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and she quickly gathered up her evening cloak and reticule and allowed Oliver to lead her from the box. But by the time they reached the lighted lobby and had ordered the carriage to be brought around, Oliver himself was beginning to have second thoughts.

“Perhaps we should have asked Mrs. Peyton to accompany us,” Oliver said thoughtfully as he draped her cream silk cloak around her bare shoulders. “I know that you would not wish to give the least appearance of impropriety, my dear Julia, and it is not quite the done thing for us to leave the theatre alone together. Though such a thing might not occur to you—you are such an unworldly innocent! I feel that it is my responsibility to consider such repercussions for us both.”

“Dear Oliver,” Julia said, smiling up at him, though it was something of an effort to assume an expression of proper affection. In reality she wanted to shake him. He was always so, so proper! “It could not be right to disturb Caroline and her friends. They are enjoying the play, and I would feel quite low if they had to leave without seeing the end on my account. Grosvenor Square is only fifteen minutes from the theatre, after all.”

“Still,” Oliver said darkly, “there may be those who will take note of the impropriety. We are not officially engaged yet, you know, and I do not want anyone saying that we are to marry because … because it is necessary. Yes, the more I consider the matter the more I feel that we must ask Mrs. Peyton to accompany us.”

Julia counted to ten before she replied. As she counted, she made a little business of fastening the silver frogs that closed her cloak up the front. Worn over a full skirted, tightly bodiced dress of the same cream silk embellished with silver lace, it was an elegant and highly becoming ensemble. She looked all the crack, as the wags would say, and she was surprised that she did not enjoy the knowledge more. Earlier this evening, when she had first put on the dress and stood looking at herself in the glass, the beautiful picture she made had elicited hardly more than a shrug from her. What good was looking beautiful if there was no one to see? Despite her best efforts to make him do so, Oliver simply didn’t count. Neither did Caroline and her friends, nor the rest of the theatre. The audience she wanted to dazzle was Sebastian and Sebastian only. Without him to witness and be moved by her beauty, it was meaningless. The realization annoyed her past bearing, but she could not blind herself to the truth.

“I shall send a note in to Mrs. Peyton.” Oliver was still mumbling, and Julia could no longer contain her irritation.

“Don’t be a goose, Oliver,” she said crisply, turning to face him. Seeing his eyes widen in affront, she hastily smiled and put her hand on his arm. She did not want to alienate him, after all.

“I’m sorry, Oliver, I spoke without thinking. But you see, you really musn’t send for Caroline. I don’t have a headache at all, I only used it as an excuse. The truth is, I wish to talk to you alone.

I have something to say that is very important for you to know, and I must tell you at once. I had hoped to keep the truth from you, but I find I cannot so deceive you. So if you will humor me?”

Oliver stared down at her. Before he could say anything, the link boy called that the carriage was waiting. Julia, breathing a sigh of relief, immediately moved toward where the footmen were waiting to assist her inside. Oliver had no choice but to follow.

“What is it that is so important for you to tell me?” he demanded testily once they were inside and the door was closed.

Seen in the light from the streetlamps which poured through the window, he looked old suddenly. The lines on his face were shadowed into deep creases, and webbed circles surrounded his eyes. His jowls were heavier and his nose was longer and thicker. Instead of the vigorous man in the prime of life that Julia had thought him, he seemed old enough to be her father.

“Oliver, it saddens me to have to tell you this, but I feel I must,” Julia began, looking down at her hands in an attitude of virtuous sorrow as the carriage jerked into motion. “There is an impediment to our marriage of which you are unaware. I fear that unless we wed secretly within the next few days, we will be torn from each other forever.”

That was very well done, Julia congratulated herself. She silently thanked Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels, which were full of lovers being torn asunder by cruel guardians, and from which she had culled her idea. Given the way Oliver felt about Sebastian, he would have no reason to doubt her story, which was, she defended herself to herself, almost true in a way.

“What kind of impediment?” Oliver was staring at her. Through the shifting patterns of light cast as the carriage passed through the streets, Julia could see that his expression was very stern.

“I—I hate to have to say this. Indeed, I hoped I would not! But I have turned the matter over and over in my head, and I can hit on no other solution. Oh, Oliver, you must tell me what we should do! Sebastian—Lord Moorland!—will never allow me to wed you. You see, he wants me for himself.”

“Moorland wishes to marry you?”

Julia managed a blush and an anguished look up at Oliver before casting her eyes back down to her clasped hands.

“I am afraid it is worse, much worse than that,” she said mournfully, in a voice so tiny as to suggest she could hardly speak at all. “I am almost ashamed to tell you, but Lord Moorland made it quite, quite clear that he … he was not offering marriage.”

“That bas—, your pardon, Julia. That blackguard had the insufferable cheek to offer you a slip on the shoulder?” Oliver looked outraged. Julia, casting a swift look up at him, had to suppress a smile of pure satisfaction. Her confession was certainly having all the effect she had hoped for.

“I—I am so ashamed,” she whispered.

“Oh, my dear,” he said in quite a different voice, reaching out to take her hand. Julia allowed her hand to be swallowed up by his larger, warmer one, and even turned hers over so that her fingers were clinging to his as though for support. “There is no shame attached to you. It is Moorland who should be ashamed. For years the ton has whispered of his depravity, even before the tale went round that he had murdered his wife. But that he should have offered such an insult to you! He shall meet me for this.”

This last was said with fierce determination. Julia, who had not anticipated such a violent eventuality, gasped. Oliver could never be allowed to call Sebastian out! She did not know, but she suspected that Sebastian might accept even a groundless challenge. He had no liking for Oliver either. And Sebastian might kill Oliver—or, nightmare of nightmares, Oliver might actually succeed in killing Sebastian!

“No, no, you must not do that!” Julia hurried into speech with a conviction borne of true horror. “Only—only think of

what a—a slur that would be on my reputation! For there could be no other reason for you to quarrel with my guardian, and all the world must know it! Besides, you could be killed!”

She threw that in because it sounded like something a loving fiancÉe would say, and looked up at him with trepidation. He appeared much struck by what she had said, and she hurried on.

“What we should do—I’ve thought about this, you see, through many a sleepless night—is be married out of hand. It would not have to be a havey cavey affair at all. Is there not such a thing as a special license? We could be married right here in London, in a perfectly proper fashion, before Lord Moorland even returns to town. Then—then he could have no further hold over me, and could not undo what had been done.”

Oliver was silent for a long moment, running his fingers absently over the soft skin on the back of her hand. Julia, impatient with his touch, nevertheless allowed it. Anything to persuade him to her way of thinking!

“You may be in the right of it. I will have to think about it,” he said slowly just as the carriage pulled to a halt in front of the house in Grosvenor Square. “If you will permit me, I will call upon you tomorrow to let you know what I decide.”

Such lack of a definitive answer did not sit well with Julia, but there was nothing she could do but smile tremulously at him as he pressed his lips to her hand just as the footman swung open the door.

XXVIII

Two evenings later Julia was preparing for Lady Jersey’s ball. One of the highlights of the Season, it was a grand affair which nearly everyone who was anyone would attend. All across fashionable London, ladies were dressing in their finest ballgowns and bringing out their most valuable jewelry. A tangible sense of excitement lay over the haute monde.