Scandal of the Year (11 page)

By the time his gaze once again met hers, Julia felt she must be pink as a peony. Aidan, however, didn’t seem to notice her discomfiture, nor did he seem to feel anything similar. The desire she was used to seeing in his eyes wasn’t there now, and his voice was indifferent, his manner scrupulously businesslike.

“All invitations shall continue to be directed here,” he went on, “but I shall inform Lambert to expect many pieces of correspondence directed to Mrs. Boodle, and to have each day’s social invitations delivered to you for your perusal. I believe you and I should meet several times each week to go through them, and to coordinate my social calendar with my business engagements. We’ll meet in my offices on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at nine o’clock. I hope that is acceptable to you?”

Without waiting for an answer, he reached for a leather-bound volume on his desk and opened it. “I am already engaged at nine on Monday, but I am free at four, so we shall meet then.” He reached for a pencil and noted that appointment in the book, then set the pencil aside and began flipping through the pages allocated to future dates. “From then on, however, nine o’clock appears to be a convenient hour, so that shall be our customary time to meet for the remainder of the season.”

As she listened to him outlining his expectations and preferences, Julia began to appreciate what working for him would entail, of how it would bring them into close, repeated contact, and she suddenly wondered if she ought to call the whole thing off. There were things about that day in Cornwall she never wanted him to know, and if she worked for him any length of time, her secrets might come spilling out.

Aidan closed the book and stood up, indicating their meeting was at an end, but when she didn’t move, he gave her a quizzical little smile across the desk. “Was there anything else?” he asked.

She told herself to stop being silly and jerked to her feet. “No, nothing else.”

“Excellent.” He nodded to the sheaf of papers in her hand. “Go through those, and be prepared to advise me on which ones I should accept. And Julia,” he added as she started to turn away, “be sure to give Lambert the name of that moneylender on your way out.”

“Heavens, what will he think of me?”

“Does it matter? Lambert is discretion itself.”

“Of course.” She smiled, working to regain her wits, which seemed to have scattered to the four winds. “I shall see you Monday, then.”

“Yes.” He bowed. “Good day.”

She departed, pausing to speak with Aidan’s secretary on her way out. But as she left his offices, Julia still felt stunned, and a bit uneasy. In coming this morning, she’d been seeking Aidan’s advice and hoped for a post of some sort, but she’d never really thought he would hire her. But he had, providing her with a way to build a future for herself. Perhaps this was a chance to heal the breach between them as well, as long as she kept her mouth shut about what had really happened that afternoon at her cottage.

Chapter Ten

St. Ives, Cornwall
1901

B
y the time Julia met Aidan Carr, the Duke of Trathen, fate had already tied her to Yardley. Ten years later, when she encountered the duke again, she decided fate needed to make up for that ghastly mistake.

She was at the St. Ives Ball, a charity event held in the Cornish seaside town of St. Ives every year. Aware that Yardley had just gone chasing off to France after her, Julia had managed to slip back into England, and was spending a few blissful weeks at her beloved Dovecotes, the cottage in Cornwall she’d inherited from her grandmother.

She’d brought her cousin Beatrix along for company. Beatrix’s father had died in the spring, and Trix was still mourning his death. Julia, who’d always regarded her Uncle James as a despotic old bastard, wasn’t inclined to view his departure for the hereafter as anything but a liberation for her cousin, but she knew Beatrix didn’t see it that way. Trix, racked with grief, had intended to hole herself up in Danbury Downs and wither away, but Julia wasn’t having any of that. She’d dragged Trix to Dovecotes for a holiday, and the St. Ives Ball was the first social event for either of them in months.

Julia knew she had to enjoy it while she could. Yardley would learn she was here soon enough and come after her again, but she was going to savor every minute of this holiday. Tapping her foot in time to a rousing polka, she was studying the crowd when she spied Trathen standing near the door.

“Hell’s bells!” she exclaimed in surprise. “It’s him!”

Trathen’s ducal seat was here in Cornwall, but she’d never known him to attend the St. Ives Ball, and if she recalled the gossip she’d heard about him over the years, he didn’t like to dance. Despite all that and the fact that it had been ten years since she’d met him that day in Dorset, there was no mistaking his tall, splendid body across the ballroom.

“Who are you looking at?” Beatrix, shorter than she, craned her neck, trying to determine who it was that had caught Julia’s eye. “See someone we know?”

“Someone I know.”

She was given no chance to explain, for at that moment the polka ended, and Beatrix’s company was commandeered for a reel by the next gentleman on her dance card.

Beatrix took the floor with her partner, and Julia continued to study Trathen, feeling a bit chagrined by the realization that the attractive youth she’d met ten years ago was even handsomer at twenty-seven than he’d been at seventeen. What a pity she hadn’t met him before she’d agreed to marry Yardley.

Aidan had wanted her. That fact had been plain as a pikestaff that day on the footbridge, though he’d tried so desperately to hide it. He might—just might—have wanted her enough to marry her, if she’d been given time to win him over. But it wasn’t meant to be. After the botched elopement with Stephen, her father had insisted on marrying her off, and hadn’t given her any time to be choosy about the groom.

If only things could have been different
, she thought, feeling a queer and unexpected pang of longing as she watched Aidan move with athletic grace toward the refreshment table across the room.

The feeling surprised her. She wasn’t the sort for wishful thinking, and indulging in romantic contemplations about Aidan Carr and what might have been did her no good, especially since she doubted she could muster a smidgen of sensual feeling anymore. Most of the time, she felt like a dried up widow.

Aidan vanished from sight, merging into the crowd, and Julia’s attention returned to her own troubles. She might feel like a dried-up widow, but unfortunately, the man responsible for this complete lack of passion on her part showed no signs of making her a widow in the literal sense. He’d had a bad bout of fever the previous spring, but that brush with death hadn’t carried him off. It had only served to remind him that he had no heir and make him resolved to beget a son with her before she was past her childbearing years.

Julia was equally determined not to let that happen, but she knew she was running out of options. She was also running out of time.

Yardley was rushing around France looking for her, but it wouldn’t take him much longer to realize she wasn’t there. A few mentions of her were already appearing in the British society pages, and her husband would soon get wind of it. Once he knew she was at Dovecotes, he’d come tearing back, prepared to drag her to Dorset so that he could transform her into a dutiful and pregnant wife.

Julia’s hand tightened around her glass of punch and she thought back to the early years of her marriage when she’d submitted to her husband’s efforts in that regard, and she knew she’d never return to Yardley Grange again. She’d kill herself before she let that man ever touch her again.

There had to be a way out. Eventually, she’d be too old to become pregnant, but the chance she would be able to evade him that long was close to nil, especially since he was now threatening to use legal means to force her home. She’d tried so many methods of escape already—scandalous behavior, consultations with solicitors, outright defiance. She’d even, God help her, gotten down on her knees and begged him to divorce her. He’d laughed, pleased to see her on her knees, expressing the wish to see her that way more often, and she’d been running away—the only means of escape left to her—ever since. But now, the noose was tightening, and a few short weeks here in Cornwall might be all she had left.

Panic rose up inside her, closing up her throat, making her feel as if she were choking. She closed her eyes, taking deep breaths and striving to keep believing there was a way out if only she could find it.

With that thought, she shoved her panic aside and opened her eyes, scanning the room for a distraction. She didn’t see Aidan, but she saw Trix.

Her cousin was laughing as she moved down the center of the reel with her partner, and Julia smiled, for Trix laughing was a welcome sight indeed. Abandoned as a child by her mother, smothered by her overprotective father, jilted at the altar by her childhood sweetheart, the Duke of Sunderland, a man she’d worshipped since childhood, Trix hadn’t had much to laugh about in her life. It was good to see.

Julia’s gaze moved on, then paused again. Trathen had somehow gotten cornered by Lady Jolette, whose entire life revolved around her prized Sealyham terriers. Julia grinned, imagining Lady Jolette’s deep bass voice going on and on about the new bitch she’d acquired from Wales. Poor fellow, she thought with a chuckle, but then, as she thought of how valiantly he’d tried not to look at her legs all those years ago, she realized he was probably the sort of man who was far too nice to women for his own good. Any other chap would have slipped free of Lady Jolette at the first mention of the prized bitch.

Julia watched him, smiling, feeling a sudden rush of affection, thinking of that day on the footbridge. She’d liked that stuffy, serious young man, she’d liked teasing him and managing to make him smile, and she’d been terribly flattered by his fascination with her legs.

Ah, he was escaping at last, taking refuge at the refreshment table, and Julia decided it was time to renew their acquaintance. The chance to tease him about dog breeding or something equally amusing was too delicious to pass up. She circled the ballroom and sidled up beside him, pretending a fascination with the canapés as she watched him out of the corner of her eye.

She timed her reach for the handle of the punchbowl just as he was doing the same.

“Sorry,” he said at once, pulling back his hand and turning toward her with a bow. “Ladies first.”

“Why, hullo!” she cried, pretending the liveliest surprise. “I do believe it’s my very own handsome prince!”

His face, still gravely beautiful, looked at her without the slightest hint of recognition, which was rather a blow to her feminine pride. His brown brows drew together in puzzlement, trying to place her, and then, just as she was berating herself for her conceit in thinking he’d actually remember her, his brow cleared. “Sleeping Beauty, if I am not mistaken?”

“The very same.” She laughed, pleased and relieved to be remembered after all. “But alas, dear prince, I fear I’ve stumbled into the wrong fairy tale, for it’s Cinderella who’s supposed to be at the ball. I’m supposed to be malingering in a glass coffin.”

His mouth curved at one corner, not quite a smile, but almost. “I don’t think strict adherence to a script bothers you overmuch. The play,” he added in explanation, noting her bewildered look. “You didn’t learn your lines, remember?”

“That’s right!” She grinned at him. “Improvisation inevitably follows procrastination, I fear. Still, I flatter myself most people didn’t notice.”

“Not even your fiancé’s mother?”

Julia grimaced. “Oh no, she noticed. Yardley’s mother was the sort to notice everything.”

His smile faded. “So you are the girl who married Baron Yardley? I had heard that a Miss Julia Hammett, daughter of Squire Hammett . . . that is, I thought it might have been you, but I wasn’t sure.”

“It was me, yes. Heavens,” she added at his expression of distaste, “it’s bad enough Yardley makes me sour as a persimmon. He needn’t make you so as well!”

The distaste vanished behind a gentlemanly veneer. “Forgive me, Baroness,” he said with a bow. “Your husband and I have sometimes chosen to disagree over political matters, that is all. I’m surprised you don’t already know of our divergent views.”

“Should I? I don’t keep up with British politics, and I live on the Continent most of the time. Besides,” she added with practiced carelessness, “I’m afraid five minutes’ conversation with Yardley is about all either of us can manage. I keep hoping he’ll divorce me, but so far, no luck. He’s standing by me, right or wrong.”

“As a husband should.”

Julia, in the act of taking a sip of punch, nearly choked. “You think he’s being noble? Oh dear, you do have chivalrous notions, don’t you? Sorry to tell you, but he’s stood by me all these years because he knows how much I want to be free. It’s my punishment.”

He frowned. “Punishment for what, in heaven’s name?”

“For not wanting him, of course.”

“If you didn’t want him, why did you ever marry him?”

“I didn’t have a choice,” she blurted out. “My family—”

She stopped, not wanting to reveal any more.

“They forced you to marry a man you didn’t want to marry?”

She watched his frown deepen with anger, anger she realized was on her behalf, and tightness squeezed her chest. Suddenly she felt raw, exposed, far too vulnerable, and she was impelled to take cover. “Well, I couldn’t blame them, really. I was such a scapegrace of a girl. My father was quite fed up with me.” She winked. “I think it was wanting to elope with a poet that did for me in the end, and my father felt Yardley was better than a poet. Too bad you didn’t come along sooner,” she added with a smile. “I would rather have married you.”

“I didn’t know you. If I had—” He stopped, and the anger in his face dissolved. His lashes lowered, as if he were imagining her bare legs.

It was then, at that moment, that she saw her way out. Her means of escape. She’d considered the possibility of taking a lover several times, but she’d never been able to quite stomach the idea. Until now.

The music stopped, dancers exiting the floor pressed her closer to him, and she didn’t feel any tinge of the fear that had always accompanied her previous speculations on this topic. Aidan as a lover?

She felt a ray of hope, faint but unmistakable. Oh, if only he could be the key to her escape from the hell she’d been locked into for so long. Aidan was just the sort of man to jerk Yardley’s chain, enrage him enough that he would demand a divorce. Aidan was a duke—handsome, rich, athletic, powerful, already a political enemy. How fitting it would be if this man—he was her prince, after all—should be the one to rescue her. But could she do it? Despite the scandals she’d deliberately attached to her name, she’d only bedded two men in her life. The first had been a man she’d loved and adored, and from him, she had learned passion. The second, a man she despised, had poisoned everything the first had given her. Now, she had none of an ordinary woman’s sensuality. She hadn’t experienced desire in so long, she hardly remembered how it felt. Inside, as a woman, she felt dead. When it came down to brass tacks, when the clothes were coming off and it was time for Aidan’s body on hers, could she do it?

Yardley, she reminded herself, wanted a son.

She looked into Aidan’s eyes, warm hazel eyes, and something in their depths made her catch her breath. Yes, she decided. With this man, she could do it.

She stepped a little closer. “If you had . . .” she prompted softly.

She waited, heart in her throat, but he had no chance to answer.

“Julie, so this is where you’ve got to,” Trix’s cheerful voice entered the conversation, and Julia almost groaned aloud at the unfortunate timing. Aidan, always polite, gave her a brief, rueful glance before giving his attention to the newcomer and awaiting an introduction.

“Trix,” Julia said, turning to her cousin, “may I present His Grace, the Duke of Trathen? Trathen, my cousin, Lady Beatrix Danbury.”

Aidan bowed. “Lady Beatrix.”

The moment she looked at Trix’s face, Julia felt a sickening knot in the pit of her stomach. Trix was smiling up at Aidan, her big, beautiful brown eyes shining with an interest Julia hadn’t seen her display for any man since Sunderland had gone away.

No
, she wanted to scream, as if she were an adolescent girl.
You can’t have him. I saw him first
.