Scandal of the Year (22 page)

“Lovely morning,” he said, pausing beside her chair and pulling out his cigarette case. “Nice for a drive.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “Quite.”

He opened the case, extracted a cigarette and a match, then slid the case back into his breast pocket. “There’s a good supply of petrol in the stables,” he went on as he bent to strike the match on the stone railing nearby.

Julia looked at him, frowning as she watched him light his cigarette, baffled as to why he’d feel it necessary to remind her of such a well-established fact. He always kept a supply of petrol in the stables, had for years now. Beatrix’s Daimler was stored there while she was in Egypt, and Paul sometimes drove it. Also, Julia often stayed at Danbury, and extra petrol had always been available in case Yardley had decided to make himself a nuisance and she had needed to fuel the motorcar and flee. “Yes, I know,” she answered. “I used a bit of it the other day.”

“Plenty left, though, I expect.” Cigarette in hand, he moved to sit opposite her, tossing the match into the ash canister on the table.

“Thinking of taking a drive, are you?”

“I’m not, but I thought you might.” He met her gaze across the table. “Cornwall’s what, five hours away?”

She stared back at him. “I’m not going to Cornwall.”

“Why not? Plenty of time to arrive at Dovecotes before dark.”

“I’m not going to Cornwall!”

“Sorry, my mistake.” He got up and turned to look out over the garden. “It’s just that when you found out Trathen was gone, you looked like a little girl who wasn’t going to get any Christmas.”

“Oh, I did not.”

“Julie.” It was a sigh on his lips. He turned. “You spent years getting away from Yardley, and yet here you are, still running from him even after he’s long gone. Don’t you think it’s time for you to run toward something for a change, instead of away?”

Julia’s mind went back to that afternoon with Aidan at Dovecotes last year, then she thought of his kisses a few days ago, and she suddenly wondered what it would be like to meld the two. Could it be like that? she wondered with a flash of hope. Could she have that afternoon at Dovecotes again, but without the desperation and panic she’d felt? Could she be again as she’d been a few days ago—vibrant and alive, not numb and cold? Could she be kissed and caressed and filled with desire? Could she cease to be what Yardley had made her?

“Paul?” She jumped up. “You’re absolutely right. Have Warren fill the Mercedes, would you?” She started back into the house. “I have to find Giselle and pack.”

Half an hour later, valise in one hand, Spike’s leash in the other, she stood on the front steps at Danbury, watching as the chauffeur brought the Mercedes around. When Warren stopped the vehicle beside the drive, and stepped aside for her, she slid into the driver’s seat. Warren put her valise in the back beside the jug of additional petrol and Spike hopped happily into the passenger seat. As Julia drove down the lane, she glanced over her shoulder at Danbury Downs. It was a familiar view, for she’d left Danbury this way many times before, but this time, the view seemed completely different. She was running again, but this time, she wasn’t running away from a man. She was running to him, and that was a ripping miracle.

The drive from Danbury to Gwithian was a bit under five hours in the Mercedes, for in Cornwall, the roads weren’t always smooth, and a motorcar couldn’t ever really travel above twenty miles an hour. As always when she drove, Spike was sitting in the passenger seat with his muzzle lifted to the breeze, and Julia was thinking.

Not of escape or railway schedules or which ships left which harbor towns or if detectives were following her. She was thinking about Aidan, and as she did, she felt a rush of breathless exhilaration and giddy excitement she hadn’t felt since she was a girl. In fact, she felt more joy now than she’d felt then, perhaps because it took suffering to truly appreciate sweetness. It took pain to savor bliss. As a girl of seventeen, she hadn’t understood that. She understood it now.

At first, she thought she would go straight to Trathen Leagh, but she changed her mind and stopped in the town of Liskeard, where she sent Aidan a cable. In Redruth, she bought supplies, and in Hayle, she bought chipped ice. By half past two o’clock, she was turning off the Churchdown Road and onto the lane to Dovecotes, feeling nervous as a cat on hot bricks.

Would he come? she wondered, her heart pounding as she drove down the rutted lane. When she saw a gig with his coat of arms standing in front of her cottage and him sitting on the seat, her heart twisted in her breast with a joy that she didn’t even try to extinguish, and she lifted one hand from the wheel to wave. When she halted the motorcar in front of the cottage and saw him smiling at her, she laughed out loud.

Spike saw him, too, and jumped down from the passenger seat, not with low, warning growls, but with eager, happy barks. He ran to Aidan, who stepped down from the gig and immediately reminded the animal who was in charge. “Sit.”

Spike obeyed and was immediately rewarded with a pat on the head, a rub behind the ears, and a bit of praise. “Good boy.”

Julia secured the brake lever and stepped down from the motorcar. “You received my message, I see, asking you to meet me here.”

“Asking? It was more in the nature of a command than a request.”

“Oh, it was not a command.”

He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. ‘arriving gwithian about two o’clock stop,’ ” he read. “ ‘meet me there stop have picnic stop want second chance with better ending julia stop stop.’ He looked at her, shoving the note back in his pocket and walking to the back of the Mercedes to remove her valise from the boot. “That doesn’t sound like asking to me.”

She laughed, tucking her handbag under her arm and grabbing her hatbox as he reached for her valise and the picnic hamper. That was when he saw the bottle of Laurent-Perrier reposing in a bucket of ice chips. “You brought champagne, too?”

“Of course! I brought all the exact same things. We are restaging this play and giving it a different ending.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? The champagne, I mean.” His eyes looked into hers. “I might lose my head.”

She looked back at him, seeing into the depths of those warm, steady eyes, and she suddenly realized why she liked them so much, why she’d turned to him as her means of escape from Yardley. She liked that steadiness, she savored that warmth, she turned instinctively toward those things she saw in his eyes.

“You won’t lose your head,” she assured him. “This time, I only brought one bottle of champagne, and you are only allowed one glass.” She smiled her most seductive smile. “This time, I want you to remember everything.”

Chapter Nineteen

A
idan fully appreciated what the eminent French philosopher Émile Boirac called déjà vu. He’d experienced that particular phenomenon several times since Julia had walked back into his life, but this particular occasion had to be the most delicious. For the second time, Julia was propositioning him, something that only yesterday had been about as likely as Queen Alexandra allowing him once again into the Royal Enclosure at Ascot. Nonetheless, Julia had asked him on a picnic. She’d brought champagne. And she was giving him the same seductive smile she’d given him last August.

He took a deep breath. “One glass,” he agreed. “But what if I stop you at the crucial moment, and cite codes of honor and moral responsibility?”

Her smile widened. “I’ll kill you.”

He laughed. “All right then. But couldn’t we skip over the picnic and champagne part and go straight to the dessert?”

Her eyes widened in pretended innocence. “That’s right! I remember how much you love blackberries.”

“Love them. Especially
after
dessert,” he murmured, his gaze sliding down her legs. Not that there was much to see beneath the long motoring coat she wore.

She laughed again, but shook her head as she wrapped her free arm around the champagne bucket, grabbed her hat box, and started for the door of the cottage. “No, no. This all has to be done in the proper order. C’mon, bring my things up.”

He reached for the valise and picnic basket and followed her. “Proper order?”

“Yes.” Her arm wrapped tight around the ice bucket so as not to drop it, she set down her hatbox, thrust a hand in her coat pocket, and extracted a key. “What that means,” she explained as she unlocked the door, shoved the key in the pocket of her motoring coat, and pushed the door wide, “is that you have to steer clear until I’m ready.”

“What?”

Ignoring his groan, she grabbed her suitcase out of his hand, shoved the ice bucket at him, and picked up her hatbox. “I was hoping to arrive before you because I have preparations to make so that we can do this right, but the road out of St. Dennis was too muddy and I had to go around, so we have to delay our picnic about half an hour. C’mon, Spike,” she added, moving farther into the foyer to allow the bulldog to enter the cottage. Aidan kicked the door shut behind them.

She nodded to the refreshments he carried as she started up the stairs with her valise. “Take the picnic things to the kitchen, would you, and put the kettle on? Well’s outside the back door, and there should be coal in the scuttle.”

“You are a devil, Julia,” he accused as she started up the stairs, “making me cool my heels like this.”

“It’s good for you,” she called back. “Dukes are far too accustomed to having things their way.”

“I’m not,” he muttered. “Not with you anyway.”

There was the tap of her heels on the stairs as she came back down far enough to peek at him. “And stable your horse,” she said, giving him that smile again. “This time, you’re staying all night.”

With that delicious promise, she vanished, and he spent the next half hour thinking it was an eternity. He stoked up the fire in the stove and put the kettle on as she’d requested, and the knowledge that she wanted the hot water for a bath sent his desire ratcheting upward.

Not that he needed much incentive in that regard. In leaving Danbury Downs, he’d tried to put her out of his mind, knowing it might be weeks or even months before he would see her again. But from the moment he’d received her telegram this morning, he’d begun imagining all the ways he wanted to make love to her, and the intervening hours had given him plenty of time to reawaken every fantasy he’d ever had about her and invent several new ones. Waiting was become harder, his anticipation keener, with each excruciating moment that passed.

He drove his carriage into the stables, unhitched the gelding, gave it water from a rain-filled trough outside, and led it to a stall. Grooming supplies hung along one wall, and he currycombed the animal as well. These mundane tasks kept his body preoccupied, but could not preoccupy his mind or prevent his thoughts from returning to the erotic possibilities that lay ahead. He could only hope when the time came, he had the will and the discipline to make them as pleasurable for her in reality as they were in his imagination.

When he returned to the house, he knew she was ready the moment he opened the back door. He could smell lilacs, the scent of her perfume, even before he saw her dark head peeking around the corner of the doorway from the corridor.

“You have to come to the front door,” she told him. “Just like last time.”

“Your wish is my command,” he said, backed out of the kitchen, and went around to the front of the cottage. She didn’t even wait for him to knock, and as she opened the door to him, he knew that drunk or not, he must have been a complete idiot last August to say no to this woman.

She was wearing that dress, a muslin affair of snowy white with a wide navy-blue sash that looked just as he remembered. It was the sort of simple daytime frock ladies wore to the balloon races at Ranelagh or the Henley Regatta every year, only without the necktie, gloves, or straw boater hat. He also knew, now, that beneath that dress was absolutely nothing. Just as before, her black curls were caught up in a loose chignon, secured with nothing more than a pair of pearl-edged combs. Her feet were encased in the same shoes she’d worn before, he noticed, looking down to see the white leather toes peeking from beneath her hem. It was the sort of shoe most women wore to the seaside. Most other women, however, wore stockings.

“I’m glad you came,” she said, pointing to the picnic hamper she had waiting just by the door. “Would you carry that?”

Spike was beside his mistress again, but this time, there was no barking and no growling to warn away the distrusted man at the door. She looked into the animal’s eager, wrinkly face and shook her head. “Sorry, old chap. I know you like Aidan now, but you still have to stay here.”

Leaving a dejected Spike tied to a fencepost outside, they started along the same path they had walked before, a well-worn path carved into the steep, winding hillside that led down to the same small, isolated cove and pretty little beach where they had picnicked last time. There, spread on the grassy turf at the edge of the sand, was the same blanket, and at one corner were the same two neatly folded towels. On another corner of the blanket was the Victrola, with its enormous horn and mahogany casing, and on top of it was a phonograph—Mozart, he suspected. When she sank down on the blanket, turned the handle of the machine, and placed the arm of the Victrola on the recording, his suspicion was confirmed as the lively notes of
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
filled the air.

The champagne was there, too, but this time, there was only one bottle in the silver bucket. This time, he waged no internal battle about how many glasses he was going to have. As she’d said, only one was allowed.

“What did you think when you saw all this before?” she asked. “You must have known what I was doing.”

“I suspected. When I saw the trouble you’d gone to, I was flattered that you . . .” He paused and swallowed hard, finding the admission hard to make. “I was flattered that you wanted me that much.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I never meant to hurt you or humiliate you.”

He sank down beside her on the blanket, then he took up her hand, lifted it to his lips, and kissed it. “I know.”

She laughed a little, entwining their fingers. “Yet you came that day. I didn’t really think you would.”

“I convinced myself that it was harmless because I could resist you.” He gave a hoarse chuckle. “Amazing how many ways a man can fool himself when he wants something he knows isn’t very honorable. You were right about me and the whole notion of forbidden fruit.”

“Still, I thought sure my motives were plain as day, and there was no way you’d fall into that trap.”

“I tried not to. I saw all this, and I thought of what was
not
going to happen on that blanket. I thought about how I was
not
going to touch you and kiss you and unbutton your dress. I thought about not doing those things over and over again.”

She laughed, and led him by the hand to where she’d arranged the picnic things. “Perhaps you should have a more positive outlook this time?” she suggested, sinking down on the blanket. Hitching up the hem of her skirt a bit, she pulled off her shoes.

His breath caught at the sight of her bare feet, and he knew if this was going to go the way he wanted it to, the way he wanted it to be for her, he had to keep his desire in check. That meant not staring at her pretty feet, and when she wiggled her toes, he jerked his gaze away. He opened the picnic hamper and rummaged inside for glasses. He found them, wrapped in linen napkins. “Pass the champagne, would you?”

“Not yet. You’re too buttoned up.” She lifted one hand, waving it in an up and down gesture. “This is a picnic in Cornwall, not afternoon tea with an archbishop,” she went on as he moved to comply. “And,” she added as he tossed his navy-blue jacket to an unoccupied corner of the blanket, “remove that necktie. And undo a button or two of that shirt.”

“Did I take these off last time?” He didn’t remember doing that.

“Yes. Well,” she added, laughing, “with a little help from me. And only after two and a half bottles of champagne.”

“Ah.” He considered a moment, then gave in. “Well, we are rewriting the ending, aren’t we? I suppose I could loosen my tie a bit earlier this time.” His tie joined his jacket and he undid the three buttons of his shirt. Only then did Julia comply with his request, pulling the bottle from its now-slushy ice bath and handing it to him. He popped the cork and poured for both of them, then lifting his glass, he proposed a toast. “To second chances.”

“And better endings,” she added. They clinked glasses and looked into each other’s eyes, and as they drank, Aidan vowed this ending wasn’t just going to be better, it was going to be the best he could make it for her.

They set aside their glasses and began pulling foodstuffs out of the picnic hamper. He opened jars of caviar, mustard, and pickles as she unfastened plates and silver from beneath the lid of the hamper. He sliced bread, ham, chicken, and various cheeses as she pulled out tins of savory biscuits and shortbread, and a basket of blackberries.

“How long have you had this place?” he asked as they ate.

“About seven years. I inherited it from my grandmother. She died after my parents, and it came to me. It’s one of those quirky entailed properties that comes down through the female line, and since I have no older sisters—no siblings at all, in fact—it came to me. I’m glad, too. I love it here.”

“But you didn’t grow up here?” When she shook her head, he added, “If you had, we would have met much sooner, I suppose, since Trathen Leagh is so close.”

“I spent a few summers here as a girl, though I always went to Pixy Cove for August. Like my cousins, I grew up in Devonshire, not by Danbury, but further east, closer to Dorset.”

“Since you have no brothers or sisters, we have something in common, then. I, too, am an only child. My mother died shortly after I began at Eton, and my father only a year later. That’s so frequently the way, isn’t it?” he added thoughtfully. “When one spouse dies, the other often follows shortly after. Why do you suppose that is?”

She shrugged. “Loneliness, perhaps. I wouldn’t know. My parents died together, in a carriage accident when I was twenty-two. I’m glad they never knew how unhappy my marriage was. It would have grieved them.”

“Would it?” Aidan paused over his sandwich, thinking it over. “That surprises me.”

“Really?” She reached for a hunk of chicken. “Why should it?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps because I gathered your parents knew you didn’t love him, even though they had pushed for the marriage.”

“I think they hoped it would all turn out well. They did love me, and they wanted what they thought was best for me.”

“Why was Yardley their choice? His rank?”

“Partly. My father had a prosperous farm, but no title. More important, Yardley wanted to marry me. His family often spent the summer just this side of Dorset, near our farm. We’d known each other most of our lives, but I never liked him. I don’t know quite why he wanted me.” She paused, considering, as she ate another bite of chicken. “Probably because he knew I didn’t want him,” she said at last. “He was . . . perverse like that. But my parents believed he had genuine affection for me, and they felt that my becoming a baroness was an excellent match that would give me a secure future. They assumed I would grow to love him.”

“It does often happen that way.”

“Does it?” She seemed doubtful, but she didn’t debate the point. “I’m glad they never knew my aversion to Yardley became loathing. It would have grieved them. Their marriage was a contented one. They liked each other and were fairly happy. No real passion, though I suppose they may have had that once.”

“Well, I’m glad that at least one of us had parents with a contented marriage. My parents’ marriage was an emotional tumult.”

“What do you mean?”

He shook his head. “They were madly in love when they met, and suitable to marry, but my father simply could not resist other women. It was a source of great unhappiness to my mother, always.”

“I see.” She paused, and he could feel her gaze on him, studying him. “That’s why you feel fidelity is important, don’t you?” she asked. “Because infidelity made your mother unhappy?”