Wedding of the Season (11 page)

“I see she’s brought Spike with her,” Paul said with a groan. “Couldn’t she have left him somewhere else?”

“Spike?” Will glanced at Paul, surprised by his friend’s lack of enthusiasm. “I take it Spike is the bulldog?”

Paul nodded. “And a mean one he is, too.”

“He’s not,” Beatrix contradicted. “He’s a bit skittish around men, that’s all.”

Trathen spoke up. “But, my dear Beatrix, a skittish dog must have training and discipline, or it can become a danger. Unfortunately, given Lady Yardley’s rather . . .” There was a momentary pause. “ . . . free-spirited character, she will probably do little to check the animal. One day it will bite someone, mark my words.”

“Not here,” Paul put in. “Marlowe will put his foot down the first time that animal growls at him. She’ll have to keep it outside and tied up most of the time.”

Her ill-mannered dog aside, Will decided he needed to thank Julia for her timely arrival and for being just the distraction he’d been praying for. “I think I’ll give Julie a bit of help with her kit,” he said, rose to his feet, and started down the steps of the gazebo.

“Careful,” Geoff called him. “Get too close to Julie and you’ll find Spike’s teeth in your arm.”

Will, who wasn’t afraid of dogs, walked toward the automobile in the drive. Spike heralded his approach with a series of barks that caused him to stop about a dozen feet away as Julia looked up.

At the sight of him, her piquant pixy face took on a look of utter stupefaction. “Will?” she cried. “Heavens above! Will?”

He started toward her again, earning a warning growl from the animal.

“Wait,” Julia ordered, tossing her motoring coat and goggles into the boot and pulling out a leather leash. “Stay right there while I tie up this beast of mine.”

She looped the leash around one of the motorcar’s wheel spokes, hooked the other end to the bulldog’s collar, grabbed her straw boater hat, and came running. “By God, it is you!” she cried, laughing. “I thought I was seeing ghosts of Augusts past.”

“Hullo, Julie,” he said, smiling.

“I had no idea you were in England!” She dropped the hat, grasped him by the shoulders, and pulled him close, and as he leaned down, she rose on her toes to plant a kiss soundly on each of his cheeks with all the
joie de vivre
he remembered. Then she leaned back to give him a more thorough study.

He did the same. He’d always had a special fondness for Beatrix’s cousin, whose adventurous streak matched his own. But as his gaze scanned her face, his pleasure was tinged with a hint of concern, for there were dark circles under her violet-blue eyes. “Are you all right?” he found himself asking.

“Right as rain,” she answered at once, her voice airy and light, but somehow Will wasn’t convinced. Even in Egypt he’d heard gossip, but he didn’t pursue the matter. Julia, he knew, was a law unto herself.

“You seem well enough,” she said, and reached up, ruffling his hair with her fingers. “Handsome as ever, you pirate. Tanned skin suits you.” She clasped his hands in hers. “Oh, Will, I am so glad to see you! Why, it’s just like old days, isn’t it? All of us coming to Pixy Cove for August.”

She glanced past him, taking note of the people gathered in the gazebo. “Well, almost like old days,” she added wryly under her breath as she bent to reach for the straw boater she’d dropped. “Bit awkward, what?”

“Not at all,” he murmured, keeping his smile firmly in place, but he suspected he wasn’t fooling Julia for a second.

“Don’t worry,” she said with a wink as she donned her hat. “I make a wonderful buffer. Darling!” she added, smiling past Will.

He glanced over his shoulder to find Beatrix approaching. He stepped back to allow the two women to exchange greetings, then he followed as they walked toward the others.

“Hullo, Aunt Gennie,” Julia greeted, bending to press an affectionate kiss on Eugenia’s forehead. “Sir George, Lady Debenham, so good to see you. Geoff, Paul . . .” She paused, and her face lit with a sudden, devilish grin. “Ah, and Aidan, too, of course. How delightful.”

If her impudent use of his Christian name offended Trathen, he didn’t show it. “Baroness,” he murmured with a stiff, formal bow.

“I say, Julie, is that a new motorcar?” Geoff asked, eyeing the vehicle in the drive.

“It is. The Mercedes, they call it. I ordered it last year after I gave the Daimler to Trix.”

“How fast does it run? Did you calculate the speed?”

“No need to,” she answered. “It has a gauge on it that does that for you—a speedometer, they call it. It measured forty-two miles an hour on the straightaway at Nice during Race Week.”

“Forty-two!” Geoff whistled, impressed. “Ripping!”

“I don’t see the point of traveling at such an unsafe rate of speed,” Trathen commented.

“That’s because you’ve never done it, old chap,” Paul told him, laughing. “It’s deuced good fun. Care for a spot of tea, Julie?”

“No, no,” she said, waving a demurring hand as Eugenia reached for the teapot. “I must greet our hosts. Are they anywhere about?”

“Both of them are in the house seeing to some of the other guests,” Eugenia offered, waving a hand vaguely behind her. “Marlowe’s mother and sisters arrived just after we did. Lord and Lady Weston came with us on Sir George’s yacht. We shall be quite a merry party this week,” she added, then gave Will a dubious glance, as if he threatened to be a possible fly in the ointment there.

“Excellent.” Julia turned to Will. “Walk me there, old thing?”

“With pleasure,” he said, offering her his arm, grateful for the escape. “I like the motorcar, but I’m not so sure about the dog, Julie. When did you obtain him?”

“Spike? Oh, I got him two years ago. He’s my constant companion these days. He’s a bit hostile to men, but that’s all right.” She grinned. “Keeps Yardley away. He’s terrified of that dog. I had no idea you were home,” she added, changing the subject as they walked toward the house. “Are you back for good?”

“No. I’m only here a month or so. I’m trying to raise funds for the excavation.”

“Ah. When I first saw you, I thought—”

She broke off, glancing over her shoulder, and he finished for her in a low voice. “You thought I’d come back to stop Beatrix from marrying another man?”

“Something like that. You’re not, I take it?”

“No. Should I?”

“I don’t know. Should you?”

“Definitely not.” He kept his gaze on the house straight ahead, but he could feel her shrewd, thoughtful gaze on him, and he felt impelled to add, “It wasn’t meant to be, Julie. Seems she’s made a much more sensible choice this time around.”

“Oh yes, very sensible.” There was an odd inflection in her voice that might have been sarcasm, but before he could take up the point, she steered him away from the side door and around to the back of the house.

“Let’s sit back here for a bit,” she said, gesturing to a wrought-iron bench overlooking the sea. “I’m dying for a cigarette, but Emma hates the smell, and I always try to avoid offending my hostess until I’ve stayed at least one night.”

They sat down, and Julia pulled a box of matches and a silver cigarette case from the pocket of her skirt. “Want one?” she asked, flipping the case open to display half a dozen neatly rolled cigarettes.

He shook his head, and she extracted one for herself.

“So,” he said as she put away the case and opened the box of matches, “were you being sarcastic just now when you said Trix was being sensible?”

“No, no, you misunderstand me.” Julia lifted her cigarette to her lips, pulled a match from the box, and used the heel of her boot to strike a flame. She lit the cigarette, then waved the match out and blew smoke in a sideways stream. “I do think it was sensible of her to accept Trathen. I was agreeing with you.”

He grimaced, and she saw it.

“Well, what do you want me to say?” she asked, pulling a bit of tobacco from her tongue with the tips of her fingers as she spoke. “I mean, Trathen’s a bit stiff, a fact you’ve no doubt observed for yourself, and he’s terribly proper—insists on the old school tie, you know,” she added, taking on an arch, painfully aristocratic accent, “and everything according to cricket. Pays attention to who’s the right sort and the wrong sort, and disapproves a bit when people shake hands at breakfast.”

His opposite, in other words.

“Still,” she went on, “he might be wound a bit tight, but he’s a good man. He’ll make Trix a fine husband.”

“Fine husband?” Will made a sound of disbelief.

“Yes. Trathen is the epitome of the perfect British gentleman—honest, honorable, loyal, and true.”

“He’s a prig.”

“Compared to you, perhaps,” she conceded, not sounding particularly impressed.

“Damn it, Julie, the man makes her eat caviar!”

“He does?” She sat up a little straighter. “What a cad!”

“Do be serious, will you? I saw them together, and I couldn’t believe it. He’s so damned superior and highbrow.”

“There are worse sins. He’s a powerful man with a wide sphere of influence. Not only is he a duke like you, but he’s also got oodles of money, and property all over the kingdom. And he truly cares for Trix.”

Will began to feel quite depressed.

“And he’s terribly good-looking, too.” Julia took a puff on her cigarette, pausing a few seconds before she added, “Too bad he’s as dull as Fordyce’s sermons.”

He gave a shout of laughter, cheered a little bit.

Julia grinned back at him, wrinkling her pert nose in rueful fashion. “I say that purely out of spite, but I can’t help it. The man dislikes me.”

“Dislikes our Julie? Not so!”

“It’s true, Will. I fear I’m everything he most disapproves of. I drink and I smoke—horrors!—and I drive motorcars very fast. Worse, I taught Trix to drive and gave her a motorcar of her own. He’s forever after her to give it up. That didn’t endear me to him. Then, of course, there’s all the scandals I’ve caused.”

“Like dancing the fandango on the tables at Maxim’s?”

“Heard about that, did you?” She sighed. “My reputation has spread all the way to Egypt, I see. Mind, I’ve no intention to become a demimondaine. Things aren’t that bad, at least not yet. But you’re right—that’s the sin that probably did it for me as far as Trathen’s concerned.”

“Because it made the papers?”

“No, because he hates dancing.” When Will laughed again, she said, “He does! I don’t know why.”

“It might make him perspire?” Will guessed.

“Dearest Will! No, it can’t be that, for Trathen’s quite an athlete. Made the quarterfinals at Wimbledon just last year. No, I think it’s because underneath all the ducal hauteur, he’s afraid of looking a fool.”

Will grinned at her. “So that means we roll back the drawing room rug tonight?”

She laughed. “I fear we shall be a bad influence upon each other this week and rag him mercilessly.” She chuckled and took a pull on her cigarette. “Poor fellow.”

“Beatrix will come to his defense, I’m sure.”

He hoped he said it lightly enough, but he could feel Julia’s shrewd gaze on him, and he didn’t look at her. He didn’t want her to see his face just now.

“I daresay she would, although . . .” Julia paused, and there was something thoughtful in her voice that made him slide a sideways glance at her profile. “I’m not sure he’d need defending,” she said. “Trathen may be a stuffed shirt, hopelessly old-fashioned and honorable, but he’s not a pushover. He’s not
easy
.”

Will tensed. “You mean he’s a tyrant?”

“No, no, that’s not what I mean at all. How can I explain?” She paused, smoking quietly as if considering the question, then she said, “Trathen may never be the life of the party or the soul of wit. But he’s also the sort who, to borrow from Tennyson, would ride into the jaws of death with the six hundred. The sort who’d stand like Henley’s ‘Invictus,’ head bloodied and unbowed, no matter what was flung at him.”

“It sounds like you actually admire him.”

Julia made a wry face. “Nauseating, isn’t it, given that he dislikes me so much, but there it is. Trathen’s a true
pukka sahib
, and that’s a rare breed nowadays.”

Will thought of Beatrix on the
Maria Lisa
, eating caviar and drinking lemonade, and he spoke before he could stop himself, asking the question that he’d been shoving out of his mind ever since January. “Is she in love with him?”

“What a tactless question!”

“Is she?” he persisted, not even sure why he wanted to know, not sure he wanted to hear the answer.

“Heavens, I don’t know.” She took another puff of her cigarette, studying him through the haze of smoke. “Does it matter?”

“Does it matter?” he echoed, rather taken aback. “She’s going to marry the fellow. You’re part of her family, you love her like a sister. Don’t you think it matters?”

“Not really, no. Love can be . . . rather awful. I tried it once, and I can’t say it has much to recommend it.”

She tossed the cigarette end to the ground and extinguished it beneath her shoe, then tucked her arm through his and stood up, taking him to his feet as well. “Play Trathen a spot of tennis, do. He trounces Paul and Geoff all the time from what I hear, and Marlowe doesn’t play, so you’re the only one with a prayer of taking him on. I’ll even help you,” she added. “I’ll distract him by lifting my skirt and waving a shapely ankle in his direction at opportune moments.”