by Abby Ayles
Christopher gave one more hurried glance around, and then tapped gently on the glass. He made as low a noise as he dared, but it was enough to make her look up at last.
He gestured at her to come outside, but he was met only with a scowl and narrowed eyes. Of course. Although he had realized all by himself that she was the one for him, and no one else, she had not been party to this revelation. She was probably still annoyed at him for going around with Kitty.
Christopher held up the pink ribbons in his hand, dangling them for her to see. Juliana’s expression softened momentarily, but then went hard again. She even looked back down at her book as if she were really capable of totally ignoring him.
Christopher tapped the glass again, and made a gesture of prayer with his hands again as she looked up. He hoped his expression was piteous enough that she would be convinced.
With a sigh that was almost audible through the glass, she got up and put her book down, then went out into the corridor. Christopher followed, though he could no longer see her, and waited by the front door.
It opened with a quiet click, though not fully - it was open by the barest crack. As Christopher pushed it open, he could hear Juliana’s voice coming from a short distance away.
“Are you sure I cannot ask the maids to get you anything, dear Aunt?” she was saying.
Christopher inched through the door, pushing it behind him and leaving it open by just the barest crack. Juliana was standing in the doorway of a room to his left, and quite effectively blocking the view of the corridor for anyone that might be inside it. He began to sneak past, and noticed that she was holding one hand behind her back - one hand that pointed towards the back of the house.
Christopher moved as quickly and quietly as he could, until he reached the back door, right at the opposite end of the corridor. He opened it and quickly slipped outside, and stood alone in the sunshine of the back garden of the house.
It was not more than a few moments before Juliana joined him. She guided him by the arm over to a bench that stood half-sheltered by a large rose bush, and bade him sit down.
“Juliana, I am so happy to see you again,” Christopher said. He meant every word with a deep emotion that seemed almost ready to overflow from him.
“You had better give me a reason to be happy to see you,” Juliana remarked tartly. “I had not thought we were on the best of terms.”
“It’s all silliness,” Christopher said. “I see that now. My heart is devoted to you, Juliana. I brought you these ribbons as a parting gift before I have to return to the barracks.”
“Are they not for your other friend?” Juliana asked archly, her brows raised.
Christopher only smiled. “They are pink, Juliana,” he pointed out.
“True,” Juliana commented. “They would clash most terribly with that orange hair of hers.”
Christopher thought it might be unfair to call it orange, given the subtlety of Kitty’s shade. Still, he was wise enough by now not to say anything of the sort.
“Could you truly believe that my heart might be given to any other person?” he asked warmly. “It has always been you, Juliana, since the first moment we met.”
Juliana took the ribbons from his hand and bent her head over them as though she were studying them closely. Christopher thought she must have been affected by his words, trying to hide her face, and renewed hope flared within his breast.
“They are passable,” she said, of the ribbons, grasping them in her hand. “I accept your gift, Lieutenant.”
“Not for much longer,” Christopher said, seized by a wild and reckless desire to make her a solemn vow. “I will be a captain next time I see you. I swear it, Juliana.”
“Do you really?” Juliana asked, looking up to meet his eyes. “You intend to progress your career to impress me?”
“No. To impress your stepfather,” Christopher said. “The Duke and Duchess have no great love for me. They consider me inferior. Fine, well, and good. I will improve myself until I am worthy.”
There was a faint rosy color in Juliana’s cheeks. “Then you are worthy of me,” she said. “Only a good man would seek to advance for the love of a woman.”
“I will rejoice in the day that all in your family agree,” Christopher said, casting a grim glance back at the house.
“We shall have to smuggle you back out the same way,” Juliana giggled. “My poor Aunt Bertha, she did not suspect a thing.”
“It is no small risk,” Christopher smiled. “But I consider it the smallest possible risk I would take in order to spend time by your side.”
The rosy color on her cheeks intensified as her eyelids fluttered at his words. Her grey-blue eyes twinkled with a thousand stars, and Christopher found himself falling into them, swimming in their skies.
There was no thought in his head, no care for propriety or rules – that warm emotion in his chest, that happiness, overwhelmed him. It overflowed and enveloped him in light. Her lips became the center of his world at that moment, and he was leaning forward before he even realized it. Juliana closed her eyes…
The spell broke by the sound of a voice calling her.
“Juliana! Where are you?”
The moment shattered. Juliana gasped out loud, and pushed Christopher off the bench and to his knees in one swift motion in order to hide him. “Here, Aunt!” she called back. “I will come to you.”
“Your parents are here to visit, Juliana,” Mrs. Reffern called from the entrance to the home.
“You’ll have to go over the wall,” Juliana hissed at Christopher with a stricken look, before she made to return to the house.
“Wait!”
Christopher gently lifted her hand and planted the softest of kisses on her knuckles.
“We will meet again very soon,” he vowed and received a brilliant smile in response before she hurried back towards the house.
Christopher considered his situation for a moment. He couldn’t very well stay and wait for long – after all, the whole party might come out of the house at any moment, and then what could he do to hide? It was all well and good when there was a rosebush to shield you, but nothing would stop them from seeing him if they came along the path.
Christopher listened to Juliana’s voice fading into the house, certain that she continued to talk loudly for his benefit so that he would have a marker of the eyes that might spot him. He heard her say something faintly about going into the sitting room, and took this as his signal that it was time to depart.
He cast around, and saw a grand apple tree growing in one corner of the garden. The space between here and there was open at many places and therefore he might be seen, but at least he would be able to climb the wall from behind it.
The wall – this was a problem that he considered as he dashed, heart racing, to the cover of the tree. His boots kicked up soil around it, and he realized that there would be a very clear sign he had been present. Juliana would have to think of some clever way to explain it – perhaps she would suggest to them that there was a mad stalker or a robber examining the house.
He wanted to laugh at the thought of Mrs. Reffern suffering great suspicion and mistrust in connection with the possibility of an attacker, but there again, there was not much chance for laughter at the present moment.
Christopher tried to reach the top of the wall, but his fingers would only just graze the very edge of it. That meant holding on was almost impossible, especially while carrying his own body weight. There would only be one thing for it: to jump.
Bracing himself against the spindly trunk of the apple tree for a moment, Christopher gathered his strength and then made a mad leap. He was not at all sure whether he had chosen the right trajectory until his fingers connected with the edge of the bricks, and then it was a frantic scramble to get some purchase on the wall with his feet.
He managed after a long and desperate struggle to pull himself up, and sitting astride the wall itself, he caught his breath. At last, he dropped down i
nto the empty ground behind the house and inspected his boots to see the damage he had done to them. They were almost completely scuffed, and would not in any respect pass muster for the next inspection he was subject to from his captain.
A man and his wife were watching him, open-mouthed, when he straightened up again. Giving them a cheery wave, Christopher moved off, heading back to join Jasper at the coach just in time to depart.
“Been on some kind of adventure?” Jasper asked, looking at the front of his boots with a pointedly raised eyebrow.
“You might say that,” Christopher grinned. “I certainly would call it such.”
“So, the Miss was receptive to your charms after all,” Jasper mused.
“Not the Miss,” Christopher corrected. “The Lady. I went to see Juliana under some flash of inspiration, and we are quite reconciled. In fact, I have devised a promise which I will need your help in order to keep.”
“That sounds ominous,” Jasper remarked.
“Quite so,” Christopher grinned. “We need to find me a commission. I have given my sworn word that I am to be a captain.”
“Then we shall plot,” Jasper replied. “And I think I have just the perfect plan in mind.”
Chapter 13
Even with the hope that she might one day be with Christopher renewed, there was no way for Juliana to communicate this to her loved ones, save for Mary.
There was also, therefore, no way to avoid the continued tedious walks with the Baroness and her equally tedious son, who seemed to have no personality of his own that the Baroness did not provide.
“Mama,” Juliana said, pretending to groan and rub her stomach. “I cannot possibly ride out today. I am feeling so unwell. I must stay in.”
“Then you will want to remain in for the rest of the week, I suppose,” the Duchess of Prighton said. “If you are so unwell, you shan’t want to attend the picnic on Saturday, nor even the grand ball of the season following it.”
Juliana squinted her eyes a little, trying to see a way around this. “Well, I dare say there’s a chance I may be better by then,” she ventured.
“Or even that you find yourself feeling miraculously better now,” the Duchess suggested. “Why don’t you run upstairs and get into your riding habit? Bessie will be waiting for you.”
Juliana sighed, and got up from her position in the sitting room. “Mama, it just seems so unfair. I don’t think I can stand it,” she said, in a last attempt to at least save herself.
“What is unfair?” her mother asked.
“That I should get to ride out all the time, and poor Mary always remains here with no one of her age to sit with,” Juliana said.
Mary gave her a raised eyebrow from a comfortable armchair, where she sat working on embroidery in a hoop. The Duke and Duchess had brought down a set of three horses with them when they journeyed to Bath, intended for use as steeds as they explored the town. Combined with the horse of John Woode, that left them at a total of four. The Baroness, being too elderly, no longer rode at all.
“I don’t have a horse, Juliana,” Mary said.
“Then I should stay with you,” Juliana pointed out. “Mama and Papa can ride out, and we shall stay here with Aunt Bertha.”
“Nonsense,” the Duchess declared. “Mary can borrow my horse – and your spare habit, too. You can both ride out, and I will stay.”
“If you are certain, Your Grace,” Mary murmured, dipping her head.
“I am. Now, hurry. They will be waiting for you both.”
Juliana resigned herself to having to go on the ride after all. It would be better with Mary by her side, at least. Though her stepfather and John Woode were amongst the last people in the world that she might desire to ride with, at least she would be able to converse with her best friend instead.
Outside the town was green land, which they soon reached once they were on horseback. Juliana found herself unused to riding already, and wishing they had decided on something more comfortable. Sitting with her legs to the side and her body twisted so that she might look forwards was not as pleasant as the men’s position seemed to be. They were so much more in control, too – Juliana often felt a fear that she might slip off should the horse run away with her.
“Isn’t it nice to be out in the open air?” John remarked, lifting his head up high as they rode along, all four side-by-side.
Juliana did not think so at all. While the countryside was fine enough, there was much more happening in town. True enough that neither of them held her Christopher, but that did not mean she could not amuse herself through other means.
“It’s wonderful to get such a wide view,” Mary remarked politely, gazing ahead at the rolling fields around them.
“Do you know the history of this land, Lady Mary?” the Duke of Prighton asked.
“I’m afraid I do not, Your Grace.”
The Duke launched into one of his usual tiresome lectures, explaining something about Romans and natives that Juliana did not care enough to listen to. Instead, she thought about how long it would likely be before she saw Christopher again.
Would it take him a terribly long time to become a captain? She had no real idea of how it all worked, except knowing that a man could purchase a commission if he wanted to. For that, however, there had to be a commission available, wasn’t that the case? And how was a man to make one appear?
Oh, she hoped desperately that it would not take too long. It was agony, as it was to wait to see him again.
Now that they were reconciled, she wished he could have stayed in Bath. They might have danced together, sat down to eat in the park, or even strolled together so long as a good chaperone was found. One who did not mind that Christopher was not the man she was supposed to stroll with.
How inconvenient that it had taken until it was time for him to leave before he professed his feelings! Juliana reached up to touch the pink ribbons in her hair absently, holding the reins in one hand.
She would never stop wearing them, not until they all fell to pieces.
“Don’t you agree, Juliana?”
Juliana started, realizing she was being spoken to. John Woode was looking at her expectantly, and she had no idea what about.
“… I’m sorry?” she managed. There was no use in pretending. And besides, she did not know what she would be agreeing to if she simply went along with it.
“Of course, you’re right,” Mary said, jumping to the rescue. “It’s quite clever of you to make that connection.”
John beamed at her, and Juliana breathed a sigh of relief.
She allowed her horse to trail behind a little as Mary and John rode on, chattering away with one another. Her stepfather slowed his steed too, until they walked in step, two in front and two behind.
“I don’t know what is on your mind, Juliana,” he said, sounding displeased.
“I’m sorry, Father,” Juliana said automatically. Though she was expected to say it, she didn’t truly think of the man as her father. Still, he seemed to be fairer when she used such a term of affection.
The Duke harrumphed. “Well, you will have to start focusing sooner or later, my girl. You won’t attract a husband with such a short attention span. A man needs to have his conversation listened to if he is to feel at all valued.”
He nodded pointedly at Mary and John, riding ahead of them.
A wave akin to revulsion swept over Juliana, and she suppressed a shudder. Never would she wish to marry John Woode – never, never, never.
She was grateful that Mary was at least able to keep up a conversation with the man. She supposed that he couldn’t possibly be as odious to Mary, since there was no intention for them to be married. If the Baroness had not made her plans entirely clear, Juliana supposed that she might have held him in regard as only a dull man, not an awful one.
She was extremely grateful for Mary’s distraction, as it turned out. If it were not for the fact that her enterprising friend had managed to take the attention away, Juliana k
new she would have had to speak to John all morning herself.
“This is terribly dull, Father,” Juliana complained, keeping her voice low so that the two companions up ahead would not overhear her. She needn’t have bothered - they didn’t seem to be paying the least bit attention as to what was going on behind them. “Can we not return to the house?”
“I should have brought your mother along instead,” the Duke growled. “She would have kept you in check. Ride up alongside them and talk, will you? Your friend is not going to distract him forever. The Baroness has already complained that you do not seem flattered by their interest in you.”