The Reluctant Rake

by Jane Ashford

  Bess shook her head.

  Julia was too miserable to make amends. She wanted only to run away. She climbed into the carriage and nodded to the driver that she was ready. He signaled the team, and they started to move. Julia waved, and tried to smile. Bess simply watched as the vehicle trundled down the overgrown lane and turned into the road.

  Twenty-three

  Julia curled into the carriage seat and gratefully gave up pretending equanimity. It was a great relief to be alone. She could loose her feelings and think how best to face the future.

  None of what had happened was her fault, an inner voice had been insisting for some time, and she listened to it now. That much was certainly true. She had had no hand in her kidnapping or what followed. But Julia’s whole education and parental example had taught her to regard such things as shameful and not to be mentioned by decent people. She could not rid herself of the shame, though her mind argued otherwise. She could not imagine facing her parents and friends; her knowledge of what had passed would be enough to sink her.

  And Richard—Julia shut her eyes tightly as the image of his face at the rescue rose again in her imagination. It was like a physical pain. Julia’s very limited knowledge of men, imparted by her mother and the experience of one London Season, told her that Richard would never wish to see her again, that he would never be able to wipe out that picture. She didn’t blame him; it would haunt her also. Perhaps it would make any happiness impossible. But the idea of a life stretching ahead without Richard filled her eyes with tears.

  She reached home in the early afternoon and went through the exhausting process of explaining to the senior servants where she had been. Sir Richard’s original story was weak, and she could see that it did not totally convince, but she could do no better. And fortunately, the household was soon absorbed in cosseting rather than questioning her.

  It was wonderful to be surrounded by her own familiar things again. Julia ordered a bath and spent a long, luxurious time in the hot water soaking away the bruises, mental and physical, of the last few days. Her maid began to believe the story of an accident, Julia saw, when she undressed her and uncovered the signs of rough treatment.

  When she had dressed in her own clothes and sent Bess’s back with the carriage, Julia went out into the rose garden and sat there gazing out over the park and the fields beyond. It was a warm day, and the scent of the early roses was heavy and sweet. She sat still, her hands lying open in her lap, and breathed it in. She felt amazingly better, Julia thought, and she began to wonder if the drug she had been given had had lingering effects. Her terrible despondence now seemed excessive. Perhaps she was wrong.

  These thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a carriage from the front of the house. Julia sprang up, half-eager, half-afraid, thinking of Richard. She longed both to run to the entry and to run away. The conflict kept her rooted to the spot until her maid appeared and said, “It is Sir George and Lady Devere, Miss. They’re asking for you.” Julia stared at her so fixedly that she added, “Are you all right, Miss Julia? Are you feeling ill?”

  “No. No, I’ll be right there. Tell them I’m coming.”

  The girl left, and Julia started to follow, moving very slowly and trying to formulate phrases with which to greet her parents. She was another person since she had seen them last, she realized. She had undergone epoch-making experiences and been changed by them. Would they see it at once? And how could she explain?

  Her mother met her with outstretched arms and her usual smile. Sir George embraced her less effusively, as was his way, and inquired about the state of his stables. The ordinariness of it all dizzied Julia.

  “But what is this garbled tale the servants give me about Sir Richard and an accident, Julia?” said Lady Devere finally. “You look perfectly well.”

  Julia tensed, and told her fabricated story again.

  “But why weren’t we told, summoned home?” was the indignant reply. “I cannot believe such a lapse. Sir Richard takes too much on himself.”

  “He knew I was all right,” stammered Julia. “He…he didn’t want to worry you unnecessarily.”

  “Acting quite the husband already,” replied her mother, and seemed very pleased with the idea. “Still…”

  “But if you hadn’t heard, why are you here?” said Julia before she could speak again.

  Her mother looked at her. “My dear, this is the day we always set to come home. You can’t have forgotten.”

  It was, Julia realized, and the vision this opened up of life going on just as before, undisturbed by the revolution in her, was staggering. It made her feel at once small and unimportant, and vastly distanced from her parents and all of society. They would never even know, she thought. And although this was the goal she had striven for, it was also a gulf between them. They remained exactly the same; she would never be the same again.

  Her mother sensed something, for she asked, “Are you all right, Julia? You weren’t badly hurt in this accident, were you? You looked so well when we came in that I didn’t worry. But now you are pale. Tell me all about it.” She tucked her arm into her daughter’s. “Come upstairs, and we will talk just as we used to.”

  Julia went, but a forlorn inner voice pointed out that nothing would be just as it used to be ever again.

  Once her parents were settled, they had many more questions about Julia’s supposed accident, and she was hard put to satisfy them about what had happened, the people who had supposedly rescued her, and why they had not been informed. Indeed, she most often had to resort to diversion. She would ask her father some question about the estate and make him forget all else. With her mother, it had to be the wedding. This was painful, but it was easier to endure her happy chatter about details than worried inquiries. The following evening, however, when Julia used this stratagem, her mother said, “Where is Richard, by the by? I should think he would have visited us. We scarcely saw him in town after you were gone.” She smiled archly at her daughter. “But we expected to have him underfoot again here.”

  “I…I suppose he is busy,” Julia stammered, repressing a pain in the area of her heart.

  “With what? The Season is over.”

  “Perhaps…perhaps he went home to prepare his estates for a new mistress.” This was an inspiration, for it sent her mother into happy speculation for quite half an hour. But it made Julia miserable. She hated deceiving her in this way, and the thought of Richard readying his house for her was so poignant she wanted to cry.

  * * *

  On the following day, Julia’s second at home, her parents went out early to call on their neighbors and catch up on all the news of the neighborhood. Julia pleaded fatigue and was allowed to stay home. She established herself in the gardens once more, with books and a jug of lemonade. But most of the time, she simply stared out over the grass despondently. The future was a blank to her. She left the chair and strolled slowly about the park. She did not leave its walls; she was not ready to do that yet after what had occurred the last time. But the Devere acres offered enough variety and a pleasant feeling of safety.

  She had stopped by the little pond near the west wall and was gazing into it, looking for the goldfish her mother had placed there, when she heard her name spoken softly. Julia looked up, and discovered Richard standing in the shade of a willow not ten yards away.

  A tremor went through her. Julia felt as if she had been hit in every part of her body at once.

  “Julia,” he said again, coming forward. “Are you all right? I went to…the other house first and found you had gone.”

  He could not name it, thought Julia. Nor could she. “I wanted to be away from there,” she replied in an uneven voice.

  Sir Richard nodded as if he understood that only too well. “Forgive me for having left you in such a place. I was forced to. We had to move quickly, and then, of course, the arrangements took much longer than anyone wanted.
It was only yesterday that I saw those two ruffians onto a ship.”

  A spark of hope had ignited in Julia, but she dared not heed it. “Ship?”

  “Yes. Shea convinced them, how I do not know and do not wish to, that they would be better off in a new country, with money to start afresh.” As he spoke, Sir Richard watched Julia closely.

  She nodded. “And…the other?” Lord Fenton’s name lay unspoken between them like a wall.

  Sir Richard looked grave. “We discussed a number of plans, but finally, we left him on Hampstead Heath. His death was blamed on footpads. There was a great outcry. And his nephew Gerard has succeeded to the title.”

  “Gerard Allingham?” asked Julia, surprised out of her apprehension. “I didn’t know he was the heir.”

  “Apparently Allingham did not care to advertise the connection,” he answered dryly. “He will certainly fill the position more creditably.”

  “Oh, yes. He is so completely unlike…”

  “Exactly.”

  Silence fell, and lengthened, between them. Now it will come, thought Julia. He will say it. It will be over. She raised her eyes. His expression was stiff and strained. She gazed at the grass again.

  “Do you wish me to go?” he asked then, in a voice so tightly controlled that tension flowed out from it.

  Julia was wholly at a loss. This was not what she had expected.

  “Go?” she repeated blankly.

  “You left without sending any word. I thought perhaps…” He stepped forward suddenly and took her hands in an almost painful grip. “I failed you, Julia. What you endured… I will never forgive myself for not protecting you. I only hope you will not let it come between us.”

  She stared up at him. “I? I thought that you… When you weren’t there the day I woke, and you didn’t come, I thought what you saw in that room had given you a distaste…” She broke off, unable to continue.

  The memory of that moment rose almost tangibly between them. Each could see it in every terrible detail, and feel the churn of strong emotions. Neither had been trained to deal with anything like this. Just three months ago, they would have shrunk away from the mere hint of such a thing, repelled and unshakably condemning.

  But those three months had brought a host of new experiences, a series of steps toward some new wisdom. “We will never be the same,” said Richard, voicing this feeling.

  Julia blinked, startled to have her own thoughts echoed so clearly. In that moment, she realized that he shared her sense of transformation. Unlike her parents, and almost everyone else she was likely to meet, he was not the same. He was the one person who could understand the revolution in her.

  “The world is unchanged, but we are not, cannot be,” he added, shaking his head as if this were difficult to accept.

  “Yes,” responded Julia.

  “Except in one thing, I trust.” He pressed her hands.

  Julia met his gray eyes, which could be so cold but were now warm with emotion. Her fears and doubts dissolved, and the flood of relief and happiness was so overwhelming it brought tears.

  “Julia?” said Sir Richard anxiously.

  She shook her head and smiled, unable to speak.

  He pulled her into his arms and held her close, cradling her head against his shoulder as if to guard and keep some terribly precious thing. Julia reveled in the love she felt from him, all the more wonderful because she had thought it lost. A memory surfaced from the time of their engagement. How little she had known then of love, she thought with amazement. She had seen it as some placid, pleasant thing to be assumed rather like a new gown or the latest fashionable phrase. Now, she knew that it was far more, holding heights and depths she was only beginning to explore. They would have a lifetime to do that, she told herself happily, together. She raised her head to look at Richard.

  “You do still intend to marry me, don’t you?” he asked, half-joking, half-concerned.

  She laughed a little, and nodded.

  “Good. That’s all that matters.” But he added, “What were you thinking of?”

  “Love,” she replied.

  “Ah. There’s more to it than we thought.” Astonished once again to have her own idea echoed, Julia gazed up at him.

  “And I find I’m very glad of it.”

  “I was thinking just that, exactly that!”

  “Were you? Perhaps our trials have brought us into tune, like…”

  “A violin and a pianoforte,” finished Julia, and they both laughed.

  Somehow, the laughter seemed to remind them that they stood very close. Richard’s arms slipped from her shoulders to her waist, and Julia’s curved about his neck. When they kissed, the gentleness and passion encompassed everything they had endured together. Their bodies fitted as if sculpted for one another, and their hands moved by shared instinct to cherish and enflame. When at last they drew apart, each was shaken and breathing quickly. “When is the wedding?” asked Sir Richard.

  Julia laughed again. “Three weeks.”

  “Too long. We must move it up.”

  “I should like to watch as you tell my mother so.”

  “Umm. I suppose she would object?”

  “‘Object’ does not begin to describe it.”

  “Ah. Well, we must wait, then. We will have to find ways to pass the time quickly.” And he bent to kiss her lingeringly again.

  Twenty-four

  Julia Devere became Lady Beckwith on an English summer day that belied all complaints about the country’s weather. The air was soft and balmy, weighted with the scents of roses and mint. Everything in the gardens blossomed as planned, despite the epic battles between Julia’s mother and the head gardener. The guests, gathered from London and various corners of the country, agreed that they had seldom seen a lovelier bride, and Sir George offered champagne with exactly that combination of jovial open-handedness and poignancy that is expected of a father.

  Certainly Julia and Richard were happy as they stood in the stone church to be married, then returned to the house for the wedding breakfast. Whenever their eyes met, they smiled so openly that some of the sharper wits of the haut ton began to point it out, rolling their eyes to show what they thought of such besottedness. Since Julia and Richard did not care, however, these satirists for once enjoyed themselves without spoiling anyone else’s pleasure.

  The only mystery was two wedding guests none of the others could identify. This was unusual because in Julia’s and Richard’s world, everyone knew everyone else, or could at least find an acquaintance to supply biographical information.

  As the party progressed through toasts and trays of multicolored ices, however, it gradually became clear that no one knew the attractive young couple in the corner by the rosebushes. They were well-dressed and quiet, and the intrepid few who approached and presented themselves received a pleasant, but unencouraging reception and soon drifted away in the face of the man’s monosyllables. The most that could be determined was that they were Mr. and Mrs. Shea and were acquainted with both Julia and Sir Richard.

  When no more could be gotten from them, they were dismissed and ignored. No one noticed that they slipped away at the same time the bridal couple went to prepare for their departure. And no one missed them in the bustle of farewells as Julia’s and Richard’s carriage pulled away from the front door and started on its way to Dover. They would have been astonished to see that carriage slow and stop as soon as the house was out of sight, and the mysterious guests step out of the shrubbery that lined the drive and get in. But they had returned to the champagne and gossip by that time and had no hint of this curious development.

  “A grand wedding,” said Bess as she settled herself in the front corner of the chaise and the vehicle started up again. Michael turned his head quickly, and she added, “I’m not complaining. Ours was fine, too.”

  Julia smiled at the p
air opposite. “Finer, in many ways. There were many times today when I remembered it and wished I could have had such a private, quiet ceremony.”

  Julia and Sir Richard had attended the Sheas in a small church nearby three days before, and signed the book as their witnesses after they were married by the parson. Only Michael’s small family was there, and there could hardly have been a greater contrast between the two weddings. Yet the couple looked happy and satisfied.

  “How long will it take to get to Dover?” asked Bess then.

  “Most of the day,” replied Sir Richard. “We will arrive in time for dinner, and your packet leaves early tomorrow.”

  “You’re sure the trunks were sent to the right place?” she said, turning to Michael.

  “Yes, Bess,” was the answer, in a tone that suggested they’d had this discussion before. And that he’d said those two words often.

  “I’m sorry. I never had a trunk before. I’d hate to lose it so soon.”

  The others laughed, and they all settled in for the day’s journey.

  Julia and Richard had arranged to make the first stage of their trip with the Sheas because it was difficult to let them go after what they had endured together. Though parting was inevitable, they put it off, for they knew it would also be final. It was most unlikely that the couples would ever see each other again. Bess and Michael were sailing for France, to settle in Paris and open the gaming club he had envisioned. Julia and Richard would take ship for Italy and spend three weeks there, then go on to Greece to examine some of the antiquities Richard had always wanted to see.

  They talked intermittently of the future as they traveled, their plans very different, and when they arrived at the inn in Dover, they separated, promising to meet again in the morning at the dock to say farewell.

  “I’ve ordered dinner here tonight,” said Richard as the inn’s servitors left their luggage in the rooms they had engaged. Julia’s maid and his valet had traveled ahead, and would present themselves in the morning. “I didn’t think we would want to eat downstairs.”