Season for Temptation

by Theresa Romain

  “That is so French,” Julia muttered, rolling her eyes.

  Despite herself, she had to smile at Simone’s reasoning. It was just possible that she was right. “Very well, what do you suggest? Not that you’re right about anything happening last night, but, you know, a lady always wants to look her best.”

  “I will fix your hair to be pretty, and you will put on a dressing gown,” Simone decided, retrieving the garment in question from the wardrobe.

  “Louisa won’t care if I’m wearing a dressing gown,” Julia protested.

  Simone looked sharply at the younger girl. “Does your sister know you better than anyone else? I think she does. You need to know what you will say to her, and you cannot do that if your hair is all a mess and you wear no dressing gown. Come, I will fix you up.”

  She sighed as she looked at Julia’s tangled hair, and added to herself, “Mon Dieu, it would be better if we were to wait for this speech until you are dressed. But we need to be as normal, so this will have to do.” She stepped out of the bedchamber for a moment and Julia heard her ordering morning chocolate from a housemaid.

  Suddenly Julia felt exhausted and very nervous. When the maid stepped back into the bedchamber, she shut her eyes against the still-sharp morning light and Simone’s insistent voice, and passively allowed the Frenchwoman to minister to her. When the chocolate arrived, she sipped at it as Simone’s deft fingers untangled her hair and her own mind whirled fruitlessly. What would she say to Louisa? She needed to act natural. But how could she possibly act natural after what she’d done? She was a terrible person.

  In a very few minutes, between the chocolate and Simone’s ministrations, Julia had to admit that she looked much better, even if she still had no idea what she would say to Louisa.

  “You can thank me later, when your vocabulary has returned,” Simone said pertly, and Julia rolled her eyes again as the maid left the room. Would anyone but Aunt Estella have a servant more arrogant than half the ton?

  Well, maybe it was for the best. Simone had at least distracted her. Now that she was alone again, she felt a sickness that had nothing to do with the aftermath of Freddie’s punch. How was she going to hide the truth from Louisa? She had never hidden anything from Louisa in all the years they had known each other.

  Of course, it helped that she’d never had anything to hide before.

  She allowed a feeling of despair to creep over her for one minute, but only one. Then with a supreme effort, she forced it down. Despair was self-indulgence. She mustered all her determination that Louisa should never know what she had done; it would hurt her sister too much.

  And for her own part, she would never be tempted again. She would never speak to James again; she would never hide anything from Louisa again. She believed, and hoped, that she meant all these things, for Louisa deserved nothing less.

  But she swore she could feel the heat of his hands on her skin, his lips on her lips. She let the pleasure of the memory wash over her for just a moment, unable to resist, then pushed it aside again.

  At the thought of her sister—her loving, unknowing sister—part of the knot in her chest dissolved, and she was able to school her face carefully in preparation for Louisa’s entry. Even so, she jumped when the knock came on her door.

  “Julia, can I come in? Simone said you were awake.”

  “Thank you so much, Simone,” Julia grumbled.

  At a normal volume, and in what she hoped was her normal voice, she added, “Yes, of course, come in.”

  Louisa came in, looking cool and elegant as usual in a morning dress of primrose muslin. She seated herself in a chair opposite Julia’s bed, and looked expectantly at the younger girl.

  “So? How was the ball last night?”

  Despite herself, Julia felt her face grow hot. Her stomach clenched. “I had a very nice time.”

  “I know you danced, because you always do,” Louisa said, smiling. “Who did you dance with?”

  “Sir Stephen Saville, of course, and Freddie Pellington, and Mr. Cosgrove, and Mr. Milligan, and Lord Xavier, and . . .” She desperately tried to think of someone else, without mentioning his name. “Lord Alleyneham?” she finished weakly.

  “Didn’t James ask you?” Louisa said with some surprise.

  “Oh, yes, that’s right. I suppose I did dance with him, too,” Julia replied with forced nonchalance, feeling herself grow even redder.

  Louisa seemed not to notice her discomfort. She fixed her gaze on the wall several feet to the right of Julia’s face, and said, “I’m glad you had a nice time. And I . . . believe it was for the best that I wasn’t with you. I didn’t really have a headache; I needed some time to think. I did a lot of thinking last night while you all were out.”

  After the silence had spun out for almost a minute, Julia realized Louisa wasn’t going to scratch her eyes out. Clearly something was bothering her greatly, though. “What were you thinking about?” she prodded, relieved to have something to talk about besides herself.

  “About . . .” Louisa trailed off, then collected herself and met Julia’s eyes. “Well, there’s no other way to say it except bluntly. I’ve decided to break my engagement.”

  Julia didn’t have to feign her shock at all. “What? You are—what? Are you serious?”

  “Yes, I’m perfectly serious.”

  “Does James know? Is it something he did? Or, er, that anyone else did?” Guilt washed over her, and she prayed that it wouldn’t show in her treacherous face.

  Louisa frowned, considering. “I don’t think he knows I was considering this step, but he might not be surprised when he thinks about it. It’s certainly not because of anything that he did or didn’t do. He couldn’t be kinder to me.”

  “Then why are you doing it?” Julia had to ask. The wash of guilt became an ocean.

  Louisa sighed, and despite the freshness of her appearance, her eyes looked tired. “It’s the idea of being engaged, I think. At least, being engaged to him.”

  She smiled ruefully, dropping her gaze to her fingers, which she began twisting together in her lap. “I suppose I ought to feel very fortunate, and I did at first. After all, I had come to London to meet someone just like him, and get married, and become part of his world.”

  She sighed heavily, seemingly from the very soles of her feet. “Julia, I can’t do it. I can’t go through another season, and I can’t go through with the marriage. I’m not ready; I don’t love him.”

  Tears welled in the corners of her eyes. “You were right about courtship; it should be romantic. We had a business transaction, not an engagement, and that’s not what I want for myself. I don’t want a marriage of convenience, and I don’t want to be a viscountess, and I never, never want to come back to London again.”

  She looked up at Julia, and Julia had never seen such pain in her sister’s eyes before. “Julia, I’ve failed. I failed our parents, and Aunt Estella, and I failed James, who is an honorable man.”

  “What do you mean, you failed?” Julia’s face went white. Surely Louisa hadn’t . . . ? “Did you . . . ah . . . you know . . . with someone else?”

  Louisa gave a sad half-smile. “Nothing like that. I just couldn’t do what they needed me to. I couldn’t be the carefree young miss who made everyone fall in love with her. I couldn’t be Evelina Anville, or Marianne Dashwood, or any of the other enchanting young women we used to read about. I couldn’t become a part of this glittering, busy world. I could barely even speak to people.

  “Every time I went to a party, I thought, this time it will be different. I know how to act, I know who these people are, I know what they want from me. All I need to do is smile and speak. That’s all. But I could never do it, and people stopped noticing me.”

  “Oh, Louisa,” Julia said softly. “I had no idea you had felt that way.”

  “I was ashamed; I didn’t want to tell anyone,” Louisa admitted. “I suppose I’d gotten used to being good at everything I put my hand to. I just didn’t realize I’d
never tried anything I didn’t have an inclination for. I’d never been away from everyone I loved. It was a desperate feeling, and when James asked me to marry him, I thought—yes, this is it; this is my way out of this desolate situation.”

  Julia’s throat closed; all she could do was nod her understanding as Louisa continued.

  “But it wasn’t a way out. Do you see? Life with him would be the same world. Maybe not all the time, but every year he would want to come back to London. He knows this world, and he’s comfortable in it, and I never can be.”

  Louisa shook her head. “He’s a kind man, and he wants a true companion in his wife. And he deserves to have that. I couldn’t make him happy in marriage, and he couldn’t make me happy. I know I’ll be branded a jilt because of this, but I think it is the only thing to do.”

  Her voice was hollow as she added, “It will probably get me the most attention I will have received since my come-out. An added bonus.”

  “But you wrote so many letters to him when you were apart during the autumn, and they seemed to make you very happy. Didn’t that help?” Julia pressed.

  Louisa’s smile was mirthless and swift. “Those letters were my favorite part of our engagement. But for the most part, I was asking him questions about his library, and he was providing me with book titles and information about their condition. For the catalogue I was so excited about working on.”

  She met Julia’s eyes. “That’s the romance of every girl’s dream, isn’t it? I suppose I should have tried harder to work things out, but inside I must have always known I hadn’t made the right choice.”

  Tears pricked at Julia’s eyes as she realized the depth of her sister’s discouragement. Surely she could have made this better. She, who knew Louisa better than anyone, should have known something was wrong and done something to fix it. “Louisa, I am so sorry. I neglected you once we got here, in my own excitement. I didn’t realize how you felt. I’m so ashamed of myself.”

  Fleetingly, she thought of James, and her sense of shame deepened. There was no more she could say. Except—“What would make you happy? What can I do to help you?”

  Louisa twisted her hands again. “I really don’t know. I always wanted more than our life at Stonemeadows. I never could resist all the books in which an insignificant country girl like me found happiness and wealth by going to London and making an excellent match. But when I got the life those book girls wanted, I didn’t want that either. It was so alien to me.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “Maybe I’m not fit for either of those worlds.”

  “Don’t say that,” Julia said, wrung at the sight of her elegant, proud sister brought to such a level of dejection.

  What could she say? How could she comfort this girl she thought she had known so well, who had hidden such misery? Julia remembered hints, of course; Louisa had spoken of her loneliness in London. But Julia had not known the sadness went so deep or back so far, that Louisa hadn’t felt happy for so long.

  She got up from the bed and went around Louisa’s chair to wrap her arms around her sister where she sat.

  “You’re fit for anywhere you want to be,” she insisted. “You’re the finest person I know.”

  Still hugging the older girl, she rested her chin on Louisa’s head and continued, “You came back to London for my sake, and I can never thank you enough. It gave me advantages you didn’t have.”

  She smiled, hoping her expression warmed her voice so Louisa could hear it. “You brought our home with you, and I never had to feel alone as you did. I’ve never had to do anything without you since we met as children, except for the year you were in London alone—but then I was safe at home with everyone else.

  “You came back here for me, and it has made all the difference to my season. You and James helped me feel comfortable right from the beginning. And now”—she straightened up and moved around the chair to face Louisa, who looked up at her with bleak eyes that quickly shuttered closed—“I am going to help you however I can. I’ve been selfish.”

  Oh, God, how she had been selfish. Louisa must never know. A guilty memory of James, smiling at her with love, flashed into her mind and she ruthlessly suppressed it. She repeated, “Yes, I’ve been selfish. I came to London to enjoy myself, and I never thought of what it was costing you to be here.”

  Desperate to engage Louisa’s eyes, to bring warmth into her face, Julia grabbed her hands. “You are the dearest person in the world to me. Is there anything I can do to help you? I would do anything to help you find happiness.”

  Louisa lifted her eyes, and fragile hope shivered in them. “I know. I know you would.”

  She took a deep breath. “I didn’t mean to tell you all this. I meant to come in and ask you about the party, and perhaps say something about my engagement.”

  Warmth was flickering back into her expression as she went on. “But I couldn’t go on without telling you. I finally had to tell someone how I really felt. It’s the only secret I’ve ever kept from you. I hadn’t wanted to say anything, because I so wanted you to be happy.”

  “I have been,” Julia rushed to assure her. “You helped make it so.”

  “Well, I’m glad you know the whole truth, if no one else ever does. I don’t know what would make me happy, but at least I know what won’t.”

  She smiled her self-deprecating half smile and began to look like herself again. The crisis seemed to be ebbing.

  “Actually, there is something I would love you to do for me,” Louisa added.

  “Anything. Anything at all.”

  Louisa looked embarrassed. “Could you send for James and give him a letter for me? It will tell him everything I’ve told you, though of course not in quite the same way. I know I should do this in person, but I can’t quite bring myself to face him after all his kindness. And perhaps by being there, in case he’s shocked, you could be a comfort to him, or help to explain things. There may be no way around it, but I would not want him to think ill of me. At least, no more than necessary,” she finished ruefully.

  “Give a letter? And talk to James? For you?” Julia repeated, trying to wrap her mind around the idea. It sounded like a very, very bad one.

  “Yes, could you? As soon as possible.” Louisa’s expression was anxious.

  “I really think you should do it yourself. You know, talk to him in person,” she coaxed.

  Louisa shook her head vehemently. “It must be this letter. It says exactly what I want to say. There’s no way I could do that in person. I’d probably lose my courage and wind up setting the wedding date instead of calling the whole thing off.”

  Her eyes beseeched Julia. “Will you please do this? For me?”

  Julia gulped, nodded, and put what she hoped was a warm smile on her face. “Of course I will.”

  Chapter 23

  In Which the Second Letter Is More Significant

  The morning after the Alleyneham ball, James also awoke with a pounding head and a sickening feeling in his stomach—though, unlike Julia, he could not attribute any of these sensations to having overimbibed the night before. Rather, he was all too aware that he had been terribly, terribly sober when he . . .

  No, he didn’t want to think about it. He shouldn’t.

  But despite his best intentions, he allowed his thoughts to turn to the carriage ride home. He felt a twisting mixture of delight and pain, remembering how he and Julia had admitted their love for each other.

  And then how he had taken advantage of her admission to act in a way a man betrothed never should. Even if his engagement was more akin to a contract than a love match, his fiancée deserved better from him. He felt sick with self-loathing at having betrayed Louisa—and also at the fact that he wasn’t, deep in his heart, one bit sorry for it.

  He knew it could never happen again, and that made him all the gladder it had happened, just that once.

  He lay in bed, pondering the complicated ebb and flow of his feelings about the night before, when he was interrupted by h
is manservant’s knock on the bedchamber door. Without waiting for a response, Delaney entered with an even smugger smile than usual.

  “Good morning, my lord.” He smirked as he wrenched the room’s curtains open, letting a blast of late morning sun hit James’s bleary eyes. As he winced and averted them (for a viscount could never go so far as to pull the covers over his head in front of a servant), he could practically feel his manservant’s impish glee.

  “My apologies, my lord. Were we out late last night?”

  James sighed. “I was out late last night, as you well know, although it was not particularly late for a ball. As you also well know.” Under his breath, he grumbled, “Since you bloody well know everything that goes on here.”

  “I beg pardon, my lord. I did not precisely hear what your lordship said. Does your lordship have instructions that I might carry out?”

  “No, curse you,” James said, his good humor beginning to return as they started their old familiar sparring. “I was just saying you’re too nosy for your own good.”

  He stretched luxuriantly, accepting that it was time for his day to begin. “Any post? I can go through it with my coffee. If you’ll take my hint.”

  Delaney’s knowing smile widened. “As a matter of fact, we received a very intriguing letter by messenger this morning. I did not take the liberty of opening it, since it appears to be from a correspondent of the feminine persuasion. I shall bring it up directly with your lordship’s coffee.”

  He left the room on the promised errands as James began piling up pillows to prop himself up in bed. He wondered whom the letter could be from. If it was from his mother or sister, Delaney wouldn’t have made a special point of mentioning it. And Louisa had never once sent him a letter since arriving in London.

  He couldn’t imagine who else could be writing to him, unless it was some old flame from the depths of the past. But surely that wasn’t it. Though it almost seemed more likely than the only other possibility he could think of.