Season for Temptation

by Theresa Romain

  “Funny?” Julia was insulted. “What part of my tragic tale was funny to you?”

  “Julia, my girl”—her mother smiled fondly, cupping her chin—“I think the world of Louisa, but she has obviously encouraged you to read far too many Gothic novels. You are allowing your imagination to run away with you.”

  She looked her daughter full in the face as she ticked points off one by one on her fingers, still smiling. “First of all, you are loved; that can never be a tragedy. Second, if there should be a baby and no marriage, you will always have a home here with us. Third, that will never come to pass, because there will be a marriage, because the viscount is head over ears in love with you.”

  Julia stared at her, a faint, eager optimism beginning to grow inside of her. “Why do you say that? Are you just repeating what I told you he said in the past, or . . .”

  “Please,” Lady Oliver scoffed gently, “allow that your own mother has eyes in her head to see what’s going on in her house, even if your father tends to be, er, a bit too distracted to notice. I was very eager for Louisa’s match to take place, but when I saw how reserved they were with each other and how comfortable James was with you and you with him, I thought there might be a change of bride at some point.”

  Julia was stunned. She had had no inkling that anyone else had ever observed her feelings for James. “You thought that all along?”

  Lady Oliver smiled again. “It would hardly have been tactful to say anything while Louisa was still engaged to him, would it? I only hoped that, if it should not work out, it would not be a disappointment to Louisa. But she’s stronger than even she knows, and she’s seen to her own happiness in this case.”

  “She’s been wonderful,” Julia blurted. “She forgave me in an instant. Once she had given James up, she was more than happy that I should . . . well, be happy.”

  “So?” Lady Oliver looked at her daughter expectantly. “Are you going to be?”

  Julia shrugged. “I don’t know. My aunt says it is for James to make things right at this point.”

  “Bosh,” the elder woman replied, and looked startled at her own response. “My goodness, I must be taking on your aunt’s personality.”

  She blinked in surprise, then explained, “If you want something, you must go and get it. It may not be precisely the conventional thing to do, but it’s the only way to be sure you’ll have no regrets. If you love him, you must pursue him, and if he loves you in return, then all will work out for the best. And if by some impossibility, he does not—I know, dear; no need to shudder, for it won’t happen—then you will have tried your utmost, and you need never wonder about what might have happened.”

  Julia considered her mother’s words. She had been so hurt by the note James had sent—well, it couldn’t really have been James who’d sent it, but still, perhaps it had come on his behalf—that she hadn’t thought about anything beyond escaping from London. She had been devastated. Crushed. Mortified.

  She had no desire to experience any of that again. Her mother’s encouraging words had cheered her at first. But now she was being told to take a risk, a very bold and unladylike risk, and take the chance of experiencing another, worse pain than before.

  She felt grouchy. What did her mother know about it, anyway? Her mother had a perfect marriage and a husband who loved her even more than he loved mucking about with his animals, which was truly saying something. All right, perhaps she had been a little melodramatic talking about her “tragic tale”—but still, it was too much to ask that Julia risk humiliation again.

  “Who would actually pursue a man in that way?” she grumbled. “Women aren’t allowed to do anything. We just have to wait for the men to ask, and then we simply have the choice of yes or no.”

  Lady Oliver raised her eyebrows in surprise. “But my dear, that’s not true at all.” She brought a considering forefinger to her cheek. “Did you never wonder why you were named Julia, rather than being named Elise for me?”

  Julia hadn’t been expecting that response. “Um . . . no. No, I never thought about it, I suppose.”

  “Well.” Lady Oliver sat back and folded her hands over her knee, as if settling in for a long tale. “It was, of course, expected that I would name you for myself, as my oldest daughter. But you are named instead for your father.”

  Despite the passage of time, the baroness’s eyes grew misty with remembered fondness. “I was only eighteen, even younger than yourself, when I met Julian Herington. I was the daughter of a country squire, and he was the curate.”

  Her voice turned confiding. “He was the handsomest man I’d ever seen, positively golden, and so kind and intelligent. I would stay after services every week just to talk to him. My father was delighted with my devotion to the church.”

  Julia smiled back at her mother, encouraging her to go on, but she was puzzled. She’d never heard any of this before. She supposed she’d never even thought to ask, since as far back as she could remember, there had been no father—and then, when she was still a young child, there had been Lord Oliver. She’d never thought about the man who had been in her mother’s life before.

  Lady Oliver spoke on, telling her daughter about how she managed to provoke the curate into admitting that he loved her, but he felt he did not have the right to marry her because she was so far above him.

  “So far above him.” The baroness shook her head. “As if there could ever be such a thing, when such warmth and wit were involved. However, my parents agreed with his view of the matter, and hoped to match me to a baronet, or a knight at the very least. I was quite the heiress, you see.” She smiled mischievously. “So I simply took matters into my own hands.”

  Julia’s eyes were round with amazed interest. She’d never known any of this. It wasn’t hard to think of her lighthearted mother as young—but this willful woman, in love and determined, was a revelation. “What did you do?” she breathed.

  Lady Oliver turned pink, and hesitated before speaking. “While I was talking with him alone, I pulled the bodice of my dress down just before I knew some women would be coming in to decorate the church.”

  She coughed, remembering the old scheme with slight embarrassment. “Naturally, they were horrified by his scandalous conduct, and he was forced to marry me at once. I hadn’t foreseen that he might also be removed from his position as curate, but so it was. I did regret that part.”

  Her smile grew warm and her eyes distant. “But the marriage—ah, that was wonderful. My father used his influence and my dowry to buy Julian a living in Leicestershire, and we went to live there following our marriage.”

  She looked her daughter straight in the eye. “It was the most wonderful time of my life, and it would never have happened if it weren’t for my own determination. When we discovered you were on the way, it made our happiness complete.”

  Julia hardly dared ask what had happened next, knowing that the idyll must have soon ended.

  “Yes, it was very soon over,” Lady Oliver replied, her eyes downcast. “Your father was killed in a carriage accident three months before your birth. He never even saw you.”

  She choked on her next words. “Despite my grief, I thanked God for you every day, for you were a little piece of him. I longed to hold you, to keep any connection with him that I could. So of course I had to name you for him.”

  She reached out to stroke Julia’s hair with a hand that trembled. “You look like me, but you have his smile. His smile could warm you in winter, just of itself.”

  Her wistful expression brightened. “So there you have it, my darling girl. You are here on earth because I was a rather bold and improper young lady. We women may not have the right to ask, but we can still get what we want, even if for just a little while.”

  Her smile broadened. “Actually, I must correct myself. I’ve been very fortunate to have what I wanted for years. My early loss was terrible, but some years later I met Lord Oliver.”

  Her expression turned considering. “We met at Ta
ttersalls, you know. I believe I was the only woman there looking at horseflesh. Naturally, I drew his eye at once. I wasn’t thinking of marrying again, though I did like him very much. But when I learned he had a daughter also—well. Then I wanted to know him better, and in time I came to love him. Just as much as I loved your father, though not in the same way, of course. Lord Oliver is a very unique person, you know.”

  “Yes, I’m well aware of that,” Julia replied with an understanding quirk of the mouth.

  “And when you and Louisa met—you just fit. You were meant to be sisters. You healed each other, and I hadn’t even known that you needed healing.”

  She gave a pensive sigh. “Oh, Julia. How fortunate you are. You, who could have all the approval and congratulations of the world for joining yourself with a titled gentleman, have nothing to risk but your own heart. And that, as I have told you, is already his, as his is yours.”

  Lady Oliver stopped speaking, and she fell into a reverie, her mind dancing back nineteen years to her first love. Julia saw her mother’s face turn preoccupied, and she considered her own situation anew.

  She felt heavy and sorrowful, thinking of her young mother’s terrible loss, with an unborn baby on the way. If that had happened to her—if she had lost James so swiftly and irrevocably—it would be unbearable. But never to see him again, while he lived, would be even worse. It would be a waste. A loss that need never be.

  She blinked her eyes wide open, understanding at last. Her mother’s sorrow had all been worth it, despite the short duration of her first love. That’s what her mother was trying to tell her. It was worth the risk of grief to pursue that bold delight. For if you caught it . . .

  Lady Oliver had been fortunate enough to find a second happiness, but she, Julia, would never even have existed if her mother had not pursued her first.

  Well. She could do the same, could she not? She felt she owed it to her mother to pursue her own heart’s desire—but also, of course, she owed it to herself. And to James. Good heavens, hadn’t she already done something similar, forcing the next step by going to his house alone? She had always known within herself, or hoped, what would happen if she did.

  So now that she was home and away from London’s prying eyes, what did she really want? Despite the long, momentous day and her physical exhaustion from worry and travel, the answers were clear.

  She wanted James. She loved him, and she wanted to marry him.

  She did not want to go back to London for some time.

  She did not want to see Sir Stephen Saville again for quite a while, either.

  And she didn’t want to listen to her aunt. She didn’t want to wait and see if James would come after her. She wanted, as her mother had said, to do all she could to find him, clear the air, and make him hers.

  “All right,” she said with determination. “I’ll do it. I’m going to get James.”

  Lady Oliver blinked back to the present, and took in Julia’s words slowly. Then she beamed a bright, delighted smile at her daughter. “That’s wonderful! I’m so happy for you. And for him.”

  Julia smiled back, allowing a sense of relief and glee to fill her. She knew what to do. She didn’t have to wait for anyone to decide her life for her. She would take the next step herself, and handle the consequences that came.

  Then a sudden doubt seized her. “Mama, what should I do to find him? I don’t know if he knows where I am, and I don’t know if he plans to stay in London either.”

  “Hmm.” Lady Oliver pondered this. “We’re a day behind in getting the London papers here. Tomorrow we’ll receive the one with your, ah, news.”

  Julia shuddered. “Could we dispose of that one, please?”

  Her mother nodded. “I’ll just tell your father that Manderly scorched it with the iron when preparing it to be read. Your father won’t think twice about it.”

  “Poor Manderly,” Julia said, thinking of how the starchy butler might react to having his skills impugned. Oh, well. She couldn’t bear to have her father, or her siblings, or the servants thinking ill of her after reading that scandal item. It was only a matter of time before word got around from the neighboring estates anyway.

  Unless she married James, of course. Just another reason to make that happen; she could add that to the hundreds she had already thought of. First of which was, of course, that she desperately wanted to.

  “Anyway,” Lady Oliver went on, “by the following day, there may be an item if he has decided to leave for the country. Then you’ll know if you should write him in town, or visit him at Nicholls.”

  “That makes sense,” Julia said, nodding. More waiting; it seemed endless. “But I want to leave at once.” Never mind that she didn’t even know where she ought to go.

  “I understand,” her mother soothed. “But—and you must forgive me for once again sounding like your aunt—you’ll appear to much better advantage if you rest and bathe before embarking on another journey.”

  “Oh.” This sensible remark put a sudden stop to Julia’s feeling of desperate longing. She ran a tentative hand over her hair, and could feel the snarls and prickling pins of an untidy coiffure. She looked down at her dress, and admitted the creases in it as well. And now that she thought of it, she wasn’t sure she was exactly at her cleanest after a long and traumatic day that involved a close and frantic carriage ride.

  “Very well,” she sighed. “I’ll wait until I appear to be a decent human being again. Simone will be here sometime soon with the trunks, I hope before nightfall. So I’ll take your advice and wait another day—but not a bit longer than that,” she said, a warning light in her eyes.

  “I think that sounds delightful,” Lady Oliver said cheerfully. “Now, what’s this I heard about you getting some Oiseau gowns? I would love to see them.”

  Despite the uncertainties pressing on her mind, this comment provoked Julia into a laugh. “Yes, Mama, I do have the most beautiful dresses. And they look absolutely nothing like Aunt Estella’s!”

  Chapter 33

  In Which Simone Gets Lost

  This newspaper is distressed to report the sudden departure of Viscount M——for his country estate. The ton will certainly be sorry to lose one of its shining stars, especially one who has provided so much recent interest for the clucking tongues of society matrons. One wonders if he intends also to make a visit to the home of Miss H——, the interesting young female so recently involved with the erstwhile viscount?

  So. He was back at Nicholls. And Julia could answer quite decisively, if anyone had cared to ask her, that the “erstwhile viscount” had not made a visit to her home.

  That meant she would go to his, then. She had already packed her trunk, just in case, and had notified her relatives that she might be leaving again at very short notice. Lady Irving was the only one who had raised any demur to this plan, although after Lady Oliver had taken her aside and talked to her for a solid forty-five minutes, even the countess had finally agreed that Julia might as well “try to bag the rascal” after all. She made Julia promise to take Simone with her if she went anywhere, however, since, she said with a meaningful lift of the eyebrows, it hadn’t gone all that well for Julia the last time she went running off to a man’s house without the supervision of a maid.

  Actually, Julia thought, it had gone rather too well, but there was no need to argue with her aunt on this point. She agreed to the company of the French lady’s maid, knowing that Simone would be a sensible and efficient traveling companion.

  Louisa offered to come along as well, but Julia declined, not wanting to give rise to the polite world’s most awkward situation since Miss Lettice Hopston’s bosoms had tumbled out of her court dress while curtsying to the queen. Which was to say—since she didn’t know how the meeting was going to go, she thought it would be better to have fewer witnesses, and to have none of those witnesses be the viscount’s former fiancée, even if that lady also happened to be one of her favorite people in the whole world.

  Jul
ia and Simone left for Nicholls within an hour of reading the newspaper with the information on James’s location. Lord Oliver was nowhere to be found at the time of departure, and thus had no idea what historic events might be about to take place. But Lady Oliver, Louisa, and Lady Irving all hugged Julia farewell and sent her off with a unique parting message.

  “Don’t get married away from home, mind you,” Lady Oliver reminded her daughter. “Have him bring you back here once all is settled between you, and we’ll read the banns in the Stonemeadows church if he hasn’t got a special license.”

  “If he hasn’t got a special license,” Lady Irving muttered, “he won’t be a functional male any more after I’m through with him.” She grumbled on for a few minutes, with only the words “scapegrace” and “the honorable thing” audible to Julia’s ears. Finally, with a hard, quick hug, the countess released Julia, adjuring her to return swiftly since she couldn’t get along without Simone.

  Louisa simply gave Julia a long hug, her dark eyes shining. “Take care,” she whispered. “I hope all shall be well.”

  “It shall be,” Julia assured her, “one way or another.”

  She expected that the journey would seem unbearably long, but it passed more quickly than she could ever have hoped. Simone could tell that Julia didn’t wish to speak, and the gentle rocking of the carriage lulled the travelers into a state of quiet contemplation.

  What was on Simone’s mind, Julia couldn’t even guess. Her own thoughts spun in circles as she wondered what she would say or do when she saw James. Different scenarios flitted through her mind. Should she be demure and wait for him to apologize? Should she be cold, and allow him to beg her forgiveness? Should she fling herself into his arms? Should she act as if nothing were wrong?

  They made only a brief stop at a posting house to change horses and have a quick meal, arriving at Nicholls in early afternoon.