by Mary Balogh
Chapter VII
The carriage that conveyed Mrs. Law to Grandmaison Park the following day was a closed one, and every window was tightly shut despite the fact that the day was sunny and hot. A draft might bring on one of her chills, she explained to Judith, who was seated beside her, convinced that both of them would surely melt in the heat. Her grandmother was in high spirits, nevertheless, and chatted the whole way. Lady Beamish had been her closest friend since she had moved to Harewood almost two years ago, she explained. It was good occasionally to get away from the house, where Louisa was forever in a cross mood over something.
Judith had been kept constantly busy during the morning, running errands to and from the kitchens and various other rooms and to the stables and carriage house as Aunt Effingham tried to ensure that she had not forgotten a single detail of the preparations for the arrival of the houseguests. Julianne meanwhile, who possessed the same number of hands and feet as her cousin, spent the morning twirling about in exuberant pirouettes whenever she was not dashing to the windows to see if anyone was arriving early or running upstairs to change her slippers or sash or hair ribbons, and generally wearing herself to the bone, as her mother said in fond warning.
But Judith’s hope that she would not be called upon to accompany her grandmother on the afternoon visit had been dashed when her aunt looked at her late in the morning, observed with annoyance that her niece’s cheeks were unbecomingly flushed, that her eyes were unnaturally bright, and that a piece of her hair was showing beneath her cap at the back. Julianne had chosen that moment to speak to her mother.
“Lady Margaret Stebbins is not prettier than I, Mama, is she?” she had asked, suddenly anxious. “Or Lilian Warren or Beatrice Hardinge? I know Hannah Warren and Theresa Cooke are not even though they are very sweet girls and I love them to distraction. But I will be the prettiest here, will I not?”
Aunt Effingham had rushed to hug her daughter and assure her that she was ten times lovelier than any of her dear friends who would be arriving during the afternoon. But her stern eye had alighted on Judith even as she spoke and on the errant lock of hair that her niece was tucking back beneath her cap.
“You really need not be here this afternoon when our guests arrive, Judith,” she had said. “There will be nothing useful for you to do, and you will only be under everyone’s feet. You may accompany Mother to Grandmaison, and Tillie will stay here instead, where I can put her to good use.”
“Yes, of course, Aunt Louisa,” Judith had said, her heart sinking while Julianne focused her eyes curiously upon her.
“Poor Judith,” she had said, “never to have had a come-out Season even though you are years older than I. How inconvenient and distressing for you not to be able to mingle freely in fashionable society. Mama says your case might not be so desperate if Uncle had made a more advantageous marriage. How fortunate you are to have been invited to live here, where you will at least be able to rub shoulders with people of superior breeding.”
Judith had not answered. She had been given no chance to even had she thought it worth expressing her indignation on her mother’s behalf—Julianne had turned to Aunt Louisa with an anxious plea for an opinion on her choice of dress.
But now she was riding in the carriage beside her grandmother, fanning her against the heat. Gentlemen surely did not dance attendance upon elderly ladies very often, especially when another elderly lady was coming to visit. Lord Rannulf Bedwyn would surely not be with his grandmother this afternoon.
She was to be proved wrong.
After descending from the carriage and entering the hall of Grandmaison, they were shown into a spacious, high-ceilinged sitting room on the ground floor, its ivory-colored walls and gilded trimmings reflecting light and spelling expensive elegance. Landscape paintings in gilded frames added depth and beauty. The long French windows at the far side of the room were opened back so that it seemed filled with birdsong and the fragrance of flowers. Judith might have fallen in love with the room at a glance if she had not been instantly aware of the presence in it of two people instead of one.
Lady Beamish was rising to her feet from a chair beside the empty hearth. Lord Rannulf Bedwyn was already standing before the fireplace. Judith lowered her chin and ducked half behind her grandmother as they proceeded across the room. She wished she could be anywhere else on earth but where she was. She felt utterly humiliated and even uglier than usual, clad as she was in one of her newly altered striped cottons with the bonnet cap and a plain, large-brimmed bonnet that Aunt Louisa had let her have because she had no further use for it herself.
“Gertrude, my dear,” Lady Beamish said warmly, kissing Grandmama’s cheek. “How are you? And you have brought Miss Law with you. How pleasant. She is one of your son’s daughters of whom you have spoken to me?”
“Yes, Judith,” Grandmama said, beaming fondly at her. “The second one and always my favorite granddaughter. I hardly dared hope that Jeremiah would send her instead of one of her sisters.”
Judith darted her a surprised glance. Grandmama surely did not know them nearly well enough to have favorites.
“How do you do, Miss Law?” Lady Beamish said kindly. “Do have a seat.”
Lord Rannulf meanwhile was making his bow to Grandmama and then to Judith, murmuring her name as he did so. She curtsied without looking up and sat down on the nearest chair. But as she removed her gloves she realized how abjectly she was behaving and how impossible it was to hide her identity from him for much longer—if indeed he had not already discerned it. She lifted her head and looked directly at him.
He was looking back, his eyes narrowed. She tilted her chin a little higher even as she felt color flood both cheeks.
Polite conversation occupied the next few minutes. Lady Beamish asked after the health of Judith’s family and Grandmama asked after that of Lord Rannulf Bedwyn’s. The expected arrival of the houseguests at Harewood that very afternoon was spoken of as well as the fact that Lord Rannulf intended to ride over for dinner. And then Lady Beamish spoke more briskly.
“Gertrude and I are old friends, Rannulf,” she said, “and love nothing better than an hour together prosing on about matters that would interest no one else but our two selves. You are excused from the tedium of being polite. Why do you not take Miss Law outside and show her the formal gardens? Perhaps after that she would enjoy a quiet sit in the rose arbor while you go about your business.”
Judith’s hands clenched in her lap.
“It would seem that we are merely in the way here, Miss Law,” he said, taking a few steps toward her and half bowing to her while one arm indicated the French windows. “Shall we step outside?”
“Perhaps, Lord Rannulf,” her grandmother said as Judith got reluctantly to her feet, “you would be so good as to shut the windows as you leave—if you have no objection, that is, Sarah. I do believe one of my fevers is threatening to come on. Judith had to fan my face all the way here.”
Judith ignored the arm that was offered her. She hurried toward the French windows and out onto the cobbled terrace beyond. She was on a path that bisected the center of the formal gardens before she stopped to hear the French windows close behind her. Where was she running to? And why would she run? But surely she had never in her life felt more embarrassed than she did at this precise moment.
“Well, Miss Judith Law,” he said softly, and she realized with a start that he had come up close behind her. There was quiet venom in his voice.
She clasped her arms behind her and turned, looking boldly up into his face—horrifyingly close and just as horrifyingly familiar.
“Well, Lord Rannulf Bedwyn,” she said.
“Touche.” He looked back at her, a familiar mocking gleam in his eyes. He indicated the path ahead with one arm. “Shall we stroll? We are fully visible from the sitting room where we stand now.”
The formal gardens had been set out with geometric precision, Judith could see, straight cobbled paths leading like spokes of a wheel
to a fountain at the center, a marble Cupid standing on one foot in the center of a marble basin, water shooting out of the end of the arrow fixed to his bow and spraying about him back into the basin. Low, neat box hedges lined the paths and enclosed flower beds that provided a feast of color and bloom to the eyes and sweet scents to the nose.
“You deceived me,” he said as they walked.
“And you deceived me.” Her hands took a firmer grip on her forearms behind her back. She wished she had never discovered his true identity. Why had this had to happen? Of all the possible destinations in England, they had been headed for homes that were no more than five miles apart. And he was, in effect, going to be a part of the house party at Hare wood.
Was he really going to marry Julianne? Had he planned it even before his journey north?
“I wonder,” he said, his voice pleasant and conversational, “if your grandmother and your aunt and uncle would be interested to learn that you are an actress and a courtesan.”
Was he threatening her? Was he afraid, perhaps, that she would expose him?”.
“I wonder,” she said tartly, “if they would be equally interested to learn that the man they are courting for my cousin Julianne engages in casual affairs with strangers on his travels.”
“You show your ignorance of the world, Miss Law,” he said. “The Efftnghams are undoubtedly well aware that gentlemen have certain, ah, interests that they pursue at every opportunity both before and after marriage. Are you an honored guest in your uncle’s home?”
“Yes. I have been invited to live at Harewood,” she said.
“Why are you not there this afternoon, then, to meet all the houseguests as they arrive?” he asked.
“My grandmother had need of my company,” she told him.
“You lie, Miss Law,” he said. “Indeed, you lie a great deal. You are a poor relation. You have come to Harewood in the nature of an unpaid servant, primarily to relieve your aunt of the necessity of catering to the demands of your grandmother, if my guess is correct. Did your father not make as advantageous a marriage as your aunt?”
They had reached the fountain and stopped walking. Judith could feel droplets of spray cool against her cheeks.
“My mother,” she said testily, “was of perfectly good family. And my father, as well as being a clergyman, is a man of means.”
“Of means,” he repeated, mockery in his voice. “But not of fortune? And the means have been depleted to the degree that your parents have been forced to farm out one of their daughters to wealthier relatives?”
Judith moved around the fountain to the path on the other side of it. He circled around the other way and then was beside her again.
“Your interrogation is impertinent,” she said. “My circumstances are none of your business. Neither are my father’s.”
“You are a gentleman’s daughter,” he said softly.
“Ofcourse I am.”
“You are also angry,” he said.
Was she? Why? Because it was humiliating to be seen and known for who she really was? Because her one stolen dream, which would have sustained her through the rest of a lonely life, had been shattered? Because he was so poised and unaffected by this horrible coincidence? Because he mocked both her and her parents? Because Julianne was young and pretty and rich? Because Bran well had wasted away Papa’s small but carefully nurtured fortune? Because life was not fair? Who had ever said it was supposed to be?
“And a coward,” he added after a short silence. “You did not even have the courage to look me in the eye and spin your yarn about there being another man. You did not have the courage to say good-bye to me.”
“No,” she admitted. “No, I did not.”
“And so,” he said, “you made me look a pretty fool. I was scolded by the innkeeper’s wife for mistreating you and advised to ride after you and eat very humble pie.”
“I am sorry,” she said.
“Are you?” He looked down at her and she realized they had stopped walking again. “I would have taken you even if you had told me the truth. Did you realize that? I would have set you up as my mistress. I would have kept you, looked after you.”
She was furiously angry then and knew exactly the reason why. Why had the one great dream of her life had to die such an ignominious, painful death? She hated him suddenly, despised and hated him for forcing her to see the essential sordidness of what had happened between them.
“Let me see.” She tapped one finger against her lips and looked upward as if thinking. “I believe that was to have been for a few days, perhaps even a week. Until we tired of each other, which, being translated, meant, I believe, until you tired of me. No, thank you, Lord Rannulf. I had my pleasure out of our encounter. It filled in a potentially dull few days while we waited for the rain to stop. I had already tired of you by that time. It would have been unkind to say so, though, since you had said you still needed a few more days or even a week of me. And so I slipped away while you were gone. Forgive me.”
He stared at her for several silent moments, the look in his eyes quite unreadable.
“If you will show me where the rose arbor is, I will sit there until my grandmother sends for me,” she said.
He spoke abruptly, ignoring her suggestion. “Are you with child? Do you even know yet?”
If a black hole had just been obliging enough to open at her feet, she would gladly have jumped into it.
“No!” she said, her cheeks hot. “Of course I am not.”
“Of course?” With raised eyebrows he looked mocking and haughty and aristocratic. “Babies do result from such activity as we indulged in, Miss Law. Did you not know that?”
“Of course I knew it!” If it was possible to feel more embarrassed, she could not imagine the circumstances. “You do not believe, do you, that I would have allowed—”
One raised hand stopped her. “Please, Miss Law,” he said, sounding infinitely weary, “do drop the worldly-wise act. It is an act as surely as your Viola or your Lady Macbeth was. Do you know for sure?”
“Yes.” Her lips were suddenly stiff and would barely form the word. “I am quite sure. Where is the rose arbor?”
“Why are you dressed so hideously?” he asked her.
She stared at him with compressed lips. “That is hardly a gentlemanly question to ask,” she said when he waited for her answer.
“You were not dressed thus when you were traveling,” he said, “though I blame myself for not seeing that you were a simple country girl playing at being an actress and a courtesan. You are good—at both. But where did the bonnet come from, and the ridiculous cap and the ill-fitting dress?”
“Your questions are insolent,” she said.
But his eyes and his half-smile mocked her—quite viciously.
“My guess,” he said, interrupting her again, “though I fancy it is more conviction than guess, is that your aunt took one look at you when you arrived at Harewood, realized in some chagrin that you far outshone her daughter, and devised as heavy a disguise for you as she could muster. Am I right?”
Of course he was not right. Was he blind? Aunt Louisa was merely insisting, even more than Papa had done, that she hide her uglier features.
“Or was even your hair a part of the act?” he asked, his mouth lifting at one corner into further mockery. “Are you bald beneath the cap, Miss Law?”
“You grow both tedious and offensive, Lord Rannulf,” she said. “Indicate the way to the rose arbor, if you please, or I shall find a gardener who will.”
He stared at her for a moment longer, his nostrils flared in an expression that might have been anger, and then he clucked his tongue, looked away from her, and began to stride back the way they had come, along the path, halfway about the fountain, and off along an adjacent path that led—she could see it now—toward rose-draped trellises that must be the outer boundaries of the arbor.
It was breathtakingly lovely—or would be under other circumstances. Enclosed on three sides by
high trellises to protect it from the wind, it descended over four wide terraces to a bubbling stream below. There were roses everywhere, all shades and colors, all sizes and types. The air was heavy with their perfume.
Judith seated herself on a wrought-iron seat on the top tier and folded her hands in her lap.
“You need not remain to keep me company,” she said. “I will be quite happy alone in such surroundings.”
He stood beside her for what seemed a long while, saying nothing. She did not look up to see whether he looked at her or whether he was merely admiring the view, but she could see the toe of one of his Hessian boots beating out a tattoo on the cobbles beside her. She willed him to go away. She could not bear his closeness. She could not bear reality or the knowledge that her stolen dream was ruined forever.
And then he went without a word and she felt bereft.
Rannulf went straight up to his room. And paced.
She was a gentleman’s daughter. Damn it all to hell! She had had no business being sent off to travel alone, without even a maid to offer respectability. Her father deserved to be shot for allowing it. She had had no business accepting a ride with him, using that husky voice, pretending to be an actress. Flirting with him. Allowing him to steal a kiss from her without whacking his head right off his shoulders for his impertinence.
She must know the rules of genteel behavior as well as he did.
He knew the rules.
He leaned both hands on the windowsill, drew a deep breath, held it, and let it out slowly. He peered downward. A footman was skirting about the formal gardens on his way back to the house. The glass of lemonade Rannulf had ordered sent out to her had been delivered then.
She had had no business accepting his outrageous suggestion that they move from the posting inn to the quieter one by the market green. Or agreeing to share a room with him. Or dining alone with him. Or fanning his lust with that acting—where the devil had she learned to act like that? Or wearing that Siren’s hair all down over her shoulders.