SLIGHTLY WICKED

by Mary Balogh

  “You are beautiful,” he told her, and he dipped his head and kissed her softly on the lips.

  “Am I ?” Her green eyes were swimming with tears when he lifted his head. “Not vulgar? I do not look vulgar?‘

  “How could beauty possibly be vulgar?” he asked her.

  “When men look at me,” she said, “and really see me, they leer.”

  “It is because feminine beauty is desirable to men,” he said. “And where there is no restraint and no gallantry— when a man is not also a gentleman—then there is leering. The beauty is no less beautiful because some men behave badly in its presence.”

  “You did not leer,” she said.

  He felt deeply ashamed. He had set eyes on her and had wanted her and gone after her. His motive had been pure lust.

  “Did I not?” he said.

  She shook her head. “There was something else in your eyes,” he said, “despite your words and your actions. Some ... humor, perhaps? I do not know the exact word. You did not make me shudder. You made me ... joyful.”

  God help him.

  “You made me feel beautiful,” she said. She smiled slowly at him. “For the first time in my life. Thank you.”

  He swallowed hard and awkwardly. He deserved to be horsewhipped for what he had done to her. But she was thanking him.

  “We had better get back to the house,” she said, looking up as he withdrew his hand from beneath her chin. “I can feel rain.”

  They got up and brushed themselves off, and she drew her bonnet carefully over her hair and tied the ribbons in a large bow to one side of her chin. She looked vividly pretty without a cap beneath it.

  “I’ll go over the hill and you can go around it to the front again,” she said.

  But he had had an idea, though he had neither thought it through nor wished to do so.

  “Let’s go together,” he said. “There is no one here to see us.”

  He offered his arm, which she took after a moment’s hesitation, and they climbed the hill together, an occasional spot of rain splashing down on them.

  “I suppose,” she said, “you are very bored here in the country. Yet you have not joined in many of the activities of the house party this week.”

  “I am learning about farming and estate management,” he said, “and enjoying myself enormously.”

  She turned her head to look at him. “Enjoying yourself?” She laughed.

  He chuckled too. “I have been taken by surprise,” he said. “Grandmaison will be mine in time, yet I have never been interested in its running. Now I am. Picture me in years to come trudging about my land with a shaggy dog at my heel, an ill-fitting coat on my back, and nothing but crops and drainage and livestock to enliven my conversation.”

  “It is hard to imagine.” She laughed again. “Tell me about it. What have you learned? What have you seen? Do you plan to make any changes when the property is yours?”

  At first he thought the questions merely polite, but it soon became clear to him that she was genuinely interested. And so he talked all the way back to the house on topics that would have had him yawning hugely just a week or two ago.

  The two elderly ladies were still in the drawing room where Rannulf had left them. Judith would have withdrawn her arm from his before they entered the house and disappeared to her own room, but he would allow neither.

  “It is just my grandmother and yours,” he said. “No one else has returned from town yet.”

  He kept her arm through his when they entered the room, and both ladies looked up.

  “I found Miss Law while I was outside walking,” he said, “and we have been enjoying each other’s company for the last hour.”

  His grandmother’s eyes sharpened instantly, he noticed.

  “Miss Law,” she said, “that is a very fetching bonnet. Why have I not seen it before? The fresh air has added a becoming flush of color to your cheeks. Come and sit beside me and tell me where you learned to act so well.”

  Rannulf sat down too after pulling on the bell rope at Mrs. Law’s request so that she could ask for a fresh pot of tea to be brought up.

  Chapter XV

  Judith was not at all sure she would attend the Harewood ball even though her grandmother told her that she simply must put in an appearance, if only to keep her company.

  “Though I daresay all the young gentlemen will vie with each other to dance with you,” she said. “I have noticed how their attitude to you has changed during the week, my love, and so it ought. You are as much my grandchild as Julianne or Branwell.”

  It was a tempting prospect, Judith had to admit—to attend a ball and to have dancing partners. She had always enjoyed the village assemblies at home immensely. She had never lacked for partners. At the time she had assumed they were being kind to dance with her, but a new possibility was beginning to present itself to her mind.

  I have never ever seen any woman whose beauty comes even close to matching yours.

  She was tempted to go to the ball, but she was dreadfully afraid that Lord Rannulf would choose that climactic event of the house party in which to have his betrothal to Julianne announced. She would not be able to bear being there to hear it, Judith thought, or to see the look of triumph on Julianne’s face and Aunt Effingham’s. She would not be able to bear to see the look of mocking resignation on his—she was sure that was how he would look.

  She had almost decided not to attend until she met Branwell on the stairs when she was going up after an early breakfast and he was coming down.

  “Good morning, Jude.” He set one hand on her shoulder and kissed her cheek. “Up early as usual, are you? You had better get some beauty rest this afternoon, then. All the fellows want to dance with you tonight and have been asking me to persuade you, as if I am the one who has been forbidding you to participate in anything for the past two weeks. I suppose it is Aunt Louisa,” he said, darting a glance about him and lowering his voice. “But really, you know, it is demeaning to have my own sister treated as if she were some kind of servant just because Papa is a clergyman and Uncle George is some sort of nabob.”

  “I am not really interested in dancing, Bran,” she lied.

  “Poppycock!” he said. “All you girls have always loved the assemblies. Listen, Jude, as soon as I have paid off all these pesky and impudent tradesmen, I am going to settle to some career and make my fortune that way. And then you will be able to go back home and you and my other sisters can find yourselves respectable husbands and all will be well.”

  Judith had not told her brother that she was going back home—in disgrace—or that Hilary was going to have to come to Harewood in her place.

  “But how are you going to pay your debts, Bran?” she asked unwillingly. She had been trying all week not to think about them. She had even for one ignominious moment thought of asking Grandmama ...

  His cheerful expression faltered for a moment, but then he was smiling and apparently carefree again. “Something will turn up,” he said. “I have every confidence. You must not worry your head about it. Think of the ball instead. Promise me you will come, Jude?”

  “Oh, very well,” she said impulsively before continuing on her way upstairs. “I’ll come.”

  “Splendid!” he called after her.

  There was one more free thing she would do before returning home, then, she decided. She would go to the ball. And she would go as herself, not as the poor relation who was hidden from public view as effectively as any nun. She would dance with any gentleman who cared to ask. If she was not asked, then she would sit with her grandmother and enjoy the evening anyway. If Julianne’s betrothal was announced ... Her boldness faltered for a moment as her hand rested on the door handle of her room. If Julianne’s betrothal to Lord Rannulf was announced, then she would lift her chin and smile and clothe herself in all the ladylike dignity she could muster.

  Why was it, she wondered as she let herself into her room, that a brief kiss on the lips yesterday could have stirred he
r emotions just as powerfully as full sexual contact had done a few weeks ago at the inn by the market green? Perhaps because then it had been only sexual congress, whereas yesterday it had been ... what? Not love. Tenderness, then? He had called her beautiful and then kissed her. But not with desire, though perhaps there had been something of that in it too, for both of them. There had been more than desire. There had been ... yes, it must have been tenderness.

  Perhaps after all, she thought, once she was back home and had blocked her mind to the image of him married to Julianne, she would be able to recover her stolen dream and live on it through the years ahead.

  “My first thought when I heard of the ball at Harewood,” Lady Beamish said to her grandson, “was that it would be the perfect setting for the announcement of your betrothal to Julianne Effingham. Has the thought crossed your mind, Rannulf?”

  “Yes, it has,” he said quite truthfully.

  “And?” She was seated opposite him in the downstairs sitting room, looking tinier and more birdlike than ever, though her back was ramrod straight, he could see, not supported by the back of her chair.

  “Is it still your dearest wish?” he asked her.

  She looked consideringly at him before answering. “My dearest wish?” she repeated. “No, Rannulf, that would be to see you happy. Even if the single state is what makes you happiest.”

  She had set him free ... and laid on him the burden of love.

  “No,” he said. “I do not believe I will remain single, Grandmama. As soon as one becomes involved with the land, one understands and appreciates the eternal cycle of birth and death and renewal and reproduction. Just as you need the assurance that this land will pass to me and my descendants, so I need the assurance that it will pass to a son of mine after my passing—or perhaps to a daughter or a grandchild. I will certainly marry.”

  He had not even formulated the thoughts clearly for himself until this moment, but he knew they were the truth.

  “Julianne Effingham?” she asked him.

  He gazed back at her, but even love should not be made to encroach upon the very essence of who he was.

  “Not Miss Effingham,” he said gently. “I am sorry, Grandmama. Not only do I feel no affection for her, but I also feel a definite aversion.”

  “I am relieved to know it,” she surprised him by saying. “It was a foolish notion of mine, born of a selfish desire to see you married soon, before it is too late.”

  “Grandmama—”

  She held up a hand.

  “Do you feel an affection for Miss Law?” she asked him.

  He stared at her and then cleared his throat.

  “Miss Law?”

  “She is many things her cousin is not,” she said.

  “She is poor,” he said curtly, getting to his feet and walking toward the French windows, which were closed this morning against the continuation of yesterday’s chilly, cloudy weather. “That ne’er-do-well of a brother of hers is likely to bring total ruin on the family soon, if my guess is correct. The father is a gentleman with a former actress for a mother, daughter of a draper. The mother is probably a lady, though equally probably she was no one of fortune or social prominence before her marriage to the Reverend Law.”

  “Ah,” his grandmother said, “you are ashamed of her.”

  “Ashamed?” He glared out at the fountain, his brows drawn together in a harsh frown. “I would have to have some personal feelings for her before I could be ashamed.”

  “And you do not?” she asked him.

  It had been his impetuous plan yesterday to make her aware of Judith Law and a possible connection between him and her. But she had said nothing during their journey home or for the rest of the day. He looked back over his shoulder at her now.

  “Grandmama,” he said, “I walked in the formal gardens here with her two weeks ago at your request. I encouraged her to entertain us here a week ago when almost all your other guests had done so except her. I met her outdoors at Harewood yesterday and walked and conversed with her for an hour. Why would I have personal feelings for her?”

  “It would be strange if you did not,” she said. “She is an extraordinarily beautiful woman once her disguise has been penetrated, and I know you well enough to understand that you admire beautiful women. But she is more than beautiful. She has a mind. So do you when you care to use it, as you have done since coming here this time. Besides all of which, Rannulf, there was a certain look on your face when you returned from your walk yesterday.”

  “A certain look!” He frowned at her. “One of foolish infatuation, do you mean? I feel no such thing.”

  And yet he wanted her to argue the point, to encourage him, to persuade him that the connection would be eligible.

  “No,” she said. “Had it been merely a silly male look, I would have disregarded it, though I might have felt it my duty to remind you that she is a lady and the niece of Sir George Effingham and the granddaughter of my dearest friend.”

  He felt horribly guilty then .. . again!

  “Bewcastle would never countenance such a match,” he said.

  “And yet,” she reminded him, “Aidan has just married a coal miner’s daughter, and Bewcastle not only received her but even arranged for her presentation to the queen and gave a ball for her at Bedwyn House.”

  “Bewcastle was presented with a fait accompli in Aidan’s case,” he said. “He has made the best of what he doubtless considers a disaster.”

  “You will give me your arm while I go up to my rooms in a moment,” she said. “But I will say this first, Rannulf. If you allow pride and shame to mask more tender feelings and thus lose a chance for a marriage that would provide all your needs, including those of the heart, then it would be churlish of you to lay the blame at Bewcastle’s door.”

  “I am not ashamed of her,” he said. “Quite the contrary. I am—” He clamped his mouth shut and hurried toward her as she got to her feet.

  “I believe the correct expression may be in love,” she said, setting her hand lightly on his sleeve. “But no self-respecting grandson of mine could admit to that foolish sentiment, could he?”

  It was not true, he thought. He was, to his shame, still in lust with Judith Law. He liked her. He was drawn to her, found himself thinking about her almost constantly while he was conscious and dreaming of her when he was asleep. He found that he could talk to her as he had never been able to talk to any other woman, with the possible exception of Freyja. But even with his sister there was an attitude of bored cynicism to be maintained. He could not imagine talking with enthusiasm about farming and estate management with Freyja. With Judith Law he could relax and be himself, though he had the feeling that it was only in the past two weeks that he had begun to discover who that self was.

  His grandmother had, to all intents and purposes, given her blessing to his courtship of Judith Law. Bewcastle ... Well, Bewcastle was not his keeper.

  He wondered if Judith intended to appear at the ball tonight. Of course, she had refused him once and that only two weeks ago. But perhaps he could persuade her to change her mind. He must be very careful, of course, not openly to humiliate Miss Effingham. Silly and vain as the chit was, she did not deserve that.

  Judith worked diligently with her needle all morning, guessing that she might be kept busy all afternoon with preparations for the ball. She was not mistaken. Her aunt kept her running almost every minute, bearing messages and orders to the housekeeper or the butler, neither of whom was ever in the place they were supposed to be. She was given the monumental task of arranging the flowers that had been cut for the ballroom and setting them up in just the right places and in pleasing combination with potted plants. It was a job she enjoyed, but once she was in the ballroom she found that servants were forever consulting her with all their problems, however minor.

  Then she was sent into the village to buy a length of ribbon for Julianne’s hair, the ribbon she had bought in town the day before having been declared quite wrong i
n both width and color now that it had been paid for and brought home. It was a longish walk there and back. Judith would normally have welcomed the chance to be out in the fresh air, even if it was a cloudy day. But she had hoped for a chance to wash her hair and rest before it was time to dress for the evening. She hurried through the errand so that there would still be some little time for herself.

  The door to Julianne’s dressing room was slightly ajar when she returned. Judith lifted her hand to knock but stopped herself when she heard Horace’s laugh from within. He had not openly bothered her during the past week, though he never lost the opportunity to say something nasty or sarcastic for her ears only. She avoided him whenever she could. She would wait, she decided. Or she would take the ribbon to Aunt Effingham’s room and pretend she had forgotten that she was to take it directly to Julianne’s.

  “I simply must have him, that is all,” Julianne was saying on a familiar theme, her voice petulant. “I will be mortified beyond words if he does not offer for me before everyone leaves Harewood. Everyone knows that he has been courting me. Everyone knows I have discouraged the advances of all my other admirers—even Lord Braithwaite’s—because Lord Rannulf is about to offer for me.”

  Judith turned to leave.

  “And you will have him too, you silly goose,” Horace said. “Did you not hear what your mama just said? He must be made to offer for you. All you have to do is make sure you are found in a compromising situation with him. He will do the decent thing. I know men like Bedwyn. Being a gentle‘ man means more to them than life itself.”

  By then Judith could not stop herself from listening.

  “Horace is right, dearest,” Aunt Effingham said. “And it is only proper that he should marry you after deliberately toying with your sensibilities.”

  “But how am I to do that?” Julianne asked.