A curricle was standing in front of the entry, Julia saw with surprise as she rounded the edge of the north wing so that she could see the front of the house. Did that mean visitors? She hated to think so. So much had to be said between her and Sebastian, visitors would be very much in the way. Besides, who knew if they would accept her? Julia felt suddenly very uncertain. As much as she now felt like a lady, who knew if she would pass muster with outsiders? Would she be scorned, or worse, secretly laughed at? During the months she had lived practically alone with Sebastian at White Friars, the thought of confronting the world in her new guise had seemed far away, and thus had not worried her. Now she was worried. Not so much for herself but for Sebastian. Desperately she wanted him not to be ashamed of her.
She moved toward the curricle, not sure whether to go inside and greet the guests or to slink away and return later. But she could not hide forever; besides, the very idea was ridiculous. She knew the proper thing to do was to go inside and be very composed but gracious. That was what Julia Stratham would do. And she was Julia Stratham.
Julia lifted her chin and was proceeding toward the front steps when something began to niggle at the back of her mind. That curricle looked extremely familiar. She looked again It was black and shiny with overly large wheels and a natty leather interior. A matched pair of bays was harnessed to it, and the little man who stood at their heads looked very familiar indeed. Julia had not seen much of him since she had arrived at White Friars, but she had no trouble recognizing him. It was Jenkins.
The equipage was Sebastian’s. She stared, then hurried toward it just as Leister came down the stairs with a large leather valise in hand and placed it in the curricle. A footman appeared on the steps, holding the door wide while another ran down to open the door of the curricle. The footman and the valet stood waiting as Sebastian himself appeared, clad in his buff colored, many caped driving coat that swung open over tan breeches and dark blue, elegantly tailored coat. From the toes of his polished boots to the waves of silver-gilt hair, this was very much the arrogant earl. Julia watched in disbelief as he descended the steps, Johnson trailing in his wake.
“Sebastian!” He was near the bottom step when she called out to him and hurried forward. All eyes swung toward her, from the celestial blue ones she had come to know so well to Johnson’s worried ones. Julia didn’t care if there was an audience of thousands. She picked up her skirts and practically ran the short distance to the foot of the stairs, where she stood looking up at Sebastian. Meeting his eyes, she was suddenly wordless.
“Good morning, Julia.” His voice was cool, composed, as if she were a chance-met acquaintance in whom he had no real interest. She stared up at him, eyes widening with disbelief. Was it possible that he had forgotten the momentous thing that had occurred between them in the library the night before? He had after all been drinking heavily. She studied his expression for a clue, noting the way the cold white sunlight bathed his features in a harsh glow that revealed every tiny flaw. On him the tiny lines radiating from the corners of his eyes and the faint creases bracketing the perfectly carved mouth just added character. His eyes met hers, and their very lack of expression gave her the answer. He remembered perfectly well. If he hadn’t, he would never have looked at her like that.
“Are you going somewhere, Sebastian?” Her voice was thin. Something was very wrong.
He resumed descending the steps until he stood beside her. Julia was once again surprised by how tall he was as she tilted her head back to look up at him. The hood of her cloak obscured her vision and she pushed it back without a care for the elegant hairstyle that she had admired with such pleasure less than an hour before.
“I am returning to London. I have business to attend to there.” His words were clipped. Julia was burningly conscious of the listening ears of the two footmen, the valet, and Johnson, who hovered discreetly some few steps above them, despite the servants’ stony stares into the distance.
“When will you be back?” She hoped she didn’t sound as anxious to his ears as she did to her own.
“When I finish my business.” He slapped his gloves against his palm, looking as though he were eager to be on his way. Julia suddenly felt her temper begin to heat.
“You were going without a word to me?”
His eyebrows lifted. “I wasn’t aware that I had to account to you for my movements.”
Julia met those icy blue eyes, and at the coldness of them her heating temper boiled over.
“You bloody swine!” The words were quiet, meant for his ears alone, but she didn’t much care if the servants did overhear. Sebastian’s mouth tightened.
“If you will excuse me …”
“No, I bloody well won’t excuse you!” Despite her months of practice, a distinct Cockney accent crept into her words as she hissed them at him. “Wot do you think I am, a bloody handkerchief that you can just use and throw away when it’s dirty? Well, if I’m dirty, I wasn’t that way before you made me so, and you know that’s the truth!”
“Watch your mouth, Julia.” The words, gritted from between clenched teeth, were meant as a warning because of the servants. But Julia was beyond caring, her breasts heaving with anger as he went on. “This is no place for a private discussion. My movements are not yours to order despite whatever mistaken claims you may think you now have on me.”
“Oh, is that wot’s worrying you, my lord? Are you afraid that the little guttersnipe might be makin’ claims now, my lord? Well, you can set your mind at rest. Lord or no bloody lord, I wouldn’t have you on a silver plate with an apple between your teeth!”
Julia was practically spitting in her fury. Sebastian’s mouth tightened, his eyes took on a second layer of ice, and he made her an ironic little bow.
“You relieve my mind,” he murmured before turning on his heel and boarding the curricle with a single fluid bound. Julia, her fists clenching and unclenching beneath the sheltering folds of the cloak, watched with growing rage as a poker-faced Leister climbed up beside him, the footman shut the door, Jenkins released the horses’ heads and leaped up behind, and the curricle began to move away down the drive.
“I’ve known high tobies that were bigger bleedin’ gentlemen than you!” she screamed after the departing curricle.
But if Sebastian even heard, there was no sign of it as the curricle turned onto the road and bowled out of sight.
XVII
Sebastian was in a black mood by the time he arrived in Grosvenor Square. His disposition was not improved by the sight of every window in his house ablaze with lights, an unmistakable sign that there was some sort of revelry taking place on the premises.
Without a word to the servants, he jumped from the curricle, leaving Jenkins to drive it around to the stables. Stalking up the steps with Leister at his heels, he found to his annoyance that the door did not swing open at his approach. Scowling, he made a mental promise to have a serious talk with the malingering servant responsible for such a lapse, and let himself in.
Fortunately (although irresponsibly) the front door was unlocked, revealing immediately the reason for such malfeasance of duty on the part of his employees. From the snatches of gay conversation that drifted to him from the direction of the dining room, it was obvious that a dinner party was in progress. Smathers, apparently having been on service in the dining room and just now becoming aware of the new arrival, came hurrying to greet him, full of apologies for not being on hand to open the door to the master. It seemed that the dowager countess had required the services of himself and all the footmen in attendance in the dining room.
Sebastian favored him with a cold stare that Smathers, shivering, thought said more than most employers’ longest tirade. With an impatient gesture he waved Smathers away, and stalked up the stairs to his bedchamber. Leister, with a fatalistic shrug at Smathers, followed.
Knowing well the signs of his master in a temper, Leister did not venture to speak until the earl was undressed and ensconced in a steaming tu
b with one of the thin brown cigars that he favored thrust between his teeth. Then Leister dared a thin “Shall I have your dinner sent up, sir?”
The icy blue eyes turned in his direction for a pregnant moment. In all the years he had been with his lordship, Leister had weathered many a black mood, but just lately he had gotten out of practice. In the past months spent at White Friars in the company of that girl his lordship had been almost cheerful, an unheard-of condition for him. In the ten years Leister had been in his service—since my lord had ascended to the exalted position of earl—he had occasionally been pleasant, but never, never cheerful. But apparently there had been some trouble with the waif, and his master was back to his usual stern self.
“I’ll be eating at my club. You may lay out my evening clothes.”
“Yes, sir.” Leister jumped to do his master’s bidding, hastily removing evening dress of a cutaway coat and breeches in severest black along with a black and gray striped waistcoat and snowy white linen from the wardrobe.
Then he hurried over to wrap his master in a large bathsheet as he arose dripping from the tub. The earl dried himself as was his preference, and then allowed Leister to assist him into his clothes. When his lordship’s neckcloth was tied to his own satisfaction (never a very lengthy procedure as the earl was a master at it), Leister assisted him into his coat and stood back, admiring as he always did the handsome figure the earl cut.
“Don’t wait up for me,” the earl said over his shoulder to his valet as he left the room. Leister knew that meant his lordship probably wouldn’t see his own bed that night.
Sebastian was walking down the stairs when the female members of the dinner party left the males to their port and filed out into the hallway on their way to the salon. He continued to descend, making an idle survey of the company. He was in a mood for female company tonight, but none of these presently under his roof seemed at all promising. His mother was present, of course, in one of the black dresses she had affected since Edward’s death seven years before. At her side was Caroline, the supposedly still grieving widow, in an ice blue satin gown that made her look younger than what he knew was her twenty-nine years. Besides those two, there were four more. He knew them all, if somewhat vaguely. Lady Curran, a plump dowdy dowager of about his mother’s age, was one of the ton’s highest sticklers and a great disapprover of him. Her daughter, Lady Courtland, was making a push to one day soon be as plump as her mother. The other two ladies he was less familiar with, but one was obviously a debutante in her first season, and the other was just as obviously her mother. He searched his memory, and from somewhere the name Sinclair popped up. He wasn’t sure if it belonged to them, but it didn’t matter either way.
He continued his descent in leisurely fashion, and as the ladies came around the stairway Caroline looked up and saw him.
“Sebastian!” Her greeting was one of restrained pleasure, and her pale blue eyes glowed suddenly as they met his.
Sebastian had known for a long time that his sister-in-law cherished a fantasy that she would one day be Lady Moorland through him instead of his brother as she had originally expected. The idea was foolish, of course, because she was his brother’s widow and therefore proscribed from him by law unless granted a special dispensation. Which he supposed would not be that difficult to obtain, if he should ever wish to, but he did not anticipate that he ever would. He had no fondness for Caroline, who did not attract him in the least, and was vain and silly besides, but he bore no enmity toward her. He did not wish to embarrass her in front of her guests. Therefore he smiled slightly despite his dark mood, said “Good evening, Caroline, mother, ladies,” in a civil fashion, and descended to stand amongst them.
“You should have apprised us of your return, Sebastian,” his mother said, her cold blue eyes resting on him with distaste. “But, of course, we quite understand you could not be expected to trouble yourself about our convenience.”
“No, I really could not,” Sebastian agreed tranquilly and bowed, meaning to leave the ladies to their evening. But Caroline caught his arm, babbling in a desperate attempt to salvage the situation.
“Of course you know Lady Curran, and her daughter, Lady Courtland,” Caroline was saying. “And this is Lady Sinclair and her daughter, the Honorable Miss Lucy Sinclair.”
Lady Curran was regarding him with hostility, her head drawn up so that she was as near to looking down her nose at him as was possible, given he was nearly a foot taller than she. Sebastian, remembering that she had also been a dear friend of his dead wife’s father, met her cold stare with an icy one of his own. The lady’s obvious disapproval annoyed rather than enraged him, but lumped on top of Lady Sinclair’s grasping of her daughter’s arm to hold her back from him like he was the devil incarnate, and the irritating presence of his mother, to say nothing of his original foul mood, it was enough to bring a warning glitter to his eyes.
“Ah yes, Lady Curran,” he said with icy sweetness. “You must forgive me. I had no idea! Of course your fame precedes you. It was you, wasn’t it, who was the victim of that unfortunate carriage accident just outside Lord Childress’ hunting box all those years ago when it rained so hard that it was not fit out for man or beast? Yes, I do remember now. I believe the weather, uh, trapped you there with him for the night?”
The lady’s eyes grew wider and wider as she listened to this speech, and by the time Sebastian stopped to look at her with lifted brows she was practically spluttering in her haste to deny such a socially ruinous accusation.
“No, my lord, it was not all night!”
“Sebastian,” moaned Caroline, flushing, while his mother regarded him with stony eyes. The other ladies looked at him with as much horror as if he were a poisonous snake.
“I beg your pardon if I was mistaken,” he said with mock contrition. “I should have known better. It is both unwise and ill-bred to go around spreading rumors without ascertaining their truth, is it not?”
Lady Curran, who had with great relish been spreading rumors about Sebastian having murdered his wife for some years now, flushed an alarming shade of puce. The other ladies looked discomfited, and young Miss Sinclair clung closer than ever to her mother. Sebastian bent a deliberately lascivious look on that young lady’s too plump bosom, and ended with a wolfish smile directed into her frightened eyes. As the girl turned red and her mother gasped, Sebastian bowed again, murmured that it had been a great pleasure, and turned on his heel. This time no one tried to stop him as he left.
Sebastian was scowling as his closed carriage bowled over the cobbled streets. God, how he despised women! Hell born bitches, the lot of them. From the fat matrons who were only too ready to believe evil of him to the still attractive married women who were very obviously all too ready to grace his bed while pretending to eschew his company in public to the plump little girls who thought his only desire in life was to ravish them. He grimaced. The women he had known intimately weren’t any better. His mother was a rapacious, bitter woman whose limited capacity for love had been expended on her elder son. Caroline was an empty-headed widgeon with an eye on the main chance. Elizabeth—Elizabeth had been a sweet innocent girl who had been horrified to learn what was expected of her as a wife. She had cringed and wept on their wedding night, but had also been horrified to discover that he was unfaithful to her. Even Suzanne, the latest in his string of mistresses, was far fonder of his pocketbook than himself. Not that it bothered him really. Such was the way of the world.
Sitting upright and scowling ferociously, he realized he still was not able to banish the face of the one female that he despised more than all the others. That thick, lustrous black hair, those eyes as golden as a lioness’, those lips as full and soft and luscious as a new rose—all of it swirled together in one haunting image of Julia.
He smiled savagely to himself. Like Frankenstein with his monster he had given life to the creature that plagued him. The scrawny, dirty, common little guttersnipe who had forced herself into his household all
those months ago had not attracted him in the least. She had been a mere plaything to him, something to momentarily alleviate the boredom of his joyless existence. He would have almost instantly forgotten her if she would have let him. If she had been a meek, grateful little chit, quietly accepting food and shelter and education, he doubted that he would have ever been more than peripherally aware of her existence. But Julia was never any of that. From that first ridiculous scene in the front hall, he should have been warned. No properly humble member of the lower classes would have dared to conduct herself so in an earl’s establishment. In fact, now that he thought about it, it was amazing that she had even gotten in. No one else that he knew of had ever managed to get past Smathers if Smathers wished to keep them out. Even lords and ladies of the realm bowed to the dictates of the Peyton family butler.
He should have taken warning, but he hadn’t. She had forced herself on his notice; his lips twitched even now as he remembered her scratching at that awful dress, and how she had topped off that highly novel journey by expurgating the contents of her stomach on his boots! And he had let her. Perhaps he was just bored, or perhaps even he, the evil earl, as he had heard himself described, was simply lonely.
She had amused him at first, and then he had found himself intrigued by her keen intelligence—amazing in one of the lower classes!—and burgeoning beauty. He never would have guessed that first night what effect good food and a little soap and water would have. So swiftly that it had stunned him when he first noticed it, the grubby guttersnipe had turned into a regular little beauty. He had decided to take advantage of that beauty to while away a few weeks of boredom while he attended to business at White Friars. Only the chit had been too damned trusting, consuming all the wine he had pressed on her the night he had meant to seduce her, making herself too drunk for the actual seduction. Evil earl or no, even he drew the line at bedding a sixteen-year-old chit who was so drunk she couldn’t even sit up.
Loving Julia Page 17