by Candace Camp
Phoebe—or, rather, their estate manager—had sold the hunting lodge last year, advising that it was not feasible for Phoebe to keep up a home which she never used. She had understood, but it had taken her two years to bring herself to get rid of something of which Selby had been so fond.
It was after dark, and Julia was growing sore and weary from sitting so long in the carriage, when they at last turned up a long driveway lined by magnificent trees and pulled up in front of a gracious house of honey-colored stone. The front door opened wide at their approach, and a footman bowed.
“My lord! What a surprise.”
“Not an unpleasant one, I hope.”
“Oh, no, my lord, indeed not. Lady Stonehaven will be so pleased. I believe that Carruthers has gone to inform her ladyship of your arrival.”
“Very good. Is she in her sitting room?”
“I daresay, my lord.”
“Jennings, this is Miss Julia Armiger, my fiancée.”
“Your—” The man choked back his surprised exclamation, goggling at Julia. “Indeed, sir. Congratulations, my lord. Welcome to Stonehaven, Miss Armiger.”
“We have no luggage. Pay off the postilion, will you? Miss Armiger and I are going up to see Mother.”
They had barely reached the top of the staircase before they met that good woman hurrying down the hall. She smiled broadly when she saw Deverel and held out both her hands to him.
“Deverel! If this isn’t just like you—putting us all at sixes and sevens! Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?” Her welcoming smile belied any harshness in her words.
“I relied on your good nature,” he replied, taking her hands and squeezing them, then pulling her close for a hug. “And the fact that I pay my servants very well. Frankly, I didn’t decide to come until this morning, and I thought it would be better to explain in person than to try to put it all in a letter that would, at best, arrive only a couple of hours before we did.”
He turned toward Julia, and his mother followed suit, her dark eyes bright with curiosity. Julia could see that Deverel had inherited his coloring from his mother, for her eyes were black, as was her hair, except for a single distinctive streak of white that ran back from her right temple. However, unlike her son, she was short and a little plump, with a smiling, pleasant face. She was dressed quite fashionably in a dove gray dress of elegant lines and expensive material that proclaimed the work of a major modiste.
“Mother, I would like to introduce my fiancée, Miss Julia Armiger. Julia, this is my mother, Lady Teresa Stonehaven.”
There was a moment of frozen silence. Lady Stonehaven looked blankly at Julia, then at her son. “Fiancée?” she repeated in a small voice. “Armiger?”
“Yes.”
“Well—ah, this is certainly a surprise.” She turned to Julia. “Excuse me. I don’t know where my manners are. How do you do, Miss Armiger? I am most happy to meet you.”
She extended a hand to Julia to shake, and Julia noticed that the older woman’s fingers were strangely discolored in varying degrees of brown, yellow and green. Lady Stonehaven saw the direction of her eyes and chuckled softly. “Don’t worry. It’s not dirt. I assure you, they are quite clean. It is just that I cannot seem to ever completely remove the stains.”
Julia looked up at her, blushing. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, no need. It startles everyone who doesn’t know me. I know you are far too well-bred to inquire, so I shall tell you. I paint. Oils, mostly. Lately I’ve been most interested in murals.”
“Painting on the walls again, Mother?”
“Only two,” she promised. “And not in your bedroom.”
“Thank you.”
She looked offended. “One would think that you disliked my painting, Dev.”
“No, madam. I think you are aware of my opinion of your talent. However, I have no desire to awaken at night and see a group of Greeks standing across the room from me.”
She sighed. “I never thought a son of mine would turn out so hidebound.”
“No, ma’am. Just lily-livered.”
As they had been talking, Deverel had taken the two women’s arms and steered them down the hall into a small, tastefully appointed sitting room.
“What a lovely room!” Julia exclaimed. None of the furniture in the room was new, nor was it coordinated, but it was a cheerful, homey blend of comfort, practicality and beauty.
“Do you like it?” Lady Stonehaven asked, smiling. “Thank you. It is my favorite room in the house. And where I spend most of my time—when I’m not in my workroom, of course.” She gestured them toward chairs, asking, “Are you hungry? Would you like some supper?”
“That would be wonderful,” Deverel replied. “We had only a small nuncheon on the road and, I am afraid, missed tea altogether.”
“I fear that we have already had dinner, but I am sure that Cook can throw a reasonable meal together quickly.”
“The leftovers will be more than adequate.”
Lady Stonehaven rang for a maid and was answered by the butler himself, a dignified individual who greeted Deverel gravely and assured Lady Stonehaven that a quick meal for the travelers had been set in motion as soon as they arrived and would shortly be brought up to them on trays.
“Wait, Carruthers, I must introduce you to Miss Julia Armiger. She is shortly to be my wife.”
The older man was so startled that he dropped his usual carefully controlled expression. “My Lord!” He recovered himself enough to continue smoothly, “May I offer my congratulations?” The butler turned toward Julia and bowed. “Miss Armiger. What a wonderful surprise. I wish you all the best.”
As soon as the door closed behind him, Julia swung on Deverel. “Why must you keep telling everyone that? You are going to look most foolish when we don’t marry.”
Lady Stonehaven’s eyebrows rose. “Are you not going to marry? But I thought you were engaged.”
“We are,” Deverel responded.
“We are not,” Julia said at the same time.
They glared at each other.
“Oh, dear,” Lady Stonehaven said. “I must confess, I am a trifle confused.”
“Perfectly natural, Mother. I am still in somewhat of a daze myself.”
“I am very sorry, Lady Stonehaven,” Julia said earnestly. “I know you must think we are quite mad.”
“No. No—only a little.”
“The truth is that, well, certain circumstances arose that made Lord Stonehaven feel that it is necessary for him to marry me. But I assured him that it is not.”
“Pamela St. Leger discovered us in a compromising position, Mother,” Deverel explained. “Being a friend to neither of us, she will, I am persuaded, see to it that everyone in the ton knows about it.”
“Oh, my,” Lady Stonehaven said, somewhat inadequately.
“It wasn’t what it seemed,” Julia assured her, miserably aware that this very nice-seeming woman must now despise her.
“Of course not,” Deverel agreed.
“I’m sure not,” Lady Stonehaven agreed. “Deverel is certainly too much of a stickler to have done anything indecorous.”
“You make me sound like a prig.”
“No. Merely a man who always thinks before he acts.”
Deverel arched an eyebrow and murmured, “If only you knew…”
“What, dear?”
“Nothing. At any rate, it was obvious that our only recourse was to marry. In fact, I told Pamela that Julia and I already were married.”
“You seem to have an uncontrollable urge to tell everyone,” Julia told him bitingly. “I cannot think why you cannot keep it to yourself.”
“Oh, no, dear,” Lady Stonehaven assured her earnestly. “You mustn’t worry. Our servants will not reveal that you were married here, later than when Deverel told Pamela. They are most loyal to us.”
“No. I am not worried about servants’ gossip. I mean that I do not intend to marry him!”
Lady Stonehaven looked s
hocked. “But, my dear, I thought that it was so compromising that you have to.”
“It was,” Deverel confirmed. “Julia is simply too naive to understand that. Or perhaps too stubborn to accept it. Or both.”
“I am not naive! As for stubborn, you are ten times worse than I am. You keep insisting that I marry you, and I have told you time after time that I will not. I don’t care about the scandal. I do not want to marry you!”
It occurred to Julia that her statement would be bound to offend the man’s mother, and she turned to her with a belated apology. “I am sorry, my lady. I know he is your son, but I simply cannot marry him.”
“I perfectly understand.” Lady Stonehaven stood up. “You know what I think we should do? I should show you to your room, Miss Armiger. No doubt you are very tired, and you would like to freshen up a little, eat and go to bed. I shall tell the servants to bring the tray to your room. How does that sound?”
“Very nice,” Julia admitted, rather amazed that Lady Stonehaven was being so pleasant to her—and that she was taking everything so calmly. She must know from Julia’s last name that her family was under a cloud of scandal. Not only that, Julia had been plumped down in the woman’s house completely out of the blue and announced as the woman’s future daughter-in-law, with the explanation that her son had to marry her because they had been caught in an indelicate situation. Then, to top it off, Julia had made it clear that she was repelled by the idea of marrying him.
But Lady Stonehaven was quite kind and acted as if nothing was out of the ordinary. She smiled at Julia and whisked her down the hall to a large, elegant bedchamber.
“This is the rose room,” she explained. “It is the chamber we keep ready for guests. This isn’t the first time that Deverel has dropped in on me with unexpected guests—although it is the first time that that guest was a female.”
“I am so sorry, Lady Stonehaven.”
“Don’t think a thing of it.” The woman waved away her apology. “As I said, we keep the room in readiness. I merely had one of the maids run a warming pan between the sheets. Even though it’s May, I feel that the sheets are a trifle cool at night. Do you find it so?” she continued without waiting for an answer, carrying a candle to an oil lamp on the dresser and lighting it. A warm glow suffused the room. “There. That’s better.”
Julia looked around the spacious chamber. It was furnished with dark furniture, more elegant and more remote than that in Lady Stonehaven’s sitting room. The dark green brocade bedspread matched the brocade seats of the two chairs, and both went nicely with the heavy green velvet curtains at the windows. The walls were a warm cream color, and a thick woven rug in tones of green, cream and rose softened the floor. But what Julia noticed first was that the wall around one of the windows had been painted with twisting vines of leaves, interspersed with fat pink roses. Julia had never seen anything like it on a wall before, and the depiction was so well-painted that it looked almost as if real roses grew there.
“How lovely!” she cried, going over to the window. She turned back toward her hostess. “Is this your work?”
Lady Stonehaven nodded. “Yes. I’m glad you like it. My brother-in-law stayed in this room a few weeks ago, and he found it decidedly odd. But Stewart has always been a dreadfully stuffy person.” She came over to stand beside Julia and looked at her art. “This is the first thing I painted on a wall. One day this overpowering urge came over me. It just took my mind that I should paint roses in the rose room. We had always called it that, you see, because this window looks down on the rose garden. It’s a lovely sight during the day. Well, it just ate and ate at me that I should frame the window with roses, too, so finally I did. I think the servants decided I was mad. No doubt I’ve convinced them of it the past few weeks, for I painted a mural of Greek gods on one wall of my studio, and I have been considering doing another mural along the gallery.”
She paused, considering. “Of course, the house is really Deverel’s now. I suppose I should ask his permission.”
“I am sure he would give it. He seems very fond of you.”
“He is. The boy can be a dear—though I have no doubt that he has not been showing much of that side of himself to you today. Poor thing. Has he ridden over you roughshod?”
She took Julia’s arm and led her over to one of the chairs. Julia sat down, and Lady Stonehaven took the other chair, turning toward Julia and leaning forward in a way that encouraged confidences.
“He is obviously used to getting his way,” Julia admitted. She smiled and shook her head. “I should not talk this way to his mother. I am sure you must find me excessively rude.”
“Not at all. Merely honest, which, frankly, I find a refreshing change to so many of the young women I meet, who cannot seem to call up an opinion of their own.” She smiled, but then she said seriously, “And I know my son. After all, I’ve raised him from the cradle. I’m quite aware of how terribly overbearing he can be. He is so sure he is right about things—and it is quite maddening that he nearly always is—that he just goes ahead and decides what should be done. Even when it doesn’t suit the other people involved. His father was much the same way, God rest his soul, but such a good man that I could never stay mad at him for long.”
“Lady Stonehaven…” Julia leaned forward on impulse, taking the older woman’s hand in hers. “Do you think you could talk to him? Persuade him that this is the wrong thing to do? He will listen to you.”
Lady Stonehaven gave her hand a squeeze. “But, my dear, I’m not sure that it is wrong. Oh, I have no doubt that Deverel has gone about it in a draconian way that fairly raised your hackles, and I quite understand that you don’t wish to give in to his high-handedness. It’s only natural. But I fear that Deverel is usually right when it comes to points of honor. If he says that this is the only way to save your reputation, it is probably true.”
“I fear that is a hopeless task!” Julia cried, releasing Lady Stonehaven’s hand and jumping to her feet. “Surely you know that my family is already in disgrace. You must have recognized my name.”
“Yes, I thought you must be related to that poor boy Selby. I always thought him such a lively young man. He and Dev were not really close, as Dev was with Walter, but Sir Selby came here to visit a few times. Usually when he was staying at his hunting lodge. He was well-mannered, but very entertaining, as well. The house was never dull when he was around.”
Julia smiled, tears suddenly burning at her eyes. “No. I’m sure it was not. It was that way wherever Selby went.”
“I am sure you must miss him.”
“I do. Terribly.” She sighed and sat back down in her chair. “But you can see, can’t you, that I am already in disgrace? Selby’s widow and I rarely go out, and then only in our country society. So my situation would be little worse than it is now. It’s hardly fair to your family to burden you with the scandal that hangs over us. I cannot think that you would wish to be allied with an Armiger.”
“Well, no, dear, of course it would not be my first choice in a wife for Deverel. But I must own, I find you excessively likable. And I would not wish for Dev to shirk his duty, in any case.”
“But it is so wrong that he should have to! We didn’t do anything.”
“I am sure not. But appearances—” She gave a little shrug and added, “And, given the scandal that has already beset your family, I am afraid that everyone will judge you more harshly. It is unfair, of course, but unfortunately, that is the way the world works. You, like Caesar’s wife, must be above suspicion.”
“I don’t need him to rescue me! I don’t want him to.”
“Of course not.”
“And I don’t want to marry him! I can’t!”
“Because of what happened to your brother?”
“Yes,” Julia replied, flopping back down into her chair, relieved that Deverel’s mother was so understanding.
“You held Dev responsible for Selby’s death, for exposing the embezzlement to the world. Of course
you did. I would have done the same. I am sure Deverel was impatient with your reasoning. He has such a strong sense of duty and honor that I am afraid he is sometimes lacking in—oh, not compassion, for I know he felt quite sad and sorry about Selby—but lacking in empathy, I suppose. I fear he does not understand why people sometimes do the things they do.”
“You understand, though, don’t you, why I cannot marry Deverel?” Julia hoped that what she had said would be enough for Lady Stonehaven. She could not possibly tell her that she believed that the woman’s son was actually a coldhearted embezzler.
“Of course,” his mother replied with a sweet smile. “The problem is, I’m not sure how you can escape it.” She reached over and patted Julia’s hand. “Don’t worry. You eat your dinner and rest now. I’m sure that tomorrow everything will seem better. We will think about it and see if we can come up with a better solution.”
“Thank you.” Julia felt immensely grateful to Lady Stonehaven. She had expected the woman to be horrified by her son’s bringing Julia home and abruptly announcing that she was his fiancée. She had been sure that Lady Stonehaven would dislike her intensely. But she had turned out to be gracious, kind and understanding. It made Julia feel strangely like crying. She thought of what would happen to Lady Stonehaven and how she would feel if Julia was able to prove that Deverel was responsible for the embezzlement, and the idea made her quail a little.
Lady Stonehaven started toward the door. When she reached it, she cast Julia a look back over her shoulder and said, “Are you certain that you have no feelings for Deverel at all?”
Julia felt herself blushing. She could not answer. She could scarcely deny that she had feelings for Deverel. Of course, none of them were the sort of emotions one could reveal to a man’s mother, ranging as they did from lust to hate.
She began to stammer out an answer, but Lady Stonehaven merely smiled and went out the door.