Worth Winning

by Elling, Parker

  It was, like all things related to Robeson these days, bittersweet.

  He’d written her many such notes, years ago. Though at that time, he’d never sent them around formally, for that would have attracted too much attention.

  Instead, he’d hidden them in her basket and pressed them into her hand at dinners and assemblies. Receiving his notes, which were always short and to the point and signed with merely his initials, had always seemed like such a thrill, back then.

  Now that they arrived on his formal letterhead, delivered by a servant, formally, so that anyone might notice if they merely cared to, it felt as though he were trying to force her hand.

  In light of what she now suspected about Charles Alver, it felt blatantly manipulative.

  Julia’s thoughts whirled in her mind as she walked, so that she barely noticed when she reached the old gardening house. She was almost—though not quite—in front of the door before she realized that there was someone standing in front of it. And not just anyone.

  Charles Alver.

  Looking like the proverbial cat that had just caught its prey.

  Chapter 15

  Instead of asking how he had possibly found her, Julia answered her own question by saying, “I mentioned where I was heading the other day, didn’t I?”

  Charles nodded in a lazy, self-assured manner. “It’s not a particularly large town, and you’d already made your general direction fairly obvious.” He pushed himself gracefully away from the door and motioned toward the lock. “So, are you going to let me in?”

  Julia hesitated, though really, her decision seemed like a foregone conclusion. Despite the fact that she’d used Claire as a shield these past few days, she knew that she would have to face him, and what they’d done—what they’d almost done—eventually.

  Besides, she needed to get some answers. There was only so much guessing and theorizing she could do without driving herself crazy. She motioned for him to step aside and withdrew the key, fumbling a little with the lock in her nervousness.

  Charles chuckled and leaned in near her neck, so that she could smell the male scent that seemed distinctly him, whispering, “Do I make you nervous?”

  She opened the door, finally, and stepped inside, her eyes adjusting to the darkness, for the curtains were still drawn. “Not at all,” she said, with more confidence than she felt.

  “That’s too bad,” Charles drawled, entering and then closing the door firmly behind him. “Because I should. That trick you and your stepsister played on me . . .” He paused, and seeing that Julia had no reply, continued, “I’m glad, at the very least, you’re not protesting.”

  “I wasn’t ready to face you alone,” Julia said. She went first to one window and then another. She concentrated on her usual routine: she tugged at the curtains and then tied them back with the thick rope she’d brought over when she’d first started using the house. She pulled out a chair by the main desk and began, almost absentmindedly, reorganizing the herbs displayed there. She looked at the samples to make certain they had been dried, labeled, and bundled appropriately.

  Some had already been put into vials, for later use, and some had been combined. In her notes, at least, she was meticulous and thorough. She tried to calm herself with these small, mundane actions, things she had done dozens of times before, but she knew that she couldn’t avoid facing him forever, and her hands shook a little as she prepared to turn and face him. Her cheeks burned as she thought, once again, of her unguarded response to him in the woods the other day.

  “Julia,” he said, standing far closer to her than she’d realized.

  She turned hastily, dropping the bundle of dried lilac she’d picked up for no particular reason, and tried to slide away from him, along the edge of the table. She’d never really thought about it before, but the house, really more of a cottage, was quite small. In the past, it had always seemed to be her own private sanctuary where no one would ever interrupt her. Even Jack never entered, despite the fact that it was his property.

  Now, with the two of them in there, the cottage felt cramped, confined. Charles’s large body seemed to fill the space. Julia glanced around and looked at everything as if for the first time: the main living area, which held a desk and a couple of chairs, and the small, homely rug, which had been one of her additions. It was currently covered in more herbs, taking up what little space there was in front of the fireplace, which hadn’t been used in as long as Julia could remember. She tried not to think about the small bedroom down the hallway.

  She tried not to think about anything, in fact, but as usual, her brain refused to comply, and instead of bringing up the things she had planned on saying to him or posing the list of questions she had formulated about him, their situation, and Robeson’s involvement, she remained silent, her thoughts scattered and jumbled. She worried about the lilac she’d dropped, the bedroom she didn’t want to be thinking of, the answers to the questions she was afraid to ask. Finally, when it became clear that he was waiting for her to speak, she said, as confidently as she could, in a voice that shook only slightly, “I’ve been wanting to speak with you anyhow.”

  “You could’ve fooled me,” Charles said, a bit unkindly.

  Julia grimaced and lowered her head for a moment. She knew that Claire had gotten quite a bit of pleasure out of torturing Charles and Julia owned to feeling a modicum of remorse. “I was trying to decide what to say, and I needed time.”

  “Which you bought by having your clever little stepsister torture me.”

  Julia gave a wry half smile. “I guessed that you knew.”

  “I mostly knew, until now.”

  Julia met his eyes briefly and was relieved to see that he seemed more amused than annoyed. She forbore asking him just how annoyed he was and decided instead that she should be grateful for small mercies.

  It took only a moment longer for Julia to finally screw up her courage. She looked straight at Charles and articulated each syllable clearly, “Do you have some kind of agreement with Robeson? A wager of some sort that involves me?”

  She had hoped that the directness of her query would shock him into some sort of admission, but his face did nothing more than tighten. The half-smile that had been there just a moment before when they’d been discussing Claire’s antics seemed to fade slightly, but he betrayed no other sign of surprise.

  His voice was calm, almost placid, when he asked, “What makes you ask that?”

  Julia looked away for a moment, willing the tears that had begun to well up to dissipate. Her hands tightened until her nails were biting into the palm of her hands. It wasn’t a denial, and if it had been nothing more than a wild theory, if he was here for any other reason, wouldn’t he have been surprised? Or, at the very least, wouldn’t he have denied it out of hand?

  She took a few deep breaths and tried to remember the meditation techniques she’d read about during her father’s all-things-Asian phase but could recall little other than something about the importance of breathing and of chi, or balance. All those things—her sense of balance in particular—felt wildly out of her control at the moment. Julia finally said, a bit grudgingly, “Robeson’s always loved making wagers. He used to make small wagers with me about everything from the weather to who would be the next person to ask Elizabeth Ewell for a dance. It was one of the things the mothers used to say about him – that he was too brooding, too skinny, and too eager to suggest wagers…”

  “That tells me nothing about why you would think I, in particular, would be in the midst of a wager with Robeson.”

  “It all adds up, doesn’t it? From the beginning you’ve been interested in me, just me. Not Claire, not Penelope, not any of the others.”

  “And a man showing interest in you must stem from a bet? My, what little confidence you have.”

  “Don’t,” Julia said. “Just don’t. You didn’t deny it just now and the way your face tightened . . . I wasn’t sure before. I thought perhaps that you were genuinely intere
sted in courting me, but then, the other day, when you got so angry about the fact that I don’t wear garters . . . for all you know, I could just choose not to wear garters, but the way you reacted, the specificity of it. There’s only one other person who might have known, with certainty, that it’s not a habit I adhere to, and only one possible context I can think of in which the topic would have come up.”

  She stopped suddenly as Charles reached out and gripped both of her arms tightly, squeezing them almost compulsively. She’d been slipping away from him slowly, trying to widen the distance between them, and yet he was suddenly there, crushing her arms and grinding out his words: “What does he know about you and garters?”

  The words seemed to be forced from him, even though he was the one squeezing her arms, trapping her. She looked down, and now tears that she couldn’t stop were flowing freely down her cheeks. She thought about not answering, about saying that it was none of his business and that that he had no right to ask any questions of her, but instead she found herself whispering, “We were close once, and there was a time when I thought he was . . . when he courted me.”

  At the first sign of her tears, his grip had loosened. He gathered her against him, and she let him hold her, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He kissed the top of her head and whispered soothingly, apologizing for pushing her, rubbing her arms and her back and telling her that it was all right and that there was no reason for her to cry.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I had no right to ask you about that, especially considering my own position in all of this.”

  She pulled away from him, maneuvering until there was a little more space between them. “So I was right? It was—I was—just another bet?”

  Charles gave a brief but firm nod. “It was a bet.”

  Julia felt an almost hysterical laughter bubbling up inside her. “I can’t believe he hasn’t let it go, after all this time. I thought women were supposed to be the ones who . . .”

  Charles looked at her steadily and then folded his arms across his chest. He took a deep breath and then said, “I overreacted just now, and for that, I feel as though I should apologize.”

  She gave a watery chuckle. “Saying you should apologize isn’t quite the same as apologizing.”

  The edges of Charles’s mouth seemed to tilt upward a little, but he said merely, “I apologize.”

  “For the overreaction or the bet?”

  “Would you accept both?”

  Julia cocked her head to one side, miserable yet willing to let their banter distract her, however temporarily. It was an odd conversation to be having. He’d tricked her, told her he was courting her, all for some stupid wager, and yet she found that she was still comfortable in his company, enjoying the fact that even now, in the midst of all this, there was room for levity. “What a bargain you strike: one awkward apology for two transgressions.” She tried for a laugh but found that it came out more brittle than amused. She closed, then opened her eyes, and found his disconcertingly intense gaze still focused on her. She asked finally, “Was it for an awful lot of money?”

  “It’s a nontrivial sum.”

  Julia was tempted to push further, to clarify, but in the end, what did it matter? Charles needed money, and Robeson, well, apparently he still felt he needed to teach her a lesson. She’d been a means to an end, nothing more. She took a deep breath and said, “I forgive you.”

  “Just like that?”

  Julia heard the surprise in his voice and briefly lifted one shoulder in answer. “I’m a vicar’s daughter. I’ve been taught not to hold grudges.”

  They were both quiet for a moment, and then Charles said, “I don’t have a right to know or a right to question, but I would be . . . curious about your history with Robeson, if you’d care to share it.”

  And suddenly Julia found that she did want to tell him—everything. To free herself, finally, from the foibles of her youthful self, to share details that she hadn’t even told Claire all those years ago.

  “Why?”

  Charles’s hesitation was brief but noticeable. “At the time I accepted this wager, I wasn’t thinking clearly. The situation and circumstances seemed . . . I don’t normally participate in such things.”

  “The seduction of vicar’s daughters?”

  “It’s not quite like that.”

  Julia considered for a moment, but really she’d already made her decision. She walked farther away from him and turned her back to him. She faced the window and adjusted the curtains, just for something to do. After the briefest of pauses, she said, “Robeson wasn’t Robeson at the time. We all called him Archie and knew him to be the third son. He and his father hadn’t gotten along, and he certainly hadn’t grown into his looks yet.”

  She paused and couldn’t prevent a cynical half smile. “At the time, he thought himself a bit of a poet, and I was . . . what I’ve always been, I suppose: overly talkative, awkward, hungry for an audience. We were well matched, in that sense. We were both used to being overlooked.” She could feel moisture building up behind her eyes and angrily brushed away the unwanted tears. “That’s a terrible thing to say when I’ve had such a blessed life is so many ways.”

  “It’s neither wrong nor terrible to want more out of life,” Charles interjected.

  Julia smiled gratefully. “It’s just that I’ve always been close to my father, but we only ever talk about academic inquiries, and sometimes I think that—well, that’s neither here nor there. Claire and I had grown apart, and Jack had just gone off to Cambridge.”

  “Jack?”

  “God, we really don’t know each other very well, do we? Not even the basic facts of—Jack LeMay, he’s a neighbor of ours, though he rarely stays in Munthrope these days. He’s always been one of my closest friends.”

  “Just a friend?” The tone of his question was quite placid, though there was a hard edge to the set of his lips, the lock of his jaw.

  “Yes, just friends. We discussed becoming more than friends one day, and it was an unintentionally hilarious moment. Jack and I, we’re more brother and sister than anything else.”

  “I see,” he said, and from his tone Julia believed that he did. Which was interesting—she’d never had to explain her friendship with Jack before; even Robeson had accepted Jack as a surrogate brother, perhaps because he’d been explicitly introduced as such.

  “Jack had just left and—well, I didn’t realize he’d be leaving. Jack’s family wasn’t particularly . . . that is, it wasn’t initially a certainty that he’d be able to go away for school. He was a little older but had just secured funding, and I was lonely.”

  Julia said nothing for a moment. It’d been a long time since she’d told anyone about what had happened that summer. “When I first met Archie, Robeson, he seemed similarly . . .” She trailed off, not knowing quite how to finish that sentence. “I don’t think most people even knew that he was . . . courting me. Even I didn’t realize, initially, that he thought of us as more than just friends. I mean, I’m the girl everyone is friends with, you know? We were walking one day, talking about astronomy—actually, I’m sure I was the one talking, and he was just listening, and he leaned in and kissed me. He said he couldn’t help himself.”

  Charles gave a short snort of derision.

  “Yes, well, hindsight always makes everything clearer, right? At the time, he seemed charming. And of course I was flattered.”

  Charles waited, not pushing or encouraging, knowing that there was more to the story. “It was the first time I’d really thought myself even capable of a romantic relationship, and I was charmed by him and by the whole process of being wooed. He was the first person, besides Jack, who listened to me talk about my articles and my experiments. At the time, I thought he was genuinely interested.” She paused again, noting a slew of details about the room: the light smattering of dust she really needed to do something about, the herbs that should have already been crushed and processed. She said finally in a small vo
ice, “It might have gone further except one day he had a little too much to drink.”

  She stopped. This was the part she’d never told anyone, not even Claire—at least, not in any sort of detail. She looked down, as if suddenly finding the bare rug covering most of the room’s floor to be unbearably fascinating. Her cheeks burned as she continued, feeling compelled now to finish her story. “The Clarks were giving a dance, and I didn’t realize quite how much he’d imbibed. He asked me to take a walk with him. He said it was a new moon and a clear night, that it’d be a good opportunity for me to point out some of the more obscure constellations I’d spoken of but that he’d never seen for himself. We went out back, not really a very scandalous thing, and when we were out of sight and hearing of the main party, he just . . . I mean, it wasn’t an attack—”

  “What was it, then?”

  Julia gave a rather affected shrug, “I don’t know. We argued about it afterward, and Robeson said it wasn’t an attack so much as a very natural progression of our relationship. He always maintained that I mistook his intention and that a woman in love would be willing to—wanting to—anyhow, I guess it doesn’t matter what he intended. I’ve worked with women who have been . . . who have had troubles with the men in their life for too long not to know how to defend myself. Jack trained me, long ago, on exactly what to do if such a situation ever arose. I’m not sure, I mean, in some ways I don’t even think I was thinking by then. He was holding me so close, and by then I could tell that he reeked of alcohol, and I just sort of panicked. If Jack hadn’t—” She stopped herself there, knowing that Jack wouldn’t like her divulging his secrets to a near stranger.

  “I’m very grateful to this Jack bloke.”

  Julia said quietly, “Yes, well, you and me both.”

  She gave a wan smile, and he asked, his tone deliberately light, “And so, that was that? You fended off his unwanted advances, and he didn’t try to force the issue further?”