“Do you wish to attend Lady Rathbone’s house party over Whitsuntide?”
“Should I attend?” He leaned back in his chair. “What is Mrs. Boodle’s opinion?”
Julia shrugged. “Lady Rathbone’s all right. She can’t help being a perfect fool.”
He chuckled. “I cannot tell you, Julia, how much I appreciate your razor-sharp opinions. They spare me no end of trouble.”
She looked back at him with tongue-in-cheek sincerity. “I consider fielding the Felicia Vales and their matchmaking mamas as one of my most important responsibilities,” she told him gravely.
“Is Lady Rathbone a matchmaking mama? If so, that means she has an unmarried daughter, I take it?”
Julia, in the act of putting the invitation of Lady Rathbone on the pile of refusals, paused as she remembered that Flora Rathbone was a stunningly beautiful, intelligent, and charming young woman whose only reason for not being married was her justifiable discernment regarding her many suitors. Aidan, Julia realized, would be just the man to meet all of Flora’s high expectations, and vice versa. Before she could stop it, Julia felt a queer and unwarranted stab of pure jealousy.
“Well, Julia?” he prompted as she didn’t speak. “Do Lord and Lady Rathbone have an unmarried daughter?”
“I don’t know,” she lied, and then could have bitten her tongue off. What did it matter to her if Aidan chose to court Flora Rathbone? “That is,” she amended at once, “I believe the daughter is unmarried, but I don’t know very much about her. Would you . . . would you like to attend the house party and meet her?”
She made a great show of turning to the proper page in his appointment book, and then she looked up at him expectantly, pencil poised.
He was frowning. “The Rathbone house party is during the Whitsuntide recess, I believe you said?” When she nodded, his frown deepened. “I seem to remember I have another invitation during that fortnight.”
“Do you?” She was careful to sound wholly indifferent and keep any hint of relief out of her voice. “Mr. Lambert has nothing written down,” she added as she flipped through the pages of his appointment book. “And I know I have not confirmed any invitations for you during Whitsuntide.”
“I’ve got it,” he said, snapping his fingers. “I was invited to your Aunt Gennie’s house party.”
Julia stared at him, thoroughly taken aback. Her Aunt Eugenia would have loved Aidan to attend her house party, for the status accorded to those who entertained dukes was enormous, but with Julia there as well, decorum had precluded issuing an invitation. “Aunt Gennie invited you to our house party at Danbury Downs?”
“Not Eugenia,” he said, shaking his head. “Paul invited me the day we played tennis.”
This was becoming more surprising by the moment. “You and Paul played tennis?”
Aidan smiled a bit ruefully. “I think he was holding out the olive branch.”
“Possibly, but surely you didn’t accept? The invitation to the house party, I mean?”
“Not yet, but I should like to. I know it would raise a few eyebrows—you’re going, I assume?” When she nodded, he continued, “There will be gossip, of course, I realize that, but I’m willing to risk it. I’ve missed my friendship with Paul. We used to be good friends, you know.”
She bit her lip, feeling a pang of guilt, appreciating in the sudden, stilted silence that in addition to everything else he’d lost as a result of last August, he’d lost a friend. “So you wish to come to Danbury Downs, then?”
“That rather depends on you. I wouldn’t want you to feel awkward because I’m there. Would you rather I didn’t go?”
“It’s not up to me,” she said at once, forcing a laugh. “Why should I care?” She paused, but a mischievous imp inside her impelled her to add, “I’m not sure it’ll be your cup of tea, though. We always have silly games at our parties, and you don’t seem the sort for charades and blindman’s bluff.”
“If the parlor games are not to my liking, I can always play chess with Paul or find a foursome for whist or bridge.”
“There will be dancing, too,” she warned, “and since you’re unattached, Aunt Gennie will be forever urging you to dance with the wallflowers because she knows you’re too nice to say no.”
“I’m not particularly fond of dancing, as you are aware, but I have come to accept the fact that a man looking for a wife has to dance with many women. I don’t mind the wallflowers, because that’s usually just shyness, and I’m a rather reserved fellow myself. But I leave it to you, Julia, to keep any Lady Felicias at bay, and their mamas, too.”
“That’s all very well, but I don’t know how we’ll keep Aunt Cora away from you.” When he looked at her without understanding, she went on, “Our Aunt Cora, Lady Esterhazy, is quite a character. Because of precedence, you’ll escort Aunt Gennie into dinner and sit next to her, but on your other side, you’re sure to have Aunt Cora.”
“So? Is she dull?”
“Dull? Quite the contrary. She’s eighty-two, and terribly naughty. She’ll rub your thigh under the table in a most licentious manner.”
Aidan actually laughed at that. “I think I can hold my own with Aunt Cora.”
“You really want to go?”
“Yes, I do. That is,” he added, “as long as you don’t play that god-awful ragtime music you’re so inexplicably fond of just to provoke me.”
That reference to the Marlowes’ house party two years earlier when she’d flicked him on the raw by playing bawdy music on the piano impelled her to give him a look of mock apology. “Sorry about that.”
“You’re not the least bit sorry,” he accused, but he was smiling as he said it. “You relished every minute of tormenting me with that music.”
“Well, yes,” she admitted, laughing, but then she remembered what else had occurred at the Marlowes’ party, and she sobered at once. “I’m glad you can smile about the time you spent at Pixy Cove, Aidan. It must have been awful for you, what with Sunderland there and Trix breaking your engagement and all. And I ragged you endlessly, I know. It’s just that I find teasing you almost irresistible. You were so scrupulously polite to me, and yet underneath, I could feel your disapproval like the heat from a radiator.”
“Disapproval?” He gave her an odd, thoughtful look. “Yes, I suppose you could call it that.”
“What else would I call it? You were practically glowering.”
“I wasn’t glowering.”
“Oh yes, you were, and it was like waving a red flag to a bull, I’m afraid.”
“Ah, so being forced to listen to that awful ragtime music was my own fault?”
“Yes,” she answered at once with her most charming smile. “Yes, it was.”
He grinned back at her. “Then thank God this time I have something to hold over your head.”
“You do?”
His grin widened. “Play that ragtime next week, Julia, and I’ll sack you.”
She laughed merrily. “How unfair! And unchivalrous.”
“It’s born of desperation.”
“All right, all right. I promise not to play ragtime. But,” she added, “I can’t promise not to find other ways to tease you. Are you sure you really want to come?”
He nodded. “I’m looking forward to it. And who knows?” he added, “I might meet a smashing girl and fall madly in love, just like you wanted me to.”
Once again, she felt an inexplicable pang, but she again set it aside. “Well, that’s the rub, isn’t it?” she said lightly, pasting on a smile. “I fear our definitions of suitable are very different.”
“No actresses, Julia,” he said with a stern look of warning. “No music hall singers, no can-can dancers.”
She sighed. “Really, Aidan, must you spoil all my fun?”
One week later, Aidan arrived at Danbury Downs, and as his hired carriage, open to a warm May afternoon, pulled into the tree-lined drive, he couldn’t help remembering all the times he’d visited Beatrix here during their cou
rtship and engagement. He didn’t feel any sting at the memory, perhaps because his feelings for Beatrix had always been fond and affectionate, agreeable but not earth-shattering—a combination he’d deemed the perfect recipe for domestic bliss. His feelings about her cousin, however, had always been vastly different—primal and volcanic and not likely to incite anything but chaos. Out of that chaos, however, he intended to bring order back to his life.
It was teatime when he arrived, and about a dozen people were gathered for that afternoon ritual around a wrought-iron table beneath one of the enormous elms that shaded the south lawn. Other guests strolled the grounds or played croquet, and in the distance, more were gathered around the tennis lawn. His upbringing dictated being taken to the front entrance of any home where he’d been invited to stay, but when he saw that Julia and Paul were among those having tea on the lawn, he abandoned his usual preference for formality. Reaching up, he tapped his driver’s shoulder. “Stop here, Mr. Robinson,” he directed, and the gnarled old man, who’d brought him to Danbury many times before, pulled the carriage to a halt.
Aidan stepped down from the landau, and Mr. Robinson carried on, taking Dawes and the luggage on to the servants’ entrance, as a series of loud, staccato barks issued from the vicinity of the tea table.
Spike, he realized, remembering too late Julia’s ill-mannered, belligerent bulldog. As he approached the group on the lawn, Spike jumped up from his place beside Julia on the grass and came toward him a few paces, barking furiously, causing him to pause.
“Spike!” Julia admonished, and the dog stopped barking, but as Aidan circled around Julia to greet Paul, Eugenia, and several other guests, the animal continued to watch him with a malevolent eye, shifting position to remain between his mistress and this new interloper at all times.
As he approached the tea table, Paul came forward to shake hands with him. “Glad you came, Trathen. I expect you know everyone,” he added, gesturing to those in the immediate vicinity.
“Not everyone, Paul,” Julia corrected. “Honestly, you are terrible about social introductions. Sorry, Trathen,” she added with a glance at him and then at the red-haired girl seated beside Paul at the table. “Sorry, Eileen. If it were up to my cousin, I fear no one would ever learn anyone’s name. “Eileen, may I present His Grace, the Duke of Trathen? Trathen, Miss Eileen DeWitt McGill.”
Aidan bowed, noting without interest an agreeably pretty freckled face and a pair of green eyes below an enormous straw hat before he returned his gaze to the woman on the blanket. Weight on her arms, Julia tilted her head back to look at him from beneath the narrow brim of her straw boater hat, and he could see both amusement and a spark of challenge in those big violet eyes. “You remember Spike, of course.”
“I do.” His only previous encounter with Julia’s dog had been brief, for that day at Gwithian, she’d had the animal tied, but he did remember that Spike had been equally ill-mannered on that occasion. “I didn’t realize he was to be a member of the house party.”
“Did Paul fail to mention that when he invited you?” She grinned. “I supposed he took it for granted that you knew. Spike goes everywhere with me, and I couldn’t have left the poor boy behind in London while I went to the country, could I?”
“I suppose that would have been too much to hope for,” he acknowledged, eying the animal with chagrin.
“Don’t you like dogs, Your Grace?” Miss McGill asked.
“In this case, it’s really more the other way about,” he told her. “This particular dog does not like me.”
“That’s not true,” Julia protested. “He adores you, really.”
Spike chose that moment to give a low, menacing growl.
“You mustn’t feel too badly about it, old chap,” Paul advised him as everyone laughed. “It’s not personal. Spike hates me, too. And Geoff, and any other man who comes within ten feet of Julie.”
Ah, he thought, glancing at the dog again with a new appreciation. Spike was the guardian at the gate. The question was why Julia felt she needed one.
“Spike is impossible, my dear Aidan,” Eugenia told him as she lifted the teapot. “Shall you have tea?”
At his nod, she proceeded to pour him a cup, and Aidan, defying a possible bite in the leg, passed Spike and his mistress and sat down in the empty chair beside Miss McGill.
“Not only does Spike growl at all the gentlemen,” Eugenia added as she stirred lemon and sugar into his cup, “he frightens the chickens down at the farm and chases my poor cat at every possible opportunity.”
“Perhaps he needs training,” Aidan suggested with a meaningful glance at Julia.
“Hear, hear,” Paul endorsed, lifting his teacup in salute.
“But Spike doesn’t chase the cat anymore,” Geoff put in, laughing. “Mama’s wrong about that. He’s grown too fat. Perhaps that’s the ticket, Trathen. Feed him crumpets under the table until he’s too stout to jump. That way, he can’t clamp his beastly jowls around a chap’s arm.”
“Won’t matter,” Paul put in. “We all have ankles.”
“I think you’re all very cruel to my poor Spike!” Julia cried. “He is trained, at least well enough to suit me. He’s my guard dog.” She looked at the animal, smiling fondly, and the bulldog bounded up to a sitting position at this sign of encouragement from his beloved mistress. He placed his forepaws on her thigh, and though his tail had been docked, his backside wiggled against the grass beneath his bum with ecstatic happiness as she patted his broad, wrinkled head. “He protects me, don’t you, boy?”
“Protects you?” Aidan echoed, surprised by her choice of words. “Protects you from what?”
There was a sudden, awkward silence. Aidan was watching Julia, saw her hand go still on the back of Spike’s neck and her fingers curl into the deep creases of the animal’s fur. He could feel her sudden tension, though he did not know its cause. “Are you in danger, Lady Yardley?” he asked.
“In danger?” Julia laughed. “How dramatic that sounds, rather like a gothic novel.”
Her voice was light, but her smile seemed artificial and her laughter forced, and though the others laughed with her, Aidan did not. He continued to study her thoughtfully, and she looked away, flushing slightly beneath his scrutiny. “You mustn’t take what I say so literally, Aidan,” she said after a moment. “Of course I’m not in danger. What an idea! But Spike is a loyal fellow, and he feels duty bound to look after me.” She resumed petting the dog. “Don’t you, sweetums?”
That particular nickname seemed singularly inappropriate for a man-hating, teeth-bearing beast, but Aidan kept that opinion to himself.
Conversation eddied around him, and though Julia participated, he did not. Instead, he wondered why a woman might choose to own a dog that possessed a particular animosity toward men. But as he looked at Julia, as he studied her artificial smile, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what her reasons might be.
Chapter Twelve
A large house party was a somewhat informal affair, particularly on the first day. Guests arrived by various means at various times, and the hosts were compelled to rush about at a frantic pace to make sure everyone was comfortably situated. Julia dashed off with her aunt just after Aidan’s arrival to see to other guests, he was shown to his room by the butler, Groves, and it was not until just before dinner that he saw Julia again.
When Groves sounded the Chinese gong in the staircase hall to signal that the evening meal would commence in fifteen minutes’ time, Aidan was already downstairs. Because he’d forgotten about the gong ritual at Danbury, and because he was in the library, which was within twenty feet of the immense Oriental instrument, and because Groves always sounded the gong with particular relish, Aidan dropped the book of Henley’s poetry he’d just pulled from the shelf and clamped his hands over his ears with a grimace the moment Groves put hammer to brass.
By the time Groves reappeared to sound the second gong announcing five remaining minutes, Aidan was more prepared. Open book in h
and, he was leaning against one of the marble columns that flanked the gong’s enormous black lacquer frame. The moment Groves had done his duty, Aidan stretched out his arm and clamped his fingers around the edge of the four-foot disk to stop the resonation, looking up from Henley’s “When I Was a King in Babylon” to meet the butler’s puzzled stare with a meaningful glance of his own. Groves gently hung the hammer back on its dragon-head hook without a word and departed.
Aidan let go of the now blissfully silent gong, and vowed to talk with Paul before the end of this visit about that useful modern device, the electric bell. He then returned to the library as hurried footsteps sounded along corridors overhead and various voices echoed down the staircase.
“Was that the second gong or did I imagine it?”
“It can’t be eight o’clock already.”
“I do believe it was the second gong.”
“It sounded so queer, not at all like the first.”
Smiling a little, Aidan returned to the library as members of the house party began pouring into the staircase hall from various other parts of the house. Uncaring that he’d been the cause of uncertainty among other, less punctual guests, he began searching for the place on the shelf to return the book he’d pulled out before joining the gathering throng in the staircase hall.
He was about to slide the book back into its place on the shelf when the French doors nearest him were suddenly flung back. He paused, looking up as Julia, dressed for dinner in ice-blue silk and long white gloves, stopped in the doorway. She didn’t see him, for she was looking back over her shoulder. “Spike,” she called, and gave a whistle, patting her hip. “C’mon, boy.”
She turned to come inside and stopped again at the sight of him standing only a few feet away. The bulldog waddled up to the doorway and stopped beside her, giving a low growl at the sight of Aidan, and then sitting back on his haunches as if quite satisfied he’d put this evil man in his place.
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