by Mary Balogh
“Borne off by that notorious cutthroat pirate, Freddie,” she said. “Always Freddie. It was quite in character.”
They both chuckled and Julia smiled brightly from one to the other of them. “I have the most dreadful urge to race down the steep sick of the hill,” she said. “We used to do it, I remember, and try to pull to a halt before plunging into the stream and getting soggy shoes, stockings, and hems. I am so glad that Aunt Sarah did not come today. Daniel is nowhere in sight, is he?”
“I saw him at the bottom of the hill walking with Uncle Paul and Uncle Henry,” Camilla said.
“Good.” Julia smiled that radiant, mischievous smile again, the one that Malcolm found so appealing. “Because here I go. I think Freddie and Les are down there. Would anyone care to join me?”
Without waiting for an answer, she gathered up her skirt, just as she had done at Culver Castle in order to run up the hill, and went racing off down the steep slope. She shrieked as she gathered speed.
Malcolm and Camilla looked at each other and smiled. “Some people,” Camilla said, “seem able to resist the urge to grow up, don’t they?”
“But she is not childish,” Malcolm said. “She is delightful.”
“Daniel would disagree,” Camilla said. “But poor Daniel has not felt free simply to enjoy life since Papa died when he was only fourteen. I wish for both their sakes it could have been much later.”
“Death is the one thing we have almost no control over,” Malcolm said. “We can only make the most of life as it is presented to us day by day.”
“Which is exactly what I have been telling myself of late,” she said. “Do you remember all those games we played, Malcolm? You were always my great hero, you know, because you were six years older than I and always appeared dependable and strong. And then before I knew it you were too old to play any longer.”
“But I continued to dream of rescuing you from dragons or highwaymen or quicksand or whatever danger presented itself to my imagination long after I stopped playing,” he said.
“Did you?” She laughed and looked up at him with interest. “You always appeared so grave. I think a great deal more goes on inside you than ever appears to other people, does it not? It was no good with Julia, Malcolm?”
“I could think of nothing to say,” he said ruefully. “I felt dull and tongue-tied. I am dull compared to someone like Julia, Camilla.”
“Do you love her?” she asked.
He thought for a moment “No,” he said. “There has to be an emotional attachment, doesn’t there? I admire her greatly. I always have. Am I a hopeless case?”
She laughed. “Because you can only admire a certain lady but not love her?” she said. “By no means. One day you will love, Malcolm, and you will feel neither awkward nor dull nor inferior. There is a lady somewhere who is just right for you.”
“She had better find me, then,” he said. “I am not sure I would have the courage to find her.” He laughed, something be rarely did.
They strolled along the top of the hill and down the gentler slope, talking amiably about nothing in particular.
* * *
The three men were walking along beside the stream, enjoying the shade from the hot rays of the sun that the trees afforded. Though their minds were not really on their physical comforts. They were deep into a discussion of the desirability of parliamentary reform and the possibilities of its ever happening when the government was made up of men in whose interest it was to keep things as they were.
“Of course,” Uncle Paul said, “there is always the danger of revolution along the French lines if the government proves quite implacable.”
“I think not,” Uncle Henry said. “Look what happened in France when it was tried, Paul. Englishmen are more sensible.”
“Let’s hope English gentlemen are too,” the earl said, “and do something in the name of justice and fair play before it is too late. Reform must come, I believe.”
But their discussion was broken into by the sound of a wild shriek and they all turned their heads to look up the hill.
“The children at play,” Uncle Henry said with a chuckle.
“Julia at play,” Uncle Paul said, laughing outright. “There is not another child in sight.”
She was hurtling down the hill, quite alone, at a pace that was going to have her either losing her balance and tumbling down the steepest part of the slope at the bottom or else plunging headlong into the stream. The earl sprinted back the way he had come to save her from the latter fate, at least.
She almost bowled him off his feet. If he had not caught her by the waist and lifted her and twirled her right about, he would have been flat on his back and she would have been spread-eagled on top of him. She was laughing when her feet touched the ground again. Until she looked up and saw who her savior was.
“I might have guessed it,” she said breathlessly. “It could not possibly have been anyone else but you, could it, Daniel?”
A small, soft, warm waist. Those breasts heaving against his chest again. If he dipped his head a mere few inches, he would he able to taste her lips. She would taste sweet. He would be able to taste the inside of her mouth with his tongue. And he could easily part company with his sanity altogether during what remained of the month at Primrose Park, he thought, coming back to his senses in the nick of time. He put her firmly away from him and dropped his hands. The uncles, he noticed, were walking on after yelling some witticism and doing a deal of laughing.
“I know what it is,” Julia said, frowning up at him. “You have an identical twin, don’t you? No, there have to be more than two. Quadruplets? Sextuplets, maybe? That’s right. There are six of you, Daniel, aren’t there? I have discovered your secret. For most of my time—oh, a little more than most—I am busy doing, the most blameless, most decorous things. But whenever I do, on the rarest of occasions, decide to kick up my heels and show a little enthusiasm for life, there is one of the six of you to confront me with compressed lips and contemptuous eyes and a lecture two yards long and inches thick with dust. It is quite disgusting.”
“If there are six of me,” he said, “there must be twelve of you, Julia. Don’t you realize how covered with bruises and cuts you would be if you had lost your balance?”
“But I did not,” she said.
“Or how wet you would be if I had not caught you?”
“But you did,” she said, “more is the pity. Did you have to be just here at just this moment, Daniel?”
“Did you?” he asked, glowering at her.
“Camilla rescued me at the top of the hill,” she said, “bless her heart. And I was so relieved that I had to do something quite—”
“Reckless?” he said. “Dangerous?”
“Those are the words,” she said, flashing him a smile.
“What did she rescue you from?” he asked. “A wild boar?”
“A very tame bore, actually,” she said, laughing. “Though it is dreadful of me to say so and I feel quite ashamed for not being able to resist the pun. I am sure Malcolm is not really a bore. He reads and studies a great deal, does he not? He must know all sorts of interesting things. If he could only talk about some of them! I could get nothing out of him except stammerings and fixed stares. And yet he sought me out. I caught Camilla’s eye and yelled out ‘Help’ silently. She came, and I rewarded her by abandoning them. Poor Camilla. It was dreadfully mean of me. Especially when she had to suffer his company all the way from the house.”
“I take it, then,” he said, “that Malcolm has not made you an offer yet?”
“Oh, dear, no,” she said. “Though I am sure that was why he came to talk to me. Why else would he have done so? He never has before. But he could not get the words out. That water looks very inviting. I suppose you would be outraged if I removed my slippers and stockings and paddled in it. Wouldn’t you?”
And find himself subjected to the view of her bare feet and ankles? Yes, he would be outraged. Very.
�
��Silence, just as with Malcolm,” she said. “Though your answer speaks loudly from your eyes. Very well, I shall stroll with ladylike decorum at your side, Daniel, since I am sure you are too much the gentleman to go striding off and leave me alone here. I shall even take your arm since you are offering it. There. The thing with Malcolm is that one gets the feeling he is thinking all sorts of profound things, which he forgets to put into words. It is very disconcerting.”
“So you have not made your choice yet?” he said. “I thought perhaps you were settling things with Gussie up on the parapets of Culver Castle a few days ago.”
“Oh, don’t remind me of that,” she said. “I suppose you plan to do so every time we are alone together, don’t you, Daniel? My great humiliation. I gave those slippers to my maid, by the way. They are a size too large for her, but she was quite delighted. No, I really could not marry Gussie, though he was quite willing to give it a try. He is far too good a friend to be my husband.”
“Is it not desirable to be friendly with your husband?” he asked.
‘‘Friendly, yes,” she said. “But not bosom pals, Daniel. I would die of embarrassment when we . . .”
“Would you?” he said. “I thought you were incapable of feeling embarrassment, Julia. Except when you are caught out in some weakness, like being terrified to descend castle stairs, for example.”
“I don’t like the topic of this conversation at all,” she said. “I suppose it is the topic of a large number of conversations these days, though, isn’t it? Whom will Julia marry? I hate it. Let us turn the tables. Whom will you marry, Daniel? I suppose it would be entirely in your nature not to marry at all. I cannot imagine that it would be easy for you to find a woman worthy of your great dignity and consequence. But of course you will marry, nevertheless, because you are always dutiful and it is your duty to marry and set up your nursery someday soon so that the succession will be assured. Am I right?”
“You are right,” he said curtly. His anger felt almost like hurt, he thought in some surprise. Must it be assumed that his sense of duty and responsibility made him a cold and an unfeeling man? Incapable of tenderness? He was not incapable of the finer feelings.
“Well,” she said, “then you must be looking about you. You were in London for the Season when Aunt Millie summoned you, weren’t you? Were you shopping at the marriage mart? And had you singled out anyone special, Daniel?”
Blanche. He did not want to discuss Blanche with Julia.
“Your silence speaks louder than words,” she said. “What is she like? Is she pretty?”
“Small,” he said, “and delicate. And blonde. Exquisitely lovely.”
“Ah,” she said. “My antithesis. But then she would have to be. And is she worthy of you, Daniel? Is she very ladylike and proper? Will she make a perfect countess?”
“She is everything that is decorous,” he said. “I would not know one moment of anxiety with her. Only pride.”
“Ah,” she said and was quiet for a while. “Do you love her, Daniel?”
Love Blanche? Did he love her? The word was not appropriate. It had nothing to do with anything. Blanche was everything that he wanted and needed. And she was more than pleasing to the eye. He could have a life of peace and contentment with Blanche.
“Let me put it another way,” she said. “Do you want to put yourself inside her?”
“The devil!” he said, coming to an abrupt halt.
“You were the first to say the words,” she said. “Beside the lake a few mornings ago, remember? You wished to shock me. So you cannot accuse me of saying something quite improper without accusing yourself in the same breath. Well, do you?”
“No!” he said. “Of course I do not— Julia, I could shake you. I could shake you until your teeth rattle.”
“That makes a change,” she said. “So you don’t. I suppose that is not important when you are choosing a wife. A very proper wife. Only when you are choosing a mistress. Oh, don’t look outraged, Daniel. 1 am not a green girl. I have heard of the existence of mistresses. But I don’t think it would be a very joyful marriage if you could not take all the pleasures there are from it. Would it?”
He inhaled deeply. No other woman—no, not just no other lady, but no other woman—would think of holding such a discussion with a man. Good Lord, how did she come to know of the difference between respect for a lady and lust for a woman? And how did she come to disapprove of the fact that most gentlemen chose to keep the two quite separate in their lives?
“Won’t your marriage be rather dull?” she asked.
“Julia.” He was speaking through his teeth, showing her as he did not wish to do that she had him rattled. He breathed inward again. “The woman I choose to marry and the quality of my future marriage are none of your concern. None whatsoever. Do you understand me?”
“I hate that question,” she said, “especially when it is posed in just that tone of voice. It is so despicably rhetorical. Do you enjoy the dull life, Daniel? Don’t you sometimes long for adventure? Don’t you sometimes long to break loose and do something quite—”
“Outrageous?” he said. “Daring? Dangerous? No, I don’t, Julia. I grew up several years ago. I have no wish to revert to childhood.”
“You grew up when you were fourteen,” she said. “I can remember when I first came here with Papa and Stepmama that you were fun-loving and always laughing. You and Freddie both. I was very young but I can remember that. You were like two gods to me. I can remember looking for you one day and being told that you had been confined to your room for the rest of the day after a thrashing. I can’t remember what mischief had provoked it.”
“I was a child, Julia,” he said. “Children get into mischief. It is part of growing up.”
“But you grew up too soon,” she said. “Fourteen is too soon, Daniel. Freddie was still having fun long after that.”
“Freddie is still having fun,” he said. “And a long way it has got him. I hope you have given up all thought of marrying him.”
She sighed. “And so we are back on the topic again,” she said. “He has kept his distance for the last few days. He just stands back and grins at me and looks at me in that lazy way of his and sometimes winks. I think he is waiting for everyone else to have his say before moving on to the next stage of his courtship. I look forward to seeing what it is. At least life is always exciting when Freddie is involved with it.”
“If you marry him, Julia,” he said, “I doubt you will be saying that to me in ten years’ time. Or even five. Don’t do it.”
She smiled up at him. “The trouble with you, Daniel,” she said, “is that you want to drag everyone else down to your level. You want us all to be sober and dull.”
He felt that strange mixture of anger and hurt again. If they had not been moving away from the stream and rounding the hill and coming in sight of other relatives, he might have clamped her arm to his side and pulled her to a halt and turned her to face him. He might have had it out with her. Face to face, toe to toe.
He was not dull. His life was not dull. It was rich with meaning—with relatives and friends and duties and responsibilities. And there was marriage in his future—with Blanche if he was fortunate—and children. A wife and a family. People of his own. People to relax with and laugh with and love with and have f— Yes, and have fun with. Fun did not have to be daring and reckless. It could simply be fun. It must be years since he had relaxed and had fun. Fifteen years, perhaps? Could it be that long? Was he really twenty-nine? Had all his youth passed him by since the unexpected death of his father had catapulted him out of boyhood and into an early manhood?
“Never say,” Julia said, “that you are going to let me have the last word, Daniel. How very disappointing you are sometimes.”
“Perhaps you had better hope, Julia,” he said, “that you only ever see me when I am sober and dull. Perhaps you would not wish to see me any other way.”
If he had expected to silence her, he was to be disappo
inted. She looked up at him with widened eyes and smiled in that special way she had of smiling, everything in her that was mischievous and impish lighting up her face. “Oh, Daniel,” she said, “that sounds so very interesting. For perhaps the first time in our lives you have piqued my curiosity.”
And she slipped her hand from his arm and went tripping off across the grass to join Stella and Viola, who were with Freddie and Les. The earl drew one more steadying breath. He had to admit that she did light up a day. Not at all in the way one might want it to be lit up, perhaps, but she did it nonetheless.
Would life be dull with Blanche? But he put the thought from him before it could take root and bring him doubts that he had no wish to entertain.
9
Frederick had had rather a nasty shock. Though perhaps jolt would be a more appropriate word, he thought, since it was a fairly minor happening. But it might be symptomatic of things to come, and then life would become uncomfortable.
He had had a note and a bill from one of his creditors. A fairly insignificant one—a bootmaker to whom he owed the trifling sum of a few hundred pounds. But if one had discovered his whereabouts, the chances were good that word would spread fast, and then there might be a flood of such notes.
There was nothing new in it. He was quite accustomed to ignoring the bills when his pockets were to let and paying off some of his more persistent creditors when he was in funds. Sometimes after all he had a streak of good luck just as sometimes he had a string of losses. But it was one thing to receive and ignore bills when one lived in bachelor rooms in town and quite another to do the same thing at Primrose Park. Someone else might get wind of them. His father, heaven forbid. Or Julia.
Another frustration of being in the country, of course, was that it gave him little opportunity to bring his fortunes about. And it was high time they came about. His losing streak had lasted altogether too long this time. He was due for some good luck. Of course there was the one potentially lucrative and quite acceptable game in progress at Primrose Park. A game it was becoming increasingly imperative that he win.