“In your sense of timing.” He pushed out a breath. It clouded in front of him. The temperature was dropping. He eyed the sky. Leaden clouds were moving in fast. He moved hastily forward, weaving around his friends until he reached Julia. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, sweetheart, but we need to get off this mountain.”
“We haven’t reached the top yet,” she said. “The view is so lovely from there.”
“I truly am sorry.” He set his hands on her arms. “The weather is turning. We don’t want to be up here when it does.”
She, too, looked up at the gathering clouds. “Are we in danger?”
“Not yet. But mountains are not the best places to be in a storm.”
“This happened the first time we were up here,” she said. “Fate does not seem to approve of these excursions.”
Digby dropped a hand on Lucas’s shoulder. “You don’t seem overly anxious to get us off the mountain.”
“I like her better,” he answered.
Julia hooked her arm through Lucas’s. To the gathered Gents, she said, “Bad luck, boys. You can shelter in the shepherd’s hut.”
Lucas met Aldric’s eye. The man actually smiled, something he seldom did. Julia was weaving her spell, and Lucas couldn’t have been happier about it. She was becoming increasingly knit into the fabric of his life. He simply had to find a way to make certain that didn’t change.
***
Julia’s head hurt. It often did during inclement weather. She’d returned to Brier Hill soaked to the bone, her toes so cold they’d actually stopped aching. She was so exhausted she’d taken her evening meal on a tray in her room and was, despite the early hour, sitting in bed, tucked under the blankets, letting her pillows do all the work of holding her up.
Yet, her heart had seldom been lighter.
The Gents had welcomed her with open arms. She had friends. Brothers.
Lucas had been so attentive and affectionate. He’d enjoyed her company. Her entire heart belonged to the Lucas she’d spent the last twenty-four hours with. He looked out for her without looking down on her. He included her in his larks and adventures without making her feel as though she held him back.
To this Lucas, she wasn’t a weight. To this Lucas, she wasn’t an unwanted obligation. With the Gents taking her in as one of their own, she could worry less that this Lucas would forget all about her the first time a new adventure called to him.
There was hope.
A light knock sounded at the sitting room door. Her heart flipped over. Only one person would come to her room from there.
“Come in.”
The door opened. It was, in fact, Lucas. “You didn’t come down for dinner. Is anything the matter?”
“My head aches, and I’m still cold from the rain.”
He came inside and crossed to her bed. “Are you ill?”
“I don’t think so.”
Lucas sat on the edge of her bed, his concerned gaze studying her. “Are you certain? There is a physician a few villages away. I’ll send for him.”
She shook her head. “I truly do not think I’m ill. Mostly, I’m cold. The rain soaked all the way to my bones.” She leaned more heavily against her pillows. “Mrs. Parks had the fire lit. I’ll warm up soon enough.”
He looked over at the fire, then around the room. “Your bedchamber doesn’t reek of perfume. The airing out must have been successful.”
She laughed. “Yes, thank the heavens. The smell was overwhelming. And you, to your delight, I’m certain, will not feel obligated to offer your room as a refuge.”
“I didn’t offer out of obligation, Julia.”
“Out of pity, then.”
Lucas placed his hands on the bed, one on either side of her. He leaned toward her, stopping mere inches away. She could hear his every breath, could feel it tickle her lips.
“Not pity, Julia,” he whispered.
She tried to swallow, but her heart was lodged so firmly in her throat that it proved impossible to dislodge.
His lips brushed softly over hers. Her breath caught. He didn’t pull away. His kiss was quietly tender, but her heart responded loudly.
She ran her fingers lightly over the silk of his jacket collar. His hand moved to cup the back of her head. His kiss grew more fervent but no less gentle. Julia utterly melted. Her fingers slid to his neck, where his throat lay bare above his lace collar.
She felt him pull in a shaky breath. The kiss abruptly stopped.
She kept her eyes closed, not wanting the moment to end.
“You are feverish, sweetheart.” Lucas spoke quietly and not entirely steadily. “You need to rest.”
She hazarded a glance. He slid off the bed and stood, then moved to a chest in the corner and pulled out a thick wool blanket.
She lay back more fully, moving about, searching for a comfortable position.
Lucas returned with the blanket and sat next to her, his back against the headboard, his legs stretched out, feet crossed at the ankles. He flicked his blanket out, and it fell neatly over his legs and lap. He snatched a book off her bedside table and set it on his lap. “Now, where did you leave off reading about the adventures in St. Kilda?”
She turned onto her side, facing him. “You are going to read to me?”
He ran his thumb over the page edges. “Until you fall asleep.”
“You don’t have to if you’d rather sleep in your own room.” Did he hear the hope in her voice?
“Waking up this morning and seeing you there . . . I don’t want to miss that tomorrow, Julia. So, if you will permit it, I would like to stay.”
“I would like that as well.” She tucked her hands beneath her cheek, smiling as his words washed over her. He wanted to see her when his eyes first opened in the morning. He wanted them to be together.
A gentleman who felt that way wouldn’t disappear without warning. He would be eager to be with her, reluctant to be away. He might even, one day, wish to take her with him on one of his trips. She hadn’t done any traveling, but she had enjoyed reading about the far-off places in the books he’d given her. She could almost imagine herself visiting them.
“When last I read about St. Kilda,” she said, “the brave climbers had only just arrived at the island with their long ropes.”
He adjusted her blanket. “Close your eyes, sweetheart. Let yourself rest.”
“Thank you for staying,” she whispered.
Lucas flipped through the book before settling on a page. In a soothing and soft voice, he began to read, “‘They furnish themselves with ropes to carry them through the more inaccessible rocks; of these ropes there are only three in the whole island, each of them twenty-four fathoms in length; and they are knit together and lengthened by tying the one to the other . . .’”
She closed her eyes and let his familiar voice soothe her into a warm and restful sleep, filled with dreams of mountains and climbing and soft, soul-melting kisses.
Chapter Twenty-Five
When Julia awoke the next morning, her head no longer ached, she was blessedly warm, and sunlight spilled deep into her room. She had, it seemed, slept half the morning away. The blanket Lucas had used the night before lay folded at the foot of the bed. He had likely been up for hours. He had never been one to let even a moment of the day slip away from him. Forever moving and going and chasing down the next adventure. His boundless energy had been a boon to their childhood exploits.
How sweet he had been the night before, worried for her health, wishing to help, wanting to be beside her. Those were sentiments she’d often dreamed of experiencing in her marriage. During her loneliest moments, she’d taken comfort in those dreams.
She slipped from her bed and, barefooted, tiptoed to the door of the circular room. But he was not inside. More likely than not, he was in the ground-floor sitting room with the rest of
the Gents.
Lucy had her quickly dressed and presentable. The long curls her abigail had left loose from her chignon bounced as Julia hurried to find the gathered gentlemen. They were precisely where she’d guessed. All eyes turned to her. A chorus of welcomes greeted her, and she was waved in.
“We thought you might never wake,” Digby said with a friendly smile.
“And,” Kes added, “Lucas threatened to shoot the lot of us if you woke on our account.”
Digby nodded solemnly. “It has been a most unnerving first half of the day. It was all I could do not to fret my handkerchief into a most unbecoming twist.”
Though she acknowledged their jesting with a quick and indulgent smile, she did not pause until she reached Lucas’s side. He gently took her hands and pressed a light kiss to her forehead. “Are you feeling better, sweetheart?”
“Quite.”
He set his arm around her, so easily and comfortably affectionate. How very different their time together was from what it had been weeks earlier.
She turned to look at their gathered friends. “Has your tyrannical host kept you imprisoned in here all morning?”
“Oui.” Henri shook his head in mock misery. “No matter that the sun is shining, we have seen none of it.”
Lucas shooed away that argument. “Plenty enough sneaks in through the windows. That is more than sufficient.”
“Who is acting the role of monarch now?” Kes said beneath his breath.
“The jester is stealing your crown,” Julia said to Digby. “Does that not worry you?”
“We have our ways of reclaiming it.” The devilment in his eyes only made him even more impossibly handsome. This gentleman, no doubt, had broken hearts all over the kingdom and likely beyond.
All the Gents were intriguing and congenial in their own ways. What a fascinating group they made. Having them in her home made it more appealing as well. She had a role, a promise of laughter and smiles. Looking up at Lucas, she could see that he, too, was pleased with the gathering. No sedate, empty homes for her husband. He, she suspected, thrived on a cacophony of voices and the chaos of people sharing the space he did.
But do I? She’d been on her own for so much of her life that she couldn’t be certain. Before the last eight years, before she’d been left entirely alone, her life in Collingham could not have been described any differently. And she had loved it. She had cherished it. Those days of madness had breathed life into her existence, a feeling that had eluded her ever since.
“Have we any plans for today?” she asked Lucas. “Mountaineering? Entertaining Pooka? Parlor games?”
“The ground took a soaking all night, so we would do best to leave the mountain to itself today, but I am in favor of anything else you’d like to propose.”
“Careful there, Jonquil,” Aldric said. “You’ll find yourself committed to something humiliating, with no honorable means of avoiding it.”
Lucas flashed her a smile that melted her as surely as his kiss had the night before. “Julia imagined up the very best larks when we were children. Stanley and I readily abandoned whatever comparatively dull adventures we’d thought of when she proposed something. I’m more than willing to defer to her on the matter of entertaining our guests.”
The Gents watched her, intrigued and friendly.
Niles broke the temporary silence. “What is it to be, Our Julia? Your wish is our command.”
To her delight, she wasn’t the least intimidated or nervous at being handed so unexpected a responsibility. Indeed, she felt more like her twelve-year-old self than she had since the day Lucas had left Lampton Park.
“I believe I would like to play the games Lucas and I enjoyed most as children. Hide-and-seek. Chase. I’m not certain I could climb a tree at this point, fashion being the limitation it is. I would enjoy a game of riddles or yes-and-no.”
“And jokes revolving around inappropriate noises?” Kes asked. “I’ve been told that was a staple of your early years together.”
Julia grinned. “We may be reliving our childhood, but we have to do so with some decorum.”
“I would like to formally state my preference for hide-and-seek,” Lucas said. “Gentlemen’s fashions do not easily lend themselves to those other activities either. We’d best not press our luck too far, too quickly.”
“What say you, Gents?” she asked the others. “Care to indulge yourselves in a very sophisticated game of hide-and-seek?”
“A game of strategy? Yes, please.” The General appeared entirely in his element.
The others agreed just as readily. It was not an activity she would have suggested to the attendees of grand Society functions nor to most of the finer families near Collingham—indeed, those two groups would warrant entirely different suggestions—but this gathering, she knew, was perfectly primed for a hilariously unsophisticated afternoon.
“We shall play one seeker and the rest hiding,” Julia suggested. “Once discovered, hiders become seekers. The last to be found is the winner.”
“Capital.” Aldric rose. “I nominate Niles as the first seeker. I suspect he will be surprisingly good at it.”
Quiet, unobtrusive Niles—Puppy—smiled broadly. “Prepare to be amazed.”
“I am always prepared for amazement,” Digby tossed back. “It is boredom, rather, which catches me unawares.”
“For this first round,” Lucas said, “we will limit ourselves to the ground floor, servants’ areas not included. I will not endure the wrath of Mrs. Parks. She would happily skin the lot of us alive on the flimsiest of excuses.”
“An unfortunate end, to be sure,” Kes said.
Niles placed himself in a chair facing the corner of the room. He held up his pocket watch for them all to see. “I will allow a full three minutes, in deference to the vastness of your potential hiding area. Hide well, my friends.”
It was quite possibly the largest number of words Julia had ever heard him speak. She remarked on that as she and Lucas slipped from the sitting room.
“People often assume he is shy or perhaps a touch intellectually deficient. Neither is the case. As you know him better, he’ll speak to you more.”
“I like your friends, Lucas.”
“Your friends now as well.” He squeezed her fingers. “And your houseguests, all of whom are having a glorious time.”
“We are proving ourselves adept hosts, it would seem.” She grinned up at him as he looked from one doorway to the next, clearly unsure where he meant to hide. “We should host gatherings more often.”
He stopped his perusal and focused solely on her. “Do you mean that?”
“I would enjoy a household that is this alive on a regular basis.”
Something very like relief spread over his features. “So would I. Life is meant to be lived, and that is best accomplished surrounded by people who make that life full.”
Henri rushed past on his way into the dining room. “Do not stand about, mes amis. Time will slip away from you.”
“Find a very good hiding spot, my dear,” Lucas warned theatrically. “The Gents are cutthroat.” On that laughing declaration, he moved back in the direction of the dining room.
Julia hadn’t felt so giddy in years. Her home was filled with laughter and voices and friendship. She and Lucas were finally claiming an easier companionship than they’d found thus far. They’d also discovered they shared a mutual preference for a bustling and energetic household. That boded well.
The three minutes they’d been allotted to hide must have been nearly used up. Julia lifted her dress enough to move swiftly toward the stairs at the back of the entry hall, then pulled open the nearly hidden door of a tall coat closet, one disguised to match the wood paneling. It was sufficiently large to hide in but well disguised enough to be forgotten by those doing the seeking. Utterly perfect.
She slip
ped inside. The space was more than sufficient. Thank the heavens they were not undertaking the version of this juvenile game that required the seekers to hide with those they discovered. Even one additional person would make the space quite snug.
She pulled the door closed using the small interior ring and waited.
After a time, she could hear a voice but couldn’t sort out what was being said. It was likely Niles beginning his search. What a lark they were having. She felt like a little girl again, racing down the corridors of Lampton Park with Harriet and Charlotte, Philip and James, Stanley and Lucas. Her darling, wonderful Lucas.
She heard footsteps. A voice now and then. In the dark of the closet, she wasn’t certain how many people passed by, how many had been found, how much time had passed. But her enjoyment didn’t abate.
Even when the closet door inched open unexpectedly, she didn’t feel any disappointment. This was but the first of many games that day. The first of many gatherings of friends they would have in the years to come. This wasn’t an ending; this was a beginning.
From the other side of the doorway, Lucas grinned. “I knew you’d be in here. I ought to have claimed the spot myself.”
“Would it not be more fun to hide somewhere you aren’t likely to be found? That is how you win.”
He laughed as he glanced over his shoulder, then slipped inside. “My sweet, adorable Julia. Winning is not at all the goal here.”
“I believe the General would disagree with you.”
“The General is something of a sapskull.” Lucas pulled the door closed, casting the small space into darkness.
“This isn’t the version of hide-and-seek where we hide with the person we’ve found,” she reminded him.
“Oh, I fully intend to declare you found. Kes is eluding capture and will, I have no doubt, emerge conqueror.”
He’d lowered his voice, so she lowered hers. The closet was so small, they were within easy whispering distance. “Then why have you come in here rather than simply claiming me for the seekers’ team?”
“Because it has occurred to me that you haven’t any idea how very diverting it can be to spark a bit while hiding in the dark.”
Forget Me Not (The Gents Book #1) Page 19