SLIGHTLY WICKED

by Mary Balogh

  “Home?” Rannulf stared blankly at her.

  “To Beaconsfield in Wiltshire,” she explained. “To the rectory. Home, Ralf, where she feels she belongs.”

  He stared at her, aghast.

  “Bloody hell,” he said.

  It spoke volumes of the Bedwyns that neither lady displayed even the slightest evidence of shock.

  It rained through most of the night, slowing the progress of the stagecoach and a couple of times causing Judith’s stomach to clench in terror as the coach slithered on particularly bad stretches of mud. But by morning the sky had cleared and the sun was shining again, and there were familiar faces to smile at her and call greetings to her when she was set down outside the inn in Beaconsfield.

  They were hardly reassuring. As she trudged along the street toward the rectory at the other end of the village, she felt as if she trod on her heart every step of the way. She had not even taken a final look at him, and foolishly she had kept on panicking throughout the seemingly interminable journey, not being able to bring his face into focus in her mind.

  Her story had had a happy ending. She kept telling herself that. Both she and Bran had been cleared of the robbery charges against them and the true culprit caught. Grandmama’s jewels had been recovered—at least she assumed they would all be recovered since Horace had not denied having the rest of them at his lodgings. She was going home—Aunt Effingham would certainly not want her back at Harewood now. It was unlikely that she would want any of them there, and so even Hilary might be safe from the misery of going there to live.

  But it did not feel like a happy ending. Her heart was crushed and she thought it might take longer than forever to heal.

  Besides, it was not a completely happy ending even if she ignored the state of her heart. Nothing had been solved for her family. Quite the contrary. Bran was hopelessly in debt, and it seemed as if the only ways he could think of to get himself out of debt were to gamble and to beg Papa for help. He would be forced to take that latter course soon, and then they would all descend into poverty indeed. It seemed altogether possible that Bran’s ultimate destination was going to be debtors’ prison. Perhaps Papa’s too.

  No, it was a miserable morning in every way it was possible to be miserable. But even as she thought it, the door of the rectory opened and Pamela and Hilary came dashing outside, Hilary shrieking.

  “Jude!” she cried. “Jude, you have come home.”

  Judith set down her bag in the roadway by the garden gate and laughed with happiness despite herself as first one sister and then the other flung themselves into her arms and hugged all the breath out of her. Cassandra came more slowly behind them smiling warmly and holding out both arms as she came.

  “Judith,” she said, hugging her too. “Oh, Jude, we have been so afraid that you would not come home and we would never see you again.” Tears were welling from her eyes. “I know there must be an explanation. I just know it. Where is Bran?”

  But before Judith could reply, she became aware of her father’s stern, silent figure in the doorway. Invisible fingers of doom reached out to envelop her.

  “Judith,” he said without raising his voice—it was his pulpit voice, “you will come into my study, if you please.”

  Obviously they had heard something from Harewood.

  “I have just come from London, Papa,” she said. “Grandmama’s jewels have all been recovered. It was Horace Effingham who stole them with the sole purpose of incriminating Branwell and me. But he has been caught and has confessed. There were more witnesses than just Bran and me, the Duke of Bewcastle among them. I daresay all will be explained to Grandmama and Uncle George within the next few days.”

  “Oh, Jude.” Cassandra was weeping in earnest now. “I knew it. I did, I did. I never doubted you for a moment.”

  Mama came elbowing past Papa then and rushed down the path to catch Judith up in a mighty hug. “I was in the kitchen,” she cried. “Girls, why did you not call me? Judith, my love. And Branwell has been cleared too? That boy is a trouble to poor Papa, but he could never be a thief any more than you could. You came on the coach?” She smoothed back a lock of hair that had fallen from beneath Judith’s bonnet. “You look dead on your feet, child. Come and have some breakfast and I will tuck you into your bed.”

  For once Papa was overpowered by his women. He stood frowning and troubled, but he made no other attempt to take Judith aside to chastise her in any way for what he had heard from Harewood. And no one, Judith realized, commented on her mention of the Duke of Bewcastle. After she had been led off to the kitchen, she did not see her father again until after noon. She had not lain down as she had been pressed to do but had spent the morning with her mother and sisters in the sitting room. While they had all been busy sewing, she had written two letters—one to the Duke of Bewcastle and one to Lord Rannulf. She owed them both a deep debt of gratitude, yet she had rushed away from Bedwyn House without a word to either of them. She had just finished the long and difficult task when her father came into the room, the habitual frown on his face, an open letter in his hand.

  “I have just received this from Horace Effingham,” he said. “It bears out what you told me this morning, Judith. It is a complete confession, not only of the theft and the attempt to incriminate you and Branwell, but also of his motive. He tried to force his attentions on you at Harewood, Judith, and you very properly repelled them. His scheme was an attempt to avenge himself on you. According to his letter, he has also written to my mother and to Sir George.”

  Judith closed her eyes. She knew they had all believed her this morning—even Papa. But what a relief it was to be fully exonerated. Horace would never have written such a letter of his own volition, of course, especially the humiliating part about her rejecting his advances and his wanting revenge. He had been forced into writing it—by Lord Rannulf. Had it really all happened just yesterday? It seemed an age ago.

  Rannulf had done it all for her sake.

  “Your name is cleared, Judith,” Papa said. “But why would Horace Effingham have believed that you might welcome his improper advances? And where is your cap today?”

  It was the old story. Men looked on her with lust, and Papa blamed her. The only difference was that she now knew she was not ugly.

  I can truly say that I have never ever seen any woman whose beauty comes even close to matching yours.

  She tried to bring back the sound of his voice as he spoke the words to her out at the pool behind Harewood.

  “I do not want to wear one any longer, Papa,” she said.

  Surprisingly he did not reprimand her or order her to her room to put one on. Instead he held up another letter, still sealed.

  “This came for you yesterday,” he said. “It is from your grandmother.”

  Her stomach churned. She did not want to read it. Grandmama had believed she was the thief. She would still have believed it when she wrote the letter. Judith got to her feet anyway and took it from her father’s hand. But suddenly she could not bear to be indoors, surrounded by all the comfortable normality of family life. Nothing was normal. Nothing ever would be again.

  “I’ll read it in the garden,” she said.

  She did not stop to fetch her bonnet. She went out through the back door and saw that all her mother’s summer flowers were blooming in a riot of color. But she could not enjoy the beauty. Soon Bran well was going to have to apply to Papa again to help him out of his difficulties. And even if she could blank her mind to that, Judith could think of very little to buoy her spirits.

  She had not even turned to take a final look at him.

  The garden was too suffocatingly close to the house. She looked longingly at the rolling hills beyond the back fence, long her refuge when she had wanted to be alone. The hills, where she had roamed and sat and read during her girlhood, and where she had acted, proclaiming other identities aloud to the listening hills. She opened the gate and strode upward, stopping only when she came to a familiar large, fla
t stone two-thirds the way to the top of the closest hill. From it she could see the valley and the village below and the hedgerows of the surrounding farms. She sat there for perhaps half an hour before pulling her grandmother’s letter out of her pocket.

  It was a tearful one even though there was no physical sign of the tears. For one weak hour, she had written to Judith, she had believed the damning evidence. She had grown to love her granddaughter during two weeks more dearly than she had loved anyone since Judith’s grandpapa died, and she would have forgiven her, but she had believed. But only for one hour. She had lived through a wretched night of remorse and had gone as soon as she felt she decently could to Judith’s room to beg her pardon—on her old knees if necessary. But Judith had gone. She was not sure she would ever be able to forgive herself for doubting even for that hour. Could Judith forgive her?

  Judith could not. She crumpled the letter in one hand and stared away from the valley with tear-filled eyes. She could not.

  But then she remembered how she had suspected Branwell—for a great deal longer than an hour. Indeed, she had not been quite certain of his innocence until the proof was finally offered to her. In what way was she different from Grandmama, who had not even had proof of her innocence when she wrote this letter?

  Would she allow Horace that final victory of having caused lasting bitterness between Judith and the old lady who had become as dear to her in two weeks as any of her family members in the rectory below?

  “Grandmama,” she whispered, holding the letter against her lips. “Oh, Grandmama.”

  She sat there for a long while after smoothing out the letter, folding it carefully, and putting it back in the pocket of her dress, her knees drawn up, her arms clasped about them, gazing across the hills rather than down, basking in the heat of the sun and the coolness of the breeze, turning her unhappiness inside out and looking squarely at it.

  She had a family who loved her. Soon life was going to become more and more difficult for them. But they were a family, and Papa would still have his living. They would surely not be quite, quite destitute. How selfish of her to be afraid of being poor. Thousands of poor people survived and lived lives of dignity and worth. She had a grandmother who loved her perhaps more than she loved anyone else in this world. How blessed to be so loved! She could not have the man she loved, it was true, but thousands could not. Heartache was not a death sentence. She was twenty-two years old. She was still young. She would never marry—she could not now even if some decent man was ever willing to take her without any dowry. But life without marriage did not mean life without all meaning or life without all happiness.

  She would make her own happiness. She would. She would not have unreasonable expectations of herself. She would allow some time for grieving, but she would not wallow in her own misery. She would not become mired in self-pity.

  She would do more than exist through the years that remained to her. She would live!

  “I was beginning to think,” a familiar voice said, “that I would have to climb all the way to the top before finding you.”

  She spun around, shading her eyes against the sun as she did so.

  She had forgotten, she thought with utter foolishness, just how very attractive he was.

  Chapter XXIII

  She was sitting on a large flat rock in a blaze of sunlit beauty that felt as if it contracted his chest muscles and pressed on his heart. She was wearing neither bonnet nor cap. She looked like someone who had climbed to freedom, away from all those who would have imposed their standards of beauty and propriety on her.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked him.

  “Gazing at you,” he said. “It seems more like a week since I saw you last than just twenty-five or -six hours. You have a habit of running away from me.”

  “Lord Rannulf,” she said, removing her hand from above her eyes and clasping her knees again in a tight, protective gesture, “why have you come here? Is it because I left without a word or without even writing to you? I have written, you know, to both you and the Duke of Bewcastle. The letters are ready to send.”

  “This one is mine?” He held up the sealed sheet addressed to him in her neat hand.

  “You have been to the house V Her eyes widened.

  “Of course I have been to the rectory,” he said. “Your housekeeper admitted me to the sitting room, where I met your mother and your three sisters. They were all charming. I could easily distinguish the one you described as the beauty of the family. But you were wrong, you know. Her beauty does not come close to matching yours.”

  She merely hugged her knees more tightly.

  “Your mother gave me this,” he said, indicating the letter. With his thumb he broke the seal. She half reached out a hand to stop him, but then pulled it back again. She dipped her head to rest her forehead on her knees.

  “ ‘Dear Lord Rannulf,’” he read aloud, “I cannot even begin to thank you for all the kindness you showed me from the time I left Harewood Grange until yesterday.” He looked at her bent head. “Kindness, Judith?”

  “You were kind,” she said. “Exceedingly kind.”

  He glanced through the rest of the short letter, which continued in the same vein as it had begun. “ ‘Respectfully yours,’ ” he read aloud when he came to the end. “And this is all you had to say to me?”

  “Yes.” She looked up at him then, and he folded the letter and put it away in his coat pocket. “I am sorry I did not stay to say it in person, but you should know by now that I am a coward when it comes to saying good-bye.”

  “Why did you feel you had to say good-bye?” he asked her. He sat down on the stone beside her. It was warm from the heat of the sun.

  She sighed. “Is it not obvious?”

  As obvious as the nose on his face—and that was obvious enough. She was a proud, stubborn woman, and yet paradoxically she had very little confidence in herself. It had been squashed out of her by repressive parents, who doubtless meant well, but who had done untold harm to the daughter who was a swan among their other ducklings.

  “The Duke of Bewcastle is my brother,” he said, “and he is a haughty aristocrat, as high in the instep as any monarch. He wields power with the mere lifting of a finger. Freyja and Morgan and Alleyne are my sisters and brother, and they dress grandly and bear themselves proudly and behave as if they are a cut or two above ordinary mortals. Bedwyn House is one of my family’s homes, and it is a rich and splendid mansion. Only Bewcastle and Aidan stand between me and the dukedom and fabulous riches and properties and estates stretching over vast areas of England and Wales. Have I come close to describing half of what is obvious?”

  “Yes.” She did not look at him but gazed off down the hill.

  “The Reverend Jeremiah Law is your father,” he continued. “He is a gentleman of moderate means and rector of a less-than-prominent living. He has four daughters to provide for on a competence that has been severely depleted by the extravagances of a son who has not yet settled to earning his own living. He has moreover the embarrassment of being the grandson on his mother’s side of a draper and the son of an actress. Have I described the other half of what is obvious?”

  “Yes.” But she was no longer gazing down the hill. She was looking at him, and he saw with some satisfaction that she was angry. He would take her anger over her passivity any day of the week. “Yes, that is it exactly, Lord Rannulf. But I am not ashamed of Grandmama. I am not. I love her dearly.”

  “I would think so too,” he said. “She thinks the world of you, Judith.”

  “I’ll not be your mistress,” she said.

  “Good Lord!” He looked at her, aghast. “Is that what you have thought I am offering?”

  “There could never be anything else between us,” she said. “Can you not see? Did you not see? Even the servants at Bedwyn House were grander than I. Everyone was very courteous to me and Lady Freyja and the Duke of Bewcastle were marvelously kind in their efforts to help me. But they must have be
en aghast at my appearing among them.”

  “It would take a great deal more than that to shock any of the Bedwyns,” he said. “Besides all of which, Judith, you are not being asked to live at Bedwyn House or with any of my brothers and sisters. You are being asked to live with me, probably at Grandmaison, as my wife. I do not believe my grandmother would allow me to take you there as my mistress. She is a stickler about such matters.”

  She jumped to her feet then, though she did not immediately move away.

  “You cannot wish to marry me,” she said.

  “Can’t I?” he asked her. “Why not?”

  “It would not work,” she said. “It could not work.”

  “Why not?” he asked again.

  She turned then and strode away, choosing to go upward rather than down. Rannulf got to his feet and went after her through short, springy grass that was very green from the recent rain.

  “Is it because I may be with child?” she asked him.

  “I almost hope you are,” he said. “Not because I want to trap you into marriage against your will, but because I would like to fulfill my grandmother’s last dream while she still lives. She is dying, you know. It is her final wish that I marry before she does and it is her dream that my wife and I will present her with a grandchild while she still lives.”

  She had stopped walking. “This is why you wish to marry me?”

  He lifted one hand and set his forefinger beneath her chin. “That question hardly dignifies an answer,” he said. “Do you not know me better, Judith?”

  “No, I do not.” She pushed his hand away and resumed her climb. The slope was getting steeper, but her pace was relentless. Rannulf took off his hat and carried it at his side.

  “You told me yourself that marriage was for wealth and position only, that all your true pleasure would be taken outside of marriage.”

  “Good Lord, did I say that?” But he had, he knew. He could remember saying it or something similar. Even at the time he had not meant it but had merely meant to shock her. “Did you not know that Bedwyns are not allowed to carry on extracurricular activities outside their marriage beds? There is some rule in the family archives, I believe. Anyone who transgresses is banished to outer darkness for the rest of eternity.”