by Gayle Eden
Swallowing a burning knot in her throat that echoed in her stomach, Juliette nodded.
When she stood, Thaddeus embraced her and murmured, “The world is not perfect, my dear. But ours has its greater purpose behind what it asks of us.’
Released, she nodded and summoned a smile for him. “I understand.”
“Good.” He walked to the door and saw her out.
Juliette walked out into the hall, up the stairs, and to her chambers, looking at Ms. Henny who was directing the maid to pack her trunk.
The older woman’s eyes were sharp as they took in her expression.
Juliette murmured, “See that her Grace’s jewels are returned. Take them to her yourself, and…render my apologies.”
Mrs. Henny nodded. “Where are you going?”
Juliette was removing the gown. “For a walk.”
* * * *
Jahi had already heard the servant’s chatter, but he sought Monty out, naturally, and found the Marquis standing down by the woods, on a shaded path.
“Is it true?”
Monty glanced at him and nodded.
“What happened, I mean wha—”
Wolford gave him the complete version—in very flat and abrupt tones.
Jahi whistled and then sat down on the slope, forearms on his knees casually. “Now that you saved her—made that promise about Lady Harrison—what are you going to do with her?”
“I have no bloody idea,” Wolford uttered softly.
* * * *
Juliette, rocked by the pace of the coach, sat quietly in the corner, observing passing scenery and listening to Ms. Henny’s snores. Having the brim of her green silk hat folded back, she was so much into her thoughts, as she had been since the duke had that private word with her—that she was only mildly attending, though in that abstract manner, impressed by the richness of Wolford’s lands.
The coachman had stopped once. She had ignored the coach ahead of the one carrying her—the other carrying Jahi and Monty. She had stretched her legs and attended when the driver, Samuel, was saying that they were nearing Wolford Hall. The window flap up, a nice breeze coming in, she had unbuttoned her green and ivory stripe carriage coat, letting that air soothe her upper chest. Everything inside, and outside, was still too vise tight, and her long honed survival instincts wanted to shut them down, shut the world out, and crawl into the protective whole she had once created, to blot out life’s wounds, and people’s rejections. She struggled to overcome them, however.
Monty had not spoken to her when they had taken their departure this morning. She had been grateful, considering the tension between himself and his parents. The duchess looked as if she had not slept well. Juliette was sick of feeling guilty about it. Monty’s high handedness had done this. She did not know what he was thinking. For a man who worried about scandal, this was one situation begging to be just that. Admittedly, she had a companion, and for all society would know, she was merely visiting Wolford Hall. However, Juliette was all too aware that she had to form some sort of plan, something— had to present itself so that she could be independent of him. If that meant wedding the next man who asked, she would.
She had never dreamed that the Marquis would do this. She was still in a bit of shock over the whole thing. Now she was caught in the contention between Monty and his father—Monty and his obligations to the title.
How the bloody hell did this happen?
“Don’t frown so, you’ll get lines.”
She glanced at the older woman who was yawning and looking out the window.
“Lines are the least of my worries.”
“Nonsense. The Marquis saved you from a marriage you didn’t want.”
“I would have obeyed the duke.”
One gray brow cocked toward Ms. Henny's black silk hat brim. “Yes, and been even more miserable than you’ve been since your debut.”
“I have to do something, Henny.” Juliette looked back out the window. “I can’t go on forever like this.”
“It’s a shocking turn, to be sure.”
“Shocking,” Juliette, muttered, “Its madness. I honestly don’t what his lordship was thinking.”
“Don’t you.” The woman said under her breath, then. “Something will work out. Consider it an adventure, a new Chapter in life.”
Snorting Juliette retorted, “He is courting scandal. And I, get to feel guilty about it.”
“He’s always had a cared for you, Juliette,” the woman reminded softly. “Perhaps he only wants you to find someone you can love and be happy with.”
Juliette sat back and closed her eyes. Happy? What was that emotion? Oh, why could she not have simply let her guardians marry her off to…. Ah, she could not even lie to herself there. She was born into a circumstance that made her life uncertain, her future uncertain, and nothing fit. Nothing—felt right. She was always that child looking in windows.
“I think we are approaching. I shall see to everything.”
Ms. Henny did see to everything. As soon as the coach stopped, she was greeting the waiting staff and making herself known to the housekeeper, so that when the Marquis was there, and Jahi, and the curtsying and bows were being rendered to the master, she and Juliette were already being shown to their apartments.
Once divested of the coat and hat, Juliette sat by the window, sipping tea, letting maids unpack and hearing her companion talking with them. Eventually the tasks were done and the older woman gave her shoulder a comforting pat, and then sought her own chambers for a nap.
Juliette eventually lay on a huge four-poster with cream silk and lace bolster, gazing around her chamber. It was a good-sized room, with ivory fireplace, vanity and wardrobes, gleaming polished floors. The bedchamber had an attached sitting room in rose hues, and a bathing chamber in pale yellow. It had a small balcony off the sitting room. Hand over her brow; she stared at the ornate ceiling, her mind echoing the duke’s voice; sever the bond, sever the bond, sever the bond—then Monty’s—her handprint on his lean cheek as he uttered softly, There—is the truth. Oh God, what a bloody mess life was.
Chapter Two
Wolford Hall, like any rich property, had a large staff, beautiful gardens, and emerald lawns; with gazebos, statuary, and a hedge maze in the rear, beyond the trio of flowing fountains. The rambling brick mansion also had courtyards, a green house, and two smaller guesthouses—small was only in comparison to the main manor that had additions over the generations.
Aside from many tenants, stocked fields, and lakes and farms, it sustained quite a population that in turn sustained it. A nearby village, called Wolford, had been chartered a hundred years before. It was quaint, with bakeries, blacksmith, tavern, assembly hall, cobblers, drapers, shops of all sorts. It sat at a crossroads, between Monty’s estate and that of the wealthy Duke of Wimberley. Unbelievably, Deme’s father’s ancestral home would have dwarfed Wolford twice over. That white stone mansion having prized stables, orchards, and famous for yearly coach and horse races, which anyone in the territory attended.
Juliette had no quarrel with Wolford Hall’s stable, and neither did her gelding, which Monty had brought from his father’s. Though it took twice the number of grooms and lads to look after such prime stock, she was impressed with Monty’s high steppers too. On her first visit to the brick structure, she had heard the head groom saying that his Lordship had been buying horses at Tatters and sending them down for two years now. There was a team of four pure black stallions, a team of white mares, and various muted grays. Foals were romping in a pasture, where the green of summer was fading into fall.
When she rode across even ten acres of Wolford’s lands, Juliette felt a kind of awe at beauty of it, sleek stock, undulating pastures, beautiful tree lined lakes. It was fertile, lush, and alive in that scent and sight way.
Returning from such a ride, she was dreading another dinner on a tray in her rooms. Since Monty and Jahi were out with the steward, most days, well into evening, there had no sense in the staf
f putting out a feast for one person.
Juliette dismounted and walked the last half mile to the stables, no more settled in her mind how to meet the duke’s request than she had been upon arriving. Groaning, she saw a rider heading toward her. Gabriel, her mount, snorted, recognizing Monty’s blooded stallion. The chestnut was large, graceful, and as confident in every step as its master was sitting it.
Monty reached her, reined in, and turned the horse. Juliette flickered a glance at his muscled thighs, in dun riding trousers, calves molded into somewhat dusty wine boots. He wore a linen shirt that had become half-untucked from the trousers; it was comfortable linen with an inch-banded collar, undone past his collarbone. The earthy scent of him was not the least offensive, unfortunately.
He dismounted. “Mrs. Keps tells me you have settled in well.”
“Yes. Wolford hall is lovely.”
His stride adjusted to hers. Juliette glanced at his face. His hair had not been cut of late and was ruffled, wavy, and too attractive around his handsome face. She encountered his brown eyes, knowing they had looked her up and down in her snug trousers.
He murmured, “Thank you. It is only a bit of my doing. Generations have taken good care of it.”
“It shows.”
There was a moment of thick silence, and then horses called out as they neared the stable and others answered.
“Jahi brought to my attention, that I have been absent from dinner since we arrived—”
Juliette wanted to keep her gaze off him and on the trek ahead, though it was difficult not to look at him with his relaxed and muss image in her mind’s eye, and his scent so close….“You’ve work to do. An estate to run. Don’t feel you have to entertain me.”
“I don’t. However, we have finished our tour and I have met with my tenants, so things will settle into a routine. I have a fine steward and staff.”
They reached the stable; grooms were coming out, bowing and taking the horses, leaving Juliette with nothing to distract her from attending Monty—who seemed intent on walking to the house with her.
He paused on the east lawn, waving her down a slight slope and to the shade.
She sat herself on the drying grass, and he slightly toward her, his one knee up and the other leg out.
It was nearly as bad as having him close beside her. Now he was in her line of vision. Her eyes went from his forearms where the sleeves rolled up, to his throat, his hair. Focusing on the grass, she murmured, “I’ve no business being here.”
“I don’t want to argue today.”
She glanced up to find his eyes on her. “I’m not—-arguing. I am stating facts. I do not know what you were thinking. And before this situation looks like anything other than a visit by me to Wolford hall—we both need to find an alternative.”
His brown eyes had the softest, velvet hue, even under the shade of the oak above them. Monty said, “We will visit Wimberley Court, attend amusements, as word of my being in residence gets round. There’s a village that you and Ms. Henny may want to explore—book shops, as I recall, and there is the local gentry, who will make themselves known to you.”
“I doubt they will be impressed.”
His gaze was unwavering. “Then change their opinion. I would rather you offend the whole bloody neighborhood by being yourself, rather than suffer that pretense you enacted in London.”
“How dare you—”
He smiled, and it was not a nice one. “It is a bit late for you to ask that now. I dare. And since I have, and since you are a grown woman, I suggest we stop playing games.”
“I don’t know—what you want.” She shook her head, her emotions in chaos again, and her eyes on his.
He looked away then, but murmured, “Do you really believe those things about yourself, Juliette. Do you really want to believe them?”
“What things—”
His gaze shot to hers.
Juliette flushed and waited until he looked away to say, “I can’t change the way I look. I can’t change people who find fault with it.”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“I don’t want to hide my brains to catch a husband either.”
Monty snorted and she saw a smile tug his lips. He turned to look at her again, gazing down her in a way she was aware of, and then back up. He said bluntly, “You were overly sensitive as a child, likely with good reason, feeling abandoned and afraid to become attached to people. We all left you in some sense. Somewhere in your growing into a young woman, you found a flaw in yourself to answer that. By the time you were matured, you magnified the insult and criticisms of those who, knowingly or not, delivered them. And that reason—was the reason why your encounter with young Peter, was confusing for you too.”
She looked sharply away. “I don’t know why you do this.”
“Had he been someone else, just someone who made you forget and feel good about your body—but he wasn’t, and it blew up into something you were made to feel guilt and shame for. I never, not ever, told you to alter your character as you did in London— and you know that, Juliette. I spoke to you because my father was concerned enough about the incident to set his mind on marriage for you then.”
“Must we go through it again?” She wanted to get up and run, but settled for bringing her knees up, resting her arms on them—staring out at nothing.
“We must.” He said just as soft, “I have experienced guilt because I blamed myself for somehow—breaking your spirit.” When she shook her head he was gazing at her and observed it, so he said, “I was a young, maturing lad once, too. I have thought upon it and deduced that you couldn’t help those natural feelings, thus to mask them, to mask any sort of emotion, you shut yourself down.”
She swallowed and reached for a twig, her motions showing she was discomforted. “I don’t like you’re doing this, my Lord. Taking me apart... like some—”
“I know that too, Juliette. However, if there is only one person in this world you are ever honest with, I hope that is me. I think— I know, that you have always believed no one really cares for you, but I do.”
Her voice was gruff, “You shouldn’t.”
“True. To this extent. I should not.” He sat up too, much the way she was and finished, “There is much in life we can’t control. However, there are moments when we have choices so we can, to some extent, alter our course. This is where you are, Juliette. In one of those moments.”
She looked aside at him. His gaze on her was pensive. Juliette murmured, “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I’m giving it to you. The truth of what you have felt and feel, the reality of who you are, instead of what you force yourself to believe, because it hurts when others do not. You have a chance to wipe everything clear and be whom you believe yourself to be.”
“Do you think it is that simple?”
When he did not answer, she stared at him. He had a very intense expression on his handsome face.
“What?”
“I’ll help you see it. I’ll make you see it.”
Juliette got to her feet slowly, her gaze warily on him.
Monty stood and came closer, looking down at her upturned face. “Why do you think Jahi wants you?”
She searched his gaze.
He answered for her, “It isn’t because he imagines some domestic bliss and a babe in your arms. It’s for the same reason you look at him, and feel it in your body.”
Flushing she whispered, “I don’t think we—”
“Juliette.” He captured her chin, not letting her look away. “He talks to you because you’re yourself with him, and he finds you as interesting as you do him. He finds you unique, singular, in a hundred women he has met. You engage him conversation that is stimulating and interesting. But he wants you—because he’s a man and is extremely attracted to you.”
Whether conscious of it or not, that hold switched to his fingertips gliding under her chin, to touch her throat where her pulse was racing.
“My parents care for yo
u, Juliette, even though they don’t understand everything about you. I care for you, as does your old Nanny, and Jahi. It’s not pretense, because there has been no gain in it. And the truth is, you care too. Those emotions you have that are yours, just yours and private, we all have them, but you are afraid of them. You are afraid of people caring for you, too. Afraid— they’ll see what you see in distortion, and abandon you if you do.”
“Perhaps that is true.” She whispered and reached to push his hand down.
He captured hers instead. “You don’t really hate people. You do not really hate yourself. What you truly want—is to let yourself feel passion, love, and everything that we all do. You want to glory in your image, not loathe it. None of us are above that.”
His free hand undid the tie in her hair and the wind caught it and tossed it wildly. “This is you—Juliette. This is the truth.”
Pulling her hand free, trembling, Juliette stepped back from him, needing to put distance and break whatever thrall his well-aimed words surrounded her with—verbalizing what she needed, longed to hear, plundering around in her heart, her head. It was too emotional.
Nevertheless, he was not done. Monty uttered huskily, eyeing that ruffling red-gold hair and then the wind fluttering the material of her blouse, “I wish you could see yourself through his eyes. That, is what Jahi sees, when he lies sleepless at night. It’s what brings his hand under the sheet, in the dark.”
Her nape prickled, her nipples tightened against material. Juliette could scarcely breathe.
“That’s what he wants, and can’t have. Why it is maddening to imagine that you would loathe it. Why settling for friendship is a bit of heaven and hell. And why—giving you to someone else—is torment.”
Her stare was fixed on his.
He apparently saw something dawn in her eyes and blinked.
Stepping back, he shoved a hand through his hair and muttered, “Bloody hell.”
She said at length, with her throat painfully tight, “The duke and duchess want you to wed Lady Harrison.”
He nodded slightly.
