Shaking her head no, Julia waited until Meggy departed before turning back to the mirror on her dressing table. Reaching out with trembling fingers, she skimmed her fingertips along the mirror's smooth surface, tracing the lines of her scars that were reflected back at her. There were six in total on her face, three on each side. The top-most one followed her cheekbone precisely, while the second one fell a bit below it, the line just as straight as the one above. On both sides, the third and lowest of the lines started by her ear and then dipped down under her jaw a bit before going lower. All so precise and perfectly straight.
When she'd been younger, the scars had been thicker and wider, but as she'd grown, they had thinned out, pulling the skin a bit, but nothing terribly puckered. At least, she decided, there was that, even if it was only a small blessing. Now, the impossibly thin lines looked more like shadows if seen from a certain angle, even though they were still a bit discolored after all these years. When she blushed, however, the color difference became much more noticeable, just as it had earlier in the evening. The skin around the scars didn't flush as the rest of her skin did. Instead, it remained stark white, creating the patchwork of colors that had been visible, much to her shame.
The scars had been there as long as she could remember. There wasn't a memory from her youth when she didn't have them, and while she no longer believed the story of an animal attack on the grounds of Seldon Park, no one was willing to tell her how she'd acquired them. The animal attack story was the official one, her mother had always said and that to question it would be to open doors that were best left shut.
Julia had attempted to ask Nicholas about them a time or two, but he closed down every time she approached him and always changed the subject. He knew the truth. She was certain of it. She was also just as certain that he did not want her to know. After some time, she simply stopped asking.
There was one other person she could ask, but she wouldn't. She couldn't and had never been able to even broach the subject around him. For all that she and Benjamin shared, she'd never asked him about how she'd acquired her scars, and he had never offered the information on his own. She was, however, certain that he knew the truth as well. She could see it in his eyes as he took in the horrible markings each time they met. There was a sadness and anger that made no sense to her, but those emotions were there, revealing, to her at least, that the duke knew the truth. Still, in many ways, he was the only true friend she had, and she didn't want to push him away by pestering him about the issue. Perhaps her mother had been right. Perhaps it was best to leave well enough alone, especially if finding the truth might cost her the one thing she held dear - her friendship with the duke.
Benjamin Sinclair was the wealthiest duke - some even said the wealthiest man - in all of England, and, for some strange reason, a true friend to her. He always had been. He'd been at Seldon Park nearly every day while she'd been growing up, their country estates bordering each other closely. No one had ever indicated that the duke had no right to sit at the dinner table or take a horse from their stables as if he was family. In turn, she had never questioned his presence. She had never thought to. He was simply Benjamin. Ever present and ever welcome.
He was also responsible for her season, even though he was unaware that she knew. She'd overheard him and Nicholas discussing the details one day, and rather than embarrass him, she'd kept silent. For whatever reason, it was important to Benjamin that she have a year in London, and, despite everything, she was grateful to him. No one else knew how stifled she'd been in Sussex, not even her brother. No one else had, quite frankly, cared. But Benjamin had seen. And he'd done something about it. He'd given her an amazing gift, and she had no way to repay him other than with her silence, continuing the pretense that her time in town had been all Nicholas's idea.
Julia had told Meggy that she felt safe with Benjamin, which was the truth. She did. But she'd also told her maid a lie as well. Julia had told Meggy that she didn't want to marry Benjamin, that she wasn't like the other women of the ton, grasping and clawing for his affection. That was a lie. In a way.
In general, Julia didn't allow herself to want things that she could not have. There was no point to it. She'd learned at an early age that hoping and wishing and wanting accomplished nothing. She could wish all she wanted that the dratted scars didn't mar her face, but she couldn't change the fact that they were there. The lines would be there every morning for the rest of her life. There was no escaping them. Just as there was no escaping the reality that no man would ever be able to look past those scars long enough to see Julia for who she really was - a desirable woman with much to offer. A woman who would make a good wife and mother, if only she'd have the chance.
Benjamin, however, did see Julia as she truly was. To him, she was more than a collection of scars and marred flesh. She had laughed with him, cried with him, and confided in him, secrets that she'd told no one else. Except for one. She had never told him of her desire to marry, for that was a line that she could not cross. She knew that even though she treated the duke as family, in truth, he was not. And once those words were spoken, things would change. She did not want that. In many ways, he was all she had, and she was not about to risk that friendship.
Still, sometimes in the silent depths of the night, Julia allowed herself the tiniest of wishes, let her heart long, just for a moment, for something it could never have. She wished for Benjamin.
She wished that one day, he might realize that she would make a good wife to him. She didn't require love or any of the other emotions the silly young chits on the marriage mart bandied about. She wouldn't even require he spend time with her. She would allow him to live his own life, separate from her, just so long as she had a place to call home, somewhere she belonged. In return, he would be a husband to her, and, hopefully, she could give him children, an heir to carry on the Radcliffe line.
But she would never, ever ask for love. In her deepest of hearts she might want it with a ferocity that scared her, but she would never ask for it, never wish for it. Wishing for Benjamin to some day share his life with her was enough of a risk for her heart, something that, logically, she knew she would never have. Still, it was a tiny bit of hope, the shadow of a dream, and on very lonely nights like tonight, it was a small comfort. It was the only dream she allowed herself. Love was not part of the equation. It never could be.
Julia didn't know when she'd begun to cry, only that as she focused on her reflection once more, she could see the tears flowing feely down her cheeks. Letitia and Henrietta's words that evening had hurt her far worse than she'd initially thought. Not that she would ever allow anyone to see that pain, either.
Then Julia did something she hadn't done in a very long time. She pulled away the top of her nightrail and exposed her breasts and chest. Here was the answer to the bet in that dratted book at White's, the one that only Nicholas and Benjamin knew the truth about. Not even Meggy knew for certain, for Julia never allowed her maid to see her completely unclothed. No one had, at least not since she'd been very, very young.
Everyone assumed that the two scars that snaked under her jaw and down her throat ended just at the top of her chest, a fraction of an inch below the bodice of her gowns. They didn't. Instead, they fanned out, six tiny, shallow lines radiating from the longer, deeper center line that ended just above her nipples, much like the pattern of a fan. Two more, one on each side of her body, snaked down her sides, from her breasts to her waist. Those weren't deep, and the one on her left side not as smooth as the others, more jagged where it ended abruptly halfway down her body. Like the scars on her face, Julia had no idea how they'd come to be there.
Her mother and father had, of course, known about the scars, as had her old nurse, but now, only Nicholas and Benjamin knew the truth. Since they'd grown up together, shared the same sickroom at times, it was difficult for them not to know. When she'd been six and they twelve after a particularly nasty bout of the flu that had left them all nearly naked and
ill together in the nursery at Seldon Park, they'd made a pact never to speak about the scars to anyone. They'd even sealed the pact with blood, Nicholas making small slits on each of their thumbs with the hunting knife he'd received for Christmas the previous year.
As far as she knew, neither one of them had ever broken that pact. They'd almost had to when, shortly after her father had died, she'd developed a chest cold that normal remedies could not soothe, but in the end, it hadn't been necessary. Now, on occasion, Nicholas asked if she was well and would gaze in the area of the scars. She would nod and say that she was fine, and that would be the end of things.
But they were still there, just below the surface that society saw, and in her heart, Julia knew that no man, no matter how kind and patient, would ever be able to look beyond those perfectly straight lines to the woman beneath.
She was still contemplating the scars when a knock sounded at her door.
"Just a minute!" she called and hurried to pull her nightrail on, as well as pull on her dressing gown. She took a swipe at her eyes for good measure, not wanting anyone to know she'd been crying.
Finally, when she was ready, she went to the door and opened it, surprised to see Nicholas on the other side, still dressed in his evening clothes. "Evening, Jules," he said as he wandered in, and she noted that his cravat was undone and his stick pin missing, probably tucked into his pocket, a sure sign that he'd been drinking.
"Good evening, Nicholas. Out carousing again, were you?" There was no censure in her tone. Like her, Nicholas had endured quite a bit in his life, and she wasn't about to lecture him on denying himself the pleasures of women and drink and gambling. She might think it, but she would not say it. She would not take away someone else's source of comfort, even though she might wish he would find other ways to fill his evenings.
He flopped himself into a chair and pinched the bridge of his nose. "A bit." Then he waved a hand in the air. "Good God, Jules. It's all so boring. There is nothing new. Town has become boring. We need to go back to Seldon Park." Yet there was no conviction behind his words, and immediately, she guessed the truth.
"You heard about the incident at the ball." She regarded him for a moment before moving to sit in the chair beside his. "Only a few more weeks, Nicholas, and then we can leave. I can endure that long."
Reaching out, he took her hand and held it tightly in his, and for a moment, she allowed herself to bask in the warmth of brotherly love. "You should not have to endure, Jules. You should be able to enjoy all that town has to offer. This was to be your time to shine."
"We both know that I will never shine." Julia squeezed his hand back just as tightly. "And I cannot run back to Seldon Park every time an incident occurs, or I am embarrassed. If I do, those horrid creatures will have won, and I do not want that. They will not drive me away. If I run now, I will not be able to return. Ever."
He raised an eyebrow, obviously not nearly as drunk as he wanted her to believe. "I thought you were never coming back to London again. You told me you did not want to."
"I don't, precisely," she admitted, pulling her hand away from his. "But what if I change my mind, Nicholas? What if some day I wish to attend a play? What then? I could never hold my head up in society if I allow them to chase me back to the country. I would be shamed. No. I will endure and leave on my own terms when the season ends." Then she patted his hand in an attempt to ease the heat of her words. "It will be fine. You shall see."
Nicholas's dark eyes, so very like her own, traced the lines of the scars. "I don't want to see you hurt, Jules. That's all." There was concern clearly written all over his face, so much that it made her heart swell with love for him.
"I am hurt every day that I live, Nicholas." It was the truth, and it was time he knew it. "Each day that I awake, I know that someone I shall encounter during the day will hurt me, intentionally or not. That includes the servants when they look at me with curiosity, wondering if they can learn my secret so that they may sell it to the highest bidder."
When he looked at her warily, she grasped his hand in both of hers. "There is the bet, Nicholas, and whether here or at Seldon Park, someone is looking for the answer. Thousands upon thousands of pounds are one the line, and do not think for one moment that even someone as loyal as Meggy would not sell me out if they knew the answer for that ridiculous bet."
Rising, Julia stalked back to her dressing table, her earlier sadness now morphing into fury. "Even back home, a groom or a maid will stare at me at some point during the day. If not because of the bet then because of idle curiosity or an inquisitive nature. People want to know what happened to me, Nicholas, and I cannot tell them because I do not know. So they will stare, disbelieve the story we have clung to for so long, and make up stories on their own. Ones that they prefer to the truth because they are more salacious. I cannot change that. But I can change how I react to it. I will not let them, or those like Letitia and Henrietta, win. I will not!"
She had never spoken with such passion about her plight, but tonight, for some reason, the desire to fight back against the lot she'd been dealt in life burned bright and hot. She was tired of being meek and mild, the way she had been trained to be, tired of shying away from everyone for fear that they might ridicule her. They would regardless of how she behaved, so why not face them? Why not allow a little of the old Julia to creep back in?
"I'm sorry." Nicholas also looked more than a little ashamed. "I did not know it was thus."
"And I did not tell you, so the fault is mine as well." Julia knew how difficult it had been for Nicholas to say those words, but she was grateful that he had. "This is my only season, Nicky," she sighed, using his childhood nickname for good measure. "When we leave here next month, I am unlikely to return, despite what I just said. If I do, it will not be as a debutante. We both know that. I do not want this time cut short, no matter how uncomfortable some incidents might make me feel."
With a sigh of his own, he nodded, his mouth set in a grim line. "I had expected you might feel this way, though not with this amount of passion. However I did want to give you the option to leave if you so chose." He squeezed her hand again, and she was grateful that he seemed to understand her desire to remain in town. "In anticipation of precisely that, I inquired yesterday as to whether Lady Berkshire might be willing to act as your chaperone for the remainder of the season while Benjamin becomes your official escort."
"What about Avaria?" Julia could not imagine sending the woman away, at least not when there was something obviously wrong with her health. Yes, she had been a bit inattentive, but surely that was no reason to dismiss the woman.
"She is ill. The doctor that was brought in earlier tonight does not know with what, only that her constant need for sleep is a sign of some far graver problem other than lack of rest." He rose and came to stand next to her, leaning against her dressing table and acting the imposing lord of the manor, just as he'd done when they were children. He nudged her shoulder with his. "I'm sending her home, Jules. Not to Bath, but to Seldon Park where my physician can watch over her. Dr. Heddington from here in town, the one who saw her tonight, agrees that the country air might help her. Until we came to London, her lungs knew nothing but clean air. Heddington thinks that may be at the heart of her problem."
"And Lady Berkshire has agreed to this?" Julia had only met the woman once, even though she knew of her by reputation, so she had no idea why the countess would ever agree to such a thing.
Nodding, Nicholas pushed away and began heading for the door, the matter settled, at least in his mind. "She owes me a favor, Jules. From a long time ago. Let's leave it at that."
"But the events she attends..." Julia did not know how to voice her concerns without offending Nicholas or the countess. Though Lady Eleanor Hathaway, the Countess of Berkshire, was quite young, Nicholas's age in fact, her husband was most decidedly not. Many evenings, the young countess and her elderly husband would be departing events as others arrived, citing Lord Berkshire's busy
schedule. If Julia was truly to enjoy her last few weeks in society, she didn't want to adhere to such an odd schedule.
Holding up his hand to ward off the flurry of questions he knew was coming, Nicholas shook his head. "I would never do that to you, Jules. Ellie will be your chaperone in name only. God knows, she has those gray-gowned, professional chaperones out watching numerous other girls of the ton every night of the week. She had no problem adding one more. Not to mention that really, Benjamin will be with you every night, and he's practically family. You'll be perfectly safe and free of scandal."
It was an odd arrangement to be certain, yet Lady Berkshire had the same agreement with other young ladies and their families, so Julia knew it was tolerated, if not exactly appropriate. It also must be effective, as she had not heard of any scandal among the ton, and she'd been attending various events off and on all season. If something were amiss with the arrangement, she was certain that she would have heard at least a whisper of scandal.
"And Lord Radcliffe agrees to this? Nicholas, he is a much sought-after, bachelor duke who has better things to do than drag me about town." Of this, she was fairly certain.
Nicholas took a moment to consider her words, his hand still resting on the doorframe. "I really don't think he does. He might be a duke, Jules, but he's our friend before all else. Your friend," he pointed out succinctly. "And he wants to do this. He gets benefits from the arrangement as well."
Julia found that very hard to believe. "Such as what, precisely? We both know that he won't benefit from my beauty, as I do not have any. My charm? I think we can both agree that Benjamin knows I am far too blunt for most men's liking. He knows me too well."
"He has his reasons, Jules." A shadow passed across Nicholas's face, making him seem far older than he actually was. "This is important to him. He wants you to have a good time. He wants you to dance and do all of those things you've longed for."
To Catch A Duke Page 3
