by Edith Layton
Curiously, it was only once Nicholas had gotten her an acceptable chaperone so that her reputation might be preserved that her heart had been utterly lost. For when she had dined with him and spoken with him and dueled verbally with him before Lady Preston had come upon the scene, there had always been that element of fear in their relationship that had enabled her to keep her distance. She had never let down her guard. Or at least, she thought, remembering those moments when his words or his eyes or as that once, his lips had lulled her entirely, she had never let it down for too long. She had been able to remind herself constantly that not only was he a man and therefore always suspect, but a vital, intelligent male at that, thus doubly dangerous. Most damningly, he was also Robin’s uncle and primarily concerned with his nephew’s welfare, as he himself had admitted. But then Lady Preston had arrived and bringing with her the illusion of safety, she had all unwittingly brought about the downfall of Julia’s defenses as well.
Julia had been enabled to accompany Nicholas everywhere once Lady Preston was in tow. Lady Cunningham might not exist, but Lady Preston decidedly did. And she was irreproachable. Knowing that her name and person stood in no immediate danger with that good woman at her side, Julia had allowed herself to enjoy the baron’s company entirely. And only now, days later, had she come to understand that once the shadow of fear had been removed, her ability to love, which she had been sure had been blighted forever, had burgeoned, as all dormant but living seeds will do when exposed to the light.
But such an attachment was useless from so many points of view that Julia could scarcely finish enumerating them to herself each night as she counted them instead of sheep until sleep overtook her and saved her from total despair. He was a nobleman, she was a commoner. And not only a commoner, but one who had totally ruined her reputation by running off in an abandoned manner with a gentleman. Not only a gentleman either, but one who was Nicholas’s nephew and who for some reason had told his uncle how perfidious and cruel she was. And not only did Nicholas believe his nephew, but so much so that he had deceived her, abused her, entrapped her, and now paid her to confront his nephew.
Part of the baron’s plan of entrapment, she was sure, was to offer her a position as his mistress. Another part of it was to woo her so completely with his wit and warmth that she had not room in her heart or head for anything but him.
There was a certain dreadful justice, Julia thought, as she paced her sumptuous hotel room and waited for her chaperone to accompany her to an evening out with her employer and tormentor, in the fact that she could not become his mistress even if she wanted to. Just as there had been some insurmountable obstacle to her marriage, so there would surely be the same one should she decide to embark upon her ruination. There was a certain moral comfort in this, Julia thought, reaching for a gauzey silvery whisper of a shawl, but it was such a cold one that she drew the shawl about her as though it were common, comforting flannel that could take the sudden chill from her limbs and heart.
Still, it was a shocking thing to suddenly acknowledge, even if only to herself, this tempting terrible little thought that she would even consider becoming any man’s mistress. Although he was not just any man, not with those eyes, and that smile, and that wicked sense of humor, he was nevertheless undoubtedly, almost blatantly, a member of that gender .she had forsworn. But lately this nagging, incessant, and insistent little thought was never too far from her: that such employment might be the very answer, the only answer, at least for her.
Because it seemed that she did not want to part from him. It wasn’t that she feared that she would forget him, it was rather that she worried that she might not have enough to remember of him. She discovered she wanted something more of love to recall when she grew old than just the folly of one innocent, abortive evening when she was seventeen. The mean little voice often whispered that as she would always bear the marks of shame in the world’s eyes anyway, wouldn’t it be far better to have for keepsake the memory of a breathing lover that she had once held to her own beating heart, rather than only the sad, sterile remembrance of a love that was conceived only in imagination and that had died at birth?
When the argument became too persuasive, Julia would be glad of the unknown handicap which prevented her from any such wild, immoral flights as she entertained in her fancies. But then she had to laugh at herself. For if she did not know the world very well, having neither been in it or about it for too long, she knew herself very well, having been forced to bear her own company for so long. She knew the truth was that if she had no such restriction upon her, she would very likely have had to invent one. Her upbringing had been conventional and the real world she lived in, when she was not with the baron, was a censorious one.
She knew very well that a woman who choose to flaunt society and live with a gentleman without benefit of churchly sanction, was a woman who placed herself forever outside society’s blessings and protection. And when he was bored with her, and gentlemen always became bored with their mistresses, why then, she would have no recourse but to seek another such as he. And there was no other such as he, not upon the face of this wide world, and that she knew as well as she knew her own name.
And so Julia was very glad that she was honest enough to admit that she was temperamentally and morally unfit to ever become the baron’s mistress. And she was, of course, glad that she did not have to rely on that weak argument alone to withstand him, since she also possessed that unexpected, unfathomable impediment to love with any man. Being so glad of so many things, it was curious that when she turned to greet Lady Preston, she had tears in her eyes, unless, of course, they were tears of happiness at her situation.
“My dear Miss Hastings,” Lady Preston said in her soft little voice, “you look quite beautiful,” and she gave Julia such a pleased and sweet smile to go with her words that they were lifted out of the commonplace and became instead, a very real compliment.
But so it was with Lady Preston, Julia thought as she returned the smile and the compliment. The lady’s looks had improved even as her fortunes had. The securing of a paid position had had a cosmetic effect that went beyond the new frocks she now wore. Her cheeks had color, her eyes were clear, and her spine seemed straighten But it was not only her looks which were pleasing. For the lady was in every good construction of the word, a lady. When she was alone with Julia, she never presumed to ask too much, nor did she err by noticing too little. When she accompanied Julia and Nicholas on their rounds of restaurants or touring sites, she never imposed her personality or her sanctions upon them. But then she never had to, as Julia was always aware of her quiet personality, and Nicholas never forgot her presence.
Most importantly, persons of the baron’s class, seeing him dining in public with a lovely young female, might be moved to inquire as to her name, and being refused it, might be inclined to inquire further. Hearing that the other lady at the table was Lady Mary Preston, they would lose interest, knowing that with such a female present, there would be little scandal broth to stir. If it were a romance, they would reason, they would soon read the announcement of it in The Times. And if it were not, then the chit were some relation surely, for any other sort of connection would be impossible to imagine with such a paragon to give it countenance. The lady’s impecunious late husband may have forced her to seek employment, but her name was known. And her name was solid.
“And you look radiant as well,” Julia said, finishing up her compliments. But it was true. The lady looked unusually well tonight. Her thin cheeks were flushed, her eyes were bright, and she bore an air of almost febrile excitement. Julia might have even inquired as to her health if she had not surmised that the lady’s condition was only due to her enthusiasm for their destination this night. For last night she had ventured to say that she had not been to the Opera in years, and was quite looking forward to it. Since Lady Preston’s every word and action was usually measured, Julia took that statement as excitation bordering on hysteria.
But
the baron would not have noticed if Lady Preston were so elevated that she walked three inches above the carpet when he came to Julia’s rooms to call for them. He only gave the lady the most cursory of glances as he bowed to her, bade her good evening, and told her rather mechanically how well she looked, while all the while his gaze kept sliding back to Julia. When he could at last turn to her, he said at once, “Silver and blue tonight, eh? You make me rue my cowardice, Julia. For we might have been well matched, you and I. That expensive blue jacket arrived today. You know, the one I told you of, the frenchified one with the silver threads. And although Makepiece has been crooning over it since it was delivered as though it were his newborn babe, I reckon it so overwhelming that I haven’t allowed him to take it out of its papers. So I hope you won’t mind the company of a fellow togged out with all the color and dash of the financial sheets, for I’m only all black and white to your silver and blond and blue. You look like a moonbeam, Julia.”
He gave her a little grin with the compliment that made her feel as though it was the sun and not the moon that had come out in the midst of the night, and to cool her cheeks and her spirits, she began to ask him questions about the Opera. He took each of their arms and, still wearing a small smile for Julia’s continuing inability to cope with his compliments, took the ladies to dinner.
Julia often told herself that night life was not her style, and that it was just as well that a governess-companion could not experience firsthand those pleasures she had often heard her employers and their friends speaking of, such as dances and routs and supper parties and balls. She had gone to a waltz party as well as several evening soirees with the Honorable Miss Carstairs when she had been that young female’s companion. It was true that she had always sat, as was correct, on the sidelines with others of her order, behind the dowagers and the infirm. But she had been able to see a great deal of what was going on over their heads and through the spaces between their seated forms, and she hadn’t been much impressed nor very regretful of her lot in life, save for some few moments when the music at the waltz party had threatened to lift her from her seat and carry her to her feet. But the one thing she had always secretly coveted was the ability to attend the Opera or the theater. And so from the moment she entered the Opera, until the moment she found herself seated in a box high in its rafters, she believed that she felt dizzy because she did not draw or expel one breath the whole while from the sheer weight of her awe.
The theater itself was gorgeous. She had never understood the true impact of the word until she had seen the gold and gilt and rococco carvings and plush of the interior of the building, and now she found that even that word did not do justice to the sight. Once within, there was such a gabble of voices as to make the Bible stories she had read of the tower of Babel seem insignificant. Not only was everyone talking at full volume, but as there were gentlemen and officers present from every victorious army, there was every language and accent imaginable competing loudly for attention.
The gentlemen outnumbered the ladies, but those females present were attired in no less magnificent fashion than the theater they ornamented. They might be in France, but here there were no sabots, nor any high white bonnets on fresh-faced females as there had been in Calais. No, here there was gold cloth and scarlet silk and silver gauze, and all seemingly in too short a supply to adequately cover the ladies that had chosen them as dress materials. Despite Celeste’s and Lady Preston’s assurances, Julia had felt that her own gown showed perhaps a jot too much white skin above the swell of her breasts, but now it seemed that she was wrapped to her ears in comparison to the others of her gender.
The atmosphere was warm and airless, a hundred perfumes hung in the still atmosphere even as a thousand less palatable odors did. The bright flare of the footlights and the glitter from the patrons themselves assaulted the eye even as the din confused the ears, but Julia was enthralled. She gaped at the theater, she shamelessly stared below her at the coxcombs and the dandies and soldiers and then she looked up in wonder at the statesmen, heroes, and generals in adjoining boxes. Then she could marvel no more at them, for the lights dimmed, the noise abated, and the music struck up.
It was as she thrilled to the expertise of the dancers and their stirring ballet representing the allied victory at Waterloo, that she became aware of the others in the box with her again. She felt a firm but gentle touch upon her arm and heard the baron say, quite close to her ear, “I’m sorry, my dear, but she is quite right. We must go. And now, at once.”
Julia was far too grown-up and self-contained to sulk or pout, but as the coach bore them back to the hotel she devoutly wished that she were Toby’s age once more so that she could just fling herself down upon the cushions and have a good howling cry. They had left the theater quietly and furtively while the music had continued playing. Julia had looked at the stage to the last, until she risked tripping in the dark, so she could have just one last glimpse of the ballet as it went on. Then it had been easy enough to commandeer a carriage from the line outside the Opera, since none of the drivers expected such early departures. It seemed to Julia that she had been allowed just a glimpse of something exciting and enthralling beyond imagination and then had been unceremoniously snatched away from it, like a child who had been discovering hiding upon the stairs observing a brilliant grown-up party past her bedtime.
She said not a word of this, but her face must have spoken her thoughts eloquently, for when they were snugly ensconced in the hotel’s small salon sipping at their coffee in their comfortable armchairs, like proper old pensioneers, she thought glumly, the baron spoke. Lady Preston was seated at a distance from them, perusing a magazine, so he need not have lowered his voice to such an intimate register, but he did, nonetheless, to ensure their privacy.
“She was right, Julia. It’s unfortunate, but true, and I’m a fool for not having thought it. But you wanted propriety, my sweet, so you mustn’t complain when it puts a crimp in your style. You were far too busy ogling the soldiers to notice, but she turned ashen and I thought she was going to pitch over headfirst into the pit. ‘My lord,’ she cried, and I don’t know if she meant me or someone rather higher, ‘we are the only respectable females in this entire company!’ ” The baron smiled as he mimicked the lady in a passable horrified falsetto.
But then he went on reflectively, “It’s true, you know. All the genteel ladies were at home lamenting either the loss of their empire or their emperor, I imagine. That lot we saw were the sort that can be counted on to cavort with the victors in any land, in any century. Still, there are some highborn ladies who might have sat it out when they realized their error and written it off as a lark. But ‘a proper chaperone,’ you said, and ‘a proper chaperone’ you received. Want to change your mind, Julia?” he asked suddenly, dropping his voice lower, to a husky timbre that sent as many shivers up her spine as his words did.
“We could then go to all the theaters, and all the balls, and all the places I haven’t dared to ask you to accompany me to, and oh, what fun you should have, Julia, what joy we should both have. We wouldn’t have to go home for ages, and when we did, ah Julia, there would be no end of delights ahead of us.”
He was looking at her with such earnest entreaty that Lady Preston, glancing over toward them, permitted herself a small smile at how animated the pair’s discussion had grown. There was something entirely ludicrous, Julia had time to think as she looked to see her chaperone’s reaction to the words she could not have heard, in receiving an invitation to a life of mortal sin while one’s very dignified chaperone sat and dumbly nodded her blissful approval to it. Thus, she wore a faint and foolish smile herself in reaction to his words, rather than the horrified scowl she ought to have treated him to. But all she said was, “And Robin?”
It was brief, but her reply was as effective as a spirited speech might have been, for he fell silent for a moment. She felt a peculiar pang as she saw how his long lashes closed to lie outlined like dusky fringes upon his high
cheekbones. His face appeared strangely gentle when the quick comprehension in his eyes was thus shuttered and shaded. She was still staring bemused at his newly vulnerable aspect, when his eyes snapped open and she found herself caught and looking deep into his aware, alert regard.
“Julia,” he said immediately, “you know I never intended you for him. From the first, I believed it to be a mistake. Although I may have altered my opinion about a great many other things, in that, at least, I have not changed my mind. Come Julia, Lady Preston is a charming companion, but this respectability is a cumbersome thing, is it not? Give over, love, do,” he said, a smile quirking the corner of his lips. “Stay with me. I’ll accept that you have principles, but ‘love the sinner if not the sin,’ ” He laughed low in his throat as he added, “Yes, I’ll quote scripture for my own purposes, just as the good book says, as well as for yours. For it’s what you want, you know. It’s right for you, you know.”
“I cannot,” she said, as though the words were wrenched from her, “I could not.” And then with a smile that attempted to match his own, though she could not see if he smiled back now, as her gaze was fixed upon her own lap, she said gently, so as not to give offense, “And it’s no loss, you know. For I could not, even if I could.”
Her reply was a puzzle, so he had to take as answer that which he had not heard. She had not said “I will not,” or “I should not,” or even “How could you?” Instead of becoming irate, or insulted, or aghast, as she previously had done, she seemed genuinely sorry for what she, not he, had said. So Nicholas took her by the hand and urged her to stand with him and then he walked her to Lady Preston.
