by Edith Layton
“Nicholas!” Julia cried gladly, and she took a few steps toward him before she recalled herself. He stood at the entrance to her room and his sober face gladdened for a moment at her spontaneous greeting. He seemed drawn and pale, he was covered with the dust of the road, but he was undeniably there. Julia stood staring at him and then said, in wonderment, “You’ve come back.”
“Well of course I have, Julia.” He smiled wearily as he entered the room and put out his hand to take Robin’s. “Hello, Robin, I’ve looked for you over the face of the entire Continent, but I didn’t think to find you here in Julia’s boudoir, lad.”
“Nick, we must talk,” Robin said seriously.
“Why certainly,” his uncle replied on a sigh. “Why else do you think we have come?”
15
When Julia had been very young, she had once strayed directly into the path of Lord Quincy and a hunting-party he had organized. She had seen his great gray horse bearing down upon her and it hadn’t seemed either real or important. But after her father had swept her out of the way, and after the riding party had stopped to comment upon her narrow escape and offer her father congratulations for his quick-wittedness, and long after Lord Quincy had done with praising himself for the excellent horsemanship that had prevented him from running the both of them down, Julia had found that her legs would not work. They simply would not function. And her father had to lift her and carry her, trembling, all the way home.
Now, in an elegant bedroom in a hotel in Paris, Julia discovered herself experiencing the same phenomenon. Nicholas must have seen her distress, or known of it in the uncanny way that he always anticipated her, for before her numbed legs could betray her he had left Robin’s side and assisted her to a chair. Now she sat and looked at the two gentlemen who had come into her bedroom and she heard their voices and watched their faces, and tried to assimilate the reality of them.
Neither had taken a seat. They stood before her, Robin leaning back against a wall near the window, since it seemed, as she began to remember now, that he always liked to drape himself over any available surface, and Nicholas relaxed as if at his ease with one hand resting on a chair’s back as they spoke. Julia could not pay attention to their words at first. Just as she had noticed only the fact that Squire Quincy had a smudge of dirt near his nose on that long-ago morning, now she could only marvel at how bizarre it was simply that they stood and chatted in her bedroom. This room had been the scene of so many dreams and fancies of and about the two of them. Its delicate gold and rose-pink furnishings, seemed a particularly unreal setting for the two vital men who stood within it in actuality now.
Now as she watched them with wondering, wandering belief, she could see that there was little physical family likeness between them. Nicholas had the advantage of a few inches over Robin, although Robin’s frame was so slender that he appeared taller than he was. Both were pale, but Robin was all autumnal in his russet hair and eye coloring and Nicholas was more vivid with his white skin, dark, curling hair, and wide gray-green eyes. Both were slender, both well made, both had that clean and deceptively narrow length of limb that belied their tensile strength. But overall, their resemblance was one that was discreet rather than apparent.
Then, even as she sat dumbly and gazed at them, their voices began to intrude upon her recovering mind.
“Yes, I passed through Waterloo,” Nicholas said easily, “and it was an eerie feeling to see the blackened grasses and the blasted rye fields. But it was a faster route than the Tubize road because of the rains.”
“But Nick, old fellow, the road was merely muddy, not impassable, and I made very good time once I reached Mons,” Robin replied.
“What?” Julia cried, for it began to seem as though she had lost her wits completely rather than having simply misplaced them. “What?” she went on in rising accents. “We meet after all this time and travail and you discuss the roads?”
At that, they left off speaking and turned toward her. They looked at her incredulous face and then at each other and then, in their matching laughter, at last Julia could see their matching heritage clearly.
“So you are returned to us,” Nicholas said, as his mirth subsided. Yet he continued to gaze at her with a slight smile as he explained, “But Julia, it was only right to wait for you to join us. And then, we are English gentlemen, you know. I imagine that even on Judgment Day, when the deserving dead arise from their graves to meet their maker and go to their just rewards, there will be a group of Englishmen standing about making idle chat about the weather as they wait for their Lord to shine His countenance upon them. It just isn’t the thing to immediately plunge into the crux of the matter, you know. But as usual, you are right. There are other things to discuss than roads. How do you propose we start, Robin?” he said then in a serious voice, all hint of his humor vanished and only his concern showing in his face.
Robin seemed unfazed as he answered lightly, “I might inquire as to why you rode down the wind to see me, and spread the alert through the length and breadth of the civilized world that our meeting must be at once.”
“And I would tell you that I have word of your father,” the baron said softly.
“Ah, and is he passed from this mortal coil then?” Robin asked, tilting-his head to one side.
“No, not when I left England, but by now it is entirely possible that he has. And if not now, then soon enough, barring a miracle that I do not think even Prinny’s favorite leeches capable of pulling off,” Nicholas said, watching his nephew closely.
“But there is nothing new in that, Nick,” Robin said carefully, looking down as though he found his waistcoat of surpassing interest.
Julia watched the two men and dared not breathe a word. There was that in their attitude, although their voices were mild and their reaction subdued, which reminded her of cats circling each other before they attacked. They were so occupied with each other that she believed they had forgotten her entirely.
“And if he is gone, then I shall be king of the cats. Shall I then contrive to leap to my feet in joy and vanish up the chimney to begin my reign? Isn’t that how it was done in that old folktale, Nick?” Robin asked as he became engrossed in an embroidered fleur-de-lis upon his waistcoat. “But,” he went on thoughtfully, “I should be nothing so high as that, I would only be a marquess of the British. So I think I’ll pass up the chance to rise up the chimney. I won’t go home, Nick,” he said abruptly, and looked up quickly to watch his uncle’s reaction.
“But not because of Julia,” Nicholas said quietly.
“No,” Robin said as softly, not even glancing at Julia as she sat up sharply upon hearing her name mentioned.
“No, not because of Julia, as you most likely have already discovered.”
“But you see,” Nicholas said patiently as he shifted his weight and leaned both hands heavily upon the chair, “I had to insult her, deceive her, threaten her, do her physical injury, and abduct her to learn that. Would it not have been simpler, Robin, to have simply told me the truth originally?”
“But I didn’t want you to know, you see,” Robin replied in so low a voice that Julia had to strain to hear him. “And I assumed I’d be safe enough because I supposed her to be wed, you see. Conveniently wed, conveniently obscure, convenient for my purposes.” But then he looked up at Julia and with a brighter eye and clearer voice, he said, “I thought you only a ghost of my past, but what an unquiet spirit you turned out to be! I am sorry, child,” he said in something of his old manner, although Julia detected more bravado than naturalness in his voice, “I had no idea that dear old civilized Nicholas would turn pirate in his efforts to lure me home. That was your intention, wasn’t it, Uncle,” he asked with a trace of anger as he turned to the baron.
“You must come home,” Nicholas answered calmly. “You’ll have the title, and the responsibilities and the land to see to. You said that Julia was the impediment, so I attempted to remove her from your path by throwing her into your path. The
poor lady almost got trampled by our mechanations. She deserves far more. I think, Robin, that at the very least, she deserves the truth from you.”
But at the word truth, a subtle change came over Robin. His face grew paler, and he closed his eyes for a moment. When he spoke again it was with an effort.
“Then I am to suppose that you surmise the truth?” he said with the ghost of a smile. “I doubt it, Uncle, I really do. A great many credible things may have occurred to you, but I doubt if the truth is among them.”
Now Nicholas looked steadily at his nephew and said in a measured, emotionless voice, “Robin, I am not a fool. I have heard Julia’s story and she is not a liar, poor lady although I believed her one long after I ought not to have, because I did not wish to come to a natural conclusion about you. Then, too, I have had speech with the vicar.”
Robin stirred visibly at the mention of the vicar’s name, but his uncle only noted that and went on, “No, the vicar is circumspect at all times, as you know. But still, matters began to become clearer. And as you must know as well, there is the bothersome fact that Sir Ollie Sidney is on your traces. It is my forced cooperation in a difficult matter that he is after. But he would not be so hot upon your heels if he did not think there was profit in it for him. And there is only profit for him when someone has made a slip. I suspect it is your money he is after as well as my compliance. He would threaten to destroy the family name, you know.”
“What’s in a name?” Robin laughed, but his laughter was weak and he seemed to be thinking furiously.
The room grew very still and Julia grew very confused. There was something that had been said, or had almost been said, that she knew she ought to understand. But she could not, so she only sat quietly and hoped that they would forget her and go on with their conversation and give her the key to what hovered at the edges of her consciousness.
Then her patience was rewarded in a manner that made her wish that she had not wished for a revelation. For then Robin broke from his immobility. He abandoned his position by the wall and paced a few steps. Then he swung back to his uncle and looked at him with such distress that Julia felt her heart constrict, for even though she knew his age, he seemed nothing more than a badly frightened boy again.
“I didn’t want you to know,” he said despairingly. “That was the sum and substance of it. I knew I could fob the others off in a thousand ways, but your opinion was always so important to me. So long as it was safely secret from you, Nick, I could bear it. I told you that farrago about Julia’s deception so that you wouldn’t press me to return. Because of your history, I thought you’d believe it, and I believed her comfortably wed and out of it. But I never meant to endanger you in any fashion, and I know that Ollie, for all he looks a buffoon, is a dangerous man. And I never wished to hurt Julia. In fact,” he said on a bark of a laugh, “I believed that by abandoning her, I was saving her from hurt. I was being noble that night, Julia,” he said as he looked to her imploringly. “Forgive me, I meant it for the best, you know.”
“The point is,” Nicholas said as he too looked at Julia, “that she doesn’t know. And you must tell her, Robin. In all honor, you must. You see,” he went on as his nephew gazed at Julia disbelievingly, “she thinks it was some deformity or monstrous aberration in herself that repulsed you.”
As Robin continued to gaze wordlessly at Julia, Nicholas walked to her side and placed his hand on the back of her chair. “Yes,” he said sadly, “and so she believes to this day. True, Julia?”
But Julia understood nothing of the sorrow in his voice, nor of the horror in Robin’s eyes, she only leaned forward and, holding her hands tightly in her lap, grasped at that one question, the one that had never left her waking mind for very long for three long years.
“Why did you leave then, Robin?” was all that she could say.
“Ah Julia,” Robin said at last on a long sigh that seemed to come from the depths of his soul.
Then he took in his breath, and with it he seemed to take back in some of his natural presence and jauntiness. He seemed to relax. He half sat, half perched upon an inlaid table’s edge, in the casual way that he so often had in the past, as though it were too much trouble to settle down in a chair like an old or average person. He ran his hand once through his hair, enhancing its contours even as he did so, as it had obviously been styled to accommodate his characteristic habit. Then he blew out his cheeks in a sigh again and then, looking at Julia and his uncle, he at last spoke.
“I never meant any of this, you know. But the bard, of course, was right. I wove a very tangled web in my efforts to deceive. Or you might say, it was because I did not wish to deceive that I did so. No, Nick, don’t fidget, I’m coming to it. Julia,” Robin said, looking at her straightly, “I was going to use you very badly. It was all to your benefit that I did not. There was nothing wrong with you, child. Never. Not for a moment. And I did like you very well, and you were as extremely pretty then as you are extravagantly lovely now, and there was no defect in you in heart, mind, or person. But you see, I could never love you, not in the way you ought to have been loved. And it was never your fault, child, for you see, the simple truth is that I could never love any female in that way.
“You didn’t know, Nick,” Robin continued, now rising again and restlessly pacing as he avoided his uncle’s eye, although his uncle never took his eyes from him. “Well, how could you? I kept it very close after I discovered it myself. Which is not to say that I didn’t fight it with good British fortitude, for I did. To no avail. Even though I could achieve that which I was supposed to with a professional female, there was more alcohol than delight in it, and alcohol, you know, makes me foully ill when I take it in excess. Which, it transpired, I had to do in order to do what I was expected to. Oblique enough to save Julia’s sensibilities, Nick?” he asked, looking up from the carpet he had been studying and, unexpectedly, grinning at his uncle.
“Perhaps it would be better if you were a bit more transparent,” Nicholas said with a trace of temper as he saw Julia frowning slightly in her efforts to comprehend all that Robin had so lightly said.
“She shall have the truth, but no pictures,” Robin replied caustically, and then he went on at once, “You see, my dear, I found that I preferred the intimate company, shall we say, of my own gender to that of yours.”
He waited a moment as Julia’s eyes widened in comprehension, and then, nodding, he went on, “I found a number of like spirits, of course, at school and, when I got out, in London. We flocked together, as the saying goes. Oh dear,” he interrupted himself to sigh ruefully, “why is it that our deepest shames and fears can so easily be contained in platitudes? Never mind, Nicholas, I’ll go on. So we commenced to have a fine time together, my friends and I. We were discreet, we were cautious, and we were fools to be so complacent, it turns out.
“For someone brought a friend to one of our revels. And though he looked deceptively mature, the lad turned out to be shockingly young. What he did at our soiree preyed upon his mind and so he confessed all to his father. Who, as it happened, turned out to be no less than an honored duke, and who had, to our misfortune, the ear of the Prince. We had to fly, of course. But I did not want to, you see.” Robin sighed, shaking his tousled head.
“So I came to Surrey,” he said with artificial brightness, “to rusticate and escape the scandal. Then I hit upon a capital scheme for concealing my preferential way of life. I chose the youngest, prettiest, sweetest, most naïve child that I could to take to wife. One lovely enough for my Uncle Nick to admire, for it was upon his expert taste that I based my criteria,” he said with a brilliant sidewise smile, before he went on to add, “and one with no connections. Oh sorry, Julia, I meant to say no social connections. So that even if she eventually discovered me, she could do nothing about it.
“But I was not a monster, Julia,” Robin said quickly, “for after all, if I had been discreet, you might never have known. And there was a great deal that I could give you: a
kind of love, a great deal of gold, and a title. And even, I thought, with luck and enough time, an heir.”
Robin’s embarrassed laugh dwindled into silence. Julia sat with her head bowed, and Nicholas stood quietly at her side. Neither man spoke, they knew it was Julia’s moment alone.
“Robin,” she finally whispered, her eyes large and very frightened at what she must now ask, “what changed your mind, then?”
“That towel, love,” Robin sighed with a twisted smile, “or rather, the lack of it. For want of a nail the horse was lost ...” he recited, before his smile faded and he went on. “For want of a towel a wife was lost. Because you see, child, in that moment I realized that you weren’t a child but a warm and loving and dismayingly complete woman. I knew then that to be able to return your kiss in a way I ought to have quite naturally done, I would have had to go back down to the taproom for quite a few more hours. I knew that it was never fair to you, or to me. You were simply too young and too sweet to do that to, Julia. I liked you very well, so I left you. I honestly thought you’d soon forget me and marry some local fellow before the year closed out.
“Then I left for the Continent with my good friend Sir Edwin Chester, who is an older, wiser, worthy gentleman whatever his unfortunate tastes, even you cannot say nay to that, Nicholas. He brought Julia home swiftly and safely when my heart and head failed me that night. Then we came here. And here I shall stay,” he declared with challenge in his tone, “for here I am myself, and I am, according to my own lights, happy.”
Julia shook her head in disbelief, perversely seeking a hole in the fabric of his story. It was a strange narrative, but there was no part of it which gave her so much difficulty as that, which freed her of all fault for that night. It was as though she had grown so accustomed to believing in the invisible flaw within herself that she refused to accept the daring notion of her blamelessness.
“But Robin,” she persisted, “if it were only that, then why didn’t you tell me?”
