by Edith Layton
There was a profound silence after she spoke, and though she awaited his reply, Robin only looked at her oddly. But then, unexpectedly, Nicholas bent close to her and spoke gently, “He did not dare, I imagine. Even though he thought highly of you, he didn’t dare put his life in your hands. You see, Robin’s way of life can be a way of death in our country. It is a capital offense, Julia, punishable by hanging.”
“Oh, I doubt they’d actually stretch my neck, Nick.” Robin laughed bitterly. “Noblesse oblige and all that, you know. My title would buy me exile rather than the topping cheat. But unless I passed my life in a tissue of lies that would make this situation appear to be only a matter of a few fibs, I would be told, man to gentleman, to leave my country forever. It does not take much, you know. Just before I left home, you’ll recall, there was the celebrated case of that waiter accused by his busboy. Only accused, mind you, but nonetheless it only took five minutes for a jury of his peers to vote him out of this life.
“There are ways around it,” Robin said knowingly. “Oh yes, there are. I could be like Sir Bailey up in Yorkshire, who spends his life as a recluse, never passing through the very gates of his estates lest he succumb to temptation again and ruin his name. Or even better, like Lord Crowell, who parades his wife in the highest reaches of the ton. But she is a trull who holds his title dearer than her honor and presents him with bastard babes every year to carry that prized title onward. I would not do that, Nick,” Robin said fervently. “It would be far better that one of your blood take my name after I am gone, than one from a nameless litter spawned by some opportunist...” He paused, collected himself, and then said soberly, “The vicar is no fool, you know. I could do worse than to follow his lead.”
They stayed in silence, then, the two gentlemen and the lady, in the opulent rented bedroom. Each was immersed in his own thoughts to the point that no one of them noted the quiet grown profound enough to make the mantel clock’s tiny, tinny chime resound like that of Bow Bells in the hushed room. But when Julia looked up and out into the world again at that intrusion, she found that Nicholas was watching her closely.
“Do you understand now?” he asked simply, placing his hand upon her shoulder.
“Yes,” she said, facing hint squarely and answering as honestly as she was able. “As much, that is to say, as I can, I think.”
“And do you forgive me, child?” Robin asked with concern.
The warm weight of the baron’s hand upon her shoulder seemed to give Julia’s body warmth, and she drew confidence from the way he continued to stand at her side. The two men who had shaped her life so strangely in the past few years waited for her reply, and even as she drew in her breath to answer she knew that for all of them far more than the next few years was dependent upon what she next said.
“I am not a child, Robin,” she replied thoughtfully, “but I was one when you knew me, and yes, it would have been disastrous had we wed then. So, instead of blaming you, I suppose I must thank you. No, Nicholas, don’t look at me that way,” she protested with a little laugh as she read his face, “I am no saint, and although I am relieved beyond words to know that I’m not a freakish thing, in any wise either, I’m human enough to wish Robin at Jericho for these years of doubt I suffered. ”
She shook her head in a sorrowful negative and added, “I can’t undo the past so it’s useless to say what might have been had you not come into my life, Robin.” And then, with a small, sweet smile she added, “But I can’t forgive you either.” Robin hesitated, and then, smiling sweetly himself, merely shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of helplessness, and Julia could feel Nicholas’s hand grow heavy upon her even as she went on to say in the same thoughtful tones, “For there is nothing for me to forgive, you see. Nothing. Yes, you ought not to have offered for me, knowing what you did, and you ought not, I suppose, to be what you are. But then, none of us have been precisely what we should have been, have we? I ought not to have been such a ninny as to agree to marry you without knowing you, and Papa ought not to have given his consent so quickly, for I would not have made a move without it. And Nicholas should never have believed the worst of me without proof, or forced me to leave England to come to the last place on earth that I wished to be. So if you come right down to it,” she said reasonably, “I ought not to be here right now.” Nicholas removed his hand from her shoulder as she shook out her skirts and rose from the chair so that she might cease to look up at both men and face Robin directly.
“But I am here, so let’s make an end to it now. I would wish that it all had happened to some other person. But at least it’s over. Or, at least for me it is. And for whatever it’s worth,” she smiled as she put out her hand, “I wish you well in future, Robin, I truly do.”
Robin took her hand, but even as he had it in his clasp, he turned a bright look toward his uncle.
“And you, Nick?” he asked quickly. “Do you? Ah, might as well ask for the moon, I suppose. Julia forgives that which she cannot fully comprehend. She’s not a gentleman and hasn’t been to the best schools and clubs, thank God. Still, if I cannot condone it fully myself, why then, how can I expect it of you? C’est la vie. Only don’t despise me too much if you can help it, and keep it between us, if you will. I should rather Mama believed no girl good enough for me than the reverse. I don’t mind being the family skeleton, but pray don’t rattle my bones too much.”
He bowed to Julia, and then straightened his shoulders. “Well,” he breathed with an air of great decision, “I believe I’ll be going along now. Don’t fret about Ollie, Uncle, for I’ll have a word with him myself. I’ll simply tell him that he’s too late, you’ve discovered all and are in such a rage that you’ve already vowed to spill it to the family. He can’t sell secrecy he don’t possess, so if he broaches the subject to you, just agree to the tale. I don’t think,” he added, giving his motionless, grave-visaged uncle a measuring look, “that you’ll have to simulate too much rage, at that.”
“No,” his uncle agreed grimly.
Then as Robin grew white about the mouth and turned blindly to the door, Nicholas cleared his throat and added in a clearer voice, “No, it’s an unworkable scheme, dear boy. If he’d believe me to be so enraged, why then he’d believe me willing to pay anything for his silence before the world. Now wouldn’t it be far better if we both faced him? Say, as two gentlemen who might choose to live extremely different lives, but who have a fondness for each other through memory as well as blood that transcends present circumstances. Such gentlemen can have no secrets from each other, and never would, for they would know that their friendship could withstand anything but deceit. He can’t sell a secret that doesn’t exist. I don’t know about you, Robin, but certainly I think I would not have to simulate enthusiasm for your company. And if he asks you, I hope you would agree with me.”
Robin stopped in his tracks, and then, smiling as tremulously and as suspiciously broadly as his uncle, advanced upon the baron. The two men positively slapped their hands together before they gripped them hard and grinned at each other. And Julia, seeing it all through a sudden blurry mist, made a liar of herself. For as she stood and watched them repeatedly and wordlessly shaking hands, she was supremely happy to be there at that moment. And she would not have been anywhere else in the world, for the world, even though she was undeniably there against her will, on her own, and very far from home.
The afternoon late summer sun shone down broadly upon the diners at the outdoor cafe near the banks of the Seine. It was such a bright day that many of the gentry taking refreshment there had to squint their eyes to see their dishes of ice properly, although their ladies were more fortunate, having their parasols to shield them from the full glare.
So it was that one gentleman had his eyes screwed up tightly as he attempted to watch a playful quartet of persons at another table. It was hard to ascertain whether he was affected by the glare or brought to the brink of either laughter or tears by their apparent outsized merriment. For he soon had
to bring his handkerchief into use, if only to clear his eyes so that he might better see the gentleman who joined him at his table.
“Oh, hello there, Ollie, my friend,” the vicar said pleasantly as he pulled out a spindly chair, dusted it with his own handkerchief, and then dropped gracefully into place, even though he had not been invited to do so. “How good to find you here in the city of light. Now who was it told me you were in Amsterdam?” he mused. “No matter, for clearly, you’re here now. How goes it with you, then?” the older gentleman asked, all solicitude, as though he were speaking to a man in his sick bed rather than in a fashionable cafe in the heart of Paris.
“Is there anything you don’t know, blast you?” the heavy-set gentleman answered angrily, although he never took his eyes off the other table.
“I sincerely hope not!” the thin old gentleman replied with a great show of horror. He smiled, and although he did no more than signal to the waiter and order up a cup of tea, he seemed to be enjoying himself hugely. “A charming sight, is it not?” he sighed at length when his companion did not speak. He gestured toward the four persons at the table at the far end of the cafe, the four who were laughing and talking together, the four that his host could not tear his gaze from.
“And such a singularly unusual circumstance,” he said confidentially, dropping his voice, “for there sits Lord Nicholas Daventry,. Baron Stafford—why he’s the same chap you were asking me about, Ollie, when last I saw you! Well, here’s a bit of gossip for you then, for there he sits with his young nephew, Robin Marlowe, Earl of Shepton, and Lady Mary Preston and some young filly she’s looking after. But the singular thing, Ollie,” the vicar whispered although still grinning terribly, looking rather like an ancient turtle in his glee, “is that it’s rumored that young Robin has a rather queer kick in his gait, and yet his family don’t give a rap, so long as he’s discreet enough about it to stay on the Continent. Now I don’t know what this modern world is coming to, Ollie, I vow I do not.”
But at that, his companion slammed his fist upon the table and rose. He gave the other table one last fulminating look and then turned to the older gentleman, who was gazing at him blandly.
“Damn you, Vicar,” Sir Sidney shouted wrathfully, and then, shoulders slumping, he slouched out into the street and disappeared into the afternoon crowds.
“Oh dear,” the vicar chuckled to himself, “and he’s left me with the bill to settle, of course. But it was worth the price,” he whispered to himself as he fished for a coin from his vest pocket, “for value received.”
Then the old gentleman made his way to the table his erstwhile host had been observing. He made a courtly bow which brought a smile of gratification from Lady Preston, and then he declined the baron’s offer that he join them.
“I only came, dear friends,” he said, standing by their table so wreathed in smiles as to be a bit frightening, like a dessicated Father Christmas, “to tell you of the departure of another acquaintance. Sir Oliver Sidney, it appears, has no further business here, and I imagine, we’ll see no more of him. Pity, that,” he remarked in a singularly unsorrowful fashion. “But the pity is,” he said with some real emotion and a more wistful smile, “that I imagine that means you will soon be gone from here as well, my dears.”
Lady Preston nodded in affirmation, and the young earl grew a wistful expression as he acknowledged the truth of the statement. But at those innocuous words, the vicar noticed, Miss Hastings’ lovely face immediately went the color of the damask tablecloth, and she bit her lip and dropped her gaze to her lap. And the Baron Stafford, who had carried state secrets through a roomful of assassins without so much as batting his long eyelashes, grew suddenly so still he seemed to be carved from alabaster.
“Yes,” the baron breathed at last, “now we may take passage home on the next fair wind. Yes, at last it is over.”
17
They stood on the quay and waited for their turn to board the packet. Had they arrived earlier, they would have been among the first to embark, for they were traveling in first class style and they were clearly members of that class which always took precedence. But there had been minor delays in starting out and then major farewells to be done with. Now it had been decided for both prudence and the sake of appearance to wait until the last soul and shipment had been taken on board before they went on the ship themselves to begin their journey home.
It was a warm and muggy August morning, and the miasmas of the sea were supplemented by the stench of the flotsam and debris that wharfside slips always seemed to collect. Julia attempted to breathe shallowly to escape the aroma which greeted her whenever the vague, inconstant breeze shifted, slightly to shore. She looked longingly out to the wider sea beyond the ship. There the waters seemed clear and open and of an entirely different constitution than the oily, dank stuff which sullenly lapped at the dockside beneath her feet. She tried as hard not to look down as she did not to breathe in deeply. For now and again the thick waters below the boards where she stood showed hints of prodigies as they floated by, things she would rather not define, as they were either long deceased, or soon to spring to unnatural new forms of life.
She could, she knew, have stayed within the more cleanly atmosphere of the parlor of the waterside inn, where both Celeste and Lady Preston now comfortably awaited their summons to leave. Both women were making the return journey with her. Lady Preston was on her way home after all her weary journeys and unexpectedly, Celeste had taken passage as well. The maidservant’s practicality had outweighed the call of nationality. She had heard that French maids were in demand in England, she told her present mistress, and if a lady were foolish enough to pay for a mere accent, why then she thought she should be twice as foolish not to provide one for a price. But Julia had decided to forego the company of both women just now. She could have time with them once she was at sea. She had two more personal good-byes to make this morning, and she needed both privacy and solitude in which to compose herself. One farewell would be difficult enough, for it would be to a person, but the other, much harder leavetaking would be to a dream.
Even as she stood apart and brooded alone, Robin and Nicholas were making their last good-byes only a few paces away from her. She had thought that there was not much further that they could have found to say to each other, as she knew that they had stayed up late the previous night, talking and settling accounts together. But then, she sighed, so too had she stayed up most of the night, talking and attempting to settle matters with herself, and yet here she was this morning, still unresolved, with even more thinking yet to do.
She was going home at last. If her reputation was not cleared in the matter of her elopement with Robin, then at least some of her personal shame was absolved. It seemed that she had been only a fool, not a freak of nature. And it appeared that no further damage would be done either to her name or her honor by this recent sojourn abroad with his uncle. But it was neither her conscience nor her reputation which troubled her now, it was her heart. If she had found her self-esteem again on this journey, she had paid for it dearly. For even if the incredible thing that Robin had stated were true and there was nothing wrong with her at all, no bar to normal love and life, how could it matter when she was about to be parted from the one man it would ever matter for?
But part from him she would, Julia vowed, with a sudden firming of her resolve. She did not need Lady Preston to tell her what was proper. Standing here on the dock, with a breeze from home in her hair, it was as though she was already there in truth, and a certain sense of reality settled over her. Foreign travel disordered the brain, it made one wander in one’s wits as well as in one’s itinerary, she thought. She realized, as more worldly travelers had done for centuries before her, that often things that one thought or did upon alien soil were things that were alien to one’s true nature. No, she sadly acknowledged to herself, Julia Hastings, for all her sins, could not be, and could not wish to be except in her deepest midnight fancies, the fancy-piece of any
gentleman.
That did not mean, that she could not regret her nature. For she perceived a truth that no explanation could erase—that her essential nature was as much of an impediment to her longings as the phantom flaw that Robin had banished had been. The only man that she had ever desired as a man desired her only as his mistress. Yet even though she knew it was her only chance at happiness, she could not oblige him. Her conscience simply would not permit it. She was, she thought on a sigh, either a true puritan or a deluded prig. But that was what she was, she thought, straightening her shoulders and giving one last little mournful snuffle. And if she changed herself beyond recognition to achieve a desire, why then, she reasoned, she would be like one of Cinderella’s stepsisters, slicing off a toe or two to fit a slipper that was never meant to be worn by her.
Having reached that conclusion, Julia felt far better. It was true that the sun seemed to have dropped from the sky, the waters that seethed beneath the wharf seemed to have become inky black, and she felt as though she were waiting for deaf Charon to ferry her across the Styx rather than bluff Captain Aherne to take her home to England, but at least she saw her way clear. Oh yes, she thought, she saw a clear and empty and long road to the end of a lonely life ahead of her.
The two gentlemen finally left off talking and Nicholas gave Robin a clap upon the back, even as they shook hands warmly. Robin spoke a brief, low word to Nicholas, and then he alone came to where Julia was standing and waiting.
“Time for a good-bye, Julia,” Robin said gently. “I’ll come no closer to home than this dockside this time. What is there for me in England save for regret and threat and fear of a misstep? But still, I’ve promised Nick that one day I shall visit again. He’s agreed to mind the shop as best he can for me, and I’ll direct the rest in letters home. It’s to be a devastating Italian widow that I’ve lost my heart to this time, by the by,” he grinned. “Which ought to suit Mama to perfection, for she had a dancing master in her youth that was a grand infatuation. Her papa of course forbade the match, so to salve her feelings of loss she is fond of going on at length about how perfidious his entire race is known to be. She’ll understand my continued absence well enough, I think.
