Courting Julia Read online

  Dear Reader,

  Between 1985 and 1998, I wrote more than thirty Signet Regency romances, most of which have long been out of print. Many of you have been asking me about them and hunting for them, and, in some cases, paying high prices for second-hand copies to complete your collections of my books. I have been touched by your interest. I am delighted that these books are going to be available as e-books with lovely new covers and very affordable prices.

  If you have read any of my more recent books, the Bedwyn saga, the SIMPLY quartet, the Huxtable series, the Survivors’ Club series, for example, you may wish to discover if my writing has changed in the course of the past 30 years or if my view of life and love and romance remains essentially the same. Whatever you decide, I do hope you will enjoy being able to read these books at last.

  Mary Balogh

  www.marybalogh.com

  “Courting Julia” Copyright © 1993 by Mary Balogh

  COURTING JULIA First Ebook edition April 2017 ISBN: 978-1-944654-94-8

  All rights reserved. No part of the Ebook may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both copyright owner and Class Ebook Editions Ltd., the publisher of the Ebook. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  “Balogh is today’s superstar heir to the marvelous legacy of Georgette Heyer (except a lot steamier)!” –New York Times Bestselling author Susan Elizabeth Phillips

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  “One of the best!” –New York Times Bestselling author Julia Quinn

  “Mary Balogh has the gift of making a relationship seem utterly real and utterly compelling.” –New York Times Bestselling author Mary Jo Putney

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  CourtingJulia

  Mary Balogh

  Class Ebook Editions, Ltd.

  New York, NY

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Dear Reader

  Copyright

  Praise for Mary

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Biography

  More by Mary Balogh

  Also by Mary Balogh

  COMING SOON

  Dancing with Clara

  Tempting Harriet

  The Constant Heart

  1

  “They’ll come rushing from all corners of the globe as soon as I’m dead,” the Earl of Beaconswood said to his granddaughter—to his step-granddaughter, to be more accurate. The earl’s daughter had married Julia Maynard’s father when Julia, the child of his previous marriage, was five years old.

  “Oh, Grandpapa,” Julia said, closing the book from which she had been reading aloud and frowning at the old man as he reclined back against his pillows and tried to smooth the sheet across his chest with gnarled and feeble hands. “Don’t say such things.”

  “They’ll come racing all right,” he said. “And weeping pailfuls and roaring fury at you for not summoning them sooner, Jule. But we’ll cheat ’em, girl.” His chuckle turned into a cough.

  “I meant don’t say that about dying,” Julia said, standing up to fold the sheet neatly and bending over him to kiss his forehead. His bushy white eyebrows tickled her chin.

  “It’s true enough,” he said. “The body is worn out, Jule. Time to turn it in for a new one.” He chuckled again. “Time to turn up my toes.”

  “You will be getting better now that the warm weather has come,” she said briskly. “Though I still think we should let everyone know that you are poorly, Grandpapa. 1 have had to lie to both Aunt Eunice and Aunt Sarah in the past month, assuring them both in reply to their letters that you are very well, thank you. It is not right. They should know. And it would be a comfort to you to have a little more company.”

  “Bah!” he said, frowning ferociously from beneath bushy white eyebrows. “Company is what I don’t need, Jule. Everyone tiptoeing around and whispering and looking Friday-faced. And bringing me this gruel to make me feel better and that gruel and the other gruel. Bah!” He paused and wheezed for breath.

  “Well,” Julia said after watching him in some concern until he had succeeded, “I am not going to change your mind about it, am I?” Though she would be the one blamed for it afterward. He was right about that but she did not express the thought out loud. After what? her mind asked and shied away from an answer. “Are you enjoying Gulliver’s Travels?”

  “No better than 1 did when I first read it fifty years or so ago,” he said. “That Gulliver was a fool if ever there was one. No, I’ve been lying here thinking, Jule.”

  She clucked her tongue. “So I was reading for nothing,” she said. “You were not even listening.”

  “I like the sound of your voice,” he said. “Besides, you were reading for your own entertainment too, girl, or you are a fool for wasting a sunny afternoon sitting up here with a dying old man.”

  “It is not a waste,” she said. “Grandpapa, you will get better. You were feeling quite spry yesterday. You said so.”

  “Feeling spry these days means seeing a pretty chambermaid and knowing that once upon a time the sight would have meant something,” he said with another chuckle that turned into a cough.

  “For shame,” Julia said, sitting back down again. "1 am not going to give you the satisfaction of blushing, Grandpapa.”

  “You ain’t married,” the earl said, frowning and looking keenly at his granddaughter from beneath his eyebrows. “You know what that will mean after I am dead, Jule.”

  She sighed. “Let’s not start on that topic again,” she said. “Would you like some tea, Grandpapa? Cook has made some of the little currant cakes you like so well. Shall I go and fetch some?”

  “How old are you?” the earl asked.

  Julia sighed again. Nothing would distract Grandpapa once he was launched upon his favorite topic. And he knew very well how old she was. “Twenty-one,” she said. “Aged and decrepit, Grandpapa. And definitely a spinster for life. Don’t start. Please?”

  But he was already started and well launched. “You came back from your Season in London with your nose in the air and all your beaux rejected,” he said. “That was all of two years ago. And you have turned up your nose at every respectable young man I have brought here for your inspection since. You’ll be lucky if you really don’t end up a spinster, Jule.”

  “I have never turned up my nose,” she said indignantly, falling into the trap of arguing with him, as she always did. “I have just not met anyone I cared to spend the rest of my life with, Grandpapa. There are worse fates than ending up a
spinster, you know.”

  “Are there?” he said gruffly, “You want to be turned over to the Maynards, Jule?”

  No, she certainly did not. Her father’s elder brother and his wife and five children lived far to the north, almost in Scotland, and they had always made it clear that they would not relish having to take responsibility for Julia. Though they would if they had to, of course. They were all the direct family she had.

  Julia held her peace and glared sullenly at her grandfather.

  “It’ll be the Maynards after I am gone," the earl said. “You can’t expect my family to take you under their wing, can you, Jule?”

  Grandpapa’s family consisted of two sisters and a sister-in-law on his side, and a brother-in-law and sister-in-law on Grandmama’s side, plus spouses and numerous nephews and nieces. Julia had grown up as one of them. Only in recent years had she realized fully that in truth she did not belong at all. Grandpapa had kept her constantly reminded with his repeated attempts to marry her off.

  “You had better take Dickson while I am still alive to give a dowry,” the earl said. “He is steady enough, Jule. And respectable. I’ll have him summoned tomorrow. He’s less than ten miles away.”

  “You will do no such thing,” Julia said crossly. “I would rather marry a frog than Sir Albert Dickson. If you won’t have tea, Grandpapa, then it is time for your sleep. You are tired and you have been talking too much. You know what the doctor said.”

  “Old fool,” he said. “I don’t have too much longer to talk, Jule. It’s Dickson or the Maynards, girl. I don’t have time to find someone else for you.”

  “Good,” she said tartly. “That is one small mercy, at least.”

  But he grasped feebly for her wrist as she stood up, and tears sprang to her eyes. His hand was a thin, bloodless claw. Grandpapa had always been robust.

  “Jule,” he said, “I wanted to see you settled, girl, before I go on my way. I feel an obligation to you because of your stepmother. She loved your father and you. And your papa left nothing. I love you as my own granddaughter.”

  “I know, Grandpapa,” she said, swallowing tears. “Don’t worry about me. It is time for your sleep.”

  He looked at her broodingly. “But I do worry,” he said, “What is going to happen to you, Jule?”

  “I am going to go from this room,” she said, bending to kiss him once more, “so that you can rest. And then I am going to go outside for some air and sunshine. That is what is going to happen to me. Aunt Millie will look in a little later to see if you are awake and need anything.”

  “I’ll be sure to be asleep, then,” the earl said. “Millie always shakes my pillows until they are all lumps and kicks the bed with her slippers so that all my bones jangle.”

  Julia chuckled as she let herself quietly from the room. But amusement faded quickly. Grandpapa really was failing fast. She could no longer pretend, as she had all winter, that he would rally again once spring came. It was June, more summer than spring, and he was weaker than ever. He had not left his room since just after Christmas. He had not left his bed in three weeks or a month.

  He really was dying, she thought, admitting the truth to herself for the first time. It was difficult to imagine the world without Grandpapa in it. And it was still difficult to realize that he was not really her grandfather at all. He had always treated her as if he were, perhaps because he had no grandchildren of his own. Her papa and her stepmother had died together in Italy three years after their marriage. There had been no children of the marriage. All they had left behind were debts.

  Julia tapped on the door of Aunt Millie’s sitting room—Aunt Millie was Grandpapa’s maiden sister—opened the door quietly, and found her aunt asleep in her chair, her mouth open, her cap tilted rakishly over one eye. Julia closed the door softly. She would be sure to come back inside to check on her grandfather herself within the hour.

  She proceeded on her way outside for a stroll in the formal gardens without stopping to pick up a shawl. It was a warm day despite the breeze. She breathed in the scent of flowers as she crossed the cobbled terrace and descended the wide stone steps to the gardens. It was going to be hard to move away, to have to stop thinking of Primrose Park as home. It had been home since she was five years old. She could not remember any other with any clarity.

  Julia changed her mind about strolling along the graveled paths between the flower beds and box hedges and sat down instead on the second step from the bottom, clasping her knees and gazing across the colored heads of flowers. It seemed self-centered to be thinking about losing her home when Grandpapa was dying. As if her grief over what was happening had less to do with him as a person than with what he represented to her—comfort and security.

  But she need not feel such guilt, she knew. She loved him dearly. He was the only parent figure she had known since the age of eight. There was Aunt Millie, of course, but Aunt Millie had always been all adither. Even as a child Julia had felt protective of her, almost as if their supposed roles were reversed.

  Perhaps for Grandpapa's sake, Julia thought, she should have made a more determined effort to choose a husband. She could have been reasonable about it, choosing the least objectionable candidate. But the trouble was that she could not choose a husband with her reason. She was a romantic. A foolish one. For in looking for romantic perfection she knew that she was very likely to end up as a spinster, as Grandpapa always warned. Indeed, she was one and twenty already. But no, even to please Grandpapa she could not have married anyone who had yet shown an interest in her—or in the dowry Grandpapa was prepared to offer with her.

  She did not really believe his threats. Grandpapa loved her and would not doom her to having to go to live with relatives who did not want her. No, he would provide for her, she was sure. She did not know details, but she did know that Grandpapa was enormously wealthy and that a great deal of his wealth and some of his property—including Primrose Park—was at his disposal, to be left to whomever he chose. He would leave her an allowance sufficient to enable her to live independently. She knew he would. In fact, he would probably leave her even more than that.

  She was not really afraid for her future but only depressed by it. Soon there would be no Grandpapa and no Primrose Park. And no husband either. No grand romantic passion to set her on the path to the happily ever after. Sometimes life seemed very dreary. And her mood was not improved at all by the fact that she had disappointed her grandfather. He would have liked to see her contentedly married before he died.

  Julia's attention was caught suddenly by movement beyond the gardens. A carriage had emerged from the trees far down the driveway and was making its way toward the house. Not a wagon or a gig, but a fine traveling carriage. Who was coming? It could not be any of the family, surely.

  Grandpapa had given strict orders that none of them be informed of the poor state of his health, and the family never came until July or August.

  She stood up and watched the carriage approach the terrace, shading her eyes against the sun.

  He felt rather like a vulture, the Viscount Yorke thought as the house came into view. Primrose Park, with its neat Palladian manor and well-kept formal gardens and picturesque park, was neither the largest nor the most accessible of the Earl of Beaconswood’s estates, but it was the one where he had elected to live most of his life. And so it had become the focal point of family life, the place where everyone tended to gather during the summer months.

  But the viscount, the earl’s nephew and heir, had not been there for six years. He had been busy with his own estate and other responsibilities. And with his own life too. And so he felt a little embarrassed coming now, in June, without an official invitation. He felt like a vulture. Primrose Park was unentailed, unlike the earl’s other estates. He could leave it to whomever he chose after his death. And the earl was dying, if the strange, apologetic, secretive letter sent the viscount by his aunt was to be believed. Probably it was. His uncle must be close to eighty years old. He was
certainly years older than any other member of the family.

  And so the viscount was coming at his aunt’s request, though she had advised him in her letter with lengthy apologies for the presumption not to divulge the fact that she had written. He was supposed to arrive just as if he had taken it suddenly into his head after six years to call upon his uncle. Or just as if he had been passing through Gloucestershire by some chance and had decided to call to pay his respects.

  But it would look, the viscount thought, as if he were coming to gloat over all that would soon be his and as if he were perhaps trying to ensure that Primrose Park would be his too.

  He was coming because it was the dutiful thing to do. He was, after all, the earl’s heir and if it was true that the old man was dying, then he should pay his last respects to his uncle. And of course it would be as well for him to be on hand afterward to deal with all the business of the funeral and the will. There would be many things to be done and Aunt Millie had never been a competent manager.

  He had come out of duty, he thought, peering out of the window as the carriage turned onto the terrace and slowed before the marble horseshoe steps leading up to the front doors. But he could think of other things he would rather he doing. He would rather be back in London, though this was the first year he had gone there for the Season for many years. He had gone to begin to look about him for a wife since he was at that awkward age of twenty-nine and his mother’s hints were becoming persistent.

  And surprisingly he had found Blanche, a grave, sweet, and pretty eighteen-year-old, who suited him very nicely indeed despite her youth. The courtship was proceeding slowly but promisingly. He chafed at the delay this visit to his uncle was creating. And perhaps it would be a prolonged delay. Perhaps, he thought, he should have acted with less than his customary caution and made his offer to Blanche’s father before leaving town. But he had not done so and it was too late now.