Courting Julia Page 18

  “And then you came back,” she said, “and you were cold. Not just neglectful. Young children expect that of older ones. And not even occasionally indulgent. Just cold and disapproving. And never joining in any of our games if they smacked of mischief. And always I was the one in trouble with you. Because I was a girl, I suppose, and liked to keep up with the boys. I could never do anything right in your eyes. Never. I came to hate you, Daniel. I was never so glad as when you stopped coming. But I did not set out to say this. Somewhere I lost track of what I was going to say. Oh!” She jerked her arm from his suddenly and turned sharply away to fumble in her reticule. Out came his crumpled handkerchief. “An insect must have flown in my eye. Now both eyes are watering. How ridiculous!”

  “Let me see,” he said. But she slapped his hand away from beneath her chin.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said. “Don’t touch me, Daniel.”

  He swallowed and felt all his emotions raw again, as they had been for the last two days. He wondered why she was crying. For a lost childhood? For a lost hero? For the fact that he had returned to bring shadow back into her sunny world? He waited until she blew her nose and announced that the horrid insect was gone.

  “The point I was going to make,” she said, starting to walk again, ignoring his arm, “was that you were robbed of something, Daniel. I don’t know if it was just circumstances that were to blame or if it was Aunt Sarah, perhaps, demanding too much of you too soon. You were too young to know that doing your duty did not prevent you from also having fun out of life. You don’t have fun, do you? Not ever?”

  He wanted to do violence to something or someone. They had emerged from the tree-lined section of the driveway. The house was in sight, fortunately. They did not have too far to go.

  “What do you call having fun?” he asked, and he could hear the anger in his own voice. “Riding neck or nothing across uneven fields and jumping thick hedges? Swimming in the raw? Climbing trees? No, of course I do not indulge in any of those things, Julia. They are childish or dangerous or can bring great embarrassment to others.”

  “When done in private?” she said. “On one’s own property? Of course one would not climb a tree in Hyde Park or swim—in the raw or even in a shift—in the Serpentine. Even I did not get into any trouble when I spent a Season in London, you see, Daniel, though I ached for more freedom sometimes. But when you are alone or with people to whom you feel close, don’t you ever have the urge to shed your titles and your duties and even your adulthood? Don’t you ever want to run down hills shouting your lungs out? Don’t you?”

  He had a vivid mental image of her racing down the steep side of the hill, shrieking and keeping her balance by the sheer effort of will and of himself catching her at the bottom and twirling her about. And wanting to kiss her.

  “Oh,” she said crossly. “I hate being given the silent treatment. You don’t, do you? You don’t even know what I am talking about. Do you?”

  Everything snapped in him suddenly and he clamped one hand on her wrist, not even knowing with his conscious mind why he did so or what he intended to do next. But he turned off the path, taking her with him, and strode across the lawn in the direction of more trees and the lake. Julia trotted along at his side, not saying a word. His conscious mind knew that he was walking too fast for her, that the gentleman in him would cause him to reduce his pace. But his unconscious mind drove him on until they were deep into the trees, not far from the lake.

  He stopped at an oak tree, an ancient oak that appeared not to have changed by so much as a twig in fifteen years and more. Except that its lowest branch seemed lower to the ground, perhaps. He looked up at branches and footholds that were impressed indelibly upon his memory even across the span of so many years. A tangible and unchanged link with childhood.

  “Climb!” he said tersely, releasing Julia’s wrist. He looked at her for the first time since his control had snapped back on the driveway. She was wearing a flimsy and very feminine muslin dress and a straw bonnet. “I don’t doubt that you can do it even dressed as you are. Climb.” She looked at him for a few moments, her expression blank. And then she dropped her reticule, removed her bonnet and dropped that too, slipped off her shoes, and turned to the lowest branch. She held up a staying hand when he would have helped her.

  She climbed and he climbed after her.

  14

  She was a little frightened if the truth were known. She did not know at first if he intended her to climb the tree so that he could stand below and lecture her again. Perhaps he hoped she would get stuck there so that he could walk away. And when he had first taken her by the wrist and dragged her in the direction of the trees, she had thought that perhaps he intended to continue where he had left off down by the stream. One never knew with Daniel.

  But she climbed. The order had been almost in the nature of a dare after he had looked over the unsuitability of her clothes for such an activity and had told her to climb anyway. She was soon aware that he was coming up after her. To push her off? That was the most ridiculous thought she had ever entertained. After thinking it, she climbed higher than she had intended to go, and then seated herself on a broad branch, setting her back firmly against the trunk. She watched him come up behind her.

  She would not speak. He must be the first to do that. If they must sit there in silence for an hour, then so be it. She was not going to say a word. She thought about two days ago—about the embrace they had shared, about his apology and marriage proposal later. She thought about the day before when she had avoided him and everyone else too as much as she possibly could. And about Gussie’s disturbing words on the way to the village. And the strange comfort of finding Daniel behind her in the churchyard and the strange novelty of having him with her as she paid calls on some of her friends.

  But she had been right in what she had said to him on the way home, she thought. Perhaps she should not have said it aloud, but she was not sorry. He had been robbed, probably by Aunt Sarah, though she had not labored that point. He had been robbed of the sort of adult he would have grown into if he had not been forced into too much responsibility too soon. He would still have acted responsibly. Obviously it was in his nature to do so. But he would also have been as carefree and as charming as Freddie.

  He climbed up onto a branch that was on a level with and almost parallel to the one she occupied and moved out along it, turning eventually and surprising her by lying down full length on it, one booted foot raised, one arm behind his head. He stared upward through the higher branches of the tree to the sky.

  “We used to play here as children,” he said. “Maybe not in your time. I can’t remember. And then I used to come here alone as a boy when the rest of you were off playing somewhere else. For hours on end I used to lie here in this exact spot and just stare at the sky. I used to climb trees even after I was the Viscount Yorke, you see.”

  Julia hugged her knees and rested her chin on them. She said nothing. Somehow it seemed important not to say anything.

  “My father was a wastrel,” he said after a lengthy silence. “Did you know that, Julia? Probably not. Children tend not to know such things, and families tend not to talk about them. Even I did not know until after his death. He was vital, charming, athletic—and devoted to gaming and womanizing. Does the description remind you of someone? He left behind him an estate so heavily mortgaged that there seemed almost no way of saving it, and a widow who was embittered and anxious for the future of her children. Especially perhaps for that of her son, who resembled his father in both looks and character to a remarkable degree.”

  Julia closed her eyes and moved her forehead to her knees. She was not sure she wanted to hear this. But she could not stop him. Or would not do so.

  “Young as I was,” he said, “I understood the situation. I understood that only I stood between my mother and my sister on the one hand and ruin on the other. More than ruin in my mother’s case. Destruction. She seems to be a strong person, doesn’t she? She
can be very harsh and opinionated. But she was very close to total collapse for a long while after my father’s death. I was her anchor to sanity, she used to tell me, not realizing what a heavy burden she was laying on a boy’s shoulders. She loves me and Camilla to distraction, you see. For years we were all that gave meaning to her life.”

  I came to hate you, Daniel. Julia could hear herself saying the words just a short while before. She wished she could recall them now. Oh, her wretched mouth. She wished she had not spoken at all.

  “And so I learned,” he said. “In addition to my school work I learned how to be a viscount, how to manage an estate on the verge of ruin, how to be the head of a family. I learned how to be the sort of man whose womenfolk could depend upon him. Women are the most helpless members of our society, you know. Not through any fault or weakness of their own, but because they are at the mercy of men—physically, economically, in almost every way. And men can be blackguards.”

  He stared upward at the sky until Julia thought he must have forgotten about her. But she did not think of moving or of climbing down to the ground again.

  “And yes, you are right, Julia,” he said at last. “I was young. The only way I could cope with the demands of my life was to stamp out of it everything that might have diverted me and hurt my mother and my sister. And yes, you were always the brunt of my anger almost more than anyone else.”

  “Why?” She spoke at last.

  “I don’t know.” He drew his arm from beneath his head and set it over his eyes. “Perhaps because I saw you as more helpless than most women, more at the mercy of men. There was your orphaned, dowerless state, though I always believed that my uncle would look after you. His will was cruel to you.”

  “He owed me nothing,” she said. “I had rejected all the gentlemen who showed interest in me during the Season that Grandpapa financed. And all the gentlemen he brought here for my inspection after that. He tried to see me securely established before his death.”

  “And perhaps I could see you on the way to your own destruction,” he said. “The only hope for someone in your position seems to be to live by all the rules. You live by none of them.”

  “You exaggerate,” she said.

  “Yes.” He thought for a while. “I do. Other people—the villagers and the family here—are very fond of you. But they have no responsibility for your future, Julia.”

  “Neither do you,” she said.

  “No.” He sat up at last, carefully, and looked down. “No, I don’t, do I? Are you going to be able to get down from here?”

  “There are no crumbling stairs between here and the ground,” she said. “And I am not wearing slippery slippers. I have called myself all kinds of fool since that incident, by the way. Why did I not simply take off my shoes and stockings? I would not have needed either your assistance or Gussie’s. And I would not have made such a cake of myself.”

  She lowered herself carefully to the branch below as she talked. But descending from a tree when one was wearing a costly and flimsy muslin was not a speedy business. He was waiting on the ground by the time she stepped onto the lowest branch. He reached up his arms for her, and it seemed petty to refuse his help. She set her hands on his shoulders while he set his at her waist, and allowed him to lift her to the ground.

  “Julia.” He kept his hands at her waist when she was down and standing very close to him. His face was beside hers. If she turned her head, their noses would collide or their mouths would meet. She did not turn her head.

  “Promise me one thing. Promise me that you will not marry Freddie.”

  She was almost ready to promise him the moon and a few stars for good measure, especially when she was standing like this within the aura of his physical magnetism. But nothing had really changed. He had explained things to her that she had never dreamed of, things that helped her understand why he had changed so completely in the course of one year and why the fun and the laughter had gone out of his life never to return. And she understood better perhaps why he had always been so hostile to her. But the hostility was still there nevertheless. And she was still in no way answerable to him.

  “Freddie is not your father, Daniel,” she said. “No one is ever an exact replica of someone else. And I have made no decision yet about whom I will marry. If anyone. I think perhaps I will marry no one but retain at least a part of my freedom.”

  “That is not an answer,” he said. “Promise me.”

  “I can’t promise anything, Daniel,” she said.

  “You mean you won’t.” His tone was hard again.

  “I mean I won’t,” she said quietly.

  “Because it is I who ask you,” he said.

  And he turned his head and set his mouth to hers and kissed her fiercely and openmouthed for several long moments while her mind spun off into space and she clung to him, all the aches of the past two days suddenly focused again in the one embrace. With a man who had offered for her and whom she had rejected. With a man who disliked her and whom she hated—had hated. With a man who could make her want to cry and cry for no discernible reason at all.

  He released her suddenly, and she felt bereft and disoriented. He was stooping down to pick up her bonnet and her reticule and straightening up to hand them to her. His eyes were hard. “You are a foolish woman, Julia,” he said. “You would rush to your own destruction just to spite me, would you not? Perhaps I should urge you to marry him. Perhaps then you would feel obliged to reject him.”

  She slid her feet into her shoes and tied the ribbons of her bonnet beneath her chin with hands that did not feel quite steady. “I will do what I consider right for myself,” she said. “I am not your mother or your sister. You do not need to burden yourself with my care, Daniel.”

  She turned to walk back in the direction of the house, and he fell into step beside her. He did not offer his arm. They walked all the way back without speaking a word.

  Frederick stood at the top of the horseshoe steps whistling. But it was an enforced cheerfulness that he displayed, for the benefit of the servants in the hall behind him. He was not feeling cheerful. His eyes were narrowed on the driveway as it emerged from the trees.

  Interesting, he thought. Why would they be making off in the direction of the lake instead of coming directly back to the house? Why indeed? Judging from the way those two apparently felt about each other, they should have been taking the shortest route back so that they could be rid of each other.

  And why had Dan attached himself to her in the village even to the extent of visiting with her people who could mean nothing whatsoever to him? Frederick could not feel convinced by Camilla’s argument that as the new Earl of Beaconswood Dan felt obliged to make himself agreeable to some of the leading families of the village. Primrose Park did not belong to him, after all. Unless he intended that it would.

  Dan had whisked her away from the lake the afternoon of the picnic too, when Frederick had intended to press his advantage and take tea with her. And neither one of them had come back in a hurry.

  Could he have underestimated Dan? Frederick wondered. Was it possible after all that he was interested in Jule or interested in Primrose Park? Was it possible that he was indeed a contestant for her hand, a crafty one? And was there even a glimmering of a chance that Jule would favor him? The lure of a countess’s title and the other properties and all the rest of the fortune must be strong. Not that he would expect Jule to be swayed by such considerations. But would the lure of Dan, a man who had always disliked her and whom she had always hated, be equally strong? The attraction of opposites? The love/hate relationship?

  It seemed altogether possible.

  Frederick left off whistling in order to grin. But neither the expression nor his amusement lasted long. Normally he would welcome a worthy opponent and long odds. They would add uncertainty and excitement to the game. But unfortunately the game had just become too desperate a one, winning it just too crucial to his well-being.

  He had been right to
feel unease when one creditor had found him at Primrose Park. For of course now others had found him there too. One particularly nasty letter had been awaiting him on his return from the village. It was from a creditor who had lost both his patience and his sense of humor. Either the Honorable Mr. Frederick Sullivan would pay up immediately, it seemed, or he must bear the consequences. And the sum in question was enough to make Frederick break out in a cold sweat.

  The only way he could save himself from the humiliation of throwing himself on his father's mercy—and even his father’s considerable fortune would be dented by the payment of all his debts—or from the disaster of debtors’ prison was to persuade Jule to marry him. Soon. Before the month was out. All the pleasure involved in the game of courting her was gone, for the game could no longer be played at his leisure. And it must be won.

  And so damnation to Dan and his sly courtship, if indeed that was what he was involved in. Dan had quite enough already. More than enough. And he had no expensive habits as far as Frederick knew. Besides, he had the young and lovely Miss Morriston waiting for him in London. A man ought not to be allowed to become too greedy.

  Frederick waited for a while, but the two did not emerge from the trees again. Whatever they were doing down by the lake, they were taking their time about it. He had to make a conscious effort to restore the accustomed good humor to his face before turning to enter the house.

  * * *

  Julia was late for dinner. Not that she was so busy in the late afternoon that she left herself insufficient time to change and tidy herself. She was not busy at all, in fact. On her return from the lake, she withdrew to the conservatory and curled up on the window seat with the curtain pulled across to hide her from anyone who happened to stray there. She clasped her knees and stared sightlessly out over the rose arbor. And thought.