Elizabeth Mansfield (27 page)

Again she removed her hand from his grasp. “I think it would be best,” she said, not meeting his eyes, “if we don’t meet again like this. Good-bye, my lord.” And she hurried off to the stairs.

He stared after her, dumfounded. Something about her remarks had seemed strangely askew, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. But one thing was glaringly clear. Though she’d suggested that she no longer loved Tris—and perhaps never had-—she certainly didn’t care for Peter Granard, Viscount Canfield. She wanted him to remain her
friend!
Remembering those words of hers, he gave a derisive, self-deprecating laugh. For the first time in his life, he’d been soundly rejected by a woman.
I
hope you’ll always remain my friend.
Weren’t those the words every woman used to rid herself of a suitor she didn’t want?

Julie, meanwhile, ran up the stairs, brushing away the tears that she’d managed to hold back during the interview. How could he have behaved in that intimate way, she asked herself, when he knew he would soon be betrothed to his “Kat”? She would have liked to fling that question in his face, but she’d been too reticent. Besides, if a betrothal had not yet been officially announced, did it officially exist? One couldn’t even mention it except in whispered gossip. Perhaps that’s why he felt justified in seeking her company—because the betrothal was not yet official. But from her point of view it was quite wrong of him. To show attentions to one woman when you are betrothed to another is the act of a ... a cad.

Already in pain from the fact of his attachment to that beautiful red-headed creature, Julie now found herself in greater pain because of his thoughtlessness. And the only way she could think of to ease the terrible ache inside her was to throw herself across her bed and sob her heart out.

But even that sad solace was denied her. Her mother was sitting on her bed waiting for her. “What did he want?” she asked, still angry at Julie’s disobedience. And then she saw her daughter’s tearstained face. “Julie!” she cried in alarm.

“I’m all right, Mama, you needn’t worry,” Julie said, dashing the wetness from her cheeks with the back of her hand and speaking as resolutely as she could. “But I do have something to say to you. You may stay here in London and help Tris and Cleo as long as you like. But as for me, I’m going h-home. Today!”

38

The first thing Julie saw on her return home was the pianoforte. His pianoforte. The very sight of it troubled her. He’d given it to her as a wedding gift, but she was not going to have a wedding. On the other hand, he was. Hadn’t her mother learned, on good authority, that he was going to marry Miss Catherine “Kat” Marquard? His deuced Kat was the one who should have the instrument. Julie had possession on false grounds.

Besides, she, Julie Branscombe, no longer wanted it. Every time she saw it, her heart constricted achingly in her chest. When she sat down to play, she sooner or later found herself crying. The pianoforte, magnificent as it was, had become a symbol of rejection and grief. She had to rid herself of it.

After dwelling on the matter for several days, she decided that as soon as his engagement was announced in the
Times,
she would send the piano back to Wycklands and, in a congratulatory letter to him, inform him of it. Every day, for the next three weeks, she pored over the announcements in the newspaper, searching in vain for his name. She wondered why, if the betrothal was as certain to come to pass as her mother had said, it was taking so long to make it public.

She even wondered if she should write to the brash young Horace Chalmondeley to ask if he’d had any news of the betrothal. Ever since she’d danced with him at the ball, the silly young fellow had been besieging her with love letters. She’d never answered a single one, but her curiosity and suspense regarding Peter’s impending nuptials were so great that she was tempted to contact the boy. But of course she did not.

After three weeks, however, her mother came home in a state of considerable excitement. She’d been visiting Phyllis and Smallwood at Enders Hall, as she’d done every day since their return, and had heard some news. “He’s back,” she said to her daughter as if announcing a catastrophe.

“Who’s back?” Julie asked, not particularly curious.

“Canfield. He’s come to pack up his library. Evidently he’s decided to sell the property.” Unmindful of Julie’s immediate stiffening, she babbled on. “I, for one, am delighted he’s giving it up. Perhaps now we’ll get a new bachelor at Wycklands, someone with better sense, who’d appreciate a true gem when he saw her.”

“And perhaps,” Julie said as she fled from her mother’s diatribe, “it will be bought by a huge family with a drunkard of a father, a whining mother and seven noisy children all under the age of ten.”

“Really, Julie,” her mother shouted after her, “I don’t know what’s come over you lately. You are becoming a positive hoyden.”

The “hoyden” ran up to her bedroom and shut the door. She had to think about this new development. If Peter had truly returned to Wycklands, perhaps this would be the proper time to send back the piano. Why not? she asked herself. He himself would be there to receive it. What better time would there be?

She sat down at her writing table to pen a note. She started and discarded three before she wrote one she considered acceptable.
To His Lordship, the Viscount Canfield,
she finally wrote.
I
have never felt deserving of the magnificent pianoforte you were generous enough to bestow upon me on the occasion of what you believed was my imminent marriage. Since that marriage never came to pass, I feel that my continued possession of it is under false pretenses. You, on the other hand, being yourself anticipating an imminent marriage, will no doubt wish to present it to your bride. I am therefore sending it back with my best wishes for your happiness. Yours most sincerely, Juliet Branscombe.

That done, she went back downstairs and asked Horsham to arrange for four men and a cart to transport the instrument (and her note) to Wycklands that very afternoon. She hoped she could handle the matter quietly on her own, but when the men came to remove the piano, her mother heard the commotion. She came running down from the upstairs sitting room where she’d been reading, demanding to know what was going on.

“I am returning the pianoforte to Canfield,” Julie explained. “You yourself told me that any wedding gifts I’d received had to be returned.”

To her relief, her mother made no objection. “It’s the right thing to do,” she sighed as she went back upstairs, “though it’s a lovely thing to have to part with.”

Julie watched the carters carry it away with a strange feeling in her innards. It was relief, she told herself. Decided relief. She was truly glad to see it go. Truly. Then why, she was forced to ask herself, were these tears coursing down her face?

Self-pity was a quality she scorned, so she tried to shake away the doldrums that this business with the piano had brought upon her. A vigorous ride along the river might be, she decided, the very thing to lift her spirit. She ran upstairs to change into riding clothes. As she started down again, in her old, shabby skirt and with her hair loose, she was startled to discover that an angry Lord Canfield was brushing past the butler and storming in.
“Peter!”
she gasped, freezing into place halfway down the stairs. What rotten luck, she thought, that he should see her looking so deucedly unkempt.

But he was too out of temper to take any notice of her appearance. “What, ma’am, is the meaning of this?” he shouted, waving a crushed piece of notepaper at her.

“Is that my note?” she inquired, her knees a-tremble.

“If this gibberish can be called a note, then I suppose it is. It has your name on it.”

“I don’t see why you call it gibberish. I thought I’d written it in plain English and, if I may be a bit immodest, that it was rather felicitously phrased.”

“Felicitously phrased? Are you completely
shatter-brained?”
He took several angry paces about the entry hall to gain control of himself before turning back and looking up at her again. “In the first place, ma’am, you know perfectly well that I wanted to give you the instrument before there was any talk of marrying Tris. So this business of possessing it on false pretenses is utter nonsense.”

“Well, you did write in your note that it was a wedding gift.”

“A mere excuse, as well you know! And what is this idiotic jibber-jabber about
my
imminent marriage and giving the piano to my bride?”

Her legs were so unsteady she had to cling to the bannister. “Well, I know you haven’t officially announced it as yet,” she explained uneasily, “so perhaps it was not in the best of taste to mention it, but—”

“Mention
what?”
he roared. “I don’t know what you’re babbling about.”

She drew herself up angrily. “Dash it, my lord, I don’t babble! And I don’t like being shouted at, either. I am speaking of your... your almost-intended, Miss Marquard.”

“Who?” He gaped at her, befuddled. “Do you mean my cousin Kat?”

“Your c-cousin?” Julie stammered, taken aback.

“Catherine Marquard is my nuisance of a cousin whom my aunt in Yorkshire insists I must escort about town on her once-a-year visit.
Why
would I want to give her a
piano?
She doesn’t even play!”

“But...” Julie took a gulping breath, almost afraid to go on. “. . . Are you not intending to ... to marry her?”

“Marry
Kat?”
Peter gave a snorting laugh. “I’d sooner wed one of those whirling dervishes from the east! I can’t abide the chit more than half an hour at a time.” Then, with a quick, gasping intake of breath, he gazed up at her, a light of comprehension dawning in his eyes. Suddenly a number of pieces of the puzzle of Julie Branscombe were beginning to fall into place. “Is
that
why you behaved so strangely at the Fenton? Because you thought I was getting
married?
”

She felt her heart jump right up into her throat. “Aren’t you?” she asked, choked. “Have we perhaps... gotten it wrong? That is... can we have heard the wrong name?”

He didn’t answer for what seemed an eternity. He merely continued to gaze up at her with a look of intense speculation. Then, when she thought she could not bear the silence a moment longer, he spoke. “Julie, come down here,” he said quietly. “Please!”

She started down, slowly and unsteadily, as he came round to the foot of the stairway. When she reached the third step from the bottom, he held out his arms. Without knowing quite what she did, she leaped into them. He held her in a crushing embrace, her feet high off the ground, and kissed her, long and hard, with the intensity that comes from passion long restrained. When they had no breath left, he set her down. “I love you, Julie,” he whispered in her ear. “Almost from the first moment I laid eyes on you. I could
never
wed anyone else. I want to marry you even if it means taking second place to Tris in your heart.”

“
Second place?
”
She broke from his hold and stamped her foot. “Dash it, Peter, I could wring your
neck.
I’ve been trying to tell you from the moment you started to push me into Tris’s arms that it’s
you
I love, not Tris.”

Even now he couldn’t quite believe it. “That can’t be so,” he said, peering at her suspiciously. “You and he were so... so close. It seemed to me you could almost read each other’s minds.”

“Balderdash. Neither of you could read my mind. He was trying to teach me how to win you, just as you were trying to teach me how to win him. And I, fool that I was, tried to follow the advice of both of you. I was like a marionette, with two idiotic puppet masters pulling the strings.”

“My poor darling,” he exclaimed, appalled. “And when in the course of this farce did you decide you loved me and not him?”

Somehow the question infuriated her. He still didn’t understand her feelings. But as usual, it was hard for her to express them, especially with his eyes fixed so lovingly on her face. “Peter, you... you buffleheaded fool,” she said, turning and addressing the newel post, “why won’t you
listen
to me? I’ve never loved anyone but you. Not anyone. Not Tris, not Ronny Kenting, not even the Honorable Horace Chalmondeley, who’s been importuning me by post to marry him ever since I danced with him at the Chalmondeley ball.”

Peter snorted. “Good God,
Chalmondeley?
I should hope not, indeed. The fellow’s a looby.”

She laughed and turned back to him. “The truth is, my lord,” she said shyly to the buttons of his coat, “that you took hold of my heart the night you sauntered into the assembly and I got my first glimpse of you. I’ve tried to tell you so many times in every way I could think of— except to say the words.”

He pulled her into his arms again and brushed back her wild strands of hair. “My sweet, beautiful Julie, you
should
have said them. A buffleheaded fool like me needs to have things said plainly, I’m afraid.”

“I was... shy.”

He lifted her chin and made her look up at him. “I hope, my girl, that you’ll never be shy with me again.”

“I think I’m much improved in that regard. In fact, I’m almost growing bold. Almost bold enough to ask... but perhaps I’d better not...”

“Go ahead, girl, be bold and ask it,” he insisted.