Juliana (38 page)

“You want to marry him yourself. You’ve been trying so hard to help me. The last thing I want to do is repay you by stealing your suitor. You’re such a good friend.”

“You’re a good friend, too.” Juliana took Amanda’s hands. “I don’t want to marry the duke. I want you to have him instead. Wait here,” she added, squeezing Amanda’s fingers before she released them. “I’m going to make it happen.”

As she walked toward the duke, Juliana couldn’t help noticing that his blond, pristine handsomeness matched Amanda’s pale beauty precisely.

She came to a stop before him. “You’re not in love with me,” she said. Although he’d claimed he was falling in love with her, it was a statement, not a question. “You’re in love with Lady Amanda.”

“I hold her in some affection.”

Juliana supposed that was reserved-speak for
love.
In any case, it was the best she would get out of the duke, and it would be enough to satisfy Amanda.

“Would you like to marry her?” she asked.

He didn’t hesitate. “Very much. Even though she doesn’t come with a horse.”

“Pardon?”

“Never mind. I would definitely like to marry her. Unfortunately, I understand she’s engaged to another.”

“She told you that?” Juliana asked. But obviously, Amanda had. While Juliana and James were kissing, Amanda and the duke must have been talking. “We can fix her engagement,” she said. “But first you need to ask her for her hand.”

The duke nodded gravely.

“It might help to tell her how you feel,” she advised as she walked him toward Amanda, thinking him the sort of young man to forget that. “You may want to exaggerate a bit.”

After delivering him to her friend, she backed away and watched from afar as he and Amanda conducted a conversation that looked more like a business discussion than a proposal. In the end, when Amanda nodded, he leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek.

It seemed an auspicious beginning. Maybe after a year or two they’d progress to kissing on the lips.

The negotiations complete, they summoned Juliana. In the course of the next half hour, the three of them came up with a plan. After church tomorrow, they would all attend Lady Hartley’s breakfast party, where, at precisely three o’clock, Amanda would be caught in the library with the duke, her dress unbuttoned down the back.

Amanda blanched when Juliana suggested the last bit, but they all agreed it was necessary to assure her ruin. By the time Amanda’s father arrived that evening, her compromise would be a fait accompli. He would have to allow her to marry the duke.

“Will you ask Lord Stafford to help ‘discover’ us?” Amanda asked.

“No. He told me he won’t be attending.” Juliana thanked goodness for that, because he’d never approve of their plot. “But I’m sure plenty of other people will come running when I call, so there’s no need for him to be involved.”

With any luck, James would never hear about what happened at all.

And after all was said and done, if she was fortunate enough to learn he loved her, she would never—never ever—meddle again.

IN HIS STUDY
at Stafford House the next day, James pushed aside his paperwork and sighed.

Sometime during the sleepless night, the hot fury had cooled to a solid lump in his chest. Mother had the sniffles. He’d passed the morning in a haze, hoping she’d decide she was well enough to leave for Lady Hartley’s breakfast. When she finally did, he’d sat down at his desk, added the same column of numbers three times, and come up with three different answers.

He couldn’t concentrate. He still couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that Juliana had been hiding Amanda’s engagement from him ever since they’d met. He’d thought he knew her.

But then again, he’d thought he knew himself, too. And when it came right down to it, his disappointment in himself was much harder to swallow.

True, Juliana had made a mess of things. But she was a meddler, and he’d known that all along. Sometimes her scheming worked—with his aunts, for example—and sometimes it didn’t.

Everyone made mistakes, and as bad as her actions had been, his own had been no better. He was hardly in a position to judge. They’d both been playing games. Her games may have
nearly
forced him into an unwanted marriage, but his had
actually
hurt a real person’s feelings.

And he loved Juliana nonetheless. He loved every scheming, meddling inch of her.

And he, for one, was done playing games.

Decision made, he pushed back from the desk, summoned his valet, and went to his newly renovated bedroom to change. The red-and-yellow-striped bedroom he hoped to share with Juliana.

It was time to buy her roses.

ONLY THE CREAM
of society held “breakfasts” in the afternoon.

Beneath a tent in Lady Hartley’s garden, the breakfast was well underway when James arrived just before three o’clock. As he scanned the several hundred seated guests, searching for Juliana, Occlestone rose from a nearby table.

“You owe some lady an apology, Stafford?”

James glanced down to the flowers he held, a dozen red roses. “Something like that.” In his carriage between the florist’s shop and Lady Hartley’s, he’d unwrapped and nervously dethorned them. Now, rewrapped in the crumpled paper, they didn’t look like much.

“I missed you in the House of Lords this week. Or rather, I didn’t miss you.”

“I was there Thursday,” James said mildly, still searching the crowd. He had more important things to do than bicker with Occlestone.

“Oh, yes, you were there Thursday. How could I have forgotten your feeble argument in favor of returning the Elgin Marbles to Greece?”

“It’s a matter of morality,” James snapped. “We have no right—”

“Where on earth is my daughter?” another voice cut in.

Grateful for the interruption, James turned, then blinked at the stranger’s stern demeanor. “And your daughter is…?”

“Lady Amanda Wolverston,” Occlestone answered for the stranger, clapping the man on the shoulder. “Good to see you at long last, Wolverston. What has it been, two years? Three? Parliament has sorely missed your voice of reason.”

While Lady Amanda’s father muttered something about excavating antiquities on his property, James looked him over. He was rather short, with fair hair and beady, pale blue eyes. His mouth was compressed and turned downward, and deep lines on either side made it clear frowning was his habitual expression.

He looked exceedingly unpleasant. Poor Lady Amanda.

A flash of yellow caught James’s eye. Juliana, leaving the tent. “Excuse me,” he said quickly and moved to follow her.

He reached the garden just in time to see her enter the house. Wondering what reason she could have for going into a house during a garden party, he crossed the threshold just in time to see her reach the other end of what seemed a long corridor. From there, best he could tell, she turned and stole into a room.

He hurried after her, composing apologies in his head, desperate words spilling from his brain in a rhythm that matched the pounding of his feet.

Juliana, I shouldn’t have judged—

Juliana, please listen—

Juliana, I love you—

Reaching the end of the corridor, he opened what he hoped was the right door and stepped into a library. As he quietly shut the door behind him, his mouth fell open.

Evidently it had been the right door. Between two deep red velvet curtains, Juliana stood facing a window, a dark silhouette against the light. Her dress was unbuttoned all down her back, and her sleeves had slipped down her arms.

“Juliana,” he whispered.

She turned and stepped forward, her hair glinting the palest blond.

It wasn’t Juliana.

“Lord Stafford!” Lady Amanda’s cheeks flushed bright red. She jerked her dress back up on her shoulders, but not before he glimpsed an oddly shaped birthmark near her cleavage. “What are you doing here?”

“What are
you
doing here?” he asked. Had he entered the wrong room? Where was Juliana? “Why are you undressed?”

“I—I’m just—”

She was clutching the top of her dress for dear life, unwilling to let go in order to button it. James stalked across the room to help her.

The door opened and closed again. “What are
you
doing here?” the Duke of Castleton asked in his annoyingly stuffy manner.

The turd. “Buttoning the lady’s dress,” James spat. “What are you doing here?” The paper-wrapped roses tucked under one arm, his fingers awkwardly buttoned as quickly as possible.

But not quickly enough. Before he was anywhere near finishing—before Castleton could even open his mouth to answer James’s question—the door flew open once more, and a flood of people poured in.

Led by Occlestone.

“How dare you preach morality in the House of Lords, Stafford!”

James’s fingers fell from Lady Amanda’s buttons, and the roses fell, too. He scooped them up. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

Occlestone’s snout went into the air. He’d never looked more like swine. “I doubt the lady’s father will agree.”

“My father is here?” Lady Amanda squealed.

“Lord Wolverston is looking for you. I shall fetch him forthwith.”

“Please don’t,” she said quickly, but Occlestone was already gone.

The onlookers turned as one to watch him go, then broke out in excited whispers.

“Gracious me.” Lady Amanda sounded even more wooden than normal, which must have been how she expressed panic. Slowly she turned to face James, her eyes dull. “What an unpleasant man.”

James grimaced. He hadn’t missed the smirk on his rival’s face. Occlestone was relishing this little nugget of revenge.

Which might turn out to be far more than little.

Lady Amanda’s gaze surveyed the whispering crowd. “What are we going to do?” she asked urgently.

“Nothing. There is nothing we can do.” His instincts said to run. But escape was impossible. Alerted by Occlestone, Lady Hartley’s guests were arriving in droves, filling the doorway, cramming the room. He could only be grateful his mother and aunts weren’t among them. So far, anyway. Hopefully they’d all come down with the sniffles and gone home.

A long velvet curtain swished behind him, and he turned, shocked to see Juliana step from behind it. “What on earth is going on here?” he asked.

Her gaze swept the fascinated bystanders, then settled on him as though they were the only ones there. “I’m so sorry.” She
did
look sorry. Devastated, in fact. Not that that did any good. “We’d planned for Lady Amanda to be discovered with the duke.”

James swung to Castleton in disbelief. “You were party to this? You willingly—”

“Yes,” Castleton interrupted stiffly, but before he could explain anything, more people streamed into the room—Mother and her sisters among them, blast it—as Lord Wolverston arrived with a roar of displeasure.

“Stafford, you will pay for this!”

James’s stomach sank. He’d never been formally introduced to Amanda’s father—in fact, he’d never even laid eyes on the man until a few minutes earlier. But he wasn’t surprised to find that Wolverston knew his name. Occlestone would have supplied him with all the lurid details as he fetched him to the scene of the crime.

James should have run.

Although he was no taller than Lady Amanda, Lord Wolverston was commanding in his fury. “You will wed my daughter in place of Lord Malmsey. Next Saturday, as planned.”

A buzz filled the room. Gasps of surprise and astonished whispers. It seemed Lady Amanda’s betrothal had been a well-kept secret.

“No!” she cried. “This is all a mistake!”

Her father turned to her, his jaw clenched. “A serious mistake indeed, young lady.” He swung back to James. “I’ll expect you at Wolverston House Saturday at noon, with a special license.”

James’s gaze flicked to his horrified mother before he nodded. There was nothing else he could do. Having been witnessed buttoning Lady Amanda’s dress at an event attended by half of the
ton
, he had no choice but to comply or lose all honor.

“What if Baron Malmsey still wants her?” someone shouted over the babble. “Will you deprive him of his betrothed bride?”