The Abandoned Bride (22 page)

13

Since her arrival in Paris, Julia had taken great
pains to arrange matters so that she might see the city each day. She had known that since a great many things might transpire, she might never come this way again. So she had been determined not to miss a moment of her opportunity to explore the great city. It wasn’t only enlightenment she sought, she had discovered that a busy mind and a pair of weary feet made brooding upon her wretched situation more difficult. Now, with the arrival of Lady Preston, Julia was making the acquaintance of a totally different city: Paris by night. And she discovered both to her delight and dismay, that it was making her forget her situation very well indeed. So well, in fact, that there were times that she found herself actually enjoying it to the point where she wished it would never end.

A boat ride around the daylight city with Celeste may have been educational, a coach ride through the moonlit streets with the baron was breathtaking. Walking through hushed cathedrals gazing at stained glass windows with Celeste had been extremely interesting, strolling through the gardens of the Tivoli by the Rue de Clichy exclaiming over fireworks with Nicholas
was enthralling. Viewing famous landmarks each afternoon had been illuminating to be sure, but to see them picked out by starlight at Nicholas’s side each night was dazzling. And where she had to purchase several little guidebooks to pore over as she had toured with Celeste, she now need refer to no other source of information than the lips of her noble escort.

Though Nicholas scoffed at any idea of himself as a learned man, claiming only that he had picked up a great deal of knowledge from his previous travels, still Julia was not so gullible as to believe that one could acquire such a thorough classical education from mere voyaging. If it were so, she had argued, then every gentleman who ventured abroad should return a prodigy of learning. And that, she told him reasonably, would have made the Vikings, for example, such mannered, lettered fellows that they would have commenced to set up universities wherever they went, instead of pulling down villages. When Nicholas could speak again, he allowed as how she might be right, and that his education might well have been a little helpful to him. But he was so entertained by her notion of enlightened Norsemen that he went about for the remainder of the evening postulating about the courses that might be offered at the College of Eric the Red, until she was weak with laughter and lightheaded with happiness. And that, she now told herself sternly, would never do.

She was becoming, she argued to herself this languorous summer evening as Celeste lovingly labored over the arrangement of her hair, ve
r
y much like a prisoner who forms such a strong attachment to his jailer that he is fearful of the day of his release. For no matter how she dressed the matter up, she thought as Celeste selected a new ice-blue frock with silvery sleeves for her to put on, she was still a captive, no matter how pleasant her captivity may recently have been made. A bird cage may be ornate, it might be furnished with charming swings and perches, its little occupant might be pleased with daily treats, but nonetheless, Julia thought as she slipped into her dress and inspected herself in the mirror, a bird in a cage ought never to forget that its cage existed. And, Julia thought sadly as Celeste went to see if there was anything Lady Preston required before she accompanied Julia to dinner, she herself ought never to forget that it was only birds that had never known freedom that were capable of surviving in captivity.

With all that Nicholas had given her of late—her new clothes, her maid, her chaperone, and, not the least, his own full attention and constant company—he had taken much away from her as well. For she realized that now, not only was she bereft of her freedom of choice and action, but of her fine rage and the sense of injustice which had sustained her through it all. If she should come to love her state so much that she thought nothing of her condition, then she was in fact, little better than if she had accepted Nicholas’s shocking offer. No, Julia thought unhappily, perhaps she was become even worse, for at least a female in such a position had few illusions and could feel that she earned her way.

It was true that she was where she was at present so that she might at last face Robin and have the truth from him for herself as well as for his uncle. But in the last days there had been little talk of Robin. There had been instead only general conversation and laughter and the continuing discovery of a mounting sense of mutuality between herself and Nicholas. Yet she also realized that if the baron had once hurt her physically when he had not actually known her, he now had the potential of inflicting far more pain without lifting so much as a finger against her. Now he need only to speak a word to cruelly wound her. And that one word would be “good-bye.” Because against all judgment, against all intentions, against all good sense, Julia had grown to care for him deeply.

Curiously, it was only once Nicholas had gotten her an acceptable chaperone so that her reputation might be preserved that her heart had been utterly lost. For when she had dined with him and spoken with him and dueled verbally with him before Lady Preston had come upon the scene, there had always been that element of fear in their relationship that had enabled her to keep her distance. She had never let down her guard. Or at least, she thought, remembering those moments when his words or his eyes or as that once, his lips had lulled her entirely, she had never let it down for too long. She had been able to remind herself constantly that not only was he a man and therefore always suspect, but a vital, intelligent male at that, thus doubly dangerous. Most damningly, he was also Robin’s uncle and primarily concerned with his nephew’s welfare, as he himself had admitted. But then Lady Preston had arrived and bringing with her the illusion of safety, she had all unwittingly brought about the downfall of Julia’s defenses as well.

Julia had been enabled to accompany Nicholas everywhere once Lady Preston was in tow. Lady Cunningham might not exist, but Lady Preston decidedly did. And she was irreproachable. Knowing that her name and person stood in no immediate danger with that good woman at her side, Julia had allowed herself to enjoy the baron’s company entirely. And only now, days later, had she come to understand that once the shadow of fear had been removed, her ability to love, which she had been sure had been blighted forever, had burgeoned, as all dormant but living seeds will do when exposed to the light.

But such an attachment was useless from so many points of view that Julia could scarcely finish enumerating them to herself each night as she counted them instead of sheep until sleep overtook her and saved her from total despair. He was a nobleman, she was a commoner. And not only a commoner, but one who had totally ruined her reputation by running off in an abandoned manner with a gentleman. Not only a gentleman either, but one who was Nicholas’s nephew and who for some reason had told his uncle how perfidious and cruel she was. And not only did Nicholas believe his nephew, but so much so that he had deceived her, abused her, entrapped her, and now paid her to confront his nephew.

Part of the baron’s plan of entrapment, she was sure, was to offer her a position as his mistress. Another part of it was to woo her so completely with his wit and warmth that she had not room in her heart or head for anything but him.

There was a certain dreadful justice, Julia thought, as she paced her sumptuous hotel room and waited for her chaperone to accompany her to an evening out with her employer and tormentor, in the fact that she could not become his mistress even if she wanted to. Just as there had been some insurmountable obstacle to her marriage, so there would surely be the same one should she decide to embark upon her ruination. There was a certain moral comfort in this, Julia thought, reaching for a gauzey silvery whisper of a shawl, but it was such a cold one that she drew the shawl about her as though it were common, comforting flannel that could take the sudden chill from her limbs and heart.

Still, it was a shocking thing to suddenly acknowledge, even if only to herself, this tempting terrible little thought that she would even consider becoming any man’s mistress. Although he was not just any man, not with those eyes, and that smile, and that wicked sense of humor, he was nevertheless undoubtedly, almost blatantly, a member of that gender .she had forsworn. But lately this nagging, incessant, and insistent little thought was never too far from her: that such employment might be the very answer, the only answer, at least for her.

Because it seemed that she did not want to part from him. It wasn’t that she feared that she would forget him, it was rather that she worried that she might not have enough to remember of him. She discovered she wanted something more of love to recall when she grew old than just the folly of one innocent, abortive evening when she was seventeen. The mean little voice often whispered that as she would always bear the marks of shame in the world’s eyes anyway, wouldn’t it be far better to have for keepsake the memory of a breathing lover that she had once held to her own beating heart, rather than only the sad, sterile remembrance of a love that was conceived only in imagination and that had died at birth?

When the argument became too persuasive, Julia would be glad of the unknown handicap which prevented her from any such wild, immoral flights as she entertained in her fancies. But then she had to laugh at herself. For if she did not know the world very well, having neither been in it or about it for too long, she knew herself very well, having been forced to bear her own company for so long. She knew the truth was that if she had no
such restriction upon her, she would very likely have had to invent one. Her upbringing had been conventional and the real world she lived in, when she was not with the baron, was a censorious one.

She knew very well that a woman who choose to flaunt society and live with a gentleman without benefit of churchly sanction, was a woman who placed herself forever outside society’s blessings and protection. And when he was bored with her, and gentlemen always became bored with their mistresses, why then, she would have no recourse but to seek another such as he. And there was no other such as he, not upon the face of this wide world, and that she knew as well as she knew her own name.

And so Julia was very glad that she was honest enough to admit that she was temperamentally and morally unfit to ever become the baron’s mistress. And she was, of course, glad that she did not have to rely on that weak argument alone to withstand him, since she also possessed that unexpected, unfathomable impediment to love with any man. Being so glad of so many things, it was curious that when she turned to greet Lady Preston, she had tears in her eyes, unless, of course, they were tears of happiness at her situation.

“My dear Miss Hastings,” Lady Preston said in her soft little voice, “you look quite beautiful,” and she gave Julia such a pleased and sweet smile to go with her words that they were lifted out of the commonplace and became instead, a very real compliment.

But so it was with Lady Preston, Julia thought as she returned the smile and the compliment. The lady’s looks had improved even as her fortunes had. The securing of a paid position had had a cosmetic effect that went beyond the new frocks she now wore. Her cheeks had color, her eyes were clear, and her spine seemed straighten But it was not only her looks which were pleasing. For the lady was in every good construction of the word, a lady. When she was alone with Julia, she never presumed to ask too much, nor did she err by noticing too little. When she accompanied Julia and Nicholas on their rounds of restaurants or touring sites, she never imposed her personality or her sanctions upon them. But then she never had to, as Julia was always aware of her quiet personality, and Nicholas never forgot her presence.

Most importantly, persons of the baron’s class, seeing him dining in public with a lovely young female, might be moved to inquire as to her name, and being refused it, might be inclined to inquire further. Hearing that the other lady at the table was Lady Mary Preston, they would lose interest, knowing that with such a female present, there would be little scandal broth to stir. If it were a romance, they would reason, they would soon read the announcement of it in
The Times.
And if it were not, then the chit were some relation surely, for any other sort of connection would be impossible to imagine with such a paragon to give it countenance. The lady’s impecunious late husband may have forced her to seek employment, but her name was known. And her name was solid.

“And you look radiant as well,” Julia said, finishing up her compliments. But it was true. The lady looked unusually well tonight. Her thin cheeks were flushed, her eyes were bright, and she bore an air of almost febrile excitement. Julia might have even inquired as to her health if she had not surmised that the lady’s condition was only due to her enthusiasm for their destination this night. For last night she had ventured to say that she had
n
ot been to the Opera in years, and was quite looking forward to it. Since Lady Preston’s every word and action was usually measured, Julia took that statement as excitation bordering on hysteria.

But the baron would not have noticed if Lady Preston were so elevated that she walked three inches above the carpet when he came to Julia’s rooms to call for them. He only gave the lady the most cursory of glances as he bowed to her, bade her good evening, and told her rather mechanically how well she looked, while all the while his gaze kept sliding back
to Julia. When he could at last turn to her, he said at once, “Silver and blue tonight, eh? You make me rue my cowardice, Julia. For we might have been well matched, you and I. That expensive blue jacket arrived today. You know, the one I told you of, the frenchified one with the silver threads. And although Makepiece has been crooning over it since it was delivered as though it were his newborn babe, I reckon it so overwhelming that I haven’t allowed him to take it out of its papers. So I hope you won’t mind the company of a fellow togged out with all the color and dash of the financial sheets, for I’m only all black and white to your silver and blond and blue. You look like a moonbeam, Julia.”

He gave her a little grin with the compliment that made her feel as though it was the sun and not the moon that had come out in the midst of the night, and to cool her cheeks and her spirits, she began to ask him questions about the Opera. He took each of their arms and, still wearing a small smile for Julia’s continuing inability to cope with his compliments, took the ladies to dinner.