The Abandoned Bride (5 page)

Julia hugged her arms around each other in front of her. She was badly frightened. Although the baron was young and vital, spoke coherently, dressed perfectly, and seemed sane, it was becoming apparent to her that she was alone in a room with a lunatic. Mrs. B
r
yce might not be
far off, she might even be eavesdropping upon this weird conversation. The butler certainly would be within shouting distance. But Julia feared that if she were to call out for assistance, the baron might become uncontrolled or destructive. She tried to remember all the advice she had read about such cases, and remembered only that she must try to remain calm so as not to excite him the more, and that she must not call him insane or risk sending him off into a rage.

She drew in a deep breath and then said softly, reasonably, as she backed slowly to the door, “No, my lord. I’m so very sorry, my lord, but I cannot. Indeed, I think you have the wrong opinion of me.”

He showed strong, even, white teeth as he threw back his head to laugh harshly and she winced, despite her resolve to be collected.

“Now how could I have gotten that opinion?” he asked, halting her backward movement by staring pointedly at her and her proximity to the door, his eyes alert and amused. “Could it be from the interviews my agent obtained? You passed seven months with the wealthy Mrs. Pomfret in Leeds, and then you were summarily dismissed because of the attentions you received from her eldest, a seventeen-year-old lad. Six months with the Honorable Miss Carstairs as companion, dismissed abruptly when Miss Carstairs noted the unseemly approval with which her noble
fiancé
soon came to regard you. Ah,” he went on with a theatrical air of discovery, as he took a paper from his pocket and scrutinized it, “A blameless year with old Lady Wingate in the Midlands, terminated perhaps because of her vile temper, I grant
.
But also per
h
aps because she
abhor
red
males and there was never a susceptible one in sight? And two months, fancy that, only two months before Lord Wycliffe’s interest came to the attention of his lady. Really, Miss Hastings, you ought to have known that the lady has the eye of a hawk and the gentleman already enjoys the services of that Turner woman.

“And now,” he went on, taking his attention from his notes, putting the pages back in his pocket, and glancing up just as Julia was about to make a lunge for the door, “leaving dear little Mrs. Bryce and her charming Toby, whom you profess to adore, in the lurch because you are homesick? Or because, truthful for once, you have told her there are no eligible males in the district? Yet, according to the townspeople, Miss Hastings, you have many admirers here. But, I will admit, no wealthy ones.

“Oh, I have done my homework,” he sighed, noting her grimace and misconstruing her complete distress at his false interpretation of true events. “And I know your history as well. It makes for colorful reading. But you have not been as good a scholar, my dear. Did you not remember that Robin is in line for a more august title? When his father dies, he will be no less than a marquess. Now how can you think to do better? You cannot have anyone in mind with more pleasant prospects. You will come with me next week?”

But Julia had been moving, inch by inch, quietly to the door. Now that she felt the handle firm against her spine, she drew herself up and said clearly and decisively, as she turned the handle unobtrusively behind her back, “No. I shall not. I am not what you think me, no matter what bits of paper you have amassed about me. I do not wish to ever see Robin again and I tell you that I have not even been in contact with him once since that night we parted. It is all a mistake, my lord.

“And,” she added with relief, as she at last felt the door sway open a crack behind her, “I wish never to see you again as well. And I shall certainly not leave with you for anywhere, at any time.”

But Julia did not have to race from the room, shrieking for help as she sought a hiding place from a violent madman as she had envisioned herself doing. The baron merely stood still for a moment and looked at her as he might look upon something found wriggling upon the earth after a rain. Then he bowed, and as she shrank back and poised to run, he simply walked past her and out the door. But he turned back to face the salon as the butler approached with his hat and driving cape. He ignored Mrs. Bryce, who came to wish him good day, and gazed only at Julia.

“Oh, but you shall,” he said softly, as though taking a vow. “One
way or another, my dear, you certainly shall.”

The next few days wert among the most uncomfortable Julia had ever passed in her brief span. For now her employer exhibited not only the symptoms of jealousy, but those of deep distrust as well. Julia attempted to cope with the uneasy atmosphere as she had done in such situations before, by occupying herself completely with her tasks and by so doing blinding herself to hateful reality. But as the days wore on and she still did not get a response from her letter to the Misses Parkinson, the situation became increasingly less tolerable. The present so neatly imitated the past that the same learned responses were called into action. Thus, on a heavily scented late spring night almost a week after the mad baron’s visit, Julia began to pack her bags.

Just as she had fled the comforts of her home when gossip and innuendo had become too distasteful to bear, now, even without assurance of a new situation, she prepared to bolt again.

Mrs. Bryce was admittedly in an untenable position as well. Whether the captain’s good wife had stood in an adjacent room, or ordered the butler away so that she could actually put her ear to the door, there was no doubt that she had heard every word the baron had uttered in private to Julia. Now her sense of propriety obviously warred with her notions of morality. She could not bring herself to admit to having actually done something so crude as eavesdropping. So she could neither condemn Julia for her scandalous behavior, nor discuss the accusations with her to get at the truth of the matter. Instead, she consistently cast shocked glances toward her, or studied her with badly concealed amazement. She seldom directly addressed Julia if she could help it, yet her every action showed that she could not decide whether her
governess
-companion were something as exciting as a shameless Delilah, or merely as contemptible as a common lightskirt. In any case, Julia had not the heart to bring the matter up herself.

For even if she told no less than the truth, the truth itself was enough to have her dismissed and lose her the foolishly effusive recommendation she would need to secure a new position. For, Julia thought as she opened her largest traveling case, although she had not deliberately committed any of the crimes she had been accused of, the bare facts were sadly true. She had been no more than kind to Jamie Pomfret, the young son of her first employer, and he had fallen immediately into calf love with her. His obsession had shown itself in no more than bad poetry, but it was that overheated verse that his mama had found, and it was her shock at the depth of her beardless boy’s ardor which had caused Julia’s dismissal.

Mrs. Pomfret had been a fair-minded female and Julia had gotten her letter of reference. Similarly, her second period of employment had ended abruptly. Yet even as the Honorable Miss Carstairs had swallowed down her disappointment, she too had resignedly penned a glowing commendation. “For it is not your fault, dearest Julia,” the Honorable Miss Carstairs had sighed. “I know that Teddy will be a sadly unsteady husband, and there is nothing for it, because you see, I am unfortunate enough to love him. I know the world will hold many other decorative females, but at the least, I must remove a source of unhappiness from my own household. So you see, my dear, I’m sorry for it, but you must go.”

Lady Wingate’s temperament had estranged her from every one of her relatives, and considering the amount of her estate, that was no mean accomplishment, but still Julia had managed to endure her company for a full year. That, Julia thought now, as she arranged her linen in the traveling case, was not due to virtue, nor was it any moral credit to her. She had stayed on solely because the Misses Parkinson, while sympathetic, had firmly told her that a succession of brief periods of employment would look badly upon her record, however much she might be blameless in their cause. On the precise day to a year after she had arrived to companion Lady Wingate (Julia was sure of that reckoning, as she had kept track with a pen on a calendar upon her wall, just as any other prisoner might), she offered up her resignation. Surprisingly, her dreadful old ladyship had written a perfectly unexceptional reference as well, perhaps because
she had been amazed that any employee could have stayed on with her for that long a time.

Lord Wycliffe and his despicable actions, Julia thought, as she resolutely fastened up her largest traveling bag, did not bear refining upon. And so, even as she began to carefully wrap and stow away the last of her possessions, Julia could not find it within her to blame Mrs. Bryce. For, on the face of it, she supposed that she might well appear to be a mercenary, conniving, husband-hungry opportunist. Yet, even if she could explain all these things away, there still was one basic truth that was unalterable and inexcusable.

When she was seventeen, she had gone off unchaperoned with a wealthy young nobleman to be wedded to him, and had returned the next night, accompanied by a different gentleman, still very much unwed.

It could not matter that she had not cared a jot for his riches or title, or that she had gone with the full cognizance and approval of her family, or even that she had vowed that she had returned, as she had left, a maid. The thing that was not done had been done. Her good name was as lost to her as her betrothed clearly was.
Her family had rallied around her, and it made no difference. Both love and guilt impelled them to support her. Though Mama had wept for her daughter’s distress and her own shortsightedness, and the other children had stoutly defended their sister, Papa had blamed himself the most.

He had no word of censure for Julia. For it had been he who had listened to the sincere young nobleman when he had come to ask permission to pay his addresses, and it had been he who then, had weighed all the risks of an elopement and had finally agreed to it. How easily Robin had brushed away his doubts, admitting in straightforward fashion that, yes, his family might protest or have an eye on a more equal match for him, but that nonetheless he was resolved to wed only where his heart lay. How plausibly and convincingly he had added that as his family loved him, they would come in time to accept his choice of bride, and come to love her as well, but only after the wedding.

Robin had insisted on elopement, explaining reasonably that he would not have his family think his new in-laws in any way coerced him to his decision. However much Julia’s papa shrank from the idea of a run-away wedding, foremost in his mind was
the question of how he could deny his daughter happiness with the handsome and clever young gentleman. But deep in his heart, clouding his clear judgment, there also arose the question of how he could ever hope to obtain a better match for her. She was a mere estate-manager’s daughter, and to see her securely wed to a member of the nobility, even if the thing had to be done in secrecy, was more than he had ever dared envision.

Ill-advised as it was, young as they both were, it was this secret dream of advancement for her that decided him. It was, in the end, simply too good an opportunity to ever come again. But if it was greed for his child that caused
h
is
acquie
sc
ence
, it was the remembrance of that greed which was to torment him later.

But who could have resisted Robin? Julia wondered now. Light and laughing Robin, who had sworn
to Papa with earnestness evident in every word and gesture, that as he loved and respected his daughter, he would so care for her throughout her life. And if he had conquered practical Papa, he had completely swept away Mama and overwhelmed all the children of the house, herself included.

At seventeen she had known no real beaux, though it was said in the neighborhood that she was bidding fair to becoming a beauty. When Robin had arrived suddenly to visit with her father’s employer, Lord Quincy, he had seemed to her to be a prince from out of one of the fairytales she had just left off reading. When he deigned to speak with her that first time they met on a country lane, she had been staggered that he had even noted her existence upon the earth. He might have become, as he should have become, an idealized standard of masculinity that she could base her future choice of husband upon when she had grown to adulthood. But he had continued to meet her by chance, and then by happy accident, and then, finally, by secret arrangement. And he became instead of her distant ideal, her betrothed.

However much her family had comforted her after she had returned home that night, exhausted and confused, it had not been enough. It could never be enough to shield her from the criticism of the outside world. If Lord Quincy and his family had been appalled at their factor’s daughter’s sly behavior when he had, full of pride, prematurely announced her wedding to their honored guest, there were no polite words to describe their reaction to her ignoble return. Neither could Julia
discount neighbor women’s whispers, nor could she pretend to ignore their menfolk’s calculating stares for long.

It soon became apparent to her that she had not only destroyed her own future, but that she had jeopardized others’ as well. The local people shook their heads and opined that Mr. Hastings had got above himself, thinking to marry his daughter into his betters’ class. Lord Quincy and his family decidedly agreed. It wasn’t long before Lord Quincy himself began to drop ponderous hints about renovations the estate needed that a younger man might find easier to implement. “Can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” he had jested, sending his factor home that night looking a score older than his actual years. Julia had four sisters, one already of an age for matrimony, and as the attitude of the local bachelors changed toward her, it subtly altered toward her sisters as well. They never said so, but when Dorothea went walking out with young Alan Baines, and came running home alone, her face flushed and stained with hastily wiped tears, her sister knew what had transpired as surely as if she had been there to see the familiarity which had been rebuffed.

No, it was time for her to be gone, Julia had vowed, despite all their pleas for her to remain. A shadow cannot fall if there is no one about to blot out the sun, she insisted. And so, armed with a letter from the vicar, whose job it was, after all, to forgive all transgressors, and a letter to the Misses Parkinson, whose job it was to find jobs for all idle young females regardless of their morality, she went.

The family saw her off again with tears in their eyes. But this time they did not shed tears of happiness, and this time she did not return.

Julia finished her packing and stared about the room, which now looked naked without her little picture frames upon the nightstand, and her sister’s samplers on the wall above the bed. A jumble of oddments still remained upon the nightstand, however. She had decided that in light of present circumstances, it would not be fitting for her to pack away those many tokens of esteem her employer had pressed upon her during her brief orgy of atonement.

As she lay down upon her bed, Julia thought of Toby, whom she had left an hour ago, rosy and talc-covered, still damp from his bath and the sleep which had overtaken him just as the princess
lost her golden ball down the well. That memory she would take with her, she mused on a sleepy smile, and the visions of the mustard fields, this room, Old Joseph, the village people, even Mrs. Bryce in those days before
the
deranged baron had called upon them. She would stay on a few more days and then, even if the letter she awaited did not arrive, she would go. She had done it before, Julia thought as she herself fell down into a soft gray well of sleep, and however much it pained her now, she consoled herself by remembering that the present would soon become the past. And she had become an expert at living with the past.

The gentleman entered the room as he was bade, and walked to the older gentleman seated at the huge satinwood desk; At least, he thought it was the satinwood desk, but there were so many books laid out upon it that the exact nature of its surface was difficult to ascertain. He smiled as he watched the other man carefully place a bookmark, or what he had decided would do for a bookmark but was rather a jay’s feather that he extracted from his pocket, in the center of one particularly large tome.

“Nick, my boy,” the older gentleman then said, rising and coming forward from behind the desk with every evidence of delight large upon his thin, patrician features. “I had not looked to see you here. I thought you were off to the Continent, about the King’s business, or the family business.”

“And so I thought too, sir,” Baron Stafford replied, taking the preferred hand in his, “but I’ve had to change my plans.”

“I’m not a bit sorry,” the older gentleman said, gesturing to his visitor to take a chair by the window, as he himself now did." “I should think any friend of the enemy knows your face as well as Bonaparte’s by now, and Robin is quite old enough to be accountable for himself.”

“Actually, the home office quite agrees with you on the former, and I very much doubt your infinite wisdom on the latter, but in any case my hands are tied and I must wait a while before I leave, it seems,” the baron replied with barely concealed annoyance.

“Petulance does not sit well upon you, Nick,” the older gentleman chided.