She increased her pace, eager to escape the embarrassment that seemed to be chasing her from the kitchens.

“Juliana!”

Embarrassment followed nonetheless, in the form of Lady Georgiana.

She spun back around, facing the smaller woman, wishing she could eliminate the last few minutes, the last hour, the whole trip to Yorkshire. “Please.”

Georgiana smiled, a dimple flashing in her cheek. “Would you like to take a walk with me? The gardens are quite nice.”

“I—”

“Please. I am told I should take air after the baby. I should like the company.”

She made it impossible to refuse. They exited through a sitting room set off to one side of the corridor, out an unassuming doorway and down a small set of stone stairs into the vegetable garden at the side of the house.

They walked among the perfectly organized rows of plants in silence for long moments before Juliana could not bear in any longer. “I am sorry for what I said in the kitchens.”

“Which part?”

“All of it, I suppose. I did not mean to criticize your brother.”

Georgiana smiled then, running her fingers along a sprig of rosemary and bringing the scent to her nose. “That is unfortunate. I rather liked that you were willing to criticize my brother. So few ever do.”

Juliana opened her mouth to speak, then closed it, uncertain of what to say. “I suppose that he does little to deserve their criticism,” she said, finally.

Georgiana gave her a look. “Do you?”

The truth was far easier than attempting to say the right thing. She gave a little self-deprecating laugh. “Not entirely, no.”

“Good. He’s infuriating, isn’t he?”

Juliana’s eyes widened in surprise, and she nodded. “Exceedingly so.”

Georgiana grinned. “I think I like you.”

“I am happy to hear it.” They walked a while longer. “I have not said congratulations. On the birth of your daughter.”

“Caroline. Thank you.” There was a long pause. “I suppose you know that I am a terrible scandal in the making.”

Juliana offered her a smile. “Then we are destined to be friends, as I am considered by many to be a terrible scandal already made.”

“Really?”

Juliana nodded, pulling a sprig of thyme from a nearby shrubbery and lifting it to her nose, inhaling deep. “Indeed. I have a mother, as I’m sure you know. She is a legend.”

“I’ve heard of her.”

“She returned to England last week.”

Georgiana’s eyes widened. “No.”

“Yes. Your brother was there.” Juliana tossed the herb aside. “Everyone thinks I am made from the same clothing.” Georgiana tilted her head in the way people did when they did not entirely understand her. Juliana rephrased. “They think I am like her.”

“Ah. Cut from the same cloth.”

That was it. “Yes.”

“And are you?”

“Your brother thinks so.”

“That was not the question.”

Juliana considered the words. No one had ever asked her if she was like her mother. No one had ever cared. The gossips of the ton had immediately condemned her for her parentage, and Gabriel and Nick and the rest of the family had simply rejected the idea of any similarities out of hand.

But Georgiana stood across from her on this winding garden path and asked the question no one had ever asked. So, Juliana told the truth. “I hope not.”

And it was enough for Georgiana. The path forked ahead of them, and she threaded one hand through Juliana’s arm, leading the way back to the house. “Never fear, Juliana. When my news gets out, they will forget everything they have ever thought of you and your mother. Fallen angels make for excellent gossip.”

“But you are the daughter of a duke,” Juliana protested. “Simon is marrying to protect you.”

Georgiana shook her head. “I am well-and-truly ruined. Absolutely irredeemable. Perhaps he can protect our reputation, perhaps he can quiet the whispers, but they will never go away.”

“I am sorry,” Juliana said, because she could not think of anything else.

Georgiana squeezed her hand and smiled. “I was, too, for a while. But now I am here for as long as Nick and Isabel will have me, and Caroline is healthy, and I find it difficult to care.”

I find it difficult to care. In all the time that she had been in England, for all the times that she had scoffed at the disdainful words and glances from the ton, Juliana had never not cared. Even when she had tried her best, she had cared.

She had cared what Simon had thought.

Cared that he would never think her enough.

Even as she had known it to be true.

And she envied this strong, spirited woman who faced her uncertain future with such confidence.

“It may not be proper for me to say it,” Juliana said, “but they are idiots for casting you aside. The ballrooms of London could benefit from a woman with such spirit.”

Georgiana’s eyes gleamed with wry humor. “It is not at all proper for you to say it. But we both know that the ballrooms of London can hardly bear one woman with spirit. What would they do with two of us?”

Juliana laughed. “When you decide to return, my lady, we shall cut a wide, scandalous path together. My family has a particular fondness for children with questionable parentage, you see—” She trailed off, realizing that she had gone too far. “I am sorry. I did not mean to say that . . .”

“Nonsense,” Georgiana said, waving one hand in the air to dismiss the apology. “Caroline is most definitely of questionable parentage.” She grinned. “So I am quite happy to know that there is at least one drawing room where we will be received.”

“May I ask . . .”

Georgiana met her gaze with admiration. “You do not worry about propriety, do you, Miss Fiori?” Juliana looked away with chagrin. “It is an old tale, tiresome and devastatingly trite. I thought he loved me, and maybe he did. But sometimes love is not enough—more often than not, I think.” There was no sadness in the tone, no regret. Juliana met Georgiana’s amber gaze and saw honesty there, a clarity that belied her age.

Sometimes love is not enough.

They walked in silence back to the house, those words echoing over and over in Juliana’s mind.

Words she would do well to remember.

Chapter Sixteen

Lifelong companionship begins with softness and temerity.

Delicate ladies do not speak freely with gentlemen.

—A Treatise on the Most Exquisite of Ladies

The Guy is not the only one with a fiery temperament this autumn . . .

—The Scandal Sheet, November 1823

Most days of the year, the village of Dunscroft was a quiet place—the idyllic country life interrupted by the occasional loose bull or runaway carriage, but in the grand scheme of small English towns, there was little in the village worthy of note.

Not so on Bonfire Night.

All of Dunscroft had come out for the festivities, it seemed. It was just after sundown, and the village green was filled with the trappings of the celebration—lanterns had been lit around the perimeter of the greensward, bathing the stalls that lined the outside of the space in a lovely golden glow.

Juliana stepped down from the carriage and was immediately accosted by the smells and sounds of the carnival atmosphere. There were hundreds of people on the greensward, all enjoying one part of the fair or another—children in paper masks chased through the legs of their elders before tripping upon impromptu puppet shows or smiling girls with trays of candy apples.

There was a pig roasting several yards away, and Juliana watched as a group of young men nearby attempted to shake a living statue from his impressively rigid pose with their jesting and dancing. She laughed at the picture they made in their buffoonery, enjoying the welcome sensation.

“You see?” Isabel said from her side. “I told you that you had nothing to worry about.”

“I am still not certain,” Juliana replied with a smile. “I do not see the bonfire you promised.”

A pyre had been set up at the center of the town square, an enormous pile of wood topped with a sorry-looking straw man. The head of the effigy listed dangerously to one side, threatening that it would take a light breeze rather than a blazing fire to bring him down. Children were running in circles around the unlit bonfire, singing and chanting, and a fat baby sat off to one side, covered in sticky toffee.

Juliana turned to her sister-in-law with a smile. “This does not seem at all frightening.”

“Just wait until the children have eaten their fill of sweets, and there is a great inferno from which to protect them. Then you shall see frightening.” Isabel peered through the crowd of people, searching. “Most of the girls should be here already. The house was empty save for Nick and Leighton when we left.”

The mention of Simon set Juliana on edge. She’d been thinking of him all day—had spent much of the morning finding reasons to move in and out of rooms, to fetch things from near the nursery and visit her brother in his study, all to no avail.

He’d all but disappeared.

She knew she should be happy that he was keeping his distance. Knew she should not tempt fate. He had made his choice, after all—it was only a matter of time before he returned to London and married another.

Someone he thought highly of.

Someone who matched him in name and station.

And now, instead of doing her best to forget him, she was standing in the middle of a mass of strange Englishmen, wearing one of her most flattering frocks, and wishing that he was here.

Wondering why he wasn’t here.

Even as she knew he was not for her.

It should be easier—here in the country, protected from the rest of the world, from the scandal of long-missing mothers and illegitimate children, far from marriages of convenience and betrothal balls and whispers and gossip.

And still, she thought of him. Of his future.

Of her own.

And of how they would differ.

She had to leave.

She could not stay. Not if he was here.

Isabel lifted her nose to the air. “Ooh . . . do you smell apple tarts?”

The question shook Juliana from her reverie. This was a carnival, and all of Yorkshire was in celebration, and she would not let the future change the now. There was enough time to worry about it tomorrow.

“Shall we have one?” she asked her sister-in-law with a smile.

They set off down the long line of stalls in search of pastry, as Isabel said, “You are warned, once I start, it is possible I shan’t stop until I have turned into an apple tart.”

Juliana laughed. “It is a risk I shall take.”

They found the stall and purchased tarts before a young woman stopped Isabel to discuss something about uniforms for the Townsend Park servants. Juliana wandered slowly, lingering in the stalls nearby as she waited for the conversation to finish, watching as the greensward grew dark, the only light at the center of the square coming from candles that people held as they chatted with their neighbors and waited, presumably, for the bonfire to be lit.

Everything in this little village had been distilled to this simple moment of conversation and celebration. The air was crisp with the smell of autumn, the leaves from the trees around the greensward were falling on the breeze, and there was no worry in this moment . . . no sadness. No loneliness.

Here she was in the country, where life was rumored to be simpler. She had come for this. For bonfire night and children’s rhymes and apple tarts. And, for one evening, she would have it.

She would not let him stop her.

She paused outside a booth filled with dried herbs and flowers, and the large woman manning the stall looked up from the sachet she was tying. “What’s your pleasure, milady?”

“My pleasure?”

The woman hefted herself from her stool and made her way to the high table where Juliana stood. “Children? Money? Happiness?”

Juliana smiled. “Plants can give me those things?”

“You doubt it?”

She gave a little laugh. “Yes.”

The woman watched her for a long moment. “I see what you want.”

“Oh?”

I want one evening of simplicity.

“Love,” pronounced the shopkeeper.

Far too complicated. “What about it?”

“That’s what you want.” The woman’s hands flew over the collection of herbs and flowers, faster than someone of her size should be able to move. She pinched a tip of lavender, a sprig of rosemary, thyme and coriander and several things that Juliana could not identify. She placed them all in a little burlap bag, tying it up with a length of twine in a knot Odysseus himself would not be able to undo. She handed the pouch to Juliana then. “Sleep with it under your pillow.”

Juliana stared at the little sachet. “And then what?”

The woman smiled, a great, wide grin that revealed several missing teeth. “He will come.”

“Who will come?” She was being deliberately obstinate.

The woman did not seem to mind. “Your love.” She put out a wide hand, palm up. “A ha’penny for the magic, milady.”

Juliana raised a brow. “I will admit, that does seem a bargain . . . for magic.” She dropped the herbs into her reticule and fished out a coin.

“It will work.”

“Oh, yes, I’m sure it will.”

She turned away resolutely and froze.

There, propped against the post at the corner of the stall, arms crossed, was Simon, looking as little like a duke as the Duke of Leighton could look.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024