Season for Temptation

Chapter 23. In Which the Second Letter Is More Significant

The morning after the Alleyneham ball, James also awoke with a pounding head and a sickening feeling in his stomach — though, unlike Julia, he could not attribute any of these sensations to having overimbibed the night before. Rather, he was all too aware that he had been terribly, terribly sober when he. .

No, he didn’t want to think about it. He shouldn’t.

But despite his best intentions, he allowed his thoughts to turn to the carriage ride home. He felt a twisting mixture of delight and pain, remembering how he and Julia had admitted their love for each other.

And then how he had taken advantage of her admission to act in a way a man betrothed never should. Even if his engagement was more akin to a contract than a love match, his fiancée deserved better from him. He felt sick with self-loathing at having betrayed Louisa — and also at the fact that he wasn’t, deep in his heart, one bit sorry for it.

He knew it could never happen again, and that made him all the gladder it had happened, just that once.

He lay in bed, pondering the complicated ebb and flow of his feelings about the night before, when he was interrupted by his manservant’s knock on the bedchamber door. Without waiting for a response, Delaney entered with an even smugger smile than usual.

“Good morning, my lord.” He smirked as he wrenched the room’s curtains open, letting a blast of late morning sun hit James’s bleary eyes. As he winced and averted them (for a viscount could never go so far as to pull the covers over his head in front of a servant), he could practically feel his manservant’s impish glee.

“My apologies, my lord. Were we out late last night?”

James sighed. “I was out late last night, as you well know, although it was not particularly late for a ball. As you also well know.” Under his breath, he grumbled, “Since you bloody well know everything that goes on here.”

“I beg pardon, my lord. I did not precisely hear what your lordship said. Does your lordship have instructions that I might carry out?”

“No, curse you,” James said, his good humor beginning to return as they started their old familiar sparring. “I was just saying you’re too nosy for your own good.”

He stretched luxuriantly, accepting that it was time for his day to begin. “Any post? I can go through it with my coffee. If you’ll take my hint.”

Delaney’s knowing smile widened. “As a matter of fact, we received a very intriguing letter by messenger this morning. I did not take the liberty of opening it, since it appears to be from a correspondent of the feminine persuasion. I shall bring it up directly with your lordship’s coffee.”

He left the room on the promised errands as James began piling up pillows to prop himself up in bed. He wondered whom the letter could be from. If it was from his mother or sister, Delaney wouldn’t have made a special point of mentioning it. And Louisa had never once sent him a letter since arriving in London.

He couldn’t imagine who else could be writing to him, unless it was some old flame from the depths of the past. But surely that wasn’t it. Though it almost seemed more likely than the only other possibility he could think of.

He hardly dared allow himself to entertain the thought that she might be writing to him. But as soon as he saw that flowing hand on the thick folded missive Delaney brought him, he knew it was from Julia, and his stomach flipped. He would have known that handwriting anywhere. Somehow, in the months since meeting her, he’d come to pick up those details about her without even realizing it, until now he felt he knew her better than anyone in the world.

Even so, the contents of this letter were a complete mystery to him. She wouldn’t have written about their wonderful but foolish behavior of the night before, would she? His head was suddenly clear and curious, the coffee service unneeded. He unsealed the letter eagerly, waving the obviously curious Delaney out of the room so he could read it in peace.

Once he had it open, he realized its bulk was due to the fact that it enclosed another sealed missive. Julia’s own correspondence was just a brief note of explanation. Still, he greedily drank in every word penned by her hand:

Dear James,

Louisa has asked me to deliver this letter to you as a friend, but under the circumstances, I thought it might be best for you not to receive this from me in person. Please accept my sincere apologies, and do let me know if there is anything I can do as a friend to ease any displeasure you might have.

Sincerely,

Julia Herington

Well. That wasn’t quite what he had been expecting. And once he read the note through several times to be sure he hadn’t missed any hidden crumbs of meaning, he became slightly annoyed. It was so formal and impersonal. So she didn’t want to see him, did she? Even though her sister had asked her to give him. . something? He had no clue what this talk of displeasure was, but figured from the tone that Louisa didn’t know what had taken place the night before.

Then there was that phrase “as a friend,” which she had repeated twice. “As a friend.” Well, if he hadn’t been a friend to Julia, what had he been? True, last night had been an unforgivable lapse in propriety — and yet she had forgiven him, and even seemed to regard him as well as ever when they parted. And before last night, he had shepherded her gently along the rocky path of London society and manners for weeks so that she would be a credit to his family when he and Louisa were married. Good Lord, he’d even helped her look for a husband of her own. How many other friends would have done as much?

At least, helping her become a credit to his family was how it had started out. His feelings had changed along the way, as they both now knew, but still. He didn’t have to be reminded that they could only be friends.

He shook his head in puzzlement and “displeasure,” to borrow her own term, and unsealed the letter that had been enclosed within the folds of Julia’s note. This one was from Louisa. The first real letter he had ever gotten from her, and somehow he didn’t think it was going to turn out to be a love letter, based on Julia’s brief note of explanation.

Dear James,

I have hesitated for a long time about writing this letter, or about communicating at all the feelings that I have at last decided to reveal. However, I believe I owe you the same candor and courtesy with which you have always treated me, and so I must own the truth.

You must have known for a long time how unhappy I found myself in London, but what you cannot have known — and what I did not know, myself, until I granted myself time for reflection last night — was that I cannot see myself ever taking part in the life you lead here. It is too foreign to me, and I am ill suited for success in it. In a sense, therefore, I became engaged to you under false pretenses, though it was unwittingly done. I know that you need a wife who can share fully in the social and economic responsibilities of your life, and even perceive them as joys. I also know that I can never do this.

I therefore release you from our engagement. I believe that you will be happier, and I hope that I will, too, though this statement is certainly not intended as a reflection on your behavior toward me. You have always treated me as a gentleman should, and my greatest regret is that my action must necessarily prevent our families from interacting in the future. I know my own family has come to value you greatly. I trust that if you can find it in your heart to forgive the embarrassment I must be causing you, you will not allow it to affect your feelings toward them.

In time, perhaps, you may forgive me as well. I hope to forgive myself someday for putting us both in this untenable situation, although that day has not yet arrived.

With my sincerest regard,

Louisa

He reread this letter several times as well, to be sure that he understood it. Louisa was breaking their engagement. . because she was unhappy?

He was stunned.

It was like the answer to a prayer, considering his own growing ambivalence, and yet it hurt more than he would have imagined. He was shaken, embarrassed, stung. It seemed unbelievable that he could have failed so utterly to notice how dissatisfied she felt.

Of course he had known that she didn’t enjoy ton parties. They had, after all, met because she’d fled the Alleyneham House ballroom. But he could hardly understand it, all the same. How could she wish to give up everything he was offering her, just to avoid the social circles in which he had to move? His name, his fortune, and — if he did say so himself — a fairly even temperament, liberal mind, and not unhandsome appearance should make him a reasonably agreeable husband by anyone’s standards. Why was he not enough for her?

Hmm. Thinking about it like that, it did seem rather cold and businesslike. He might have seemed right to her when she considered him on paper, so to speak, but. . well, if she couldn’t enjoy living in London at least part of the time, spending time with his family, even hosting events, she would frequently find herself unhappy. He had assumed their different temperaments would work themselves out, but it now seemed that hadn’t been realistic. And it wouldn’t be realistic for her to expect him to change everything on her account, either; a viscount couldn’t just drop out of society unless there was a major scandal attached.

As these thoughts ran through his head, he began to understand Louisa’s motivations a bit better, and the hurt began to abate. It wasn’t personal, she had made clear. And his own loss, while great, was not the loss of a love match.

Excitement bubbled up in him.

He was free.

He was free, and Julia loved him, and now he could pursue her.

Except — no, he really couldn’t.

The realization clanged down onto his excitement like a hammer onto an anvil. (Where did these pastoral analogies keep coming from, he wondered. It must be from all that time spent in Lord Oliver’s blasted stables.)

No, if there was any woman he couldn’t pursue now, it was Julia. Louisa was correct; there would be social repercussions from their broken engagement. Oh, it wouldn’t exactly be a scandal, but a jilted viscount would be the talk of the ton for a while, and it would certainly be difficult for Louisa herself to reenter society should she ever choose to.

Not to mention the fact that it would cause a shattering amount of gossip if he took up at once with the sister of his former betrothed. He doubted his own family would ever deign to speak to Louisa or any of her relatives again, since a broken engagement would, in their eyes, be taken as a huge slight.

Yet he had meant well, from the beginning. He had tried to do right by his family, and by Louisa. They had all meant well. Funny how such a lot of well-meaning people could wind up at cross-purposes.

He laid his letters from the two sisters in front of him on the bed and sighed from deep within. If there was one thing worse than being engaged and unable to be with the woman he loved, it was being un-engaged and still unable to be with the woman he loved.

He rubbed his hands over his face, then straightened up and set his feet on the floor. It was time to face the day. It was going to be a long one.

It seemed likely that they would all be long ones, for a while.