Slightly Wicked

Chapter XXIII

She was sitting on a large flat rock in a blaze of sunlit beauty that felt as if it contracted his chest muscles and pressed on his heart. She was wearing neither bonnet nor cap. She looked like someone who had climbed to freedom, away from all those who would have imposed their standards of beauty and propriety on her.

“What are you doing here?” she asked him.

“Gazing at you,” he said. “It seems more like a week since I saw you last than just twenty-five or -six hours. You have a habit of running away from me.”

“Lord Rannulf,” she said, removing her hand from above her eyes and clasping her knees again in a tight, protective gesture, “why have you come here? Is it because I left without a word or without even writing to you? I have written, you know, to both you and the Duke of Bewcastle. The letters are ready to send.”

“This one is mine?” He held up the sealed sheet addressed to him in her neat hand.

“You have been to the house V Her eyes widened.

“Of course I have been to the rectory,” he said. “Your housekeeper admitted me to the sitting room, where I met your mother and your three sisters. They were all charming. I could easily distinguish the one you described as the beauty of the family. But you were wrong, you know. Her beauty does not come close to matching yours.”

She merely hugged her knees more tightly.

“Your mother gave me this,” he said, indicating the letter. With his thumb he broke the seal. She half reached out a hand to stop him, but then pulled it back again. She dipped her head to rest her forehead on her knees.

“ ‘Dear Lord Rannulf,’” he read aloud, “I cannot even begin to thank you for all the kindness you showed me from the time I left Harewood Grange until yesterday.” He looked at her bent head. “

Kindness, Judith?”

“You were kind,” she said. “Exceedingly kind.”

He glanced through the rest of the short letter, which continued in the same vein as it had begun. “

‘Respectfully yours,’ ” he read aloud when he came to the end. “And this is all you had to say to me?”

“Yes.” She looked up at him then, and he folded the letter and put it away in his coat pocket. “I am sorry I did not stay to say it in person, but you should know by now that I am a coward when it comes to saying good-bye.”

“Why did you feel you had to say good-bye?” he asked her. He sat down on the stone beside her. It was warm from the heat of the sun.

She sighed. “Is it not obvious?”

As obvious as the nose on his face—and that was obvious enough. She was a proud, stubborn woman, and yet paradoxically she had very little confidence in herself. It had been squashed out of her by repressive parents, who doubtless meant well, but who had done untold harm to the daughter who was a swan among their other ducklings.

“The Duke of Bewcastle is my brother,” he said, “and he is a haughty aristocrat, as high in the instep as any monarch. He wields power with the mere lifting of a finger. Freyja and Morgan and Alleyne are my sisters and brother, and they dress grandly and bear themselves proudly and behave as if they are a cut or two above ordinary mortals. Bedwyn House is one of my family’s homes, and it is a rich and splendid mansion. Only Bewcastle and Aidan stand between me and the dukedom and fabulous riches and properties and estates stretching over vast areas of England and Wales. Have I come close to describing half of what is obvious?”

“Yes.” She did not look at him but gazed off down the hill.

“The Reverend Jeremiah Law is your father,” he continued. “He is a gentleman of moderate means and rector of a less-than-prominent living. He has four daughters to provide for on a competence that has been severely depleted by the extravagances of a son who has not yet settled to earning his own living.

He has moreover the embarrassment of being the grandson on his mother’s side of a draper and the son of an actress. Have I described the other half of what is obvious?”

“Yes.” But she was no longer gazing down the hill. She was looking at him, and he saw with some satisfaction that she was angry. He would take her anger over her passivity any day of the week. “Yes, that is it exactly, Lord Rannulf. But I am not ashamed of Grandmama. I am not. I love her dearly.”

“I would think so too,” he said. “She thinks the world of you, Judith.”

“I’ll not be your mistress,” she said.

“Good Lord!” He looked at her, aghast. “Is that what you have thought I am offering?”

“There could never be anything else between us,” she said. “Can you not see? Did you not see? Even the servants at Bedwyn House were grander than I. Everyone was very courteous to me and Lady Freyja and the Duke of Bewcastle were marvelously kind in their efforts to help me. But they must have been aghast at my appearing among them.”

“It would take a great deal more than that to shock any of the Bedwyns,” he said. “Besides all of which, Judith, you are not being asked to live at Bedwyn House or with any of my brothers and sisters. You are being asked to live with me , probably at Grandmaison, as my wife. I do not believe my grandmother would allow me to take you there as my mistress. She is a stickler about such matters.”

She jumped to her feet then, though she did not immediately move away.

“You cannot wish to marry me,” she said.

“Can’t I?” he asked her. “Why not?”

“It would not work,” she said. “It could not work.”

“Why not?” he asked again.

She turned then and strode away, choosing to go upward rather than down. Rannulf got to his feet and went after her through short, springy grass that was very green from the recent rain.

“Is it because I may be with child?” she asked him.

“I almost hope you are,” he said. “Not because I want to trap you into marriage against your will, but because I would like to fulfill my grandmother’s last dream while she still lives. She is dying, you know. It is her final wish that I marry before she does and it is her dream that my wife and I will present her with a grandchild while she still lives.”

She had stopped walking. “This is why you wish to marry me?”

He lifted one hand and set his forefinger beneath her chin. “That question hardly dignifies an answer,” he said. “Do you not know me better, Judith?”

“No, I do not.” She pushed his hand away and resumed her climb. The slope was getting steeper, but her pace was relentless. Rannulf took off his hat and carried it at his side.

“You told me yourself that marriage was for wealth and position only, that all your true pleasure would be taken outside of marriage.”

“Good Lord, did I say that?” But he had, he knew. He could remember saying it or something similar.

Even at the time he had not meant it but had merely meant to shock her. “Did you not know that Bedwyns are not allowed to carry on extracurricular activities outside their marriage beds? There is some rule in the family archives, I believe. Anyone who transgresses is banished to outer darkness for the rest of eternity.”

If anything her pace became faster.

“Once I am married, Judith,” he said, realizing that she was not in the mood to be teased, “my wife will be entitled to my undivided devotion, in and out of the marriage bed. That would be true even if for some reason I were ever persuaded to marry a woman not of my own choosing—as I almost was during the past few weeks. You are the bride of my choosing, the love of my heart, for all the rest of my life.”

He heard his own words almost as if there were a spectator in him uninvolved in his emotions, in his fear that there was going to be no way of persuading her. The spectator was very aware that he would have found the extravagance of his own words excruciatingly embarrassing even just a few weeks ago. . . . the bride of my choosing, the love of my heart , . .

Her head was down. She was crying, he realized. He did not comment on the fact or say any more. He merely kept pace with her. They were almost at the summit of this particular hill.

“You cannot marry me,” she said eventually. “We are soon going to be quite ruined. That was no happily ever after at Bran’s rooms yesterday. He is still dreadfully in debt. He is either going to end up in debtors’ prison, or he is going to beggar Papa—or both. You cannot ally yourself with such a family.”

She stopped suddenly. There was nowhere else to go except down the other side of the hill to a sort of no-man’s-land before the next hill began.

“Your brother is no longer in debt,” he told her, “and I am hopeful that he never will be again.”

She looked at him, her eyes widening.

“The Duke of Bewcastle did not...” She did not complete the thought.

“No, Judith,” he said. “Not Wulf.”

“You?” One of her hands crept up to her throat. “You have paid his debts? How are we ever going to repay you!”

He took her hand in his and drew it away from her throat. “Judith,” he said, “it is a family matter.

Branwell Law is going to be a part of my family, I fervently hope. There is no question of repayment. I will always do all in my power to keep you from harm or misery.” He tried to smile and was not at all sure he had succeeded. “Even if that means removing myself from your life and never seeing you again.”

“Rannulf,” she said, “you paid his debts? For my sake? But Papa will never allow it.”

It had not been easy. The Reverend Jeremiah Law was a severe, proud man who did not unbend easily into affability. He was also an upright and honest man who loved his children, even Judith, whose spirit he had so unwittingly crushed over the years.

“Your father has accepted the fact that it is quite unexceptionable for his future son-in-law to give some assistance to his son,” he said. “I am up here with his permission, Judith.”

Her eyes widened again.

“Your future brother-in-law helped too,” he said. “He used his influence and has found your brother a junior post with the East India Company. With hard work he will be able to improve his position considerably. The sky, one might say, is the limit for him.”

“The Duke of Bewcastle? Oh.” She bit her lip. “Why has he done so much for us when he must despise us heartily?”

“I am here with his blessing too, Judith,” he said, raising her hand to his lips.

“Oh,” she said again.

“You seem to be in a minority of one in considering a marriage with me ineligible,” he said.

“Rannulf.” Tears welled into her eyes again, making them look greener than ever.

The spectator in him looked on appalled as he risked murder to one leg of his pantaloons by dropping to one knee on the grass in front of her, possessing himself of her other hand too as he did so.

“Judith,” he said, looking up into her startled, arrested face, “will you do me the great honor of marrying me? I ask for one reason and one reason only. Because I adore you, my love, and can imagine no greater happiness than to spend the rest of my life making you happy and sharing companionship and love and passion with you. Will you marry me?”

He had never in his life felt so helpless or so anxious. He gripped her hands, fixed his gaze on the grass, and tried to ignore the fact that the course of all the rest of his life hung on the answer she would give him.

It seemed to him that it took forever for her to answer. When she drew her hands free of his, he thought his heart had surely slipped all the way to the soles of his boots. And then he felt her hands very light against the top of his head and then gently twining in his hair. He was aware of her leaning over him, and then she kissed his head between her hands.

“Rannulf,” she said softly. “Oh, Rannulf, my dearest love.”

He was on his feet then and catching her about the waist and lifting her off her feet and twirling her twice about while she threw back her head and laughed.

“Look what you have done,” she said, still laughing, when he set her down.

Her hair on one side had come tumbling down, and the braid was fast unraveling. She lifted her arms, took down the other side too, and stuffed the hairpins in her pocket. She shook her head, but he closed the small distance between them.

“Allow me,” he said.

He combed his fingers through her hair, untangling the last of the braiding until her hair was loose and falling in shining ripples about her shoulders and down her back. He gazed into her bright, happy eyes, smiled at her, and kissed her. She wound her arms about his neck and leaned into him while he wrapped his own about her waist and drew her to him as if they could have melded into one right there on the hilltop.

They smiled at each other when he finally lifted his head, words unnecessary, unwilling to let each other go. And then he stood back, holding her hands out to the sides with his own, and looked at her—his prize, his own, his love.

There was a noticeable breeze on the hilltop. It sent her dress fluttering behind her and flattened it against her at the front. It lifted her hair in a red-gold cloud behind her back. Just a few weeks ago, he knew, she would have been deeply embarrassed to be seen thus in all her vivid, voluptuous glory. But today she gazed back at him, her head tipped proudly back, a soft smile on her lips, her cheeks flushed.

She was all beautiful, breathtaking goddess and woman, and now at last she had accepted herself as she was.

“May I assume that your answer is yes?” he asked.

“Yes, of course,” she said, laughing. “Did I not say so? Oh, yes , Rannulf.”

They both laughed then and he scooped her up in his arms again and twirled her about and about until they were both dizzy.