Slightly Wicked

Chapter VII

The carriage that conveyed Mrs. Law to Grandmaison Park the following day was a closed one, and every window was tightly shut despite the fact that the day was sunny and hot. A draft might bring on one of her chills, she explained to Judith, who was seated beside her, convinced that both of them would surely melt in the heat. Her grandmother was in high spirits, nevertheless, and chatted the whole way.

Lady Beamish had been her closest friend since she had moved to Harewood almost two years ago, she explained. It was good occasionally to get away from the house, where Louisa was forever in a cross mood over something.

Judith had been kept constantly busy during the morning, running errands to and from the kitchens and various other rooms and to the stables and carriage house as Aunt Effingham tried to ensure that she had not forgotten a single detail of the preparations for the arrival of the houseguests. Julianne meanwhile, who possessed the same number of hands and feet as her cousin, spent the morning twirling about in exuberant pirouettes whenever she was not dashing to the windows to see if anyone was arriving early or running upstairs to change her slippers or sash or hair ribbons, and generally wearing herself to the bone, as her mother said in fond warning.

But Judith’s hope that she would not be called upon to accompany her grandmother on the afternoon visit had been dashed when her aunt looked at her late in the morning, observed with annoyance that her niece’s cheeks were unbecomingly flushed, that her eyes were unnaturally bright, and that a piece of her hair was showing beneath her cap at the back. Julianne had chosen that moment to speak to her mother.

“Lady Margaret Stebbins is not prettier than I, Mama, is she?” she had asked, suddenly anxious. “Or Lilian Warren or Beatrice Hardinge? I know Hannah Warren and Theresa Cooke are not even though they are very sweet girls and I love them to distraction. But I will be the prettiest here, will I not?”

Aunt Effingham had rushed to hug her daughter and assure her that she was ten times lovelier than any of her dear friends who would be arriving during the afternoon. But her stern eye had alighted on Judith even as she spoke and on the errant lock of hair that her niece was tucking back beneath her cap.

“You really need not be here this afternoon when our guests arrive, Judith,” she had said. “There will be nothing useful for you to do, and you will only be under everyone’s feet. You may accompany Mother to Grandmaison, and Tillie will stay here instead, where I can put her to good use.”

“Yes, of course, Aunt Louisa,” Judith had said, her heart sinking while Julianne focused her eyes curiously upon her.

“Poor Judith,” she had said, “never to have had a come-out Season even though you are years older than I. How inconvenient and distressing for you not to be able to mingle freely in fashionable society.

Mama says your case might not be so desperate if Uncle had made a more advantageous marriage. How fortunate you are to have been invited to live here, where you will at least be able to rub shoulders with people of superior breeding.”

Judith had not answered. She had been given no chance to even had she thought it worth expressing her indignation on her mother’s behalf—Julianne had turned to Aunt Louisa with an anxious plea for an opinion on her choice of dress.

But now she was riding in the carriage beside her grandmother, fanning her against the heat. Gentlemen surely did not dance attendance upon elderly ladies very often, especially when another elderly lady was coming to visit. Lord Rannulf Bedwyn would surely not be with his grandmother this afternoon.

She was to be proved wrong.

After descending from the carriage and entering the hall of Grandmaison, they were shown into a spacious, high-ceilinged sitting room on the ground floor, its ivory-colored walls and gilded trimmings reflecting light and spelling expensive elegance. Landscape paintings in gilded frames added depth and beauty. The long French windows at the far side of the room were opened back so that it seemed filled with birdsong and the fragrance of flowers. Judith might have fallen in love with the room at a glance if she had not been instantly aware of the presence in it of two people instead of one.

Lady Beamish was rising to her feet from a chair beside the empty hearth. Lord Rannulf Bedwyn was already standing before the fireplace. Judith lowered her chin and ducked half behind her grandmother as they proceeded across the room. She wished she could be anywhere else on earth but where she was.

She felt utterly humiliated and even uglier than usual, clad as she was in one of her newly altered striped cottons with the bonnet cap and a plain, large-brimmed bonnet that Aunt Louisa had let her have because she had no further use for it herself.

“Gertrude, my dear,” Lady Beamish said warmly, kissing Grandmama’s cheek. “How are you? And you have brought Miss Law with you. How pleasant. She is one of your son’s daughters of whom you have spoken to me?”

“Yes, Judith,” Grandmama said, beaming fondly at her. “The second one and always my favorite granddaughter. I hardly dared hope that Jeremiah would send her instead of one of her sisters.”

Judith darted her a surprised glance. Grandmama surely did not know them nearly well enough to have favorites.

“How do you do, Miss Law?” Lady Beamish said kindly. “Do have a seat.”

Lord Rannulf meanwhile was making his bow to Grandmama and then to Judith, murmuring her name as he did so. She curtsied without looking up and sat down on the nearest chair. But as she removed her gloves she realized how abjectly she was behaving and how impossible it was to hide her identity from him for much longer—if indeed he had not already discerned it. She lifted her head and looked directly at him.

He was looking back, his eyes narrowed. She tilted her chin a little higher even as she felt color flood both cheeks.

Polite conversation occupied the next few minutes. Lady Beamish asked after the health of Judith’s family and Grandmama asked after that of Lord Rannulf Bedwyn’s. The expected arrival of the houseguests at Harewood that very afternoon was spoken of as well as the fact that Lord Rannulf intended to ride over for dinner. And then Lady Beamish spoke more briskly.

“Gertrude and I are old friends, Rannulf,” she said, “and love nothing better than an hour together prosing on about matters that would interest no one else but our two selves. You are excused from the tedium of being polite. Why do you not take Miss Law outside and show her the formal gardens?

Perhaps after that she would enjoy a quiet sit in the rose arbor while you go about your business.”

Judith’s hands clenched in her lap.

“It would seem that we are merely in the way here, Miss Law,” he said, taking a few steps toward her and half bowing to her while one arm indicated the French windows. “Shall we step outside?”

“Perhaps, Lord Rannulf,” her grandmother said as Judith got reluctantly to her feet, “you would be so good as to shut the windows as you leave—if you have no objection, that is, Sarah. I do believe one of my fevers is threatening to come on. Judith had to fan my face all the way here.”

Judith ignored the arm that was offered her. She hurried toward the French windows and out onto the cobbled terrace beyond. She was on a path that bisected the center of the formal gardens before she stopped to hear the French windows close behind her. Where was she running to? And why would she run? But surely she had never in her life felt more embarrassed than she did at this precise moment.

“Well, Miss Judith Law ,” he said softly, and she realized with a start that he had come up close behind her. There was quiet venom in his voice.

She clasped her arms behind her and turned, looking boldly up into his face—horrifyingly close and just as horrifyingly familiar.

“Well, Lord Rannulf Bedwyn ,” she said.

“Touche.” He looked back at her, a familiar mocking gleam in his eyes. He indicated the path ahead with one arm. “Shall we stroll? We are fully visible from the sitting room where we stand now.”

The formal gardens had been set out with geometric precision, Judith could see, straight cobbled paths leading like spokes of a wheel to a fountain at the center, a marble Cupid standing on one foot in the center of a marble basin, water shooting out of the end of the arrow fixed to his bow and spraying about him back into the basin. Low, neat box hedges lined the paths and enclosed flower beds that provided a feast of color and bloom to the eyes and sweet scents to the nose.

“You deceived me,” he said as they walked.

“And you deceived me.” Her hands took a firmer grip on her forearms behind her back. She wished she had never discovered his true identity. Why had this had to happen? Of all the possible destinations in England, they had been headed for homes that were no more than five miles apart. And he was, in effect, going to be a part of the house party at Hare wood.

Was he really going to marry Julianne? Had he planned it even before his journey north?

“I wonder,” he said, his voice pleasant and conversational, “if your grandmother and your aunt and uncle would be interested to learn that you are an actress and a courtesan.”

Was he threatening her? Was he afraid, perhaps, that she would expose him?” .

“I wonder,” she said tartly, “if they would be equally interested to learn that the man they are courting for my cousin Julianne engages in casual affairs with strangers on his travels.”

“You show your ignorance of the world, Miss Law,” he said. “The Efftnghams are undoubtedly well aware that gentlemen have certain, ah, interests that they pursue at every opportunity both before and after marriage. Are you an honored guest in your uncle’s home?”

“Yes. I have been invited to live at Harewood,” she said.

“Why are you not there this afternoon, then, to meet all the houseguests as they arrive?” he asked.

“My grandmother had need of my company,” she told him.

“You lie, Miss Law,” he said. “Indeed, you lie a great deal. You are a poor relation. You have come to Harewood in the nature of an unpaid servant, primarily to relieve your aunt of the necessity of catering to the demands of your grandmother, if my guess is correct. Did your father not make as advantageous a marriage as your aunt?”

They had reached the fountain and stopped walking. Judith could feel droplets of spray cool against her cheeks.

“My mother,” she said testily, “was of perfectly good family. And my father, as well as being a clergyman, is a man of means.”

“Of means,” he repeated, mockery in his voice. “But not of fortune? And the means have been depleted to the degree that your parents have been forced to farm out one of their daughters to wealthier relatives?”

Judith moved around the fountain to the path on the other side of it. He circled around the other way and then was beside her again.

“Your interrogation is impertinent,” she said. “My circumstances are none of your business. Neither are my father’s.”

“You are a gentleman’s daughter,” he said softly.

“Ofcourse I am.”

“You are also angry,” he said.

Was she? Why? Because it was humiliating to be seen and known for who she really was? Because her one stolen dream, which would have sustained her through the rest of a lonely life, had been shattered?

Because he was so poised and unaffected by this horrible coincidence? Because he mocked both her and her parents? Because Julianne was young and pretty and rich? Because Bran well had wasted away Papa’s small but carefully nurtured fortune? Because life was not fair? Who had ever said it was supposed to be?

“And a coward,” he added after a short silence. “You did not even have the courage to look me in the eye and spin your yarn about there being another man. You did not have the courage to say good-bye to me.”

“No,” she admitted. “No, I did not.”

“And so,” he said, “you made me look a pretty fool. I was scolded by the innkeeper’s wife for mistreating you and advised to ride after you and eat very humble pie.”

“I am sorry,” she said.

“Are you?” He looked down at her and she realized they had stopped walking again. “I would have taken you even if you had told me the truth. Did you realize that? I would have set you up as my mistress.

I would have kept you, looked after you.”

She was furiously angry then and knew exactly the reason why. Why had the one great dream of her life had to die such an ignominious, painful death? She hated him suddenly, despised and hated him for forcing her to see the essential sordidness of what had happened between them.

“Let me see.” She tapped one finger against her lips and looked upward as if thinking. “I believe that was to have been for a few days, perhaps even a week. Until we tired of each other, which, being translated, meant, I believe, until you tired of me. No, thank you, Lord Rannulf. I had my pleasure out of our encounter. It filled in a potentially dull few days while we waited for the rain to stop. I had already tired of you by that time. It would have been unkind to say so, though, since you had said you still needed a few more days or even a week of me. And so I slipped away while you were gone. Forgive me.”

He stared at her for several silent moments, the look in his eyes quite unreadable.

“If you will show me where the rose arbor is, I will sit there until my grandmother sends for me,” she said.

He spoke abruptly, ignoring her suggestion. “Are you with child? Do you even know yet?”

If a black hole had just been obliging enough to open at her feet, she would gladly have jumped into it.

“No!” she said, her cheeks hot. “Of course I am not.”

“Of course?” With raised eyebrows he looked mocking and haughty and aristocratic. “Babies do result from such activity as we indulged in, Miss Law. Did you not know that?”

“Of course I knew it!” If it was possible to feel more embarrassed, she could not imagine the circumstances. “You do not believe, do you, that I would have allowed—”

One raised hand stopped her. “Please, Miss Law,” he said, sounding infinitely weary, “do drop the worldly-wise act. It is an act as surely as your Viola or your Lady Macbeth was. Do you know for sure?”

“Yes.” Her lips were suddenly stiff and would barely form the word. “I am quite sure. Where is the rose arbor?”

“Why are you dressed so hideously?” he asked her.

She stared at him with compressed lips. “That is hardly a gentlemanly question to ask,” she said when he waited for her answer.

“You were not dressed thus when you were traveling,” he said, “though I blame myself for not seeing that you were a simple country girl playing at being an actress and a courtesan. You are good—at both.

But where did the bonnet come from, and the ridiculous cap and the ill-fitting dress?”

“Your questions are insolent,” she said.

But his eyes and his half-smile mocked her—quite viciously.

“My guess,” he said, interrupting her again, “though I fancy it is more conviction than guess, is that your aunt took one look at you when you arrived at Harewood, realized in some chagrin that you far outshone her daughter, and devised as heavy a disguise for you as she could muster. Am I right?”

Of course he was not right. Was he blind? Aunt Louisa was merely insisting, even more than Papa had done, that she hide her uglier features.

“Or was even your hair a part of the act?” he asked, his mouth lifting at one corner into further mockery.

“Are you bald beneath the cap, Miss Law?”

“You grow both tedious and offensive, Lord Rannulf,” she said. “Indicate the way to the rose arbor, if you please, or I shall find a gardener who will.”

He stared at her for a moment longer, his nostrils flared in an expression that might have been anger, and then he clucked his tongue, looked away from her, and began to stride back the way they had come, along the path, halfway about the fountain, and off along an adjacent path that led—she could see it now—toward rose-draped trellises that must be the outer boundaries of the arbor.

It was breathtakingly lovely—or would be under other circumstances. Enclosed on three sides by high trellises to protect it from the wind, it descended over four wide terraces to a bubbling stream below.

There were roses everywhere, all shades and colors, all sizes and types. The air was heavy with their perfume.

Judith seated herself on a wrought-iron seat on the top tier and folded her hands in her lap.

“You need not remain to keep me company,” she said. “I will be quite happy alone in such surroundings.”

He stood beside her for what seemed a long while, saying nothing. She did not look up to see whether he looked at her or whether he was merely admiring the view, but she could see the toe of one of his Hessian boots beating out a tattoo on the cobbles beside her. She willed him to go away. She could not bear his closeness. She could not bear reality or the knowledge that her stolen dream was ruined forever.

And then he went without a word and she felt bereft.

Rannulf went straight up to his room. And paced.

She was a gentleman’s daughter. Damn it all to hell ! She had had no business being sent off to travel alone, without even a maid to offer respectability. Her father deserved to be shot for allowing it. She had had no business accepting a ride with him, using that husky voice, pretending to be an actress. Flirting with him. Allowing him to steal a kiss from her without whacking his head right off his shoulders for his impertinence.

She must know the rules of genteel behavior as well as he did.

He knew the rules .

He leaned both hands on the windowsill, drew a deep breath, held it, and let it out slowly. He peered downward. A footman was skirting about the formal gardens on his way back to the house. The glass of lemonade Rannulf had ordered sent out to her had been delivered then.

She had had no business accepting his outrageous suggestion that they move from the posting inn to the quieter one by the market green. Or agreeing to share a room with him. Or dining alone with him. Or fanning his lust with that acting—where the devil had she learned to act like that? Or wearing that Siren’s hair all down over her shoulders.

She had had no damned business bedding with him.

She must know the rules.

He knew the rules.

He pounded the edge of one fist against the windowsill and cursed between clenched teeth.

He knew the rules, dammit all to hell. His father had raised headstrong, unruly sons who flouted convention and public opinion at every turn. He had also raised honorable sons, ones who knew the rules that could not be broken.

He had told her he would have taken her with him even if he had known the truth about her. He would have made her his mistress, he had said. Would he have? Probably not—undoubtedly not.

She was a gentleman’s daughter.

Deuce take it, but she probably did not know yet if she had escaped the worst of all possible fates. She was an accomplished liar. She had probably lied about that too. She might be giving birth to his bastard child in a little less than nine months’ time.

He pounded a fist on the windowsill once more and then turned away from the window to pace his room again, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.

Damn, damn, damn.

Finally he tore open the door and strode out into the corridor beyond without stopping to close the door behind him. Without stopping to think further.

She was sitting where he had left her, her hands one on top of the other, palm up, in her lap, the glass of lemonade, with perhaps an inch drunk, standing on a small wrought-iron table that the footman must have drawn up beside her. She was staring toward the stream and only half turned her head when he came through the trellised arch from the terrace.

“I have been pacing my room,” he said, “trying to convince myself that you were entirely to blame for what happened. It is simply not true. I am as much to blame.”

Her head came about entirely then, and he found himself staring into wide, surprised green eyes.

“What?” she said.

“You were an innocent, inexperienced young lady,” he said. “I am far from either innocent or inexperienced. I should have known. I should have seen through the act.”

“You are blaming yourself for what happened between us?” she asked him, sounding quite astonished.

“How foolish! There is no question of blame on either side. It was something that was mutually entered into. It is over and best forgotten.”

If only it were that easy!

“It is not over,” he said. “I had your virginity. You are now, to put it crudely and bluntly, damaged goods, Miss Law, and you cannot be so innocent that you have not realized that fact.”

Her cheeks flamed, her head whipped around to face front again, and she stood up abruptly.

“What makes you think—” she began.

“Oh, not my own observations,” he told her. “I was somewhat inebriated, both by the wine I had consumed and by your acting performances and your charms. After you had fled, the landlady explained to me why she had changed the sheets on our bed after our first night together. There was blood on the ones she removed, she was charmed to report.”

Her back visibly flinched.

“You are a gentlewoman, Miss Law,” he said, “though not of a socially prominent or wealthy family, it is true. You are from a class well below any from which my family or my peers would expect me to choose a bride, but my hand has been forced. Not that I blame you. I blame myself for being so blind to reality.

But it is too late to regret that now. Will you do me the honor of marrying me?”

Her back did not flinch this time. It stiffened. For several moments he thought she was not going to answer him. But she did speak eventually.

“No,” she said, her voice quite steady and firm. And she walked away from him, down over each wide terrace, past all the roses until she came to a stop at the water’s edge.

Perhaps he should have presented his offer with softer words, gone to stand in front of her, taken her hand in his. Instead, he had paid her the compliment of speaking the bald truth to her. She surely would have recognized falsehood from him anyway. In her guise as Claire Campbell she had struck him as an intelligent woman. He went after her.

“Why not?” he asked her.

“I am no one’s problem, Lord Rannulf,” she said. “I will be a salve to no one’s guilty conscience. But your guilt is unnecessary. I went with you willingly and I—I lay with you willingly. It was an experience I wished to have and decided to take when the chance offered itself. You are quite right about the reason for my coming to Harewood. There is not much likelihood that a woman in my circumstances will ever be found out as a fallen woman or damaged goods . Women like me remain spinsters all their lives. I suppose the chance of marrying after all should be tempting. I could be Lady Rannulf Bedwyn and rich beyond my dreams. But I will not be married because your hand has been forced or because it is too late to extricate yourself from the trap you perceive me to be. I would not be married because honor forces you to offer such an unequal and imprudent match. You would not feel honored if I married you but martyred.”

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I did not mean to imply—”

“Oh, no,” she said, “you implied nothing. You stated it. For which of several possible reasons did you expect me to leap at your offer, Lord Rannulf? Because you are a duke’s son and enormously wealthy?

Because my hopes of making any other marriage are dim indeed even if I still had my virginity ? Because propriety dictates that I must marry my seducer since he has seen fit to offer for me—though of course you did not seduce me, did you? Because you told me I would honor you by accepting? My answer is no.”

Relief warred with incredulity and continued guilt. It was the grudging manner of his offer that had offended her. If he had asked her properly, would she have done the proper thing?

“Forgive me,” he said. “I believed you would scorn smooth, flattering words. Allow me to—”

“No.” She turned to face him and her eyes gazed fully into his. “It was a fleeting experience, Lord Rannulf. It was never meant to last. I was curious, my curiosity was satisfied, and I was satisfied. I had no wish to continue the liaison, and I certainly have no wish to marry you. Why should I ? I am not so innocent or so ignorant that I do not know what men of your rank are like. I had proof of it on the road, and your words today have confirmed what I already knew. You are neither innocent nor inexperienced, you said with pride. Anyone who knows what is what, you said, would understand that such behavior is to be expected of you both before and after marriage. Even if I wished for marriage to you I would not marry you. Why would I knowingly become a wife married unwillingly and left to wilt in some quiet, respectable corner while her husband carries on with his life of philandering and debauchery just as if she did not exist? I wanted you for experience, not for a husband, and I was satisfied with the experience, which I feel no desire to repeat. How fortunate for you! Now you will not have to face the scorn of your peers and the displeasure of your brother, the Duke of Bewcastle, after all. Good day to you.”

Strangely, despite her fluent, scornful words and her barely suppressed anger and her drab, ill-fitting clothes, she was suddenly appealing to him again and he remembered the consuming sexual attraction he had felt for her during their day and a half and two nights together. Until now it had been hard to realize that she could possibly be the same woman.

“This is your final word?” he asked her.

“Which of the ones I have spoken do you not understand, Lord Rannulf?” she asked, still staring directly at him.

But before he could say anything more, he became aware of someone else in the arbor. He looked up to see the same footman as before standing just inside the arch, clearing his throat. Rannulf raised his eyebrows.

“I have been sent to summon Miss Law to the sitting room, my lord,” he said.

“Thank you,” Rannulf said curtly. But as he turned to offer his arm to Judith Law, she hurried across the lowest terrace and up to the next, holding her skirt up with both hands and totally ignoring his very existence.

He did not follow her. He stood looking after her, heady with relief. Though why he should feel relieved he did not know. He suddenly remembered that one way or another he was going to have to marry someone this summer.

He was feeling ruffled. And still plagued with guilt. And more than half aroused, dammit.