Slightly Wicked

Chapter VIII

Harewood Grange was buzzing with noise and activity when the carriage set Judith and her grandmother down on the terrace. All the expected guests had arrived, they discovered. Most were already in the drawing room, taking tea with Aunt Louisa, Uncle George, and Julianne. Only a few latecomers were still in their rooms, changing their garments. Many of their numerous trunks and bags and hatboxes were still strewn about the terrace, servants and strange valets darting about to take them as quickly as possible to their relevant rooms.

“I am far too fatigued to put in an appearance, Judith,” her grandmother said. “I feel one of my migraines coming on. But you must not miss joining the gathering. You may help me up to my room if you would be so good and then run and fetch a cup of tea for me and perhaps a little cake or two—the ones with the white icing, my love. After that you must put on a pretty dress and join Louisa and Julianne in the drawing room and be presented to all the guests.”

Judith had no intention of doing any such thing. She spied the opportunity for her first hour of real freedom since her arrival at Harewood, and she would not squander it. She hurried to her room after Tillie had been summoned to settle Grandmama in her bed for an afternoon sleep, changed quickly into one of the few dresses that had not yet been subjected to alteration, an old lemon-colored cotton that she was attached to, threw off her cap and replaced it with her own straw bonnet, and hastened down the back stairs, which she had discovered during several errands to the kitchen in the past few days. She slipped out through the back door and found herself facing the kitchen gardens, vegetables on one side, flowers on the other. Beyond, grassy lawns stretched away to a tree-dotted hill. Judith walked toward it and then lengthened her stride, raising her face to the sun and to the light breeze, which felt good lifting the hair at her brow and her neck, which were usually covered by her cap.

Was she quite, quite mad to have turned down a marriage proposal? From a man who was titled and wealthy? From a man with whom she had lain? Whom she found achingly attractive? With whose memory she had expected to fill every dream for the rest of her life? Marriage was every woman’s ultimate goal, her dearest hope being that marriage would bring her security and children and a tolerable measure of comfort, perhaps even companionship.

For the past few years Judith had waited patiently to meet a man willing to marry her, someone acceptable to Papa and tolerable to herself. She had very sensibly never expected her dreams of romance to become reality. Yet today—a little more than an hour ago—she had refused Lord Rannulf Bedwyn .

Was she mad ?

The hill was not a high one. Even so, it provided picturesque views across the surrounding countryside.

From the top she could see in all four directions. The breeze was a little stronger up here. She faced into it, closed her eyes, and tipped back her head.

No, not mad. How could she have accepted when he had not even tried to hide his resentment at being forced into offering for her? When he had made his contempt for her lowly social standing so obvious?

When he had quite openly confessed that what had happened between them was no unusual occurrence for him ... and that such encounters would continue even after his marriage?

How could she marry a man she actively despised?

Even so, she thought, spying water below the hill on the far side and making her way down toward it, there had been some sort of reckless madness in her refusal—pride overriding common sense. Common sense now reminded her that even if marriage to Lord Rannulf had led to being hidden away in some forgotten corner while he continued with his life of philandering, it would at least have been marriage. She would have become the respected mistress of her own home.

Instead of which she was a dependent of Uncle George, who hardly knew she existed, despised by Aunt Louisa and at her constant beck and call for endless years into the future. Only her grandmother made life tolerable for her at the moment. She gave herself a mental shake when she caught the self-pitying drift of her thoughts. There were worse fates. She could be married to a man who cared not the snap of two fingers for her and neglected her and was unfaithful to her and .. .

Well, there were worse fates.

The lake at the bottom of the hill was lovely and secluded. It was surrounded by long grass and wildflowers and a few trees. It looked quite neglected and was surely never used or even visited.

Perhaps, she thought, it could become her own private little retreat in the days and months and years ahead. She kneeled on the bank and trailed a hand in the water. It was fresh and clear and not nearly as cold as she had expected. She cupped some in her hands and lowered her flushed face into it.

She was crying, she realized suddenly. She almost never wept. But her tears were hot in contrast to the coolness of the water, and her bosom was heaving with sobs she seemed powerless to control.

Life really was unfair at times. She had reached out just once in her life and stolen a brief and magnificent dream. She had neither expected nor demanded that it be prolonged. She had wanted only the memory of it to last her the rest of her life.

Clearly it had been too much to ask.

Now it was gone, all of it. The memories were sullied— all of them. Because now he knew that she was not the bright star, the flamboyant actress he had found attractive despite her physical defects. And because she now knew that he was a man to be despised.

Yet he had just offered her marriage .

And she had refused.

She got to her feet and made her way back up the hill. She must not be missed. If she were, Aunt Louisa would surely make sure that she had no future chance for idleness.

Someone, she discovered when she arrived back at the rear of the house, had locked the back door. It would not open to all her efforts and a knock drew no response. She made her way around to the front, fervently hoping that everyone was still gathered in the drawing room so that she could slip up to her room undetected.

Two horses were being led off toward the stables as she rounded the corner to the front terrace, and a mountain of baggage was being lifted out of a baggage coach. Two gentlemen stood with their backs to Judith, one of them directing operations in impatient, imperious tones. She shrank back and would have disappeared back around the corner, but the other gentleman half turned his head so that she could see him in profile. She stared, unbelieving, and then hurried toward him, her reluctance to be seen forgotten.

“Bran?” she cried. “Branwell?”

Her brother turned toward her, his eyebrows raised, and then he grinned and hurried to meet her.

“Jude?” he said. “You are here too, are you? Famous!” He swept off his hat, gathered her up into a bear hug, and kissed her cheek. “Are the others here as well? I like the bonnet— very fetching.”

He was dressed in the very height of fashion and looked handsome and dashing indeed, his fair hair blowing in the breeze, his eager, boyish, good-looking face smiling fondly into her own. For a moment she forgot that she wanted to visit exquisite torture on every part of his body, down to the last toenail.

“Just me,” she said. “One of us was invited, and I was the one chosen.”

“Famous!” he said.

“But what are you doing here, Bran?” she asked.

Before he could answer her, the other gentleman came up to join them.

“Well, well, well,” he said, looking her over with the sort of bold scrutiny that would have had Papa scolding her afterward if he had been here to witness it. “Present me, Law, will you?”

“Judith,” Branwell said. “My second sister. Horace Effingham, Jude. Our stepcousin.”

Ah, so he had come, Uncle George’s son from his first marriage. Aunt Effingham would be gratified.

Judith had never met him before. He was a few years older than Branwell’s twenty-one and a couple of inches shorter—he was about on a level with her own height. He was a little stockier than Bran too and darkly handsome in an almost pretty way. His smile revealed very large, very white teeth.

“Cousin,” he said, reaching out a square, smooth hand for hers. “This is a pleasure indeed. Suddenly I am delighted that I succumbed to my stepmama’s persuasions and came to what I expected to be certain tedium. I brought your brother with me to help alleviate the boredom. I will take the liberty of calling you Judith since we are close relatives.” He carried her hand to his lips and held it there longer than was necessary.

“Effingham is a fine fellow, Jude,” Branwell said eagerly. “He has taken me to the races and given me useful tips on picking a winner, and to Tattersall’s and advised me on how to choose the best horseflesh.

He took me as a guest to White’s Club one evening and I took a turn at the tables and won three hundred guineas before losing three hundred and fifty. But still, only fifty guineas lost when other fellows around me were losing hundreds. And at White’s . You should just see it, Jude—but of course you can’t because you are a woman.”

She had recovered from the first surprise of seeing him, and from the first delight too. Branwell, the only boy among four sisters—handsome, eager, sunny-natured Bran—had always been the darling of them all. He had gone away to school at great expense to Papa and had come home with very mediocre reports. But he had excelled on the playing fields and was everyone’s best friend. Then he had gone to Cambridge and scraped through every examination by the skin of his teeth. But he had not been interested in a career in the church or in law or in politics or the diplomatic service or the military. He did not know what he wanted to do. He needed to be in London, mingling with the right people, discovering exactly where his talents and abilities could be put to best use to earn him a fortune.

In the year since he had come down from Cambridge, Branwell had spent everything their father had set aside for him—and then everything that had been allotted to his daughters as modest dowries. Now he was eating into the very substance of Papa’s independence. Yet he was still the darling boy, who would soon be finished sowing his wild oats and would then proceed to rebuild the family fortune. Even Papa, who was so very strict with his girls, could see no wrong in Branwell that time and experience would not mend.

“I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Effingham,” Judith said, withdrawing her hand from his as soon as she was decently able. “And I am delighted to see you again, Bran. But I must hurry inside.

Grandmama will be waking from her sleep, and I must see if she needs anything.”

“Grandmama?” Branwell said. “I had forgotten the old girl was here. An old tyrant, is she, Jude?”

She did not like the disrespect with which he spoke.

“I am remarkably fond of her,” she said, quite truthfully. “You may wish to pay your respects to her as soon as you have freshened up, Bran.”

“If Judith is going to be with her, I’ll come with you, Law,” Horace Effingham said with a laugh.

But Judith was hurrying away, contrasting her situation with her brother’s. She was here in the nature of an unpaid servant, while Bran was just arriving as a guest. Yet he was the cause of all her woes. All of them. If it were not for Bran she would not have been on that stagecoach. She would not be here.

But there was absolutely no point in falling back into self-pity.

She noticed in some relief that the hall and stairs were still deserted. As she hurried upward she could hear the hum of voices coming from the drawing room.

Rannulf, just like the rest of his family, had never been much enamored of social gatherings, whether in London during the Season or at Brighton or one of the spas in the summer or at house parties any time of the year. The house party at Harewood was going to be particularly insipid, he could see almost immediately. Yet he could not escape it. He must spend the next two weeks determinedly dancing attendance on Miss Effingham. During those two weeks or soon after he was going to have to propose marriage to her.

Two proposals to two different women, both within a month of each other. But from the second he could expect no reprieve.

It was made embarrassingly obvious from the moment of his arrival at Harewood for dinner that he was the honored guest, even though he was not staying at the house as all the others were. Not only honored guest, but most favored suitor for the hand of Miss Julianne Effingham. The mother led him about the drawing room after his arrival to introduce him to those guests he did not already know—most of them, in fact—and invited her daughter to join them in their progress. Then she had him lead the girl into the dining room, and he found himself seated beside her through dinner.

He was interested to discover that one of the guests was Branwell Law, a fair-haired, good-looking lad, who was presumably the brother of Judith Law—had not Claire Campbell named him? Of Judith herself and Mrs. Law there was no sign, for which fact he was enormously thankful. To say that he felt embarrassed after their encounters in the garden, especially the second one in the rose arbor, would be to understate the case. She had refused him .

Miss Effingham seemed absurdly young and alarmingly empty-headed. She talked about nothing but the parties she had attended in London and how this one and that one— mostly titled gentlemen—had complimented her and wished to dance with her when she had already promised all her dances to other gentlemen. She really thought dances should come in sets of two instead of three so that there could be more of them during an evening and more gentlemen could dance with the lady of their choice. What did Lord Rannulf think?

Lord Rannulf thought—or said he thought—that was a remarkably intelligent suggestion and should be brought to the attention of some of London’s more prominent hostesses, particularly those of Almack’s.

“How would you feel,” she asked him, gazing at him with wide blue eyes, her spoon suspended over her pudding, “if you wanted to dance with a lady, Lord Rannulf, and she was engaged for every set to other gentlemen even though she wanted desperately to dance with you?”

“Kidnap her,” he said and watched her eyes widen still further before she laughed with light, trilling merriment.

“Oh, you never would,” she said. “Would you? You would cause a shocking scandal. And then, you know, you would be forced to offer for her.”

“Not so,” he said. “I would have borne her off to Gretna Green, you see, and married her over the anvil.”

“How romantic ,” she said with an excited little gasp. “Would you really do that, Lord Rannulf? For someone you admired?”

“Only if she had no dances left to offer me,” he said.

“Oh.” She laughed. “If she knew that ahead of time, she would make very sure that there were none.

And then she would be whisked off... But you would not really do such an outrageous thing, would you?”

There was a small cloud of doubt in her eyes.

Rannulf was weary of the silly game. “I always make sure,” he said, “that if there is a lady I particularly admire, I arrive at a ball early enough to engage her for at least one dance.”

Her mouth turned down at the corners. “Are there very many ladies you admire, Lord Rannulf?” she asked.

“At the moment,” he said, fixing his gaze on her, “I can see only one, Miss Effingham.”

“Oh.”

She must surely know that she looked her prettiest with her mouth pouted just so. She held the expression for a moment, then blushed and looked down at her dish. Rannulf took the opportunity to turn to Mrs. Hardinge, mother of Miss Beatrice Hardinge, at his other side and to address a remark to her.

Soon after, Lady Effingham rose to signal the ladies that it was time to follow her to the drawing room while the gentlemen settled to their port.

The first person he saw when he entered the drawing room half an hour later was Judith Law, who was seated by the hearth close to her grandmother. She was wearing a pale gray silk dress which looked to be as shapeless as the striped cotton she had worn to Grandmaison earlier. She was also wearing a cap again. It was slightly prettier than this afternoon’s though it covered her hair just as completely. She was holding a cup and saucer for the old lady, he could see, while the latter held a plate and made short work of the cream cake on it.

He ignored the two ladies after nodding genially to Mrs. Law, who smiled and nodded back. It was intriguing to notice that for everyone else in the room Judith Law might as well have been invisible—as of course she had been to him just yesterday when he had first been introduced to her. All her vivid, voluptuous beauty was quite effectively masked.

Sir George Effingham offered him a place at a table of whist, but Lady Effingham took him firmly by the arm and bore him off in the direction of the pianoforte at which Lady Margaret Stebbins was favoring the company with a Bach fugue.

“It is your turn next, Julianne, dearest, is it not?” her mother said even before Lady Margaret had finished. “Here is Lord Rannulf come to turn the pages of your music.”

Rannulf resigned himself to an evening spent charming and flattering a gaggle of giggling young ladies and matching wits with a group of foolishly posturing young gentlemen. He felt a hundred years old.

Judith Law, he could not help noticing, was kept busy by her grandmother. She was constantly going back and forth between her seat and the tea tray. Twice she was sent from the room. The first time she came back with the old lady’s spectacles, which were set down and never used. The second time she returned with a cashmere shawl, which was then folded and set over the arm of the old lady’s chair and forgotten. Nevertheless, he noticed that the two of them were talking to each other and smiling and apparently enjoying each other’s company.

He smiled and complimented Miss Effingham, who had finished her second piece on the pianoforte and was clearly angling for a request for an encore. Meanwhile the Honorable Miss Lilian Warren and her sister awaited their turn at the instrument.

And then there was a commotion from the direction of the tea tray. Judith Law had apparently been pouring a cup of tea when someone—it was Horace Effingham, Rannulf could see—must have jogged her elbow. The tea had spilled all down her front, darkening the gray of her dress, making it half transparent, and molding it to her bosom. She had cried out, and Effingham had produced a handkerchief and was attempting to mop her down with it. She was pushing his hand away with one of hers while with the other she was attempting to pluck the wet fabric away from her bosom.

“Judith!” Lady Effingham cried in awful tones. “You awkward, clumsy girl! Remove yourself immediately.”

“No, no, it was all my fault, Stepmama,” Effingham called. “Allow me to wipe you dry, Cousin.”

There was laughter in his eyes, Rannulf saw—lascivious laughter.

“Oh dear,” Miss Effingham murmured, “Judith is making such a cake of herself.”

Rannulf found himself clenching his teeth and striding across the room to grab the shawl from under Mrs.

Law’s elbow. He hurried toward the tea tray and tossed the garment about Judith Law’s shoulders from behind without actually touching her. She looked around, startled and grateful, even as her hands grasped the ends and drew it protectively about her.

“Oh,” she said. “Thank you.”

Rannulf bowed curtly. “Are you burned, ma’am?” he asked. Had no one considered the fact that it was hot tea she had spilled down herself?

“Only a little scalded,” she said. “No, really, nothing.” She turned to hurry from the room, but he could see that she was biting her lower lip hard.

Rannulf found himself eye to eye with Horace Effingham, whose leering expression came very close to a wink.

“How gallant,” he said, “to find a shawl to hide the lady’s, er, embarrassment .”

It had been deliberate, Rannulf realized suddenly, narrowing his gaze on the other man. By God, it had been deliberate.

“She might have been badly burned,” he said curtly. “It would be advisable to be more careful around tea trays in future.”

And then Effingham did wink as he murmured very low. “I am burned, even if she is not,” he said. “As are you too, Bedwyn, I’ll wager. Quick witted of you to find an excuse to hurry closer.”

But Lady Effingham had raised her voice again, though now she was laughing and pleasant. “Carry on as before, everyone,” she said. “I do apologize for that unfortunate and undignified interruption. My niece is unaccustomed to mingling in polite society and has become all thumbs, I am afraid.”

“Oh, I say, Aunt,” young Law said, “Jude has never been clumsy. It was just an accident.”

“Lord Rannulf.” Mrs. Law tweaked his sleeve, and he could see when he turned toward her that the incident had upset her. “Thank you so very much for being the only one with the presence of mind to help Judith and to save her some embarrassment. I must hurry upstairs to see how badly hurt she is.”

She set two plump hands on the arms of her chair to support herself.

“Allow me, ma’am,” he said, offering his hand.

“You are most kind.” She leaned heavily on him as she hoisted herself to her feet. “I believe it must be the summer heat that has caused my ankles to swell and that is making me so breathless all the time.”

He thought it was more likely to be all the cream cakes she seemed to consume and her generally indolent lifestyle.

“Allow me to escort you, ma’am,” he said.

“Well, I will if it is not too much trouble,” she said. “I did not even really want that cup of tea, you know, but I wanted Judith to move from my side and mingle with the guests. She is very shy and even insisted upon taking her dinner with me tonight since I was too weary to come down to the dining room. I thought perhaps someone would engage her in conversation and all would be well. I am vexed with Louisa for forgetting to introduce her to the guests after dinner. I daresay she has too much else on her mind.”

Rannulf did not intend to take her farther than the top of the stairs. But she leaned so heavily on him that he took her all the way to her room. At least, he assumed it was her room until she raised one heavily ringed hand and knocked.

The door opened almost immediately, and Rannulf was trapped by the burden on his arm. Judith had removed both her dress and her cap. Her hair, still pinned up, had nevertheless pulled loose in several places so that long locks of bright red hair hung over her shoulders and temples. She was wearing a loose dressing gown, which she was holding closed with one hand. Even so, a large V of bare flesh was visible from her shoulders to the top of her cleavage. For a few inches above the latter her skin was a fiery red.

“Oh.” Soon her cheeks matched the scald mark. “I—I thought it was someone bringing the salve I asked to be sent up.” She focused her gaze on Mrs. Law, but Rannulf knew she was very aware of him.

Her hand clutched the robe closer.

“You are burned, Judith, my love,” Mrs. Law cried, relinquishing her hold on Rannulf’s arm and hurrying forward far faster than he had ever seen her move before. “Oh, my poor child.”

“It is nothing, Grandmama,” Judith said, biting her lip. But Rannulf saw tears spring to her eyes and knew she was in pain.

“Allow me,” he said, “to find the housekeeper and make sure the salve is sent up without further delay.

In the meantime, Miss Law, a cold wet cloth held against the burn may take away some of the sting.”

“Thank you,” she said, her eyes meeting his. For a moment their glances locked, and then she turned away and the old lady set an arm about her shoulders.

Rannulf hurried away, entertaining himself with pleasing visions of bathing Horace Effingham in something a great deal hotter than tea.