Theresa Romain - Season for Temptation

“Oh, Louisa,” Julia said softly. “I had no idea you had felt that way.”

“I was ashamed; I didn’t want to tell anyone,” Louisa admitted. “I suppose I’d gotten used to being good at everything I put my hand to. I just didn’t realize I’d never tried anything I didn’t have an inclination for. I’d never been away from everyone I loved. It was a desperate feeling, and when James asked me to marry him, I thought — yes, this is it; this is my way out of this desolate situation.”

Julia’s throat closed; all she could do was nod her understanding as Louisa continued.

“But it wasn’t a way out. Do you see? Life with him would be the same world. Maybe not all the time, but every year he would want to come back to London. He knows this world, and he’s comfortable in it, and I never can be.”

Louisa shook her head. “He’s a kind man, and he wants a true companion in his wife. And he deserves to have that. I couldn’t make him happy in marriage, and he couldn’t make me happy. I know I’ll be branded a jilt because of this, but I think it is the only thing to do.”

Her voice was hollow as she added, “It will probably get me the most attention I will have received since my come-out. An added bonus.”

“But you wrote so many letters to him when you were apart during the autumn, and they seemed to make you very happy. Didn’t that help?” Julia pressed.

Louisa’s smile was mirthless and swift. “Those letters were my favorite part of our engagement. But for the most part, I was asking him questions about his library, and he was providing me with book titles and information about their condition. For the catalogue I was so excited about working on.”

She met Julia’s eyes. “That’s the romance of every girl’s dream, isn’t it? I suppose I should have tried harder to work things out, but inside I must have always known I hadn’t made the right choice.”

Tears pricked at Julia’s eyes as she realized the depth of her sister’s discouragement. Surely she could have made this better. She, who knew Louisa better than anyone, should have known something was wrong and done something to fix it. “Louisa, I am so sorry. I neglected you once we got here, in my own excitement. I didn’t realize how you felt. I’m so ashamed of myself.”

Fleetingly, she thought of James, and her sense of shame deepened. There was no more she could say. Except—“What would make you happy? What can I do to help you?”

Louisa twisted her hands again. “I really don’t know. I always wanted more than our life at Stonemeadows. I never could resist all the books in which an insignificant country girl like me found happiness and wealth by going to London and making an excellent match. But when I got the life those book girls wanted, I didn’t want that either. It was so alien to me.”

Her shoulders slumped. “Maybe I’m not fit for either of those worlds.”

“Don’t say that,” Julia said, wrung at the sight of her elegant, proud sister brought to such a level of dejection.

What could she say? How could she comfort this girl she thought she had known so well, who had hidden such misery? Julia remembered hints, of course; Louisa had spoken of her loneliness in London. But Julia had not known the sadness went so deep or back so far, that Louisa hadn’t felt happy for so long.

She got up from the bed and went around Louisa’s chair to wrap her arms around her sister where she sat.

“You’re fit for anywhere you want to be,” she insisted. “You’re the finest person I know.”

Still hugging the older girl, she rested her chin on Louisa’s head and continued, “You came back to London for my sake, and I can never thank you enough. It gave me advantages you didn’t have.”

She smiled, hoping her expression warmed her voice so Louisa could hear it. “You brought our home with you, and I never had to feel alone as you did. I’ve never had to do anything without you since we met as children, except for the year you were in London alone — but then I was safe at home with everyone else.

“You came back here for me, and it has made all the difference to my season. You and James helped me feel comfortable right from the beginning. And now”—she straightened up and moved around the chair to face Louisa, who looked up at her with bleak eyes that quickly shuttered closed—“I am going to help you however I can. I’ve been selfish.”

Oh, God, how she had been selfish. Louisa must never know. A guilty memory of James, smiling at her with love, flashed into her mind and she ruthlessly suppressed it. She repeated, “Yes, I’ve been selfish. I came to London to enjoy myself, and I never thought of what it was costing you to be here.”

Desperate to engage Louisa’s eyes, to bring warmth into her face, Julia grabbed her hands. “You are the dearest person in the world to me. Is there anything I can do to help you? I would do anything to help you find happiness.”

Louisa lifted her eyes, and fragile hope shivered in them. “I know. I know you would.”

She took a deep breath. “I didn’t mean to tell you all this. I meant to come in and ask you about the party, and perhaps say something about my engagement.”

Warmth was flickering back into her expression as she went on. “But I couldn’t go on without telling you. I finally had to tell someone how I really felt. It’s the only secret I’ve ever kept from you. I hadn’t wanted to say anything, because I so wanted you to be happy.”

“I have been,” Julia rushed to assure her. “You helped make it so.”

“Well, I’m glad you know the whole truth, if no one else ever does. I don’t know what would make me happy, but at least I know what won’t.”

She smiled her self-deprecating half smile and began to look like herself again. The crisis seemed to be ebbing.

“Actually, there is something I would love you to do for me,” Louisa added.

“Anything. Anything at all.”

Louisa looked embarrassed. “Could you send for James and give him a letter for me? It will tell him everything I’ve told you, though of course not in quite the same way. I know I should do this in person, but I can’t quite bring myself to face him after all his kindness. And perhaps by being there, in case he’s shocked, you could be a comfort to him, or help to explain things. There may be no way around it, but I would not want him to think ill of me. At least, no more than necessary,” she finished ruefully.

“Give a letter? And talk to James? For you?” Julia repeated, trying to wrap her mind around the idea. It sounded like a very, very bad one.

“Yes, could you? As soon as possible.” Louisa’s expression was anxious.

“I really think you should do it yourself. You know, talk to him in person,” she coaxed.

Louisa shook her head vehemently. “It must be this letter. It says exactly what I want to say. There’s no way I could do that in person. I’d probably lose my courage and wind up setting the wedding date instead of calling the whole thing off.”

Her eyes beseeched Julia. “Will you please do this? For me?”

Julia gulped, nodded, and put what she hoped was a warm smile on her face. “Of course I will.”

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?