Mary Balogh - Slightly Wicked

Ralph—Rannulf. Bedard—Bedwyn. Close, but different enough to keep his true identity from a potentially demanding and ambitious actress. And different enough that she had not even noticed the similarity before being confronted by the man himself. She had fought not to swoon and thus draw unwelcome attention to herself. But she still felt unsteady enough to faint if she allowed herself.

“Handsome?” she said. “No, I don’t think so, Julianne. But he is, as Aunt Louisa says, distinguished looking.”

Julianne laughed, jumped to her feet, and pirouetted as she had done in Grandmama’s dressing room earlier.

“He was very attentive, was he not?” she said. “He listened to every word I spoke and did not look superior or bored as so many gentlemen do when one speaks. Shall I have him, Mama? Shall I, Grandmama? Do you not wish you were in my place, Judith?”

“He will have to make Papa an offer first,” Aunt Effingham said, getting to her feet. “But he was clearly very taken with you, dearest, and it is clear too that Lady Beamish fully intends to promote the match.

She must have considerable influence over him. I believe we can be optimistic.”

“Judith, my love,” Grandmama said, “would you be so good as to help me to my feet? I do not know why I am so sluggish these days. We will have to have the physician again, Louisa. He must give me more medicine. We will go upstairs and you must summon Tillie for me, Judith, if you will. I believe I will lie down for an hour.”

“Ah, then you will be free, Judith,” Aunt Effingham said. “You will join me in the library in a few minutes’ time. There are place cards to be written for dinner tomorrow and numerous other little tasks to be accomplished. You must not remain idle. I am sure your papa has told you about the devil finding work for idle hands.”

“I will come down as soon as I have seen Grandmama settled,” Judith promised.

“Julianne, dearest,” her mother said, “you must go and rest and not overexert yourself. You need to be looking your prettiest tomorrow.”

Judith’s mind was still whirling. He was Lord Rannulf Bedwyn , and he had come here to court and to marry Julianne. At least, that was what her aunt and cousin believed. She would surely see him every day for the next two weeks. She would see them together.

Did he know? Had he recognized her? Why, oh why, had she looked up when his hand had lifted to refuse a cake and then paused? Why had she not simply anticipated his gesture and moved on? Their eyes had met. She had lowered her head again before she had seen any recognition in his eyes, but she had sensed it.

He had recognized her ? The humiliation of being seen thus, of being known for who and what she was, was just too much to bear. But if he had not recognized her this afternoon, then surely he would sometime during the next two weeks. She could not hide from him for all that time. She had overheard Grandmama arranging to call on Lady Beamish tomorrow afternoon while all the houseguests were arriving at Harewood. Would she, Judith, be required to go too? Would he be there?

She had thought life could not possibly get worse. But she had been wrong. She felt raw with pain.

Dreams and reality were not supposed to mingle. Why had this dream— the most glorious one of her life—come crashing into her present reality? Perhaps because it had not been a dream at all?

“I’ll take your arm, Judith, if it is not too much trouble,” Grandmama said, leaning heavily on it. “Did you notice how Louisa forgot to introduce you to Lady Beamish and Lord Rannulf? I saw you hang your head in mortification and was indignant on your behalf, I do not mind telling you. You are her own niece, after all, and Julianne’s first cousin. But that is the way of people who have set themselves to climbing the social ladder, never looking back at those who are on lower rungs lest they be dragged downward themselves by association. Louisa was always foolish in that way. Have you lost weight since you came here, my love? Your dress is hanging on you today and not showing your lovely figure at all to advantage.

We must ask Tillie if she can take in the seams, and I must watch to see that you eat properly. Look, my feet have swelled after all. Perhaps the medicine you mixed this morning was not strong enough.”

“You have had a busy afternoon, Grandmama,” Judith said soothingly. “You will feel better after lying down and putting your feet up for a while.”

She could not bear what had just happened, she thought. She simply could not bear it .

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.