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“You didn’t invite a prospective husband to the house...again?”
“No, no. We are dining at Worthington Park tonight. But a friend of mine is going to be there. A friend from Oxford. An admirable chap. He’s now the Earl of Summerhay.”
“Nigel, I am not exactly out of love with Dougal yet.” She had just received a rather devastating letter from Dougal, but this would give her an excuse. “I am definitely not ready to fall in love with anyone else.” That was certainly true. She didn’t even think it could ever be possible.
Her brother lifted an autocratic brow. “Dr. Campbell did a sensible thing. You couldn’t be a doctor’s wife. You should be running a house like Brideswell.”
“I think I would have been very happy as a doctor’s wife.” True, but it was pointless now, wasn’t it? “But Dougal believed we could not circumvent the difference in our social positions.” In fact, like her brother, Dougal thought she needed a grand estate and a title. “Grandmama and Mother worked at Dougal until he went away to London. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Grandmama paid a gamekeeper to escort Dougal to the train station with a rifle at his back.”
“She wants you to be happy.”
“No, she does not if her only objection was that she didn’t want her oldest granddaughter married to a mere doctor. But Dougal has saved lives. I don’t want an earl or a duke. I’ve realized that I want a hero. When I saw what Dougal could do, I was struck with awe.”
Nigel frowned. “But I do not think Dr. Campbell is worthy of you. He should have stayed and fought for you. You are worthy of a dragon slayer. Your doctor may have saved lives, but I don’t know if he has enough courage for you, Julia.”
“Is your earl a dragon slayer?”
She was surprised by how serious Nigel suddenly looked. “I know what he did in the War, Julia. I think he is.”
“So you won’t give me my loan?”
“I cannot distract you, can I?”
“No.”
He sighed. “I want to see you happily settled, Julia. So my answer has to be no.”
She could argue. And fight. Or she could be smart about this. “I will ask Zoe for a loan.”
“In this, Zoe will not disagree with me.”
“Maybe not. But I can at least try.” She turned and walked away.
“Julia.”
She paused at the door.
“Summerhay will not be the only eligible man there. Lady Worthington has invited the Duke of Bradstock, my friend from Eton days. Along with Viscount Yorkville. Three intelligent, interesting men.”
James, the duke, she knew quite well. One of his many houses was only an hour away by motorcar, and he would visit on school holidays. He had been born to be a duke—he could be rather arrogant. Yorkville, she’d never met.
“Nigel, you can’t push me at eligible men at Worthington Park.” She sighed. “It’s bad form when Lady Carstairs will want to do that with her three unmarried daughters.”
“Julia, all I am asking you to do is be polite,” her brother protested.
“That is all anyone wants me to do. Be polite and ladylike and boring. But I am not giving up.”
Then she swept out of his study. But it was not such a dramatic exit—she was leaving to do what was expected of her. To dress for dinner.
But she longed to burst out of her shell. To do something that was more than just wild and frivolous, like dancing and drinking cocktails.
Her sister-in-law, Zoe, could fly airplanes. There were women doctors, singers, artists, clothing designers. A modern woman could now grasp almost any opportunity, take hold of life and become something.
Modern women could change the world. That was what she wanted to do.
* * *
That night, the Daimler took Julia, her mother, sister Isobel and grandmother to Worthington Park. Zoe and Nigel followed in Zoe’s sporty motor.
The car door was opened by one of Worthington’s footmen. A warm early-summer breeze flirted with the gauzy, bead-strewn hem of her skirt as Julia stepped out on the drive and gazed up at the house that might have been her home.
Brideswell Abbey, the house she’d grown up in, was more square and severe. Worthington was sprawling and inviting. It had a long facade, with two wings that came forward like embracing arms. A massive fountain stood in the middle of the circular drive. In the June sun, the house glowed with warm golden stone and hundreds of windows glinted.
With Mother and Grandmama, Julia walked into the foyer. Her heels clicked on the black marble tiles, the sound soaring to the high domed ceiling and its exquisite art, gilded with gold leaf. The newel post and railing of the stairs gleamed with gilt and the walls were covered partway in white and rose-pink marble. Orchids from the greenhouses and roses spilled out of enormous vases.
Julia handed off her wrap to a footman.
It was in here, in the very open foyer, that Anthony had stolen his first kiss. She had been unwinding her scarf while the butler fetched Anthony’s sister Diana, who was Julia’s age and a good friend. From behind, Anthony had swept her into his arms. At the soft, wonderful caress of his lips on hers, her heart had raced and she’d almost melted. Then he’d heard the butler returning, so he’d let her go and run off. But he’d thrown her one last look—a look of pure, hungry, masculine longing that had seared her to her toes.
Two days later, he’d proposed to her.
They had walked to the folly—a temple with white marble columns that stood on a hill and overlooked the house. It had been a rainy, windswept day, but they’d had so few days before Anthony would be leaving for France and war.
She had been not quite eighteen. For a year, since she had come out, everyone expected she would marry Anthony. But she had still been young and there had been time. Then war had come, and suddenly everyone was afraid there would not be time anymore—not enough time to live.
Anthony had said, “Someday I will be the Earl of Worthington but none of that matters if you aren’t with me. Don’t say we’re too young. I’m old enough to go and fight and I want to know things are settled between us before I go. I love you, Julia. I wish I could marry you before I leave, but I should be back soon, and we’ll be married then.”
“We will,” she had said. “I love you.” Then he’d swept her into his arms and kissed her again...
Anthony had died at the Somme in 1916.
Julia let out a long soft breath as she, her mother and grandmother walked toward the drawing room. Worthington Park was special to her. For her, it was filled with the happiness and the excitement of her very first love. It was wrapped up in loss, too.
Even running her hand along a banister or taking a seat in a chair gave her a powerful, electrifying jolt of memory and emotion.
“Julia!”
Her friend Diana came forward, her golden hair bouncing around her lovely face. Her huge blue eyes gave her a helpless look, but her painted Cupid’s bow lips and pencil-straight sheath of gold beads and lace were thoroughly modern.
Julia knew Diana fought a constant battle with her mother, Lady Worthington, over her shocking use of makeup, but because she bought her cosmetics from the counter at Selfridges, not because makeup was scandalous anymore.
Diana clasped her hands. “Come with me and we’ll have a smart cocktail instead of the horrid sweet sherry my mother insists on. I must talk to you!”
Julia followed Diana to one of the bay windows that looked out upon the side lawns. Worthington Park had one of the most ordered gardens in the country. Behind the house, paths followed a delicate design leading through beds to a central fountain.
A footman brought a silver tray with two enormous glasses, truly the size of finger bowls. Bubbles floated up through the liquid, which was tinted pink.
“Champagne cocktails,” Diana said. She took several long swallows.
“Diana—” Julia frowned. “You should slow down.” Diana had been drinking much too much of late. They had been in London together last week and she’d rescued a drunken Diana from a party and taken her to the Savoy to keep Diana from getting behind the wheel and driving when she could barely stand.
“It’s for courage,” Diana protested. “They found the heir and he’s coming here to see exactly what he’s inherited—what he gets to take away from us.”
Diana’s ominous words made Julia shiver. The heir to Worthington had been found. After the old earl had died at the end of the War, Anthony’s younger brother, John, had inherited the title. Tragically, John Carstairs had died a year ago in a car crash and the hunt had begun for the next in line to the title.
“What do you mean, what he gets to take away from you?”
“Mummy believes this man—who’s American—will turn us out to starve. He hates us all.”
“For heaven’s sake, why?”
Diana drained her cocktail. “It’s all very thrilling. His mother was Irish, a maid working in a house in New York City. My grandmother disowned her younger son—my uncle—over the marriage and the family cut off all ties. It left them in poverty. So Mummy fears he will throw us out into poverty now.”
“Surely your mother is wrong. That was years ago, and it was not your fault. This man can’t still be bitter and mean to be so harsh.” Now Julia saw how pale her friend was beneath her rouge. She was truly afraid. “Diana, it would be ridiculous. After a World War, this man must see that family feuds are utterly meaningless. He must have a decent nature that can be appealed to.”
“Mummy doesn’t think so. And to protect us, Mummy wants me to marry him. He is my cousin, but royal cousins marry all the time, including first cousins. It would all be quite legal.”
“This is 1925. No one will force you to marry, Diana, against your will.”
Diana laughed a cold, jaded laugh that sent another chill down Julia’s spine. “The thing is—I am willing to marry him. By all reports, he’s quite handsome. He’s going to be an earl. Master of my home. If one of my brothers had become the earl, I would have had to marry to survive. It’s what women like us have to do. And this way I can have everything—a rather sexy husband, the title of countess and the home I grew up in.”
How strong were these cocktails? “But you haven’t even met this man. Don’t let your mother push you into something ill-advised.”
“I’ve decided that I really must have a husband. And there are so few men left for us. The War took them from us.” Suddenly Diana grasped her forearm. “I need you to help me, Julia. He’s arriving in time for dinner, then he’s going to stay. I must convince him to propose.”
Julia looked at Diana’s worried face and huge blue eyes. “I suspect he will fall in love with you the first moment he sees you.”
“He won’t. He really does hate us because the family cut his father off. Apparently, this Cal holds rather a grudge. He doesn’t even use his real name. That’s why it took so long to find him. He goes by his mother’s maiden name of Brody.”
The footman came past and Diana snatched another cocktail. “I think convincing him to marry me might prove a challenge. Because, you see, I have to convince him to like me.”
“Why shouldn’t he like you?”
“Because...well, isn’t it obvious? He will see me as the privileged daughter who had everything while his family lived in squalor. I need to be more like you, Julia. Doing good works and such. Mummy is going to try every trick in the book to force a marriage, but her ideas will be crude and obvious. They will be the kind of plots intended to work on Englishmen with a sense of honor and obligation. I don’t think that’s going to work on an angry American.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
Diana waved her hand and champagne sloshed over the glass. “Oh, Mummy would think that if the American was found in my bedroom, he would feel he had to marry me. She’s dreadfully Victorian when it comes to scheming. My plan is to be the sort of woman he can admire. Of course I have no idea what sort of woman that is. Maybe it isn’t the noble saint. Maybe he would like a bad girl. You observe people and understand them. Figure out the kind of woman he wants and help me to convince him I’m that woman.”
“Diana, this is mad. How can you possibly want to marry a man you do not know—” and apparently fear “—based on trying to be someone you are not?”
The Countess of Worthington was approaching and Diana put her lips right beside Julia’s ear. “Darling, I’m pregnant,” she whispered. “I have to marry. I have to.”
Pregnant? Julia floundered to think of something to say, but Diana looked to the door and said, in husky tones, “Oh Lord, it’s the American. He’s arrived.”
The butler, Wiggins, looked as if he’d sucked on a lemon, but he cleared his throat, gave a glance of complete disdain at the astonishing-looking man beside him—he had to look up to do it—and announced, “His lordship, the Earl of Worthington.”
“It’s Cal,” the man said. A slow, wicked grin curved his mouth as if he was enjoying himself immensely.
“Oh, good heavens,” the countess moaned quietly. “He looks like he was found in a ditch. How can this man be the earl instead of my sons?” Unsteady suddenly, she almost fell over. Julia hastened to the countess’s side and supported her.
The man who called himself Cal stood well over six feet tall. A threadbare blue sweater stretched across his chest, topped by a worn and faded leather coat. He wore a laborer’s rough trousers. His black boots had never seen a lick of polish.
His tanned face set off his golden hair, which was slicked back with pomade, but light, shimmering strands fell over his eyes. Eyes of the purest, most stunning blue. Vivid and magnetic, they looked like a blue created by an artist, as if they could never be real.
He looked a great deal like Anthony. But the new earl was more grizzled, his features sharper and more intense. His nose had a bit of a kink to it, as if it had once been broken.
The entire room had gone silent, staring at him in shock and horror. As if a bear had wandered into the drawing room.
For a fleeting moment, Julia saw the American’s expression change. The confident smile vanished and a look of hard anger came to his eyes.
Was this evidence of his bitterness? Or perhaps these were all the clothes he had and their shock had hurt him.
Julia helped the countess down to the settee, next to her grandmother.
Then she realized the silence had stretched from awkward to insulting.
No one seemed to know what to do with the earl—Cal—so she smiled at him and stepped forward. She curtsied. “How delightful to have you arrive and I do hope your journey was not too taxing. Shall I have one of the footmen show you to your bedchamber so you can change for dinner? Perhaps you would care to freshen up.”
Stubble graced his jaw, as if he had not shaved for days. Up close, she saw how different he looked from Anthony. He looked too challenging, too bold.
At her small speech of welcome, his golden brows lifted. “My journey wasn’t ‘taxing’ as you put it. I know you aren’t the countess. Are you one of my cousins?”
“No, I am a friend of the family. We are neighbors. I am Julia Hazelton. I was engaged to be married to Anthony, who was your cousin, but Anthony was killed at the Somme.” She rushed through that bit, giving herself no time to dwell on the words. “Allow me to do the introductions—and if there’s a name you forget, don’t hesitate to ask.”
“Aren’t you the sweetheart, Julia?”
The countess made a horrible pained sound. Julia heard her grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Langford, sputter in outrage.
The mocking tone in his voice made her wary, but she made the introductions of all those in the room. The eligible bachelors had not yet arrived, so it was just the Carstairs family—the countess, Diana and the two other daughters, Cassia and Thalia. And Julia’s family.
Zoe greeted Cal with open American charm, welcoming him. Nigel accepted his handshake. Her mother and Grandmama threw looks of sympathy toward the Countess of Worthington. Diana and her younger sisters curtsied.
Julia struggled to not stare at Diana’s waist beneath her gold dress. She feared if she did, everyone would read her mind and know her friend’s secret. It might be 1925, but to bear a child out of marriage meant a woman was ruined forever.
Would Diana really marry Cal and keep her secret? Julia turned her gaze to Cal. Would her friend really marry him on such an enormous lie?
Goodness, she had looked at him for far longer than was polite—and he was staring right back at her. With anger crackling in his blue eyes. She smiled calmly at him, though inside her stomach fluttered with shock.
She had grown up around Englishmen—they either showed no emotion at all or they clumsily displayed it. But the energy and emotion—and fury—that seemed to sizzle around this man stunned her.
Was Lady Worthington right? Did he mean to hurt them? Julia would never stand for that. She simply wouldn’t.
He still held her gaze. “I’d better go and get dressed,” he said.
Wiggins, the butler, moved close to him. “If you need to avail yourself of evening dress, I do believe there are clothes belonging to the late earl that would fit you—”
“I don’t need them. I’ve got my own sets of fancy duds.” The anger seemed to abate. His unhurried, naughty grin dazzled again. “I like dressing like this, because I don’t need to impress anyone with what I wear. I don’t judge a man by his suit. I judge him by his actions.”
