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“What’s wrong, Julia?”
Zoe, looking lovely in a beaded dress of deep green with an emerald-and-diamond choker around her slim neck, came to her side.
She couldn’t talk about Diana’s secret, not even to Zoe. She smoothed her face into a look of ladylike placidity. “It’s nothing.”
“Do you really think Cal is the vengeful monster the countess paints him to be?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s not stopping the countess from pushing her daughters at him,” Zoe observed.
Julia watched Diana move so close to Cal her bosom pressed to his bicep. Cassia, tall and blonde like Diana, but only twenty-one, had approached him, too. She smiled demurely at him—Cassia was always gentle and sweet. The youngest daughter was Thalia: eighteen and bookish. And when Thalia looked as if she wanted to escape, her mother propelled her to talk to Cal.
Then Julia realized Cal was watching Lady Worthington. Just for a moment, then Diana ran her finger along his sleeve and got his attention again.
But Julia had seen the cold, hard rage that seethed in that one fast look.
“I think the countess might be right,” Julia said softly.
Zoe looked at her surprised.
Wiggins stepped in the drawing room and cleared his throat. “May I announce His Grace, the Duke of Bradstock. His lordship, the Earl of Summerhay. His lordship, Viscount Yorkville.”
Nigel immediately moved to greet his good friend Summerhay.
“Oh no.” Julia swallowed hard. At least it would be easy to keep track of the three of them—Bradstock had black hair, Summerhay was blond, Yorkville had auburn waves. Other people arrived also—members of the local gentry, and an older gentleman to make appropriate numbers.
“Don’t worry. I’m on your side,” Zoe promised. “I don’t think you should marry a man you don’t love for his title.”
It wasn’t the right time to speak of it, but Julia suddenly felt she needed to take charge of something. “Zoe, I want to ask if you would consider lending me money.”
Her sister-in-law stared in surprise. “Whatever for, Julia?”
“For war widows who have been left destitute. I would like to loan money to the women. They will pay me back over time. All they need is a few pounds to start them on the direction of a new and better life. I asked Nigel for a loan against my dowry, but he refused.”
“Did he?”
“He thinks my work is too scandalous and it will ruin my marriage prospects.” She couldn’t help it—she glanced at Nigel, who was talking to the three peers who’d just arrived. For all she knew, he was pleading with them to propose to her.
“I would be happy to loan you the money, depending on the amount and the terms,” Zoe said. “Is there a great chance these women will default?”
Zoe was never foolish. She was smart and shrewd. “I don’t think so,” Julia said honestly. “But I will start with modest amounts. If a woman defaults, I will be able to repay out of my pin money and my dress allowance.”
“Your dress allowance.” Zoe shook her head, obviously amused.
“Do you agree with Nigel?”
“I love my husband, but when it comes to what should be considered scandalous for a woman, we never agree. I am happy you are helping these women.”
“You don’t fear for my marriage prospects?”
“I already know who you should marry. Noble Dr. Dougal Campbell.”
“Zoe...” Julia swallowed hard, aware of the sharp jolt of pain in her heart. “He just wrote to tell me he is engaged to someone else. I have lost him forever.”
“Then it was not a great loss, Julia, my dear,” the dowager duchess declared.
Julia jumped at the firm, autocratic tones of her grandmother. She turned to find the dowager duchess had walked up beside her and looked ready to deliver advice. Julia dearly loved her grandmother, but as Grandmama looked pointedly at the Duke of Bradstock, she swallowed hard.
“It is if Julia and Dr. Campbell were perfect for each other,” Zoe pointed out, sipping her drink and toying with her long string of beads.
Her grandmother linked arms and swept her away from Zoe. “Bradstock keeps watching you,” Grandmama said bluntly. “Why do you think he has never married? He is waiting for you. You could be a duchess with one simple word. And that word is yes. Julia, you must be settled. Where shall you live, if you end up a spinster?”
“Grandmama, I won’t say yes to a man just to have his house. There’s absolutely no reason I couldn’t have a flat in London and have a job—”
She had to stop. Grandmama staggered back with her hand on her heart. “If I find you behind the counter at Selfridges, my dear, it would be the end of me. You wouldn’t want that on your conscience, would you?”
“No, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want my unhappy marriage on yours,” Julia said.
The dowager’s brows rose. “Touché.”
* * *
Cal was seated between the Duchess of Langford and Lady Julia at the long, wide, polished dinner table. His cousin Diana sat near him, talking flirtatiously to the man beside her—another earl—but glancing at him. The dining table would have stuck out both sides of the narrow tenement building he’d grown up in. The walls and floor of the dining room were covered in Italian marble shot with streaks of pink. On the table there was enough silverware and cut-glass crystal to pay a king’s ransom, and half the room was covered in gold leaf.
So damned opulent it made anger boil inside him.
Lady Julia turned to him, a lovely smile on her face, and asked, “What do you think of Worthington Park?”
Up close, Lady Julia—sister to the tall, black-haired Duke of Langford—was even more stunning.
Smooth, alabaster skin. Thick, shining black hair. Huge blue eyes. Her cool, controlled expression fascinated him. Like nothing could ever upset her. Though once he saw her looking at Diana and she’d looked real worried. Maybe because Diana was flirting with him.
Once or twice, he’d seen a look of terror on Lady Worthington’s face. That hadn’t stopped her pushing her three daughters at him. His cousins, damn it. English royalty married their cousins, but it seemed like a strange thing to him.
The countess obviously hoped the backwater hick from America would be so bowled over by her pretty English daughters and their jewels and their manners and their titles—each one was “Lady” something—that he’d kiss the ground they walked on and jump down on one knee to propose marriage to one of them.
As if that would happen. He would never marry one of them—one of the aristocracy.
“Looking at this place,” he said to Julia, “I can’t believe no one ever chopped the heads off the English aristocracy.”
He figured that would stop her trying to converse with him.
But it didn’t. “I can assure you that many members of the aristocracy have been afraid of that very thing for quite a long time,” she said smoothly. “But it is that fear that can lead to more justice for people, for better conditions and more decency—if it is pushed in the right direction.”
That answer he hadn’t expected. “You almost sound like a socialist.”
“Are you one, Worthington?” At his look of surprise, she added, “That is how you are to be addressed now. By your title.”
“I remember the lawyer telling me something like that. But having to hear that title is like having a bootheel ground into my heart. I’d prefer you call me Cal.”
Her lips parted. God, she had full, luscious lips.
But then, why shouldn’t she? She’d never slaved in a factory for fourteen hours a day. Or spent hours over a tub of steaming water, destroying her hands to scrub dishes.
A footman came by, holding a dish of oysters toward him. When Cal had made his money—a fortune that this family knew nothing about—back in the States from bootlegging and other enterprises that he wouldn’t talk about, he’d dined in a lot of nice restaurants. He’d liked knowing he could have whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it. But the amount of food coming out—and going back—shocked him.
“How much food do you people eat at dinner?” This was the third course and they hadn’t gotten to anything that looked like meat.
“There will be several courses, especially at a dinner party,” Lady Julia said softly. She kept her voice discreet, he noticed. “I expect the Worthington cook, Mrs. Feathers, wants to impress you.”
“Why? No one else around here does.”
Lady Julia faced him seriously. “The servants all know that their livelihoods depend on you. On whether you are satisfied with them or not.”
“They don’t need to knock themselves out,” he said. “I’m dissatisfied with this on principle.”
Her lips parted—damn, he couldn’t draw his eyes away from them. He wanted to hear what she would say, but then the duke sitting on the other side of her started talking to her. Not her brother, but the Duke of Bradstock. Black-haired and good-looking, Bradstock talked like he had a stick up his arse and couldn’t find a comfortable place on his chair.
“Lady Julia, have you given up that shocking hobby of yours?” the duke asked. “Or hasn’t your brother taken you in hand?”
Julia turned from him to Bradstock.
For some reason Cal felt damned irritated to lose her attention. Julia was the type of snobbish woman he should avoid. But he liked talking to her. And that surprised him.
“I am not in need of being ‘taken in hand,’” Julia said.
“He should forbid these forays into the sordid underbelly, Julia,” Bradstock went on.
Cal had no idea what they were talking about, but he could tell Julia didn’t like what the man was saying.
“I am over twenty-one, James,” she said crisply. “If I choose to do charitable work, I do so. When I told you of my work, I did not think you would hold it against me.”
“It shows you have a good heart, my dear.” The duke laughed. “There’s charity, my dear Julia, but surely this is beyond the pale. These women don’t want help. They’ve found a métier that they enjoy.”
“These women are starving and they have children to feed. I think what is beyond the pale is that there is no real help for these women. Their husbands were our heroes. And I don’t believe they enjoy what they are doing,” she said shortly.
Cal grinned. Not such a snob, then. He liked seeing Lady Julia with her blood running hot.
“My dear girl,” Bradstock said condescendingly, “we can’t just hand out money en masse. Times are hard for all of us. This year, I could only put in half the order for the wine cellar at my hunting box. Austerity has hit us all.”
“Hate to think you had to live without a bottle of wine,” Cal said. “If Julia is helping the widows of servicemen, I think that is pretty damn admirable.”
Bradstock glared at him. “A gentleman doesn’t use language like that at the dinner table.”
“Where I come from a ‘gentleman’ doesn’t tell a woman what to do when she doesn’t want him to.”
“And I’ve heard where you came from was some kind of cesspool,” sneered the duke. “You must be extremely grateful you were saved from whatever ditch you were in.”
“James, please. And Worthington, I do appreciate your support, but there is no need for heated discussion.”
So the duke got a “please” out of her and he got told off. “Get used to it, angel,” Cal said. “I’m the earl now.”
Her eyes widened in shock.
“If the man from the slums of New York agrees with you, my dear, isn’t that a sign you are doing the wrong thing?” Bradstock asked, looking down his nose. Cal would sorely love to rearrange that nose on the handsome idiot’s face.
“James, stop it. Let’s speak of something else. And do remember Worthington is your host.”
But Bradstock wouldn’t give it up. “If I were your brother, Julia, I should give you a spanking for being so naughty.”
Cal didn’t like the hot, appraising look in the bastard’s eyes. “If you don’t leave her alone,” he said heatedly, “I would be happy to beat you up.”
“Please, Worthington. Don’t. He is teasing.” Julia’s hand touched his wrist. Once, when he’d been working in a factory after the War, before he went back to life with the Five Points Gang, he’d gotten a shock from an electric outlet. The sizzle and tingle that had shot through his arm was nothing like the one that came from her touch.
Hell, she was everything he didn’t want. Privileged. Ladylike. Superior.
Except she had a heart and was willing to defend her beliefs. He liked her—and he hadn’t expected to like any of them.
All the men at the table—the Duke of Bad Manners, the Earl of Whatever, Viscount Something—watched Julia. They couldn’t take their eyes off her. Which didn’t seem to be making the Countess of Worthington too happy.
Just to piss them off, he said loudly to Julia, “You asked me if I like Worthington. For one man to get all this by the accident of his birth is wrong. A man should earn what he gets.”
She didn’t look shocked. “I can assure you that an earl who runs his estate properly works extremely hard. A responsible earl ensures his estate prospers, cares for his tenants and acts in a just manner. We are not frivolous and we don’t spend money lavishly on ourselves off the backs of others.”
He looked pointedly at the marble and gilt. “Don’t you?”
“Worthington Park would no longer exist if the men before you did that. Anthony’s father was one of the best landowners in the country. He was progressive, fair, compassionate. If he had not been, Worthington would have been destroyed by the harsh times that came both before and after the War.”
“And you’re telling me the tenants are happy to be poor while the earl is rich?”
“The tenants are happy with their treatment. On an estate like this, everyone knows the value of their place.”
So damned arrogant. Cal saw red. “I bet that footman over there would rather be sitting at this table than serving it. In America, he could be—if he worked hard and fought for it.”
His voice had dropped, low and angry. Lady Julia stiffened in shock.
“Maybe it would be better to keep the riffraff from inheriting,” Bradstock sneered. “Stop bothering Julia. You’re not fit to clean her boots. Wasn’t your mother some servant?”
Damn you. “My mother was a maid who worked in a mansion on Fifth Avenue and my father met her, fell in love with her pretty face and seduced her.”
He heard someone’s fork clatter to the plate. Anger drove him on.
“My father didn’t leave her high and dry when she became pregnant. He married her and got disowned for doing the right thing by her. But he loved her and she loved him. They spent their lives in squalor and as far as the Earl of Worthington was concerned, my mother, my brother and I didn’t exist. We could rot in hell. Too bad for all of you that I didn’t rot.”
For the first time, the countess spoke to him. “Worthington, we do not discuss our private matters at the dinner table.”
“Get used to it,” he snapped, like he’d said to Julia. “I’m not ashamed to say where I came from. And truth is, I don’t give a damn what you want.”
