AS JAMES'S carriage crawled toward the Egyptian Hall through the miserable London traffic, he smiled to himself. Juliana couldn't fool him. Although she claimed these outings were meant only to give him practice so he could court Lady Amanda, she enjoyed his company. She liked him, whether she was willing to say so out loud or not.
The proof? She'd baked him macaroons.
Feeling much more pleased about that than he probably should, he lifted the froufrou doily and pulled one out.
"No!" Juliana cried. "You're supposed to save them for tomorrow."
"There are plenty of them," he said, popping the little macaroon into his mouth. It was so light and toothsome it all but melted on his tongue. He'd never heard of a lady of the ton making sweets—or anything else that required entering a kitchen—but given Juliana's talents, he found her unusual hobby charming. "These are delicious," he told her and pulled out another.
"Please don't eat them," she pleaded, sounding concerned.
Quite concerned. Certainly much more concerned than the occasion warranted. They were just macaroons, after all. Since he hadn't believed for a moment that she really thought they lent a man stamina, why should it possibly matter whether he ate them today or tomorrow?
He reached for a third.
"I'd prefer you save them," she said firmly, taking the basket right out of his hands. She set it on the seat beside her, scooting closer to him in order to do so.
Not that he minded that. To the contrary. But as he finished the third macaroon, he glanced across to Lady Frances, thinking she might object to her charge sitting all but on his lap. Fortunately, Lady Frances seemed to be off in another world. Behind her spectacles, her blue gaze looked dazed.
Once again, although it was a rainy, gray day, Juliana smelled like sunshine. And flowers. So good and sweet it took everything he had not to sneak his arm around her shoulders and pull her even closer. Which he would never do. At least not with Juliana's chaperone watching, even if her eyes were unfocused.
Maybe Lady Frances would fall asleep. It seemed unlikely, but a man could hope.
For he did want to pull Juliana closer. Ever since that day in Harding, Howell & Company when he'd realized he wanted to kiss her, he'd thought of little else. Although the very idea had seemed appalling at first, it didn't any longer, because in the interim—during the hours he'd spent riding with her and accompanying her to the theater—he'd come to realize something else: He was no longer going on these outings to prevent her from wasting her time with Castleton.
Not that he wanted her to spend time with Castleton. Seeing the flowers the man had sent her had made him grit his teeth, because he knew for a fact that the prig was only courting her for a damned horse. He wished he'd told Juliana as much in the beginning, but news like that could deal a serious blow to a woman's self-regard, and he hadn't wanted to hurt her. He wanted even less to hurt her now. But the man wasn't only a prig—he was an ass.
Yet the fact remained that James was no longer going on these outings to save her from the ass—or at least not only to save her from the ass. He enjoyed being with her. She was bright and enthusiastic, and she cared about other people. She'd cared about him when he'd feared a stupid snake. And, all right, she was attractive. Very attractive. Excessively, utterly attractive. Any man with eyes in his head would be hard put to argue with that. Especially considering she always seemed to wear dresses with tiny bodices.
All of which added up to a simple truth: He desired Juliana Chase.
It had been a long time since James had felt desire. It made him feel more alive, like something in him that had lain dormant for two years was beginning to wake up. And the way he saw it, there was little he could do about it.
He didn't love Juliana—he didn't want to love her or anyone else. But love and desire were two very different and distinct emotions. And simply desiring another woman wasn't a betrayal of Anne. He was a man, after all, and everyone knew a man had little control over his desires. Surely he could kiss Juliana even though he wasn't in love.
Was all of that rationalization? Possibly, he acknowledged with a yawn. But he couldn't bring himself to care. Juliana had baked him macaroons, and that meant he was one step closer to kissing her.
Life wasn't too bad right at the moment.
She followed his yawn with one of her own and tried to cover it with a hand.
"I saw that," he said.
"I'm not bored, I promise."
"I didn't think so," he assured her. "It's a medical fact that yawns are contagious."
She smiled, making him smile, too. He appreciated a woman who appreciated his admittedly weak attempts at humor.
"Are you as short on sleep as I?" she asked.
"I'm afraid I am. I was up half the night finishing the speech I plan to deliver this evening in the House of Lords."
"A speech?" She looked impressed, which he found much more encouraging than he probably ought. "What does it concern?"
"A bill I've put forth to publicly fund smallpox vaccinations and make them compulsory for infants."
"Compulsory?" Her blue-green-hazel eyes widened. "That's a rather radical idea, don't you think?"
"Not at all. England is terribly behind the times. Vaccinations were made compulsory in Bavaria in 1807, Denmark in 1810, Norway in 1811, Bohemia and Russia in 1812, and now this year in Sweden." He hoped he had all those dates right; he'd had to memorize them for the speech. "If we're to wipe this scourge off the face of the earth, everyone must cooperate."
She seemed to mull that over for a minute. "This is very important to you, isn't it?"
"Yes, it's very important."
"Why is that?"
"Must there be a reason? Can't it just be for the good of humanity?"
"I think not," she said. "Not when you're so vehement about the subject."
He mentally added perceptive to the list of her qualities. "My brother died of smallpox."
"Oh," she said quietly. "I'm sorry."
"There was nothing I could do to help him. Nothing I could do but watch him die. It's a terrible, horrible disease. Have you ever seen someone suffering with it?"
She shook her head. "No, I don't think so. At least not in the final stages."
"I hope you never will. The pain is excruciating, and the pocks—well, never mind." He wouldn't sicken her by describing the way they'd proliferated on Philip's body until he'd looked like little more than one huge, oozing pustule. "Suffice it to say that I'm hoping someday no one will ever suffer with it again. And I wish to do my part to make that happen."
Her gaze was full of admiration. "You're a good man, James."
Although the tone of her voice made his heart swell, he shrugged. "This is a unique circumstance. Vaccination has given us an opportunity we've never had before—a chance to destroy something that has afflicted mankind for centuries. We'd be fools not to take advantage of it."
"I hope you can convince Parliament, then," she said and reached to take his hand.
She'd actually reached to take his hand. She was holding it. He was afraid to react, for fear she might notice and snatch hers away. Keeping himself still, he shifted his gaze toward her chaperone, but Lady Frances was humming softly under her breath and gazing out the window.
He looked down at their joined hands. Juliana wasn't wearing gloves. Prior to flouncing out to the carriage, she'd grabbed her umbrella but left a pair of white gloves sitting on the marble-topped table. Lady Frances hadn't noticed in her current, bemused state, and James hadn't thought to remind Juliana to take them, either.
Or maybe he hadn't wanted to.
Her hand felt small in his, her palm smooth and warm. He couldn't remember ever being so aware of anyone touching him before. It was a wonder she didn't seem to be feeling it, too.
"I see now," she said. "Your brother's death is why you became a physician. I've been wondering what would compel an earl to take up doctoring," she added, squeezing his fingers with kindly understanding.
He tried not to squeeze back, lest she realize she was touching him. "That's sound reasoning, but not the way it happened. Philip was my older brother—he was supposed to be the earl. I became a physician before his death, not after, because, as a second son, I needed a profession. I was at his bedside as his physician when he died."
"You don't blame yourself for his death, do you?" Concerned sympathy flooded her eyes. "Just because you're a doctor—"
"Good God, no." Even in his darkest days, he hadn't tortured himself with that. "Variola major—the more severe form of smallpox—defies treatment. There is really little a physician can do but keep the patient as comfortable as possible and hope for the best."
"So doctors do nothing?"
"Oh, there are things physicians try, but they generally involve bleeding, emetics, and purgatives—treatments I fear weaken a patient rather than strengthening him." He'd done everything he'd thought could conceivably help his brother; he was totally at peace on that score. "I don't blame myself at all. But I would blame myself if I allowed more people to contract smallpox without trying to do anything to stop it."
"I understand." Her eyes looked blue now, a blue softened by compassion. "I'm truly sorry you lost your brother to such a devastating disease."
"You must have lost a brother, too," he realized suddenly. "Else Griffin wouldn't be the marquess. He wasn't meant to be, was he? After Oxford, he joined the military, same as I did."
"Our brother Charles died of consumption," she said. "A year after our mother succumbed to it first."
They called consumption a "gentle death," but James knew better. Its victims might fade away rather slowly and gracefully, but watching a loved one die was never easy. And Juliana had suffered through that twice.
"Consumption seems to descend upon certain families," he told her. "Probably because it's not easily transmitted like smallpox, but after weeks and months in the same home—"
"I thought it wasn't contagious." She looked shocked. "We all cared for my mother and brother with no concern of risking our own health. The doctors told us consumption is caused by the patient's own constitution and runs in families only because relations are so often alike."
"That may be the prevailing wisdom, but I don't believe it. And I'm not alone. More than two thousand years ago, Hippocrates himself warned doctors to be wary of contracting it from patients. And early in the last century, Benjamin Marten wrote a paper theorizing that consumption is caused by 'wonderfully minute living creatures' that can pass from one person to another, although rarely without extended periods of contact." His explanation didn't seem to be making her rest any easier, so he tried a different approach. "I don't expect you need to worry about catching it now if you haven't already. Nor should your sisters or Griffin. Whatever 'minute creatures' might have been in your home are long gone, I'm certain, and you needn't fret that you were all born with constitutions that will cause you to develop it, either."
"So Charles caught it from our mother, but none of the rest of us did." She drew and released a breath. "I've been wondering if we all might succumb eventually. Is it wicked of me to be relieved that we won't?"
"It's natural to be relieved," he said. "And I could be wrong. Most physicians wouldn't agree with me."
"I think you're right," she said. "I think you're a man who thinks for himself, who looks for his own answers instead of blindly accepting what others claim. We need your sort of men—and women. You're the people who discover things that make the world better for all of us."
If she was wicked to be relieved, he must be even more wicked to want to kiss her because she believed in him. He'd faced a lot of censure over the years from colleagues who scoffed at his refusal to bleed patients and his unorthodox insistence that cleanliness helped prevent infection. Not that he was the only physician to believe such things—it had been nearly sixty-five years since Sir John Pringle, a former Surgeon General of the Army, had coined the word antiseptic. But he certainly went against the norm.
"Thank you," he said, squeezing her hand.
A mistake. Looking startled, she pulled it away. "So." She cleared her throat. "Tomorrow evening at the ball…just how are you planning to ask Lady Amanda if you might court her?"
The quick change of subject made him feel as though his brain had just fallen off a cliff. How did women manage to do that? How had Juliana gone from holding his hand to assuming he was still planning to court Lady Amanda?
He wasn't. He'd decided he'd rather court Juliana—or rather, tempt her into letting him kiss her.
But he didn't quite know how to answer her question, because she hadn't asked him if he was planning to court Lady Amanda. She'd asked him how he was planning to ask for permission.
She must have taken his silence to mean he couldn't figure out how, because when he didn't immediately respond, she added, "Perhaps I can help you devise some particularly gallant method."
"Like what? Shall I ride into the ball on a charger, dressed in armor?"
"Really, now, James, be serious."
He was serious. He was serious about wanting to kiss Juliana. And touch her. And do all sorts of other things with her that would make Lady Frances faint dead away if she ever managed to come out of her fog enough to notice.
"James?" Juliana asked. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
Another question he couldn't answer. He could hardly tell her the truth…that he was looking at her while imagining scenarios that would ruin her reputation beyond repair.
Lucky for him, the carriage rolled to a halt in front of the Egyptian Hall.