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JAMES WALKED AIMLESSLY down Bond Street, considering whether he ought to buy a belated Christmas gift for Louisa.
It seemed like the kind of thing an affianced man should do. He couldn’t be sure, of course; he certainly had never been engaged before, and neither had any of his friends. Good Lord, his old crony Xavier had almost spit out his brandy when James had first told him of his engagement to the Honorable Louisa Oliver at the end of the previous season.
“You’re making a mistake,” the dark young gentleman had informed him after he recovered from the shock. “I never thought you were a fool, Matheson.”
Naturally James had resented having this description applied to him, and he demanded that Lord Xavier explain himself. Xavier was a decent fellow at heart, but he could have a poisonous tongue at times.
In this instance, however, the earl had backed down and assured James that he wasn’t serious; that Louisa Oliver was no doubt an excellent choice for a wife; that he would endeavor to assure the viscount again of this opinion if he ever met the lady in question. Xavier even managed to exert himself to extend his congratulations, which, when you considered how unyielding the man could be, was like receiving a bag of gold from a miser. Or, James now thought as his mind roamed for an unlikely simile, like holding an utterly conventional, not at all shrill or embarrassing conversation with Lady Irving.
All of which was to say, he didn’t have much guidance in the area of how a man should behave toward his betrothed, especially if she seemed to be the retiring sort. His father wasn’t alive to enlighten him, and his mother certainly wouldn’t be of any help. She had been a touch friendlier when Louisa came to dine on Christmas Day, but she was still clearly against the match. He supposed he could ask Gloria, who had been rather pleasant upon meeting Louisa for the second time. Even as a grown man, though, there was something that rankled about asking his older sister for advice.
So here he was, peering doubtfully into the window of a jeweler’s shop, wondering what might be an appropriate gift for Louisa. He hadn’t bought her anything for Christmas yet, although in his defense he hadn’t expected to see her then, and the holiday had never been made much of in his family. Christmas gifts were mainly for children.
Louisa hadn’t given him anything either, true, but he had a feeling that the burden of gift-giving (for a burden was exactly what it felt like) should fall on the engaged party with the greater discretionary income. Which would be he.
Besides, a gift could possibly help Louisa feel more comfortable during what had turned into an awkward holiday season for them both. She seemed to be reluctant for their marriage because of all the changes it would bring to her life—but maybe, just maybe, if he showed her that the changes would be good, she would be more eager. As a viscountess, she would certainly have more money at her command, and more jewelry, than she had ever owned as a baron’s daughter. Many women would find that very exciting, though he knew, deep in his heart, that Louisa wasn’t one of them.
He sighed. Would diamonds be too much? He didn’t want to overwhelm her; that would have precisely the opposite of the desired effect. Which was, quite frankly, to have an intended who seemed to give a damn when he was around.
His eye caught on a sapphire set, simple and lovely. He knew that blue as well as he knew his own face; the jewels were the precise shade of Julia’s eyes.
Julia.
He smiled to think of her, causing a female passerby who saw his grinning reflection in the shop window to shriek and give him a wide berth.
He barely noticed, though. He kept his thoughts so tightly marshaled these days that it was seldom he even allowed himself to think about Julia, but he let her wash over him now. She was just so . . . so herself, all the time. Climbing a ladder. Teasing her aunt. Cramming handfuls of biscuits into her mouth. The first time he’d met her, she’d showed him what she was really like, and he’d wanted to get to know more. He’d been fascinated.
He’d tried to tell himself for quite a while that that was because he was eager to get to know Louisa’s family, and he’d been happy to make a friend among her relatives. But now, he knew, that was not the full truth. When he’d seen her again after several weeks’ absence, when she’d catapulted herself into his arms, he had felt such longing that he had had to make a physical effort to let her go. It had been one of the most difficult things he’d had to do in a long time.
Therein lay the problem. Therein lay the reason he didn’t often permit himself to think about Julia anymore, and the reason he frequently reminded himself of what Louisa’s fine qualities were.
She was elegant, self-possessed, thoughtful, and startlingly intelligent. He admired and respected her enormously. He hadn’t been in love with her when he offered marriage, true, but he hadn’t expected to fall in love with anyone else either.
Love? Was that what he felt for Julia?
Surely not. But he wondered how much that little sapphire set cost.
Despite himself, he turned from the window to the shop door, preparing to head inside and inquire about the sapphires.
Then a female voice called his name.
He jumped as if he’d been shot, or caught with his breeches off. He knew that voice. He had been about to buy sapphires for that voice.
But it wasn’t Julia alone. She was, most unexpectedly, walking with Lady Charissa Bradleigh. He hadn’t even known the Earl of Alleyneham had brought his family to town, or, for that matter, that Julia knew any of them.
He greeted them with habitual civility, turning his attention first to Lady Charissa as the highest-ranking lady present. This gave him a few seconds to return his thoughts to their usual order, or at least some semblance of it.
He had been caught off guard, true, but it might be for the best. The encounter kept him from making what probably would have been a horrible blunder, buying those sapphires.
Now that she was here, he realized the sapphires wouldn’t have done her eyes justice.
Then he realized that was precisely the type of thought he ought to be trying not to have, and he ruthlessly squelched it. His face all politeness, he inquired after Charissa’s family.
“I wasn’t aware you were in town,” he explained, “or I would have been by to offer my respects to your parents.”
“Oh, Lord, don’t worry about that!” Charissa replied with a laugh. “We only just got here on Boxing Day and we haven’t seen many people. Audrina’s fallen ill, you see—that’s my youngest sister,” she explained for Julia’s benefit. “Matheson, your mother wrote mine that she knew a very good doctor here in town, and recommended we all come back for Audrina to be treated by the best.”
She looked up at James under flirtatious lashes. “She made a point of telling us you were here as well. And . . . something about a Twelfth Night masquerade? I can’t remember, exactly.” She dimpled at him roguishly and waited for a response.
He’d once heard Lady Irving dismiss the Bradleigh daughters as “whey-faced,” but an honest appraiser would judge Lady Charissa quite a lovely girl. She had clear skin, russet hair, and pleasant, regular features, including a pair of large, lovely, and provocative gray eyes. She was also a bit chattery, though, which could be the reason she hadn’t yet snared the duke her rather fatuous mother seemed adamant she should marry. That, and the fact that there were very few unmarried dukes to go around.
Seeing her smile up at him, James thought fleetingly of the differences between the young women in front of him. How could one be impish and talkative and leave him utterly cold, while the one at her side shared the same traits and he thought them the most appealing thing on earth?
Curse it, there again was one of those thoughts he ought not to be having. He shook his head to turn his mind in another direction.
Julia responded at once to his unconscious gesture. “There’s not a masquerade?”
“What?”
“You shook your head. Is there not a masquerade, or are you not present in London? You must have been disagreeing with one statement or the other. Or else you weren’t attending to us at all, which would be incredibly impolite of you. Not that you’re impolite in general, so in this particular it would be, you know, less than your usual level of politeness.”
There it was, that sheepish smile that showed him she knew she’d been running on too much; it positively made his insides flip.
“Er . . .” He struggled to respond normally. “I believe I was shaking my head in disbelief at my mother’s level of interest in various people’s activities.”
Both young women were perfectly willing to accept this explanation, so James quickly asked when they had met, in order to get them talking on a different topic from that of his unexplained gestures.
They both started to speak at once, laughed, and each told the other one to go ahead. Finally Charissa began.
“We met a few days ago through my mama and Julia’s aunt, who have been friends since girlhood, you see. Lady Irving came to pay a call and brought her two nieces with her. I already knew Miss Oliver from last year, but I was simply delighted that Lady Irving had such an excellent friend for me with her this time! For my sisters, you know, are really no fun at all,” she finished, drawing her pretty mouth into a moue of mock dissatisfaction.
“Yes,” Julia continued eagerly, “I was so glad my aunt introduced us, and Charissa has been kind enough to allow me to use her Christian name already. She has been showing me all around town. She knows it so well, and I wanted to see all the things Louisa told me of, like the Tower of London and Hookham’s library. Charissa’s been kind enough to take me there and to places I didn’t even know of. We even went to a musicale last night and saw an opera singer. I’ve never seen one before.”
Her excitement abated as she admitted, “He was much . . . louder than I thought he would be. But I enjoyed it very much all the same,” she hastily assured her friend.
“How nice for you,” James replied, struggling for the usual polite responses.
It was difficult to speak in trivialities to these two women, when all he wanted was to wrap Julia in his arms and put his tongue in that little hollow above her collarbone. And when he also wanted to smack his head against a shop window for even thinking such a thing.
Damn it all, there were only so many competing ideas a man could hold in his mind at once.
Luckily, the earl’s daughter was oblivious to most things outside of her own well-coiffed head. She linked her arm in Julia’s, laughing. “Sweet girl, she has barely started learning where everything is. Someone has given her the flattest idea of what there is to do in London! Hookham’s; honestly, I declare I’ve never been there before in my life. But I knew where it was; it’s close to the most stunning jeweler’s. Right here, you see?”
She gestured at the shop window James had just been lurking in front of. Julia’s eyes widened as she took in the gemstones on display, and she nodded in acknowledgment of the truth of her friend’s words.
James thought he heard a faint whisper of “Hell’s bells” as Julia’s gaze roved over the jewels.
“And we,” Charissa concluded, oblivious to any epithets that may or may not have been spoken, “are just coming from Hookham’s now.” She gave a tiny shudder, but added kindly, “I’m very glad I went to see it. It is quite a lovely place, and it has the most interesting smell.”
“It did have a distinctive smell,” Julia confirmed, wrinkling her nose thoughtfully. “Maybe it was all the bindings. James, your library had rather a similar smell, now I come to think of it.”
“It did?” James was taken aback to have his home drawn into the discussion of odors. “I’m sorry to hear it. I hope it wasn’t unpleasant.”
“No, there’s nothing at all wrong with it,” Julia hastened to explain. “It’s the smell of bindings, some of them old, some well handled and in need of care. For a library, it’s a lovely scent. It shows that you care about your books, that they have a history.”
Lady Charissa seemed surprised at the intellectual bent of this speech, then discarded it from her notice and reacted only to the kernel of information that interested her.
“You’ve seen his library? At his country house? He hadn’t been there in, oh, years and years, but then all of a sudden it caught his fancy again. Last summer, I declare, we hardly saw him at all, he was so in love with the place!”
At the word “love,” she darted another of her roguish looks at him, and James began to feel distinctly uncomfortable. What if Julia should think he was flirting with this young woman, right in front of her? That would be discourteous to Louisa. And, well, he also didn’t want Julia to have that impression of him for her own sake. He might have sown a few wild oats in the past, but he’d never been much of a flirt.
He changed the subject again. “Where are you heading now? May I accompany you somewhere?”
“Oh, yes, let’s walk together,” Julia said. “It’s too cold to be standing still outdoors. Charissa, where do you want to go next?”
The young lady seemed undecided at first, but when James offered her an arm, she was perfectly willing to walk with him and Julia. They decided to head in the direction of St. James’s Square, where the town residence of the Earl and Countess of Alleyneham was located.
As they walked, much conversation flowed on the topic of Lord Xavier’s planned masquerade, most of it from the mouth of Lady Charissa Bradleigh, who was cheerfully dropping name after name of the people who might possibly be there, if they were in town, and Julia would simply have to get to know them; they were the dearest creatures. Julia, unable to contribute to this speculation about people she had never met, simply bobbed her head agreeably in response to Charissa’s words. She looked rather like a child’s nodding toy, James thought, deriving great amusement from the sight.
Because James was an acquaintance of longer standing, Charissa inevitably directed much of her conversation to him as well as to Julia. By the time they finally reached the door of Alleyneham House, the earl’s daughter had extracted from James a promise that yes, he would be at the masquerade, and yes, he would certainly be honored to dance with her. After this last promise, he looked with some small degree of anxiety at Julia for her reaction, but she only smiled and pressed his hand in farewell.
“I’ll see you at Lord Xavier’s, then,” she assured him. “I’ll look forward to it.” Her voice grew confidential. “I’ve never been to a masquerade before. It sounds exciting. Will there be secret identities, and intrigue in dark corners?”
He laughed hollowly. Intrigue in dark corners. She’d never have dared speak the words to him if she could read his thoughts.
He forced his voice into a light, joking tone. “Secrets at Xavier’s? They’d better not, if they don’t want it in the Ton Bon-bons scandal sheet. The man can’t keep a thing to himself.”
“Oh.” Julia sounded disappointed. “Are you going to wear a costume?”
This was too much for Charissa, who, through giggles, entreated him eagerly to wear something historical. “Perhaps something with tights, like Henry the Eighth! Oh, wait; he’s rather too fat. Although you could wear padding.”
“No,” James said firmly, quashing that idea at once. “I’m sorry to disappoint a lady, but I will not wear a costume. That’s never required,” he explained to Julia.
“There are always masks for those who come in ordinary evening wear. I’ll probably just wear a cape or something simple like that.”
“A cape? He’s going to go as a coachman!” Charissa exploded with laughter.
She bobbed a farewell curtsy to James, and with a waggle of her fingers, headed into her house. Julia gave James a helpless smile, and followed her friend, looking, James thought, a bit overwhelmed.
Yes, Charissa Bradleigh could do that to a person. He wondered, as he absently strolled in the direction of his own residence, how she and Julia had become friends so quickly. He rather had the feeling that the young noblewoman had seized upon Julia as a novelty and was now running the life out of her. Julia had formidable energy, but she wasn’t used to town hours, town manners, and the intense but fleeting nature of many town friendships.
He wondered, too, how it was affecting Louisa to have her sister seized from her all the time. He thought with a pang that he ought to call on her and see if she needed any cheering up.
And that was when he realized, standing a good half mile from where he’d started, that he’d taken his carriage out today and had left it behind him in Bond Street. And that he never had chosen a gift for Louisa.