‘Julia?’
She stared at Giles blankly across the breakfast table.
‘You have just dropped your toast into your tea.’
‘I—Oh, goodness, so I did. I was momentarily distracted.’ As she mopped at the pool of liquid with her napkin she looked more than distracted, she looked positively distressed.
Which is all my fault, Giles thought bitterly as he got up to fetch a cloth from the sink.
For the moment, the other women had all their attention on the baby, who was gurgling and kicking in what was clearly considered to be an endearing manner.
He sat down and handed the cloth across the table to Julia, who took it with a muttered word of thanks and without meeting his eye. Which was not surprising. Now she was wide awake he was amazed she hadn’t hurled a teapot at his head. Or perhaps she was trying to behave as normal because she did not want to alert her neighbours to what had just happened. Almost happened.
You, sir, are no gentleman.
The words stung and he knew they were justified. He had found himself in bed with a virgin and protesting that he was half-awake was absolutely no excuse. Arguing that she had been willing was even less of one.
Eventually the interminable meal dragged to an end. Giles attempted to help clear the table, was firmly repulsed by Miss Margaret and retreated to the range.
‘Miss Chancellor, should I perhaps go along to your cottage and make sure that all is well? The fires will have gone out and the house will become very cold.’
Julia put down the dish she had been returning to the dresser and straightened her back. The effort it took to look at him was palpable and cut as much as her angry reproof had. ‘What a thoughtful idea, Mr Darrowby. I will come with you.’
‘But you will come back,’ Miss Jepson urged. ‘You will join us for the rest of the day and dinner?’
‘Yes, thank you, I would be delighted,’ Julia said with a very creditable smile.
‘I do appreciate your offer of hospitality, but I had best make my way down to the village,’ Giles said. The sooner he removed himself from Julia’s company the happier she would be, he was certain.
‘There has been no thaw,’ she said. ‘It would be a very dangerous thing to attempt.’ Her chin tilted up and she met his gaze. ‘For absolutely no purpose.’
He could read no encouragement in those grey eyes. Presumably she was attempting to convey the message that if he came too close he might expect to encounter a rolling pin at the very least.
‘We can discuss it while we are checking your house,’ he said before the ladies picked up the tension that was sending prickles down his spine.
Julia nodded and began to layer on her outdoor clothing.
They walked in silence back as far as the dividing wall. ‘May I—?’ He hesitated, unsure whether he should physically help her up.
‘Yes, of course, thank you.’ Julia seemed surprised that he needed to ask and showed no awkwardness when Giles lifted her, his hands around her waist, until she could sit on top of the wall and swing her legs over. She jumped down and waited for him, her head cocked on one side, looking so much like the robin that he almost laughed. ‘What is wrong?’ she asked.
‘This morning. I wanted to come out to apologise, as much as anything.’
‘So did I. I should never have said that you were not a gentleman. But honestly, how could you?’
‘How could I kiss you? And apparently pull you into my bed and take even worse liberties. Saying that I was half-asleep is no excuse, is it?’
Julia, who had begun to walk towards Beech View, stopped so abruptly that he almost cannoned into her.
‘That? I cannot blame you for that. I could have protested, only I did not want to wake you, and to be honest, it was lovely to go to sleep like that, so warm.’ She turned away, but not before he saw the colour in her cheeks. ‘And I enjoy kissing you, it would be hypocritical of me to pretend that I do not.’
‘Then why were you so angry with me?’
‘How would you have liked it if it had been me who had stopped and said, “Oh, hell”, might I ask? You could not have sounded more horrified to find me in your bed than if you had rehearsed for a week.’
Giles regarded the back view of the infuriating woman as she stamped off down the path they had cleared towards her own back door. He contemplated either sticking his head in a snowdrift or going back to bang it on the wall and finally strode after her.
‘That was because I was horrified,’ he said as he caught her up. ‘You are an innocent, virtuous lady. You know perfectly well what the consequences of my taking that innocence would be.’
‘You mean you would have to marry me? But who would know?’ Julia had reached the door to the lean-to, unlatched it, went through to the kitchen door and opened it to reveal a swearing, ginger furball that resolved itself into one large, affronted cat. It gave them a withering stare, then stalked off.
‘Oh, for goodness sake, Fred, you had food, you had water, you could get outside. Anyone would think that you had been abandoned to starve.’ Julia shed gloves and a scarf and went to the range. ‘I think this is still alight. Yes, it is, thank goodness.’
‘Confound the cat and the range, too. Do you mean you do not want to marry me?’ Giles demanded, throwing hat, scarf and gloves on top of hers. Had he gone mad, talking about marriage of all things? He had not really compromised her, even if it had been a near-run thing, and he had absolutely no desire for a wife, not for years. ‘Why not?’ he demanded, discovering that he was indignant. ‘I am perfectly eligible. I’m comfortably off, I’ve a title and estates—’
‘And a well-developed sense of your own value,’ Julia retorted, reaching for a poker and riddling ash out of the grate with some force. ‘On the plus side of the scales, I will admit that you kiss very nicely and that you were exceedingly good with Annie and the baby last night. Your title and wealth are of no concern to me whatsoever. On the negative side of the balance is the fact that on both the occasions we have met you were engaged in some madcap, and outrageous, scheme with your friends. Forgive me, but even if I were in the market for a husband, which I am not, you do not appear to be much of a bargain for a woman who cares more about a relationship than a title.’
Giles bit his tongue on the various retorts to that which came to mind, turned on his heel and went to get an armload of wood and a bucket of coal.
Kiss very nicely, do I? And so do you, Miss Chancellor, and I would very much like to stop this conversation and resume where we were a few hours ago.
His sense of self-preservation was adequate to stop him seeing what would happen if he followed his inclination, even though Julia had never once rejected his kisses.
He should have been relieved that she had dismissed his offer so easily, of course. The single life held many attractions and why would he choose a lady of such obscurity when he did decide to settle down? Yet the sensation he was feeling now felt uncommonly like disappointment. It was simply hurt feelings, no doubt.
‘You do not want to marry?’ he asked, stacking the logs by the range and trying to ignore the ache under his breastbone. Every single lady wished to marry, surely? ‘Why did you do the Season, if that is the case?’
Julia stopped riddling the grate and sat back on her heels, looking at him as though he had just asked a difficult, but intelligent, question and she was having to wrestle with the answer.
‘Because everyone assumed I would. That I must, I suppose. And so did I, even though I was painfully shy and frightened about being in London when I hardly knew a soul. We had led such a quiet life you see, my parents and I. There were lots of friends, but no one very grand, no big parties where status and getting things right mattered one bit.
‘I told myself that people would be kind and I wanted to make friends and see the sights and go to the theatre and the bookshops and some parties. But all anyone was concerned about was who was related to whom and how attractive one was and which men were the best catch.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I wasn’t pretty enough to stand out and I certainly was not well connected and I think I was terribly gauche. Certainly I was naive.’
Julia stood up and shook her head at him when Giles started to protest that she was exceedingly pretty. ‘You really do not have to, you know. I do not want reassurance or flattery. But I have come to realise that I took my aunt’s vapours about my so-called ruin as an excuse to escape and I ran away. But now I am older and know what I want, I can manage things to suit myself. I see now that my aunt is not the only person who can organise my life in London, because I have money of my own, enough to employ the services of someone to introduce me about. I have heard there are several ladies of good family who are short of funds and are only too glad to help someone to maintain appearances. In exchange for a consideration, of course.’
She scooped up Fred and began to scratch behind his ears. ‘That is so, is it not? I am sure if I asked my cousin in Bath she would be able to recommend someone to me.’
‘Yes, it is so,’ Giles agreed unwillingly, finding a corner of the kitchen table to lean against while he looked at her. He could think of half-a-dozen youthful widows who were only too happy to supplement their straitened income in that way. But Julia had suffered one bad experience in London already, he had no desire to see her fall foul of the gossip and sharp tongues again.
‘I thought so,’ she said with a nod of satisfaction. ‘I should have done that, gone back and enjoyed the Season on my own terms and not been such a coward as to seize on an excuse to hide. After all, if one is not seeking a husband—and they all seemed such a gamble—then one can do what one wants. Theatre, libraries, exhibitions, shops, concerts. The occasional small party, picnics, perhaps. I have no ambition to attend the grand balls.’ Fred began to purr and hung limp in her grasp like a vast, weighty fur muff. ‘I do not think I would enjoy the high-flown parties at the very top of the tree. They must be such a strain.’
It had never occurred to Giles that they might be, but then he had never spared a thought for the feelings of the young ladies herded like nervous sheep into the arena to be judged on their looks and their manners, their breeding and their dowries.
And condemned and pitied if they fall short.
‘They can be, I imagine,’ he agreed. ‘Here, give me that dratted cat, he must weigh a stone. Shall I feed him?’
‘If you would.’ Julia dumped Fred in his lap and the cat glowered at him. Giles was in no mood to back down to a feline with delusions of grandeur. He stuck Fred under one arm and went to investigate the larder, ignoring the growls and grumbling.
From the kitchen Julia continued to talk as though she was working out a plan from the beginning, rather than explaining her intentions to him.
‘If I find that it answers, then I will hire a small house in a respectable district and employ a genteel companion to lend me countenance. I could come back to Spinsters’ Row in the height of the summer, or even visit one of the seaside resorts.’
There was a pile of meat scraps in a bowl under a saucer and Giles took them out and dumped them on to Fred’s plate, set it down and stacked up some broken timber in the corner while he was crouched down. ‘Julia, do you want that small wooden box and that broken cask in here?’
‘No, not at all. I was going to use them for kindling. Why?’
‘Just an idea.’ There had been some tools in the lean-to, tidily hanging on the wall above a bench. He picked up the box and one of the cask ends, a perfect wooden circle. ‘May I use your tools?’ he asked, retrieving his hat and scarves.
‘Yes, of course.’
Julia was standing in the middle of the kitchen, lost in thought, and he wondered if she had even heard him properly.
‘Don’t you want to marry anyone?’ he asked, one hand on the latch of the back door.
Perhaps one day I might find a gentleman I like and who likes me and then, with no pressure from anyone else, I could make up my mind about marriage. But I am not going to take advantage of a man I like rather too well, just because he feels he ought to offer for me.
‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so,’ Julia said lightly. ‘And certainly not for the sake of it and not because of circumstances.’
Giles made an ambiguous noise and went out into the lean-to with his odd armful of wood.
Some aspects of marriage did seem desirable... Julia glanced at the door and then hastily away. Very desirable and tempting, but dangerous for a single woman. She shivered. It had been a narrow escape that morning: not from Giles but from her own sensual desires.
If she did ever find someone else... She stopped that thought dead in its tracks. If she found someone, the theoretical gentleman would not be an aristocrat, of course. That was aiming too high and, in any case, if there were any unattached ones around of the right age there was something wrong with them, no doubt. She looked again at the door. Or even if there was not, they would be rackety, high-living lords putting off matrimony until a suitably well-bred, well-dowered lady came along and the passage of time and the need for an heir forced them to do their duty.
Like Giles. Lords are all very well for kissing, what you need, my girl, is a nice rural dean or perhaps a country doctor...
Julia checked through the house, performed a few housekeeping tasks, trying very hard not to think about Giles Darrowby and what might have been if she had succumbed to temptation and accepted his very dutiful, and doubtless most unwilling, proposal. She liked him, she found him intelligent and amusing and good company. He had been wonderful with Annie and the baby, patient with Miss Jepson and Miss Margaret and their anxieties. And he stirred something deep and wonderful inside her that she wished had remained undisturbed.
But, she told herself as she came back downstairs with her hands full of handkerchiefs that she had edged with lace and lavender bags that she had filled in the summer, I will not settle for anything other than a love match like Mama and Papa, and I do not care if that makes me hopelessly unworldly and provincial. How awful to be married to a man who felt trapped into it.
‘What’s wrong? Are you cold? You shivered,’ Giles said as she entered the kitchen.
‘You made me jump! What are you doing?’
Giles was sitting on the rug in front of the range, rasping at something with a file. ‘Making a cradle for the baby. I saw that Miss Jepson had a pile of little blankets and so on and I think they were looking for a drawer to make a bed in, but this would be better, don’t you think?’ He sat back and she saw that he had cut the cask lid in half to make rockers and secured them under the box.
‘Oh, how clever! How on earth do you know how to do woodworking?’
‘From the estate carpenter. I used to haunt his workshop as a lad, especially when my tutor was planning a Latin lesson. Not that this is anything very complicated.’ He set it rocking. ‘No joints to dovetail. If you’ve got something like an old blanket to cut up we can line it. I found some round-headed tacks out there which would fix it safely. How do you come to have so many tools?’
‘Dorothy’s brother is a carpenter and he stores some of his things up here. I’ll find a blanket, there’s sure to be one in the scrap box.’
They cut and pleated the blanket, which was a soft cream wool one, banged their fingers hammering in the tacks, created a thicker pad for the base and finally leaned against each other with a sigh of pleasure at the result.
‘That is surprisingly satisfying,’ Giles said. ‘Master William should be snug in that.’
‘Such a good idea of yours,’ Julia murmured, finding that it was also surprisingly satisfying to lean against Giles’s shoulder and share their small triumph.
He reached out and set the cradle rocking on the worn rag rug. ‘I will feel like one of the kings, bearing gifts,’ he said with a chuckle.
‘Which reminds me, I have some presents to wrap. Only handkerchiefs and lavender bags, but if the ladies are entertaining us to dinner, I thought I should take a token. There should be a jar of sweets in the larder. I’ll wrap those up for Molly, I’m sure she’ll prefer them to sensible handkerchiefs.’
She began to get up, but Giles was on his feet first and offered his hands to help her. It was difficult to let go once she was standing, hard to move away from him. It was just his warmth in a room that was chilly despite the banked fire, she told herself. That and a reluctance to break away from the emotional warmth that working on the cradle together had generated.
They were quite still, only touching where their hands clasped, yet she felt as though she was naked, skin to skin with him, her every nerve, her every thought, bared.
If he kisses me now I will not let him stop. If I just take one step forward...