Swept Away

Julia glanced up to find him smiling down at her. It had never occurred to her that her nemesis would possess a charming manner or a smile that made her feel a trifle weak in the knees. He was dangerous in more ways than one, she realized with a start. She would have to watch out for him.

“Still, it seems presumptuous for a woman like me to call a lord by his Christian name.”

“Even if I give you permission? Perhaps we could exchange the favor, and I could call you Jessica.”

“Ah, but then, I fear, you would find me bold.”

“Some men appreciate boldness.”

“Are you such a man?” She gave him a challenging, provocative look, feeling once again the curious elation at the freedom she was experiencing as a “shady” woman.

“I think it would depend upon who the woman was.” The look in his eyes clearly indicated that she was one of those women whom he would appreciate.

Again Julia felt a strange lurch in her stomach, and she quickly glanced away. Looking around the quiet street, she said, “No hackneys. I had hoped to find one.”

“You must allow me to take you home.”

“Oh, no,” Julia answered hastily. That would never do. He might not know that her house had been the home of the Armiger family for the past hundred and fifty years, but he would certainly know that it was not the sort of house in which a woman of her supposed type lived. “It’s not necessary.”

“I insist.”

Julia stopped dead still and gave him a pugnacious look. “And I refuse.”

He stared at her for a moment, nonplussed, then laughed. “My dear Miss Nunnelly, you are one of a kind. And to think I almost did not come tonight—it is enough to give one the shivers! A hackney it shall be. But I think we will have better luck if we turn up and go over a street or two.” He steered her across the street and up a narrow side lane.

Julia strolled along beside him, uncertain as to exactly what she should do to make things go as she wished. There was something quite unnerving about his physical presence—the nearness of his body and its latent strength, the warmth and firmness of his fingers upon her arm—yet at the same time it was exciting. She supposed it was the excitement of the game: pitting her wits against his, the lure of winning, the fear of exposure. Whatever it was, she had been unprepared for the exhilaration she felt.

Stonehaven’s steps slowed as they neared the next, busier street, and Julia glanced up at him questioningly. He came to a halt, turning to face her. His hands went to her waist and pulled her closer. Julia’s breath caught in her throat; suddenly her heart was thundering. Reflexively, she brought her hands up to his chest as though to hold him off, but there was no strength in her hands. She could feel the heat of his body even through his clothes, the steady thrum of his heart.

“I think you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,” he said in a low voice.

She wanted to return a quip, but the words stuck in her throat. His face loomed closer, filling her vision. Then his lips were on hers, hot and soft, pressing against her, opening her mouth. Julia stiffened in surprise as his tongue swept inside her mouth. None of her suitors’ kisses had prepared her for anything like this. Fire sizzled along her nerves and slammed into her abdomen. Her muscles suddenly turned to wax. His arms went around her tightly, pulling her into him. His body was amazingly hard against her own softness, all bone and sinew, and the difference was thrilling. His mouth possessed her, taking ownership; his hand cupped her bottom and pressed her into him. She could feel him throbbing against her and the insistent pressure of his fingertips digging into the soft flesh of her buttocks.

Julia’s whole body trembled under the storm of sensation, and all she could do was curl her fingers into his lapels and hold on for dear life. He made a sound of male satisfaction deep in his throat as he felt the heat surge through her body.

Finally he lifted his head and looked down at her, his dark eyes glittering fiercely. “Jessica…”

Desire slammed through Stonehaven like a fist at the sight of her face, soft and glowing. She had the dazed look of a woman who had just discovered passion, and though his mind knew that it must be artifice, for she was obviously a woman accustomed to men, his body responded to the lure. She was, indeed, incredibly beautiful, and he had wanted her from the moment he saw her, but now the need to have her was fierce, undeniable. He would not be at ease again, he knew, until this bewitching creature was in his bed, turning into fire beneath his hands and mouth.

Julia saw the heavy passion in his face, the sudden, unmistakable determination to have her. It was what she had wanted to arouse in him, but the reality of it sent a thrill of unease through her. For the first time doubt assailed her: What if she could not control this situation? What if she could not leash and use the need that raged in him?

The sudden trepidation was enough to cut through the fog that had seemed to possess her mind. She stepped back abruptly, one hand going to her stomach as if to still the tumult inside her.

“No.” He reached for her, but she quickly moved another step, and he stopped. “Don’t go. Stay with me.”

“I cannot.” She glanced wildly up the street and saw, like a gift of fate, a hackney rolling slowly along the cross street. She lifted her hand and waved, calling out.

The driver on his high perch peered down the street toward them and obligingly stopped. Julia started toward it, but Stonehaven laid a hand on her arm, stopping her.

“No, do not go yet.”

“I must.”

“Let us just walk a little longer.”

She arched her brows. “I know where your ‘walking’ leads, my lord.”

“Is that so bad a thing?” he countered softly. “You did not seem to think so a moment ago.”

“I am not a prize so easily won,” she responded. “I fear you will find me cheap.”

“Never.”

She shook her head and started to pull away. His fingers tightened.

“At least give me your address, so that I may—”

“I cannot.”

“Why? Have you a husband at home?” Anger roughened his voice.

“No. Please, just let it be.”

“But how will I find you? When will I see you again?”

She looked up at him. His face was hard and fierce, as if the hunger in him had peeled back the layer of easy charm and exposed the powerful reality beneath. His words were not so much a question as a demand.

Julia willed a saucy smile onto her face. She felt as if she were baiting a bear. “I am quite partial to gaming, as you know.”

Then she tugged away and, lifting her skirts to her ankles, ran toward the waiting carriage.

3

“Weren’t you scared?” Phoebe asked, leaning forward to peer into Julia’s face as they walked. They were taking their usual morning constitutional through Hyde Park, and Julia had given her sister-in-law a carefully expurgated account of what had happened the night before when she met Lord Stonehaven. “I can’t imagine talking to him. Was he purely evil?”

“Well, no,” Julia admitted. “He was rather charming, actually. It makes sense, of course, when you think about it. If he were obviously wicked, people would have realized that he was lying about Selby. But because he seems gentlemanly and engaging, one assumes he is telling the truth, that he has pure motives.”

“Mmm. I suppose so.” Phoebe looked disappointed. “I guess I had begun to picture him wearing horns and a tail.”

Julia smiled. “Me, too. But you have met him, have you not?”

“A few times. He and Selby were not close friends, not as Selby was with Varian, say, or Fitz,” she said, naming the other two men who had been trustees of Thomas St. Leger’s trust, along with Selby and Lord Stonehaven. “They had been friends when they were younger, and, of course, they met at their club and parties. But those last few years, Selby spent most of his time at home, you know.”

That fact, Julia knew, had been because of Phoebe. Selby had been a little wild in his youth—not only playing pranks such as the ones he had attributed to Jack Fletcher, but also gambling and drinking too much. But after he fell in love with Phoebe, his life had changed. He had settled down at home in Kent, and had become much more serious and attentive to the business matters of the estate. Selby would travel to London sometimes on his own, and occasionally he and Phoebe would go up for a round of parties and such, but, especially after the birth of their son, they lived a quiet country life. Unfortunately, it had been Selby’s wilder, younger times that people had remembered when Stonehaven had accused him of thievery.

“Stonehaven was pleasant enough,” Phoebe continued, her brow wrinkling. “A little remote and stiff, I thought. We never talked long. I always thought he found me boring.”

“Nonsense,” Julia replied stoutly, although she could understand, deep inside, how some could find Phoebe’s sweet personality a trifle insipid. “If he did, then it was he who was to blame, not you.”

“I was always glad when he moved on to talk to someone else. He made me a trifle…uncomfortable.”

Stonehaven had made her a trifle uncomfortable, too, Julia thought, but not, she suspected, in the way he had affected Phoebe. He had unsettled her, brought out strange responses that both puzzled and surprised her. No one had ever kissed her the way Lord Stonehaven had last night—one of the things she had been careful to not tell Phoebe—and the way she had felt when he did so shocked her. Her body had raged with all sorts of wild sensations, and she had wanted, shockingly, to feel more of them. Julia wondered if that made her a wicked person. Was that how “loose” women felt? And was it those feelings that made them abandon all propriety?

What was most disturbing to her was that she had felt those things with Lord Stonehaven. She hated him! Yet when he kissed her, when he crushed her body against his and his mouth consumed her, she had melted. How could a man she despised have made her feel that way?

The only answer she could find was that it was the kiss, not the man, that had made her react so strangely. She had not felt such a kiss before; gentlemen didn’t kiss that way, or at least they did not kiss ladies like that. No doubt it was part of the licentious life Lord Stonehaven lived, sinful knowledge that he had gained with women of dubious repute. It was probably the very sinfulness of the kiss that had rocked her. Their vicar, in his sermons, often warned of the temptations of sin, of the lure that evil held for humans. Julia had not really understood it before, but now she did. That kiss had tempted her, had made her feel and act in a way she would never have dreamed she could, had overridden, at least for a moment, her thorough dislike of Lord Stonehaven. She supposed that if any other man had kissed her in that way, she would have felt the same. She had a tendency toward lewd behavior, apparently.

Well, she knew now what she had to watch out for, Julia thought. Next time she would be prepared for that kiss, and she would stand firm against it. She would not let herself be swept into such a maelstrom of pleasure.

“Will you see him again?” Phoebe asked now.

“Oh, yes,” Julia responded quickly. “I mean, well, I shall have to, of course. Last night was just the beginning. I wanted to catch his interest, that was all. I didn’t expect to gain any knowledge. It will take a little while to get my hooks firmly into him, and then I will begin to reel him in.”

Phoebe giggled. “Honestly, Julia, you do say the funniest things. You make him sound as if he were a fish.”

“Well, and so he is,” Julia responded. “A prize fish, whom I intend to hang on our wall.”

“Are you—will you go back to that place?”

“I shall have to. I have no other way to meet him. Naturally I couldn’t tell him where we live.”

“Oh, no,” Phoebe agreed with a little gasp of horror. “When will you go back? Tonight?”

“No,” Julia replied reluctantly. She wanted very much to return to Madame Beauclaire’s tonight—only because she was filled with eagerness to get the truth out of Stonehaven, she told herself—but she knew that to do so would ultimately work against her. “I cannot let him think that I am eager to see him again. Men like a chase, I understand, and Stonehaven seems to me to be a man who likes it particularly. I have to build up his anticipation, make him begin to worry that he will not see me again. Then, when he does see me, he will be much more enthusiastic.”

Phoebe nodded. “I’m sure you are right. I am merely impatient. I want so much to hear his confession.”

“I think I shall return on Friday. That will give him two days to stew and wonder. How does that sound?”

“I don’t know. I was never much good at that sort of game. The only man I cared about was Selby, and I wanted to see him so much that I could not pretend otherwise.”

Julia smiled at Phoebe’s slightly guilty expression and reached out to link her arm through hers. “’Tis just that you are too honest and good a person to prevaricate, my love. It rather makes you wonder about me, doesn’t it—that I find it so easy to do so?”

“Julia! Don’t say such things!” Phoebe would never allow any negative words about one of those she loved, even from the loved one herself.

“Lady Armiger!” A man’s delighted voice came from the left of them. Phoebe and Julia turned to see a man and woman walking toward them. The man was smiling delightedly. The woman looked frozen in stone. “Miss Armiger,” the man continued. “How wonderful to see you. I had no idea that you were in town.”

“Varian.” Phoebe smiled, holding out her hand. “How good it is to see you. But how can it be that we have become Lady Armiger and Miss Armiger, when before we were Phoebe and Julia with you?”

Varian St. Leger had been a good friend of her husband’s, and he had visited many times at their home. At the time of the scandal, Varian had been one of the few who had not been immediately convinced of Selby’s guilt. “I cannot believe it of Sel,” he had often said. “I know the evidence looks black, but, damme, it just seems impossible.” They had seen little of Varian the past three years, though he had stopped in once or twice when he had been by to see young Thomas. Being Thomas’s cousin, he had taken on the responsibility of visiting with Thomas and his mother as Selby had formerly done.

“Phoebe, then.” Varian took her hand, smiling down warmly at her. “I did not wish to presume. And Julia.” He took her proffered hand next, smiling. “I have been lax this year, I am afraid. I haven’t visited Thomas even once. It is fortunate that he and his mother are in London this summer.”

“Yes, of course.” Phoebe cast a rather timid glance at the woman who was standing stiffly beside Varian, not saying a word. “How do you do, Mrs. St. Leger?”

Pamela St. Leger did not speak, merely gave Phoebe a short nod, her face not softening even slightly. Pamela, Thomas’s mother, had been long and loud in her condemnations of Selby. Julia had heard that she had wanted to sue Selby’s estate for the monies that had been removed from the trust. However, the decision had not been up to her, of course, but to the trustees, and they had not done so—due primarily, Julia felt sure, to Varian St. Leger’s influence. All Pamela had been able to do was cut them socially, and that she had proceeded to do with a vengeance. She had refused to attend any gathering where Phoebe or Julia were in attendance, and had been heard to declare at the slightest provocation that she was sure she did not know how either woman dared to show her face anywhere. She had even gone so far as to move her patronage each Sunday from St. Michael’s in Whitley, the local village, to St. Edward’s in Marsh-burrow, on the other side of the St. Leger estate. Julia suspected that her move had been at least in part influenced by the fact that the vicar’s wife, Mrs. Fairmont, had refused to knuckle under to Pamela’s social edict to shun the Armigers.

“Good morning, Mrs. St. Leger,” Julia spoke up, favoring Pamela with a blazing smile.

Pamela turned and nodded briefly toward her, as well, her nostrils flaring slightly. Julia knew that Pamela had disliked her long before the scandal, and Julia thought that she had seized the opportunity of the scandal to avoid being in Julia’s company. A raven-haired woman who had been considered a beauty in her day, Pamela did not like to be in the same room with Julia. She could perhaps fool herself into thinking that she was more attractive than the quiet Phoebe, but she could not compete against Julia’s vivid looks. Personally, Julia found life much more pleasant without Pamela’s presence, and she and Phoebe had not wanted to socialize the past few years, anyway, but she did resent the fact that Pamela had forbidden her son Thomas ever to fraternize with them. Thomas was quite fond of all the Armigers and had frequently visited Selby. Julia had come to regard him as something of a younger brother. Thomas was the only other person besides Phoebe and Julia and their servants who was convinced that Selby had not stolen the money from the trust. Julia found it cruel that Thomas’s mother had denied him the company of the other people who shared his love and his mourning for Selby.

Of course, Thomas disobeyed his mother, sneaking over to visit Julia and Phoebe whenever he got the chance. He had joined with them in deciding that Lord Stonehaven must have been the real thief and the engineer of Selby’s downfall. Stonehaven had visited him the least of his trustees and was, in Thomas’s opinion, a “cold fish.” It was Thomas who had first suggested that they capture Stonehaven and force him to reveal his criminal behavior, and he had wanted badly to play a part in the seizure. It had seemed a stroke of good luck when his mother had decided to go to London for the Season, and he had begged and pleaded and cajoled until finally Pamela had broken down and agreed to let him accompany her.

He had thought he would be easily able to join Julia in the escapade, but he had found out, much to his chagrin, that he was far more imprisoned in the house in London than he had been in the country. He was under the constant careful eye of the London tutor his mother had hired, and there were no afternoon rides, since he had had to leave his horse in the country. As a result, Julia had seen him only twice since they had come to London. Of course, she was glad now, considering the turn her plans had taken. Thomas, though only fourteen, would probably have gotten terribly male and disapproving about it all.

Her eyes twinkling devilishly, Julia went on speaking to the stony Mrs. St. Leger. “Odd, isn’t it, that we should run into one another here in London, when we never see each other in Kent, even though we live only miles apart?” When Pamela said nothing, merely raised her eyebrows, Julia pressed, “Don’t you think so, Mrs. St. Leger?”

Pamela stirred uneasily, glancing at Varian, who was watching her. “Indeed,” she said through tight lips.

“Phoebe and I were remarking only the other day that we rarely see you anymore. We hoped that you were not eschewing social life, as some matrons do in widowhood. Phoebe thought it was probably that you, as she is, are still in mourning for your husband, but I told her I thought that could not be the reason, for you were frequently at parties after he died, and I was sure that you had put off mourning—oh, within a few months after Walter’s funeral.”

Bright spots of color leaped into Pamela’s cheeks at Julia’s words, delivered with a wide-eyed innocence that did not fool the other woman for a minute. She knew as well as Julia that there had been a great deal of talk about the brevity of her mourning for Walter St. Leger, which Phoebe’s presence in her black widow’s weeds three years after Selby’s death seemed to underscore.

“Yes. Walter never liked black on a woman,” she said in a clipped voice, driven out of her disdainful silence by the need to justify herself.

“Ah, of course.” Julia smiled with understanding. “I’m sure Walter would have been very pleased to see you. I told Phoebe I did not think it was mourning that kept you away from the small social pleasures of Whitley. I was sure it was probably some physical infirmity. I hope not lumbago—that can be a terribly painful thing, I understand.”

Pamela’s eyes shot fire. “No, I assure you it was not ‘physical infirmity’ that kept me away. Indeed, I attend many soirees and balls, Miss Armiger.”

“Indeed? Why is it that we never see you, then?” Julia wrinkled her brow in puzzlement.

“Are you determined, then, to hear it?” Pamela snapped. Julia wondered if she realized how unattractive she looked like this, her features sharp and hawklike, her eyes narrowed, and her lips, never full, reduced to a mere line. “I do not go where you are received, as you no doubt know. No woman of any standing would.”

Varian’s expression of shock and distaste as he looked at Pamela was precisely what Julia would have wished for. But all her satisfaction was wiped out when she heard Phoebe’s sharp intake of breath and turned to see the hurt on her face at Pamela’s verbal slap.

“Phoebe, I’m sorry,” Julia said softly, curling her arm around her sister-in-law’s waist.

“Mrs. St. Leger!” Varian snapped. “Really! I am quite sure you did not mean that.” He glared at her significantly.

“Everyone knows it!” Pamela retorted defiantly, still too caught up in her anger to care that she looked mean and spiteful in front of her son’s trustee.

“Phoebe, please, accept my apology,” Varian went on, turning abruptly from Pamela toward Phoebe. “I assure you that most people do not feel that way.”

Phoebe smiled at him. “You are most kind, Varian. I know that you do not.”

“Indeed not. I hope you will allow me the honor of calling upon you while you are in London.”

“Of course.”

He turned to Julia and made his apologies and goodbyes, adding that he trusted her to “take care of Lady Armiger.” Then he hustled Pamela away.

Julia turned to Phoebe. “Oh, Fee, I’m sorry. I should never have goaded her like that. I was so intent on forcing her to admit what a witch she is that I didn’t even think about you. I should have known it would hurt you. It is simply that I am so thick-skinned, you see. No, please, don’t cry.”

Phoebe shook her head, giving Julia a shaky little smile. Her eyes sparkled with sudden unshed tears. “No. It isn’t that. It was your calling me ‘Fee.’ Selby always used to call me that. Remember? He was so fond of pet names.”

“Yes, I remember.” Julia felt tears clogging up her own throat at the memory. Even Julia he had shortened to Julie, and he had almost never called Phoebe by her full name. “He called you ‘Fee’ and ‘Delight.”’

A little noise escaped Phoebe at her words. “Oh, Julia! How can it still hurt after all this time?”

“I don’t know.” Julia hugged the other woman tightly. “Sometimes I think that it will always hurt, at least a little.”

“I want to prove that Selby didn’t do it,” Phoebe said in a fiercer voice than Julia had ever heard from her. “I want to prove that it was all Stonehaven’s doing and make that dreadful woman eat every nasty word she’s ever said about Selby or you or me!”

“We will,” Julia promised, setting her jaw. “We will.”

Julia was in the sitting room the next day, her fingers busy letting down the hem on another one of Phoebe’s dresses so that she could wear it. Her mind was occupied with her plan to manipulate Lord Stonehaven into confessing to his crime. She knew that she could not allow herself to be distracted again, as she had been last time by his kiss. She had to be firm and in control, and she had decided that the best way to do that was to plan the things she would say and do to lead him to talk, down to every last word and gesture.

The housekeeper, a fussy, plump woman in a white mob cap and an equally snowy apron, was standing beside Phoebe while Phoebe went over the menus for the rest of the week. Phoebe was engaged in another of a seemingly unending series of struggles over what should be served.