Once Upon a Highland Summer (37 page)

She pushed him out of her mind and practiced a coquette’s smile in the mirror—the smile she meant to give David when his eyes widened with pleasure at sight of her tonight. She planned to sparkle every bit as brightly as the diamond clips her maid twined into an artful coiffure of dark curls, or the magnificent Leighton diamonds glittering at her neck, wrist, and ears. She slid her betrothal ring—a sapphire surrounded by pearls the size of quails’ eggs—over her glove and stared at herself in the glass. She had been raised to be the perfect duchess, and she certainly looked the part.

“Let me see.”

Julia turned, waited for her mother’s nod of approval. If the Countess of Carrindale thought her daughter looked pretty, she kept it to herself.

“We’d better go down,” was all she said, and “Decorum, Julia,” when Julia tried to descend the stairs a little too eagerly, anxious to see the appreciation in her fiancé’s eyes.

But David wasn’t waiting at the foot of the stairs.

He wasn’t even at the door to the ballroom, or in the salon with her father.

She felt her heart sink.

“You look well tonight, Julia,” her father said, casting his eyes over the jewels, as if assessing their value against her own worth, before turning away to take her mother’s arm.

She glanced up at the portrait of her bother James that graced the wall of the salon. He smiled down at her in his scarlet regimentals. If he were here, he would have bussed her cheek, teased her, told her she looked very pretty, and made her laugh, but James had been killed in battle in Spain a year ago.

She felt the familiar pang of grief as she met his painted eyes. She missed his friendship, his easy company, and his advice. Her childhood had ended with the heart-wrenching sorrow of his death. “Courage,” he might have whispered now, squeezing her hand. She let her fingers curl around his imaginary ones. James had been her protector, her friend, and her confidant. She hadn’t felt as safe as she did with James until—Thomas Merritt’s smiling face passed through her brain. She looked down at her satin gloves. He’d squeezed her hand as well, but it hadn’t felt the way it did when James touched her, or even David. It felt, well, intimate, admiring, the kind of caress a man gives a desirable woman.

She felt her cheeks heat at the memory of the encounter in the park, and gave the painting a pleading look. Would James have been horrified at her behavior? No, he would have done the same thing himself, had he been there.

Thomas Merritt was a complete stranger to her. She had never seen him at the balls and parties she attended, and she really should not have even deigned to speak to him without a proper introduction. If he’d been a proper gentleman, he would have walked right past her, ignored the fact that she was standing alone in the middle of Hyde Park with tears stinging her eyes, but he’d stopped, and pressed his handkerchief into her hand, and just in time to rescue her from the curious eyes and prying questions of Lady Fiona Barry, the
ton
’s worst gossip.

She’d been prattling too much, perhaps, about the details of the wedding, and David was looking bored, which made her try all the harder to amuse him. He’d seen some people he knew across the park and stopped walking, taking her hand off his arm and stepping away. “Wait here, Jules. There’s someone I wish to speak to,” David had said. She’d caught his sleeve.

“I’ll come too, and you can introduce me,” she said, but he’d shot her a look of irritation. “Surely I should know your friends, David. They might be guests in our home some day and—”

“It’s business, Julia,” he replied sharply, plucking his arm out of her grip. “Be good and wait here, and I’ll buy you an ice at Gunter’s on the way home.”

Stunned, she’d watched him walk away, leaving her behind as if she were an annoying child.

“I would have promised you diamonds,” a voice said, and she’d turned and regarded the stranger by her side. He was watching David’s retreating back.

“I beg your pardon?” she said, though she didn’t know him, and knew she should not speak to him at all. He could be anyone, or anything. But he smiled at her, his eyes warm, and her breath stopped.

“To wait, I mean. I would have promised you diamonds, or something infinitely better than a Gunter’s ice, unless of course you prefer those to jewels. Even then I wouldn’t have left you alone in the first place, not with every man in the park watching you with such obvious admiration.”

She held her tongue and glanced around. The park was indeed filled with curious eyes, and all of them no doubt wondering why she, Lady Julia Leighton, was without an escort.

“It’s quite all right,” he said. “Think of me as your protector until your brother returns.”

“Fiancé,” she murmured.

His brows shot upward toward the brim of his hat, rakishly tipped on dark curls. “I see.”

Embarrassed anger filled her. “Do you? And just what do you imagine you see, my lord—”

“ ‘Mister’ will do. Thomas Merritt,” he said, giving his name and bowing. “And you are?”

“The Duke of Temberlay’s bride-to-be!” she snapped, rising to her full height. She still barely reached his nose, even in the tall, lavishly feathered bonnet she wore. There was amusement in his eyes, which was not the impression she’d hoped for.

“Forgive me, Duchess. At first glance I thought perhaps you were a younger sister he finds annoying, or a cousin he’d been instructed to squire about for a bit of fresh air, against his own choice. He treats you as if—”

“It’s none of your affair how he treats me!”

He put a hand under her elbow. “Ah, but it is, as your temporary protector. I cannot leave the most beautiful lady in the park all alone, especially when she is on the verge of tears.”

It was exactly what James might have said, and that only added to her desire to cry. She blinked back tears. “I never cry!”

He pressed his handkerchief into her hand. “Of course not. Shall we stroll along the path a little way? Lady Fiona Barry is heading this way, and I hear she can smell tears from a hundred yards.” He took her arm.

Julia’s stomach froze.
Fiona Barry?
This was disaster! She would report everything to her mother, then to everyone else in the
ton
—David’s absence from her side, the lack of a proper escort, and of course the presence of the handsome stranger by her side.

“Laugh, my lady,” he murmured, leaning under the edge of the feathered bonnet.

“I don’t think I can,” she admitted.

“Then I shall make you smile. I will promise you diamonds and pearls,” he said.

“I prefer emeralds,” she murmured.

He looked down at her, his eyes moving over her face and her elegant new moss green walking gown. “Yes, I can see that they’d suit you very well indeed,” he said, his voice low, seductive, something in his gaze suggesting he was imagining her draped entirely in emeralds and nothing else at all. She felt heat surge through her body, and she couldn’t help but smile.

“There now, that’s better,” he said, but his eyes remained on hers. He had gray eyes, glittering and dangerous, filled with the kind of male admiration she’d never seen directed at her before this moment. She’d been wrong.
This
was where childhood ended, with the first look of male appreciation a girl received. She liked it very well indeed. Her spine turned soft for a moment, and she had the oddest desire to lean into his strong shoulder.

“Good morning, Julia,” Fiona Barry said as she approached. Julia’s spine stiffened to attention at once, and she tore her gaze from Thomas Merritt’s handsome face. Fiona was examining the gentleman as if he were a cream cake and she was starving. “And who is this? Do introduce me, my dear.”

“This is Mr. Thomas Merritt,” Julia said. Even her voice sounded more adult, husky and soft. “Mr. Merritt, this is Lady Fiona Barry, a dear friend of my mother’s.”

He bowed over Fiona’s hand. “Good morning, Lady Barry. A pleasant morning for a walk in the park, is it not?”

“Indeed,” Fiona said. “But where is Temberlay, my dear?” she asked Julia. “I was sure I heard your mama say you’d gone walking with him this morning when I called.”

Julia felt her face heat. Fiona could also sniff out lies. “He’s just—”

“He’s been called away for a moment, and he asked me to escort Julia,” Thomas Merritt said smoothly.

“I see. And will you be attending the betrothal ball on Thursday?” Fiona asked, accepting the explanation, lost in Thomas Merritt’s dazzling smile.

“No,” Julia said hurriedly.

“I wouldn’t dream of missing it,” he countered, and smiled down at her, turning her knees to water again, squeezing her hand ever so slightly.

Fiona grinned, baring her teeth like an aging hound scenting prey. “It is an event not to be missed. The Countess of Carrindale gives the most marvelous parties, and her dear daughter’s betrothal ball will surely be the event of the Little Season, surpassed only by her wedding.” She sighed like a bellows. “I remember you in leading strings, Julia. It is hard for me to imagine you all grown up and about to become a duchess, my dear.”

Julia felt Thomas Merritt’s eyes on her once more, warm and appraising. He squeezed her hand yet again. “Forgive me, but I’ve remembered an appointment I cannot break, Julia.” Even her name sounded honey-sweet from his lips. “I’ll leave you to chat with Lady Barry.”

He kissed her hand, and she felt the warmth of his mouth through the lace of her glove. It flowed through her limbs like whisky. “It was a pleasure,” he said, looking into her eyes, and she could see that he meant it, that he was stepping away with regret. Her tongue wound itself around her tonsils, making speech impossible. And then he was gone, walking away without looking back, his long legs eating up the cinder path until the trees swallowed the sight of him. She suppressed a sigh of regret, just as Fiona heaved one of her own.

She let Fiona tell her the latest gossip without even hearing it. She felt like a woman. Not a lady, or a bride, or the daughter of an earl. A woman.

It felt like stepping into the heat of the sun on a cold day, and she wanted more.

“J
ulia! Did you hear me? It’s time to go in. We all miss James,” her mother said, and Julia realized that she was standing in the salon, staring up at her brother’s portrait, and seeing not his face, but Thomas Merritt’s. “You are the future now, Julia. Your son will not only be Duke of Temberlay, but also the next Earl of Carrindale.” She didn’t want to think of the fact that she was simply the conduit for the next generation of the peerage.

“Temberlay has waited long enough,” her father added gruffly, barely glancing at his late heir.

He hadn’t spoken James’s name since the news of his death came, and he was no doubt pleased the wedding would take place at last. The nuptials had been delayed while her family mourned, but men without heirs to succeed them were ever anxious about the future, though David hadn’t objected to the delay. How could he when his own brother, Nicholas, was a captain in the same regiment as James? Every man in the regiment had escaped certain death thanks to her brother’s heroic self-sacrifice. She was proud, of course, but she wished—just a little—that he had found another way to save the others, so she might still have her brother with her now, tonight, when she needed his reassuring arm to lean on.

Julia drew herself up straight. She was a woman now, a lady, and a duchess-to-be. She could and would stand on her own two feet. She cast one last glance at James, and pushed the image of Thomas Merritt’s appreciative smile out of her mind. She would soon see the same look on David’s face.

“I’m ready.”

She followed her parents into the ballroom, brilliantly lit with a thousand candles. Jewels glittered, regimental badges gleamed, champagne sparkled, and her betrothal ring shone brightest of all.

David didn’t even notice her entrance. He was deep in conversation with a group of gentlemen as Julia approached, just a trifle irritated by his inattention tonight, of all nights.

“Good evening,” she purred, and dipped a curtsy. The gentlemen bowed.

“Oh, hello, Jules,” David said with a vague smile. He dropped an absent kiss on her forehead—the kind of kiss her brother might have bestowed on her. David didn’t tell her she looked pretty. Nor did his eyes light with pleasure, or anything else. In fact, he looked away from her, swept the ballroom with a bored glance, and took a glass of champagne from a passing footman without offering one to her. She reached for her own glass, and David’s eyebrows quirked in surprise, as if he thought her still too young for wine. She gave him her practiced coquette’s grin and sipped.

Her mother beckoned them to the receiving line, and David took her glass and set it down with his own before he offered his arm. “Shall we?” He led her to her mother’s side and stood with his hands clasped behind his back as they waited for their guests to arrive. Julia watched the cream of the
ton
descending the stairs like an invading horde, drew a shaky breath and pasted on a welcoming smile.

Lady Dallen swept in like an ill wind, examined Julia’s necklace through her lorgnette, and wished her happy in a dry tone before going to stir things up in other corners of the room.

Lord Dallen slapped David on the back and said he looked forward to playing cards tonight, once “this betrothal business” was concluded, as if Julia was an interruption to the evening, and not the reason for it. David, damn his eyes—she borrowed one of her late grandmother’s favorite and most forbidden phrases—looked extremely pleased by his lordship’s invitation. In fact, he gazed at Dallen with the kind of appreciation
she
had hoped for. If that was the way to his heart, she would have to learn how to play cards before the wedding. Her mother would hardly approve, but what else was a bride to do?

David didn’t enjoy poetry, or music. He didn’t read or hunt. They would have to spend their evenings at Temberlay castle doing
something
. She felt a blush rise at the other idea that came to mind, but she was an innocent, and he had never so much as hinted at the physical aspects of marriage that would transpire between them after the vows were said. Why, she’d learned more about that from a single glance into Thomas Merritt’s glittering gray eyes.