The Wagered Heart: Signet Regency Romance (InterMix) (2 page)

Her uncle had warned her of the debauchery that the beauty of London often hid. Though surely, ladies were not customarily accosted the moment they stepped from a milliner’s shop, she thought as her heart began to hammer rapidly.

She took another quick sidestep, and he moved with her. Julia’s temper flared. It was time to put a stop to this nonsense.

“Why won’t you move?” she demanded.

The man said nothing, only stood there gazing at her with a slightly crooked, raffish smile.

The Duke of Kelbourne was not as disguised as his friends were. He had only imbibed enough spirits at his club earlier that day to destroy his gentlemanly inhibitions, and heighten his already overactive sense of daring.

Nevertheless, the lovely lady’s anger was lost upon his dulled senses as he inclined his head in a slight bow.

“I cannot leave you, fair maiden, because of a vow I have made.”

“A vow?” This was passing strange. Julia suddenly wondered if this man had escaped his keeper.

“Yes, a vow,” he said, and Julia could not help noting how deep and well-modulated his voice was.

“A vow I made last eve to Dame Fortune. I must salute with a kiss the prettiest lady I see today.” Turning to the four men who had followed him across the street, he continued, “And this is not only the prettiest lady I have seen today, but the most lovely I have seen in many a Season.”

Julia had listened as far as “salute with a kiss” when she decided to turn the other way and quit this ridiculous scene.

She took two full steps before his strong hand caught her arm and pulled her around against his solid body.

“You are mad!” she cried, staring up at him with alarmed gray eyes, shocked as she had never been in the whole of her life.

“Oh no, fair maid, you cannot leave me yet. A gentleman must never break a vow.”

Frantic, she struggled, pushing against his chest. She heard one of the other men chortle and say, “I believe Kelbourne is confusing the word
vow
with
wager.
”

To Julia’s growing horror, a crowd was beginning to gather on the busy street. Besides the men who seemed to be with her assailant, there was a smartly dressed young couple, a few people who appeared to be servants carrying large boxes, and a landau carrying two ladies had just pulled up.

Redoubling her efforts to get away, Julia demanded in a breathless voice to be released.

She also tried to kick his shins, but her skirts and his well-muscled arms clasped around her proved too great a hindrance.

With ease of strength, he dipped her to the side, offsetting her balance so that she had to abandon her struggle.

Julia squeezed her eyes shut, held her body rigid with her hands curled into fists at her sides. His head descended toward hers.

As his lips touched hers she tried to struggle again, but her efforts were fruitless. His arms felt like bands of steel around her straining body. The part of her brain that could think past her mortification wished fervently that she were strong enough to break her attacker’s arms.

With his lips on her tightly compressed mouth, Kelbourne was beginning to wonder why the young beauty he held was behaving like a broomstick.

His fogged brain told him something was not right. No woman had ever been anything but eager to be in his arms. In fact, if he could be forgiven for being so immodest, he was usually the pursued, instead of the pursuer.

With masculine determination, he marshaled his considerable personal forces against her defenses.

Julia immediately felt the change in his demeanor.

Suddenly, the kiss became infinitely gentle, the hand on the back of her neck caressed instead of held.

Julia was a mass of jumbled emotions. Rage, fear, humiliation, and something she could not identify, swirled through her senses as she remained rigid in his embrace.

The Duke of Kelbourne raised his head slightly to look at the beauty in his arms. The rage blazing in her gray eyes startled him.

After a sleepless night of revelry and lingering inebriation, he could only wonder at her fury. He hazily considered the possibility that he had trod upon her toes. Confused, he set her upright and released her.

Shaking with outrage and humiliation, Julia rasped in a voice only those closest could hear, “If I were a man, I’d knock you flat.”

She then drew her arm back and slapped him so hard across his face, her palm stung with the force of the blow.

Turning, she cut through the gawking little crowd with a breathless “excuse me” and marched back into the milliner’s shop, where Aunt Hyacinth and Caroline were still discussing ribbons.

1816

“M
 r. Fredericks, I insist that you give me back my hand,” Julia said, trying to tug her hand free from his determined grasp.

“But Miss Allard, I do not believe you understand the advantages of marrying me.” Mr. Fredericks’ tone was earnest as he tightened his grip on her fingers.

Julia tugged again, bracing her slippered foot against the base of a nearby stone bench for leverage. Looking up at the house, she prayed that Uncle John or Aunt Beryl would happen by the window, see her struggling with their neighbor, and come out and rescue her from this ridiculous scene.

“Mr. Fredericks, you may see some advantage to marrying you, but I certainly do not. Now, let go before you embarrass yourself further.”

The avid expression on his face turned to shocked hurt at the harshness of her words. Julia felt an instant stab of guilt upon seeing the mounting redness in his cheeks as he reluctantly released her hand.

Well, dash it. What do you expect me to do?
she
thought defensively as she took a step back from him on the lawn.

She put a hand to her pale golden hair for a moment, and took a deep breath to regain her composure.

“I am sorry to be so blunt, but you have left me little choice,” she said, softening her tone.

This was not the first time she had declined Mr. Fredericks’ offer of marriage. But never had he been so persistent. It was her suspicion that when he came upon her sitting alone in the garden, he had renewed his courage to propose to her despite her previous refusals.

Allen Fredericks stood in front of Julia, shifting from one foot to the other. The hurt on his florid face rapidly changed to anger.

“What is it, Miss Allard? Do you think you are too good for me because some distant relative of yours is a baron? What does that matter when everyone in Chippenham knows that you were sent home from London last year before the Season began? Such a mystery,” he said, sneering.

Julia made no attempt to interrupt him. Inwardly, she marveled that a man, regarded by all in the village as a fine gentleman, could show such ugliness at being thwarted in his desire.

He continued in the same deriding tone. “Some say that you played fast and loose until you were caught. Well, you are no better than you should be, and you aren’t likely to find a better man than I willing to take you.”

Julia did not attempt to hide her disgust as she looked him square in his white-lashed blue eyes.

“Mr. Fredericks! If you put such store into misinformed and malicious gossip, I wonder at your wanting to marry me. You should consider yourself fortunate that such a
fallen woman
has declined your
offer. I ask you to leave my uncle’s property at once.” Her icy tone matched the anger in her gray eyes.

Hesitating, Mr. Fredericks sputtered a bit before picking up his hat from the bench. He smoothed back a few thin strands of hair and looked at her, red-faced and confused.

“Well, I would not go so far as to say that anyone thinks you are a fallen woman, Miss Allard. It is just that there has never been an explanation for your sudden return from London,” he muttered, in a weak attempt to explain his insulting comments.

Julia sighed, looked up to the patch of blue sky showing through the canopy of trees, and prayed for patience. That was one of the downfalls of living in a small village—everyone felt they had a right to know everyone else’s business. Especially tabbies like the Widow March, who Julia knew had spread most of the gossip about her curtailed visit to London last spring.

“Please, Mr. Fredericks, I have no intention of discussing this with you any longer. As you can see, I was in the middle of reading some letters, and I would like to continue.”

Jamming his hat on his head, Mr. Fredericks had the grace to look a little ashamed.

“I shall not bother you further, Miss Allard. I bid you a good day.”

Julia stood by the stone bench and watched him leave the garden through the little iron gate. She sincerely hoped that he would plague her no more.

Sitting down again on the bench, she picked up the letters she had set aside at Mr. Fredericks’ unexpected arrival. Clutching them in her lap to the point of crumpling them, she thought again of how much she loathed the Duke of Kelbourne.

Once more, a current trouble could directly be connected to that dastard, she thought with renewed
anger. In fact, every single unpleasant thing that had occurred in the last year could be traced back to that horrible incident on Bolton Street in London.

The fragrant, shaded green beauty of Aunt Beryl’s garden faded as Julia’s bitter thoughts returned to that time, almost one year ago.

She had been beyond excited when she had received the invitation from Aunt Hyacinth and Uncle Edmund to come to London and make her come-out with Caro.

Such fuss! Such bustle! While Uncle John had stood by, shaking his head, Julia and Aunt Beryl had rushed around preparing for a London Season.

Though the Allards were a fine old family, it was Aunt Hyacinth, formerly a Stanhope, who had connections to the
haute ton.
Even Uncle John had conceded that his younger brother would be able to provide Julia a better entrée into Society.

The only thing that dampened her fervor was that Uncle John and Aunt Beryl would not be coming to London with her. Since the death of her father some ten years earlier, and since she had little memory of her pale, consumptive mother, Uncle John and Aunt Beryl were as dear to her as her parents.

“Won’t you change your mind, Uncle John? Or at least come to London a little later in the Season? I shall miss you both terribly,” she recalled pleading with him the night before she was to leave for Town.

“And we shall miss you, m’dear. But Edmund and Hyacinth have cultivated London Society all these years, while I am just an old soldier, content to stay in my childhood home with your Aunt Beryl,” he had soothingly explained.

So off she had gone with her maid and a groom, full of excited anticipation over the journey, for, except the occasional visits to Bath and Bradford-on-Avon,
she had not been far from home the whole of her life.

Uncle Edmund had taken a beautiful house in Mayfair for his family. Caro had squealed her delight when Julia had arrived. Soon they both had been in transports of excitement over their impending curtsy to the Prince Regent.

London had been a delight to Julia. The museums and the bookstores! She had found something to please her senses around almost every corner.

And then that horrible day!

She could still feel the shock of his insult after these many months.

She recalled that after she had slapped his face and reentered the shop, Aunt Hyacinth and Caro had instantly noticed her pale cheeks and shaking fingers.

“Julia! Are you ill?” Then Caro had called to her mother from the other side of the shop, concern obvious in her blue eyes. “Mama, something is terribly amiss with Julia.”

The three women had immediately returned to the house in Mayfair. Aunt Hyacinth had rung for tea, while Julia had struggled to tell them what had transpired.

Caro had sat staring at Julia, her eyes wide with horror.

“Heaven help us!” Aunt Hyacinth had cried, her plump body slumping into a sofa. “Caroline! I am in need of my hartshorn!”

Caro had fled the room to return shortly with the hartshorn and her father.

“What on earth has occurred?” he had asked as he hurried into the room behind his daughter. “Caroline is rattling about you being accosted by some scoundrel.”

She retold the story to him while Caro had tended to her near swooning mother.

Uncle Edmund, though a younger and smaller version of Uncle John, could still manage the legendary Allard glare when he was incensed.

“This is an outrage! I shall find out who this profligate is and have him horsewhipped,” Uncle Edmund had stormed.

Sipping sweet tea, Julia had felt oddly comforted by her uncle’s anger.

“Are you sure that he was dressed as a gentleman? I cannot believe anyone accepted in Polite Society could behave in such an unredeemable manner,” Uncle Edmund had stated.

“Yes, Uncle, and the other men that were with him were all dressed very fashionably. In fact”—she had narrowed her gray eyes in concentration—“I believe his name is Kelbourne. Yes, that is it! One of the other men said that Kelbourne is confusing a vow with a wager.”

She had sat back then, so pleased with herself for remembering the scoundrel’s name that she did not immediately catch the thunderstruck expressions on her relatives’ faces. Aunt Hyacinth’s mouth had actually dropped open.

“You must be mistaken, Julia. The only Kelbourne I know of in Town is the
Duke
of Kelbourne. I cannot conceive…” Uncle Edmund’s voice had trailed away as he and his wife had exchanged dismayed glances.

Aunt Hyacinth had looked at her husband with anguished eyes.

“Oh, Edmund! It could not possibly be the Duke of Kelbourne! Could it? I own he is a bit wild, but…Oh no! What if it is Kelbourne? The poor child will have to carry this with her, and the Season has barely started,” she had cried.

Julia had looked at her aunt in growing alarm.

“If my niece cannot even stand on a London street
without being molested by some damned rakehell at three of the clock…”

The entrance of his son had interrupted Uncle Edmund’s tirade. Roland Allard was a tall, handsome young man much like his father and known as quite a dasher around Town.