Chapter 4
Justin did not sleep for long, and he was not at all pleased when he woke and found her still there. “Felicity, if you are discovered here there will be a scandal,” he pointed out. He could not bear for Felicity to suffer in the least, and certainly not for her kindness toward him.
“I shall leave early tomorrow—or today, I suppose, since it is after midnight. No reason why I should be discovered. And my maid will tell anyone who asks that I am in bed with a headache.”
“Felicity.” He made a scold of her name, and she copied his tone in reply.
“Justin.” She put her hands on her hips and glared at him.
“I am not leaving until I am sure you are not going to have ill effects from that bump on the head. You might as well resign yourself to the fact. I shall be most displeased if you make your headache worse by fretting. Now…” she pulled The Abbess from the bag she’d brought with her.
“We can talk, or you can rest while I’ll read. ”
With a sigh, he gave up his objections. “Tell me about your book,” he said.
“It is what they call a horrid novel,” Felicity told him.
“The hero and heroine are trying to escape the schemes of—well, everyone else, really. Parents, secret enemies, hidden burial chambers full of torture devices. Very gothic. Rather shocking. Most unlikely.” Her eyes twinkled as she added, “I am enjoying it enormously.”
“Read me some,” he asked. He needed some distraction from the inappropriate idea that his body was having, despite how battered it was at the moment. Having Felicity alone with him in his bedchamber was a dream come true, but not to be acted on. He was a gentleman, dammit.
“The castle of Albano,” Felicity read, “situated at the northwestern extremity of the Venetian Gulf…”
As distraction, it was not working. Justin was seduced anew by the magic of her melodic voice, with the laughing glances Felicity cast at him, inviting him to share her amusement at the florid text.
Seduced by dreams he should not have. She had always enchanted him, from the moment he had first seen her on the deck of the yacht Sea Mist off the coast of some remote English village.
The sling that had lifted her aboard had been caught by a rogue wave before it lifted beyond the sea’s reach.
He was there to welcome aboard some earl’s sister, undoubtedly indignant at the wave’s lèse-majesté and ready to blame the nearest officer—him.
Then Felicity emerged from the sling, a laughing if somewhat drenched fairy, her golden hair sparkling in the sun, but not as much as her blue eyes, and he was her slave from that moment.
They had landed their passengers in Brest, but he and Robin had travelled on to Brussels with her brother’s party, for Robin had a package of documents to deliver to the Duke of Wellington on behalf of the yacht’s owner and his and Robin’s temporary employer, the Marquess of Glenaire.
And each day in Felicity’s company had enraptured him more.
On the sea voyage, he had tried hard to convince himself that she was a social butterfly, all glitter and glamour.
But watching her smoothly take charge on the canal boat and the midpoint accommodation house dispelled that impression, and a few days in Brussels taught him she was a consummate hostess, a skilled politician, a stateswoman and—as he worked beside her in the make-shift hospital that received Waterloo casualties, a strong and compassionate woman.
He loved her, and living without her was living with a gaping hole where his heart should be.
It was hopeless, though. He’d known that even before her brother, the austere Earl of Hythe, had pointed out they were from two different worlds.
The second son of a country schoolteacher and the earl’s sister?
The offspring of an obscure rural family and the descendant of one of the great families of England?
The unemployed naval lieutenant and the diplomat’s hostess? Ridiculous. It would never work.
The cadence of Felicity’s voice changed, and when he heard his name, he realized she was asking him a question. “Are you feeling worse, Justin? Do you need a compress for your head?”
He had not heard a word for several minutes, lost as he was in his own thoughts. “I beg your pardon, Felicity. I was not concentrating. My mind drifted.”
“To something sad, I gather,” she said.
He was certainly not going to tell Felicity that he was thinking about her. He repeated his apology. “I’m sorry. That was rude of me.”
“You are excused,” she replied, her eyes twinkling.
“First, you have a nasty bump on the head, and second this story is by no means gripping. I suppose it is just too unlikely and the characters too unlikeable. I keep wanting to tell the heroine to stop being so agreeable! As for the hero…! I do wish people in books would simply talk to one another like rational beings.”
“You should write your own gothic novel,” Justin joked.
Felicity blushed and looked down at her hands.
The woman never failed to surprise. “Lady Felicity Belvoir! You have written a novel!”
She lifted her chin, her eyes steady, and said, “I am writing a novel.” She raised one eyebrow as she waited for his reaction, but he caught a hint of uncertainty in her expression.
“I am impressed,” Justin said. “Have you always wanted to be an author?”
The starch went out of her spine and she smiled. “That was the correct question,” she said. “Yes, Justin. I have wanted to write novels since I first realized that stories were created by actual people and did not simply appear in print. My father said that I would grow out of it. I never did.”
“And why should you? Other women write novels. I think you must be good at it.”
Her smile widened. “I have told very few people, Justin. Sophia said how nice that I had a hobby to fill my time. Hythe commented I could pay to have it printed if I liked, but I should not use my own name, because any future husband would not like it. You are the only one who thinks I might be good at it.”
Justin shrugged. Her brother and sister looked at her and saw their little sister, he supposed.
“I heard some of the stories you told to amuse the children who travelled on the barge with us to Brussels. And I remember you telling me you wrote for the Teatime Tattler. The reports they ran about Brussels during and after Waterloo, the ones by ‘a lady’—those were yours, were they not?”
“They were,” she acknowledged.
“Then yes, you must be a good novelist.”
Felicity, whom he’d never seen at a loss, blushed and looked down at her hands. “You are too kind,” she said. But he was being honest, not kind. She was a good writer, with a gift for vivid descriptions and a deft way of eliciting the reader’s sympathy.
“I would love to read it,” he said, meaning every word, forgetting that he was meant to be maintaining a distance between them. “If your dream is to write novels, then you should do it.”
“Part of my dream,” she admitted. “I dream of a home in the country. Not a large estate, but one that is large enough to be self-supporting, and not an enormous house, either. One that is large enough for a husband who doesn’t mind if I disappear for a couple of hours each day to write.
Children, and sufficient servants to keep us all comfortable. ”
“That doesn’t sound anything like the life you have been living, Felicity,” he said. Who knew that her dreams marched so closely with his?
Felicity got to her feet, to pace from one side of the bedroom to another.
“I am tired of always moving about, Justin. I love Hythe, but he needs a wife of his own. One who enjoys being a hostess to political and diplomatic guests, always on show, always having to be polite while people talk about the same boring topics over and over. Oh, it was fun and exciting to start with, and what Hythe does is worthwhile. But it is his job, not mine.”
“I thought it was what you wanted.” Justin’s head hurt like blazes, but even through the pain, he was seeing new possibilities.
“No. It was what I could do instead of dwindling into spinsterhood when I could not imagine marrying any of the men who asked. I have been good at it, I believe, and I’ve enjoyed parts of it.
I love dancing, and parties are fun when with friends and family.
But I danced and had parties back when I was a girl and lived year-round on Hythe’s estate.
I’ve had more fun at a country assembly where I danced with shopkeepers and farmers than I have ever had at a London ball, or a Paris one, for that matter. ”
“Have you not met anyone you wished to marry?” Justin asked. It was incautious of him, and he knew it when she turned to face him with her eyes blazing. She let out a huff of exasperation.
“One man, but he left me without a word, and did not speak to me for two years. It was only by chance that I discovered where he was, the dastard. And so, I invited myself to Penelope’s party to find out whether I had imagined what we found together, and if not, whether there was something I could do to convince him to marry me. Is there, Justin?”
Ah. He had always known she was braver than him. “You humble me,” he said. “Am I a dastard, then, Felicity? I thought I was doing what was best for you. Hythe said…” Perhaps not the most felicitous of comments. Her eyes were steely, and she grimaced.
“You and Hythe decided my future without consulting me. Is that the sum of it?”
It was, pretty much.
“I don’t know what to say,” he confessed, feeling at a complete loss.
“Tell me your dream,” she demanded. “What life do you want, Justin? To be a country schoolteacher?”
“Would you want to marry a country schoolteacher?” he asked.
“If he was you. Is that your dream?”
Justin shook his head, cautiously, because it ached like the blazes.
“No, actually. I needed a way to keep body and soul together while I tried to figure out how to have my dream. I have prize money, Felicity. Not a fortune. Not enough to buy a grand estate. But maybe enough for a small struggling estate. That’s my dream.
A home and a position all in one. I want the life of a country gentleman, looking after my acres, working alongside my tenants, socializing with my neighbors, raising a family with my wife. ”
He could see it in his mind’s eye, and for the past two years, the once shadowy figure of his wife in that dream had been Felicity.
For two years, he had been telling himself that she would not want such a quiet life, far from the political and diplomatic power that had been her life at Hythe’s side.
“I don’t mind if you disappear for several hours each day in order to write,” he added.
“Why, Mr. Weatherall, is this a proposal?” Felicity joked.
“Felicity,” Justin’s groan was a plea for mercy, and she must have realized that, for she changed the subject.
“How long have you and Robin been Captain Moonlight?”