Chapter 2 #2
His fingers clenched protectively around Julianna’s arm, but she only leaned closer and said lightly in his ear, “How kind of her to admire my gown. I do wear it rather well, don’t you think?”
He found himself breathing again. She was good at this. Perhaps they ought to have hurled stones at foxes a long time ago.
A group of gentlemen on horseback slowed as they drew near. One tipped his hat politely, with only the faintest hesitation before courtesy won out. “Chester,” he said. “Felicitations on your marriage.”
Fred nodded, and thanked him, searching his memory for how he knew the man. And then he recalled he’d bought an Arabian off him once at a very good price. Perhaps, he thought for just a moment, there might be more to London and its inhabitants than just a love of gossip, after all.
But then another couple passed in an open barouche, slowing just enough to look Julianna up and down with open appraisal.
The gentleman’s mouth curled in something like distaste.
Julianna gave them a single, cursory glance—and then she smiled and lifted her gloved hand in a wave before resting it back on Fred’s arm.
He shifted his hand to cover hers, letting every bit of possessiveness he felt come through.
“You’re enjoying this,” he murmured to her.
“I wouldn’t say I’m enjoying it exactly, no. But I suppose it doesn’t matter all that much to me one way or the other what they think. We have the warm air, which I never thought I would say of London over Dorsetshire, and my husband’s company. I don’t need more than that to hold my head high.”
“I doubt you ever imagined saying that of me—that my company was enough.”
He felt the hitch in her step as she paused. “No. But I would have been wrong. And how fortunate that I’ve discovered it.”
He wondered for a moment at her bravery—not only to be here at Rotten Row but to just say words like those, out loud for Christ’s sake—before they passed a family they both recognized.
Dorset people, transplanted for the Season.
The matron’s lips pursed and her daughters stared with naked fascination. Fred felt his own step stutter.
Dorset—it was always Dorset that undid him.
But Julianna slowed her gait marginally until his feet were back underneath him and she graced the family with her most gracious smile.
“How marvelous to see you here, Mrs. Walton,” she said smoothly. “And with the Misses Felicity and Patience. We wish you well during your Season.”
Fred tipped his hat and onward they went.
“She once had a tendre for my father, I think,” Julianna whispered to him. “But he disappeared to Dominica one summer and returned with my mother. I don’t think she’s ever quite forgiven us for the slight.”
She laughed lightly and Fred joined her. He thought, foolishly, that they were going to win this battle without spilling a drop of blood. But he was wrong.
A horse snorted nearby, the sound impatient as the rhythm of hooves slowed to a deliberate, measured pace. Fred felt the tension of the animal between his shoulderblades, as if he too were being directed in a way he didn’t want to go.
“What is it,” Julianna murmured, her smile fading.
A chestnut mare drew level with them, glossy and restless, its rider sitting side saddle with a languid assurance that would have been attractive had it not been so vain.
The horse halted, the reins checked by the Baroness Van Austerleigh, her hand gloved in the finest cordoban leather.
Fred felt his chest begin to constrict again and that was before he noticed the younger man who rode half a length behind her, handsome and fresh-faced, watching Fred with open interest.
Had he, he wondered, looked so naive when he’d trod along behind her?
Of course he had.
“Well,” the Baroness said, her voice drifting lazily down to them. “If it isn’t Lord Chester. Restored at last to polite society, I see.”
Her gaze swept over him with unhidden familiarity before settling on Julianna. It lingered there on his wife.
“And Lady Chester. Good to see you again.”
That startled him. But of course Julianna knew the Baroness. She was from Dorset too, as much as he was. And they’d both been at Madame Tremaux’s yesterday.
Julianna inclined her head. “Baroness.”
A faint smile curved the Baroness’s lips. “I’m glad to see you promenade so openly. After everything that’s been said, much less printed, most would not show their faces.”
Fred felt Julianna’s fingers tighten on his arm before she replied. “London is quite pleasant today. It would be a pity not to enjoy it.”
The Baroness laughed but no mirth reached her eyes. “Indeed.”
She looked again—briefly but quite deliberately—to where Julianna’s gloved hand rested against Fred’s sleeve. The young man behind her shifted in his saddle, clearly uncertain about this social interaction and any role he ought to be playing in it.
None, thought Fred. He was only a child.
Sixteen probably. Slightly older than he had been when the Baroness first seduced him.
And that stopped him for a moment. He’d never thought of it as such, because at that age he hadn’t thought of himself as a child.
But of course he had been. And that realization…
sat very uneasily in the pit of his stomach.
He watched the young man hover just behind the Baroness’s shoulder and more truths pressed in on him with uncomfortable force: He’d been a child and she’d been an adult.
Whatever he’d been to her had not been equal.
He’d not been a partner but an…accessory.
Just as this young man nervously huddled behind her was.
He felt his breathing speed up and his fist clench. Julianna, beside him, noticed. She leaned into him slightly, as if to let him know she was there. And then she said briskly, “Take care in London, Baroness. We must be off.” And began to walk.
For a heartbeat, the Baroness only stared at their departing figures. But then she smiled at them both and gathered her reins. “Come along, Harold,” she said to the young man who trailed her. And then she called over her shoulder to Fred, “Enjoy your little lark, Chester. While it lasts.”
Conversation around them swelled again as the crowds swallowed up the Baroness.
“Well,” Julianna said quietly after a moment, “she is unpleasant.”
Fred tried to laugh, but it came out too thin. “Yes, she is.”
Julianna was tilting her head again and looking at him oddly. “Fred,” she finally said. “If there is anything you’d like to discuss with me about what happened with the Baroness, I’d be glad to listen.”
“Nothing, dearheart,” Fred replied, unease still churning in his stomach even as he said the words.
He was so different now than the boy he’d once been with her. A boy who had been desperate for companionship and flattered by attention. A boy who had given and given while she took. A boy who had become a man twisted by guilt.
In his mind he’d always thought his guilt over Eva and the carriage accident was different, separate somehow, from his guilt over letting the Baroness seduce him.
But he could see now that they weren’t different.
That his feelings were all mixed up together in some kind of knot of remorse and shame he didn’t know how to begin unpicking.
He could see too, looking at Harold, how young he’d been. He hadn’t known it because young people never do. But he had been.
And if he could feel for Harold, could he not also feel for the young Fred? He shuddered at the thought. Just that single soft tendril of forgiveness for the boy he’d been sliced right through him.
When they’d left for Rotten Row earlier that day, he’d done so knowing that blood might be spilled. Now he realized it had been—but the wound had been inflicted a decade ago, before he had even known what to call it.