Chapter Six
It was almost midnight when Julia slowly opened the side gate.
It creaked. Loudly.
Julia halted, freezing in the cold night air as she looked up at the windows, desperately concerned a light would appear. After all, it had been a loud noise—at least, it had felt like it.
Perhaps she was overthinking. Julia’s breath blossomed out before her, the wintery air ice cold as she stood motionless, praying desperately no one had heard her.
If they did, they showed no sign. Slowly, slowly, desperately trying to remind herself she needed to ask a footman to oil the gate in the morning, Julia crept around the side of the house and let herself in through the side door.
It was unlocked. Of course it was. People who lived in their area of London did not worry about locking their doors. Ruffians and the like simply weren’t countenanced. Not in Mayfair.
Julia smiled as she slipped off her shoes and crept along the pitch-black corridor.
Ruffians like the people she had just spent the evening with, for example…
Her heart raced as she slowly made her way up the stairs. She was almost safe. If her mother found her here, she could just about explain her presence out of bed by saying she had wanted to go to the kitchen for a drink.
And had…got dressed to do so?
Julia cursed her foolish idea as she reached the landing. She really would have to think of a better excuse, in case she was discovered out of bed. It would be most unfortunate if she was to be found with no snappy retort.
By the time she reached her bedchamber and slowly turned the handle, the exhaustion Julia had kept at bay all evening rushed upon her. She half sat, half fell onto her bed. The hot brick at the end was stone cold.
A smile crept across her face.
And what an evening it had been. Why, she had never seen such complexity of movements as the second fight of the night.
Lawrence had said so, too, pointing out the delicate way the man’s feet had moved across the ring.
He had leaned close to her, pointing, and she had leaned into him.
Breathed in the heady sensation of him. Tried to focus on what he was trying to show her when all she could think about was that kiss…
A kiss that, sadly, had never been repeated. At least, not yet.
Julia sighed happily.
She had not told Lawrence she was going to be there, and he had not appeared surprised when she had slid onto the bench beside him. It had become their habit, twice a week or so, to meet there. To watch a few fights, talk a little, laugh…and then he would disappear and appear in the ring himself.
Cheering him from the stands was entirely different now she knew him.
Or at least, Julia reminded herself as she slipped off her stockings and started to unpick the ties of her gown, she knew him better.
There was still so much she did not know, so much she—
Her bedchamber door opened, and Julia whirled around, pulling her gown around her, but her heart slowed as she saw a familiar grin in the door.
“I heard you come in,” whispered Donald with a stifled laugh. “You are incorrigible!”
“And you are the one who took me there first, so it is all your fault,” Julia hissed back, trying not to laugh herself.
How fortunate it was that her brother had come of age so recently. To think, if he had not, she would not have been able to go to Almonry Den.
Never met Lawrence…
“You didn’t go back again tonight?”
Julia nodded, exhausted. “And I’ll be there tomorrow, if you want a flutter.”
The terminology tasted strange in her mouth, but it was worth it to see her brother’s eyes widen. “Julia Dryden, you cannot possibly—”
“Fine, I won’t gamble,” sighed Julia. “But you have to admit, it is a wonderful escapade. I enjoy it there.”
The laughter slowly ebbed away in her brother’s eyes, leaving something that looked to Julia almost like…severity?
“You didn’t go back to see him, did you?”
A prickle of discomfort settled in her chest as Julia dropped her gaze to her hands.
She had, of course. How could she stay away from Lawrence? He was the most fascinating man she had ever met. Far more interesting than any gentleman she’d been introduced to, more dangerous, more exciting.
More handsome. More able to make every part of her shiver whenever he sat by her.
And that kiss—
“You mean Lawrence?” she whispered, far more boldly than she felt.
Donald shook his head with a sigh. “You really shouldn’t—”
“There are plenty of things a lady should not do, and I would adhere to the rules if I thought a single gentleman would,” Julia retorted, trying her best to keep her voice down.
If their mother heard their conversation…
Well. She would not see Lawrence again or attend a single boxing match at the Almonry Den, because she would be restricted to her bedchamber, or worse, buried.
Her brother gazed at her sternly. “As your brother it is my duty—”
“As your older sister, it is my duty to send you to bed,” hissed Julia, adopting a mock serious tone as she giggled. “Go on with you, I’m tired. We can discuss this in the morning.”
Donald sighed. “Night, Julia.”
“Night, Don.”
As the door shut, Julia waited to hear her brother’s footsteps. As she expected, they did not trail off to the left where his bedchamber could be found…but to the right. To the stairs.
He was going out himself, she thought sleepily as she finished undressing and slipped on her nightgown. A gaming hell, I’m sure. Hark at him, lecturing me about what was appropriate!
Only when she settled in bed, the covers mercifully warm thanks to her embroidered blanket—something she had hated making—did Julia permit herself to think once again about the man she craved more than any other.
Lawrence.
It was scandalous, she supposed, that she wanted to see him so often. Even if he had been of her class, a gentleman, it would have been rather irregular to see each other so frequently.
But he was not a gentleman, was he? Julia shivered but not with cold as she curled up and thought of those strong hands. Hands that had undoubtedly fought their way out of a pickle not just in the boxing ring, but in the streets.
Hands that knew precisely what they were doing…
By the time Julia awoke, the sun was up and she was toasty warm under the bedclothes—but she was not there for long.
“Eleven?” she had said yesterday, her voice eager as she looked up into Lawrence’s dark eyes.
“You should get home,” he had warned her, a teasing lilt in his voice.
She had not heeded him, desperate to make him promise. “Eleven o’clock?”
And Lawrence had hesitated, his gaze roving over her, and Julia had hoped he liked what he saw. He must have done. He had agreed.
They would meet at Hyde Park Corner the next day at eleven o’clock. That was today.
“Darling, I missed you at supper last night,” her mother called as Julia raced down the stairs two at a time. “Really, is that the way a lady—”
“Can’t stop, Mama, sorry, meeting a—a friend,” Julia called out as she rushed into the hall.
Her fingers stumbled as she attempted to pull on her pelisse and pin on her bonnet at the same time. She was going to be late if she did not hurry. That’s what came of going to bed so late…
“A friend?”
Julia rolled her eyes as she shoved an arm through her pelisse and almost dropped her reticule. “That is what I said, Mama.”
Her mother poked her head around the corner of the door to the breakfast room with a most puzzled expression. “But you aren’t meeting any friends today, I have a different schedule planned!”
“Well, I am sorry, Mama,” Julia said smartly, ramming her bonnet on her head and giving up on the pins.
Her heart pattered excitedly, anticipation mounting. Just a few more minutes, maybe thirty, and she would see him again…
“But—”
“Mama, you do not orchestrate my social calendar, I am almost one and twenty,” Julia said firmly, turning to look at her mother. “If you wish to include me on invitations, you have to tell me!”
Mrs. Dryden blinked. “But I did. I told you yesterday. We are having elevenses with the Hargreaves and then afternoon tea with the Marnions.”
Julia managed to prevent herself from using one of the very colorful curses she had overheard at the Almonry Den. It really was a wonderful sound, she greatly wished to try it out herself, but perhaps a discussion with her mother was not the time.
“I apologize, Mama, but I cannot get out of this now, and you will be more than enough company for the Marnions,” she said, stepping toward the door. Anything to be closer to him… “And the Hargreaves.”
“Julia Dryden,” her mother said sternly. “You said that Easter this year was more than enough time to find a husband! I do not wish to choose one for you, but you are getting on in years, dear, and—”
Julia winced. No one wished to be reminded of such a thing. “I will find a husband when I am good and ready, Mama.”
“But—”
“I’ll see you at dinner!” Julia shot over her shoulder as she slammed the door behind her.
If the door had remained open, she was certain to have heard her mother’s outrage—but, as it was, she could ignore her and stride down the street in the bitter cold, toward the person she had not stopped thinking about since the moment she had left him.
“You are late,” Lawrence said reprovingly as she rushed toward him, half skipping, half running.
Julia grinned as she tried to catch her breath, leaning a hand against his chest. “Ladies are never late.”
“Oh, really?”
There was such laughter in his words Julia hardly knew what to do with herself. What did ladies do, when they met a man who so utterly captivated them? Who proved the rest of the world to be dull?
“Really!” beamed Julia as she looked into the handsome face of a man she was rapidly starting to rely on. “You are early, shamefully so. Your eagerness to be in my presence is noted.”
She had meant it as a joke, an encouragement to laugh and tease her some more.
And yet, he didn’t. Lawrence flushed, a dark flush across his cheeks, and for some reason it made Julia feel…
Well. As though she was floating.