Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Where are you going so late in the evening?” Julia demanded of her father as he stood in the candlelit entrance hall of their London home, drawing his black cloak about him before putting on his beaver top hat.
“It is after eleven o’clock.” She could not help but suspect this unusual behavior had something to do with Nicholas’s absence.
The four ladies had finally arrived back in London late this afternoon, going first to Broom House to allow the marchioness and Amanda to disembark before they continued the rest of the way to Ipswich House.
As it was so late, Julia and Amanda had decided they would call upon the Countess of Shefford.
They could only hope that Georgiana returned to London before anyone suspected she had not been with them in Surrey at all.
Her father had been grim-faced and disapproving when his wife and daughter had arrived in London so unexpectedly.
Nor, no matter what Julia said or did, would her father reveal where Nicholas was or if he knew whether the younger man was completely returned to good health after the carriage accident.
Now this strange behavior.
It had been quite by happenstance that instead of ringing for a maid or footman, Julia had left her bedchamber in her nightgown and robe, her hair loose, to venture downstairs with the intention of going to the kitchen to warm some milk for herself.
Sleep had completely eluded her, despite her having retired to her bedchamber an hour ago.
Finding her father in the vast entrance hall, donning his cloak and hat with the obvious intention of venturing out despite the lateness of the hour, reawakened all her suspicions.
“I am well aware of the time, thank you,” her father now answered her sternly.
“Well?” she prompted when he added nothing else.
“Why are you not in your bedchamber, as any decent young lady should be at this time of night?”
“Papa—”
“Julia,” he bit out. “Where I am going, and who I will see when I get there, is none of your business. Now, please go back to your bedchamber—”
“If it involves Nicholas, then it is my business!” She refused to be treated like some simpering ninny afraid of the truth.
Her father’s brow rose. “Nicholas is it now?”
Julia felt the warmth of a blush in her cheeks. “We are betrothed. What else am I to call him?”
“The last you spoke on the subject, you made it clear you had no intention of marrying him.”
“Yes. Well.” She frowned in frustration. “It is the right of any decent young lady to change her mind.” She used his own words to mock him.
His brows rose even higher. “Does Wolfingham know of your change of heart?”
She glared. “I do not recall mentioning my heart had changed toward him!”
Her father’s expression softened, and he reached out to gently squeeze her forearm before releasing it again.
“You are an intelligent and beautiful young lady whom any man would be proud to call his daughter. Which I am,” he assured.
“As such, please listen to me when I tell you that pride is no substitute for the happiness of having the person you love in your life.”
Julia knew that. Of course she did. But she was helpless to change things between herself and Nicholas when no one would even tell her where he was.
She drew in a deep breath before speaking. “I said some terrible things to Nicholas the last time we met, and I—I have now come to regret them very much.”
“Ah.” Her father nodded. “You are still under the misapprehension that he is a flirt and rake.”
“No. He’s told me the truth about that.”
Her father appeared startled. “He has?”
“Yes. He also told me about the other members of the Prince Regent’s private army. Not their names,” she hastened to assure when her father looked alarmed. “Only that they exist. I—I guessed that you and Uncle Broom are two of them.”
Her father smiled wryly. “As I said, intelligent as well as beautiful. But if you talked so freely together, sharing secrets, why did the two of you not come to some sort of agreement regarding— Ah, this is because of Freddie,” her father guessed heavily.
Tears stung her eyes. “He was so young when he died, Papa. And it feels… I feel disloyal for falling in love with his brother.” There, she had spoken the words out loud. To her father, of all people.
But she knew it to be the truth. She loved Nicholas in a way she had never, nor could ever, have loved Freddie.
Her love for Freddie was that of a sister compared to the dizzying heights of a grand passion that made her heart pound every time she so much as thought of being with Nicholas and the way in which they had kissed and touched each other.
“If Freddie had lived, would you have married him?”
Her eyes widened, but she answered without hesitation. “Absolutely not.”
Her father’s visage softened. “He asked me, you know. If I would give my approval and consent to him asking you to marry him.”
She gasped. “He did?” She had never heard anything of this before tonight. But it made Amanda’s comment that Freddie loved her and had joined the army because he wished to impress her seem more believable.
“Yes.” Her father sighed. “I told him that he was asking the wrong person. That if you were agreeable to the marriage, then your mother and I would do everything we could to support your decision.”
“Even knowing of my betrothal was to the eldest Harding son?”
“I am sure that if your heart was with Freddie, we would have been able to come to some sort of compromise regarding the clause in your grandmother’s will so that you could marry the brother you loved rather than the eldest living Harding son.”
Julia’s gaze roamed searchingly over her father’s features. The half-smile curving his lips didn’t reach his eyes the way it normally did. “You did not approve of Freddie for me,” she stated with certainty.
“No, I did not. Nor did your mother.” He grimaced. “Understand, love, we liked Freddie, loved him even. But as a son, not as a husband for you. But, having said that, we would still have respected your decision if you had chosen to accept his proposal.”
“He never asked me.”
“Perhaps he intended doing so when he returned home a hero from the fighting,” her father said sadly.
Perhaps he had. But he had not returned home and had instead died on a battlefield far from home.
A loss Julia would feel for the rest of her life.
But only because, as she had told Amanda, Freddie had been her friend all her life.
In truth, Julia was quite relieved that she would never need to tell Freddie that she was not, nor would she ever be, in love with him in the way a wife should be with her husband.
That she was in love with Nicholas, not him.
That, she knew, was the honest truth.
One that Nicholas deserved to hear from her rather than the cruel words Julia had spoken to him before they last parted.
Did he know of Freddie having spoken to her father about marrying her? If he did, why had he not said so? There seemed to be only one answer to that.
Because Nicholas had not wished to hurt her with the truth that Freddie had joined the army in the hopes of impressing her, not his older brother, as she had always thought.
Nicholas had instead chosen to hurt himself and protect her.
She desperately needed to speak with him, to tell him how sorry she was for misjudging him, and hope that he would be able to forgive her for Freddie having joined the army and being killed only weeks later.
She straightened, her resolve even stronger than it had been a few minutes ago. “Where are you going, Papa?” she demanded to know.
“Julia—”
“Do not attempt to fob me off,” she warned. “I am not in the mood to be trifled with, and that includes being treated as a child and not a woman who is concerned for the man she loves.”
His smile was rueful. “You really are in love with Nicholas?”
She nodded. “But I believe he should be the one I say that to first, and sooner rather than later.”
Her father appeared undecided for several agonizing minutes until his brow cleared as he finally came to a decision.
“We have learned, after apprehending a street urchin as he left the Mastersons’ home earlier today, that the people who kidnapped Masterson’s sister have contacted him and there is to be an exchange at midnight tonight: Nicholas for Susan Masterson. ”
Julia gasped. “But whoever these people are, they might want Nicholas only so that they can kill him!”
“We have new evidence that suggests this might be the case.”
“What evidence?”
“I cannot discuss these things with someone who is not a part of Prinny’s inner circle—”
“I am betrothed to Nicholas.” She glared at her father. “As such, I must insist upon knowing what else you know about these kidnappers.”
The earl glanced anxiously at his pocket watch. “I really do have to go, Julia. I have lingered long enough.”
“Take me with you,” she urged.
“What!” Her father gaped at her. “It is one thing for you to be roaming about our home in your night clothes, but another thing entirely to expect me to allow you to leave the house in that same scandalous state.”
“If you give me five minutes—no two,” she amended when she saw how her father’s impatient expression had deepened. “I will quickly collect some clothes from my bedchamber and dress in the carriage on our way to wherever this meeting is to take place.”
“You intend— You will— No, damn it,” her father snapped, his face red with anger. “You will not leave this house again tonight. Do you hear me?”
“I hear and understand you,” she acknowledged carefully. “But if you do not take me with you, then I will simply dress and then find my own conveyance. If I must I shall search all over London for where I think you might be meeting these kidnappers.”
“You most certainly will not—”
“I will,” she insisted adamantly.
“I am your father!”
“And I am simply a woman determined to save the man she loves.” If Nicholas lived through whatever was to take place later tonight.