Chapter Nine #2
“Don’t you have fancy balls and dinners to attend?”
The light disappeared from her eyes. “Yes.”
Lawrence waited. A cheer went up around them, but he did not bother to look around.
No, he was far more intrigued by the woman beside him. A woman whose presence and touch was doing mightily unfortunate things to his loins.
“Well?” he prompted, as nothing more appeared forthcoming from Julia. “Why aren’t you?”
“Hmm?”
Lawrence had to smile. It was rather gratifying, in a way, to see her so intoxicated by his presence, as he was in hers, that she could barely pay attention. “These balls, parties, and dinners, and all that. Why aren’t you there? Why are you—”
“Here? With you?” Julia said the words Lawrence would rather not say.
He nodded, reveling in the way his cheek brushed up against her head still on his shoulder.
Sadly, she removed it as she fixed him with a more focused eye.
“You mean, as a lady I should be out in Society, meeting with members of the ton, flattering the idiots I have the misfortune to meet, simpering at the eligible bachelors I am fortunate enough to get in their path, and hoping desperately to fall into a marriage that propels me one rung higher on the social ladder?”
Dear God, she was magnificent, Lawrence could not help but think. Had anyone else put the marriage mart in better terms?
At least, more accurate ones?
“Yes,” he said with a half grin. “Something like that.”
Julia laughed, rolling her eyes. “I am sorry, I did not mean to be so dismissive of my place… I know that there are many from the lower classes who would greatly wish—I should not have spoken so.”
“No, I am glad you did,” Lawrence said eagerly. Her hand was still in his. It should always be in his. “It is refreshing, I must say, to hear someone speak about Almack’s and the like in such a straight-forward fashion.”
Only too late did he spot the confusion in Julia’s eyes. “What could you possibly know about Almack’s?”
“Nothing,” he said hastily. “Nothing at all.”
He needed to distract her, Lawrence thought quickly. Something to cover the small blunder which had slipped from his tongue.
He did not want anyone to know of his true parentage, his rank, his duty.
Not until the duty he came here to perform was complete.
“One reads things—I read things,” Lawrence said, seeing that Julia was not convinced. “Gossip, mostly.”
An unknowable tension slipped from Julia’s shoulders. “Ah, yes. Well, I cannot tell you what it is like to attend such places, hoping not to offend, hoping to catch the eye of the right people and not disgrace oneself so poorly that one ends up in those scandal sheets!”
I absolutely can, Lawrence thought darkly. And it was unpleasant indeed.
In fact, there had been a few scandals recently, now he came to think about it.
All thanks to blatantly untrue gossip in the newspapers.
Goodness knew where they were getting their information from, but it was always just close enough to the truth to end reputations, even if the eventual outcome was that the damned rag had to publish a retraction.
Not that they often did.
Julia sighed. “It can be… Well, a burden, I suppose. I know it is foolish to think of it in such terms when one has a roof over one’s head, food and drink as one needs, and no real concerns over money…”
Her voice trailed away. Lawrence saw her discomfort and adored her for it.
Why, after all, she must think he envied her position in Society! Her rank, the class she had evidently been born to.
Perhaps if he was truly Lawrence Madgwick, fighting for coin each and every day in the hope of putting bread and a little paltry meat on the table, he would. As it was…
Lawrence slowly pushed a lock of Julia’s hair behind her ear and tried not to concentrate on the feeling of her beneath his fingertips, the way her breath caught as he touched her. “Oh?”
“Oh,” Julia said breathlessly, then collected herself. “Well, you fight each day to live your own life, on your own terms. You said before that you ran away from home, that you left the north.”
It was not precisely what Lawrence had said, but he was hardly going to correct her. Not while her eyes fixed on him in that way, her fingers tightening in his grip, the warmth of her radiating into his side—
“You have to fight to get what you want,” said Julia, her eyes not leaving his. “And I…I am fighting for what I want.”
Her voice seemed to give way at that point, as though she knew she had gone too far and would only shame herself by continuing.
But Lawrence’s curiosity was piqued. Here was a woman who had boldly approached him as he had lain beaten on the floor of a boxing ring. Who had kissed him most passionately. Who had stood in his arms mere days ago and almost cried out for his touch.
But she was going to halt now, just as she was about to reveal…
No. He had to know.
Lawrence was fast discovering his interest in Julia was not focused on her person. It was on her character, her presence, everything she was.
It was a worrying thought.
“Fight for what you want?” he nudged gently.
He watched Julia swallow, watched the war within her face as her forehead puckered. She wanted to speak, yet knew she should not.
He knew the feeling well.
Julia lifted her eyes to his boldly as a cheer went up around the Almonry Den, another pair of fighters stepping undoubtedly into the boxing ring. “I have…oh, Lawrence, I should have told you before. Not that it’s a secret, it’s just… I have been given a deadline. By my mother. To be married.”
Of all the things Lawrence expected to come from those lips, that was certainly not it.
“I have been given a deadline. By my mother. To be married.”
His stomach jolted most painfully as her words echoed around his mind, a cacophony accompanied by the cheers and shouts of the crowd.
Married? Julia? Deadline—no, it was not possible.
“Your mother? A deadline?” Lawrence repeated.
He wanted to pull her close, into his arms and tell her that he would not permit it; that there was only one person she was going to marry, and that was—
Just before he thought those final words, Lawrence managed to pull himself back.
Dear Lord, he could not go down that path. Not now, as he waited for Mortimer to rear his ugly head. Perhaps not even then. He was a duke, after all.
“Yes, by my mother,” Julia was saying awkwardly. “She says—well, that almost all those who came out into Society the same year I did are married, which is true, and that I have had plenty of admirers, which is also true—”
A spurt of bitter fire rose up in Lawrence’s chest, so violently hot it threatened to burn not only him but all around him.
Admirers? Of Julia?
“—and so she has said if I am not engaged by Easter, she shall choose a husband for me and make all the necessary arrangements,” Julia continued with a heavy sigh. “Not what I want, naturally, but…”
Her eyes had never left his. Lawrence was astonished to find he was now holding both of her hands in his. As though if he let go, there would be no possibility of finding her again, and the thought of losing her—
“Lawrence?”
“What?” he said distractedly, hardly knowing what he was doing.
Julia, married? To just anyone, anyone her mother could find?
It could not happen. It would not be allowed to happen.
Which was all very well, Lawrence thought wretchedly, but the trouble was he was hardly in a position to change the situation, was he?
He could not, would not return to Society until John Mortimer had been found. Blast it all, but he appeared to be no closer to finding the devil than when he had first arrived at the Almonry, months ago.
And even afterward…
Lawrence’s jaw tightened. Even then, when he was returned to his title as Duke of Penshaw, what then? The estate would expect him to find a daughter of a duke, maybe an marquess’s sister—at the very last, a woman from the line of earls.
Not a woman who dressed impeccably, snorted when she laughed, and had the brilliance of a diamond in her eyes but not around her neck.
“I shock you,” said Julia quietly.
Lawrence’s gaze sharpened. “No, I—”
“It offends you, perhaps, to hear of the upper classes doing such things,” Julia said over the noise of the crowd. Another man had thudded to the floor of the boxing ring. “In your world, two people who love each other can choose each other, can be happy—but in my world…”
Lawrence swallowed. In his world, when he was able to leave his cover and return to it, he had even less choice than she did.