Loving Julia (34 page)

Julia was in her bedchamber, oblivious to its comforts as she sat before the mirror watching Emily do her hair. Caroline, who had treated her as a bosom bow since Julia had confided that she was engaged to Oliver, had offered the services of her dresser, Miss Hanks, on the grounds that Emily had not the expertise to turn one out “complete to a shade” as was necessary for Lady Jersey’s ball. But Julia had declined the offer with thanks, and now as she sat looking at herself in the glass she saw no reason to regret her decision. Emily had done a beautiful job of twirling her hair into an intricate knot on top of her head, and then coaxing curling tendrils down from the upsweep to frame her face.

“A little rice powder, Miss Julia?” With Julia’s hair complete Emily turned her attention to the collection of cosmetics on the dressing table. Julia usually wore only the barest minimum of cosmetics, but rice powder was unexceptionable—everyone with the smallest pretensions to beauty wore it. She nodded, and Emily passed the paper over her face, leaving it milky white without the least hint of shine. Fortunately her lashes were naturally inky black like her hair, so she had no need to resort to stroking them with the burnt ends of matches as some of the fairer ladies did.

“Some color, Miss Julia?” Emily was already reaching for the rouge pot before Julia nodded. With a whisk of a rabbit’s foot across her cheekbones and lips, she bloomed with subtle color. No one but Emily and herself would know that it was not a real blush.

Then Emily removed the towel that she had placed around Julia’s neck to prevent any cosmetics from getting on her throat or bosom and Julia stood up to be eased into her dress. In honor of the occasion, she was laced so tightly that she could scarcely breathe. Above the lacing her breasts threatened to pop from her chemise. Below it four lacy petticoats billowed, ending in layers of flounces just above her slender silk encased ankles and narrow black dancing slippers. Emily lifted the dress from the bed, and threw it over Julia’s head with a deftness that disturbed not a hair. Then Julia stood before the cheval glass in the corner of the room, staring at her reflection as Emily did the dozens of tiny pearl buttons up the back.

The dress was made up of dull gold tissue over an underdress of gold satin. It was designed with tiny off the shoulder sleeves that made the most of her neck and shoulders and arms. The neckline was low and heart shaped, dipping to form a vee in the valley between her breasts, where it was held in place with a tiny gold satin rose. The bodice clung closely to her shape, outlining her proud high breasts and slender rib cage before flaring out into the enormous circle of her skirt. A wide gold satin sash wrapped her tiny waist, ending in an enormous bow with trailing satin streamers at the rear. The overskirt of tissue was caught up in scallops all around the hem and secured with tiny gold satin roses like the one at her bosom, revealing the gold satin underdress. A necklace of topazes loaned by Caroline was around her neck, a gold satin rose was pinned to a matching satin ribbon around one wrist, and another tiny gold satin rose was perched in her hair. The color made her eyes gleam even brighter than the topazes, and emphasized the creamy whiteness of her skin and the ebony blackness of her hair. It was a dream dress, and in it she looked like a dream.

Emily finished with the buttons, and stepped back. Taking a long look at Julia in the mirror, she shook her head and sighed.

“You surely do look a picture, Miss Julia. You’ll be the most beautiful lady at the ball.”

“Thank you, Emily.” Julia smiled at the girl with real affection. Emily had seen her through some of the most difficult days of her life, and she thought of the girl as a friend as well as a servant. Never by word or look did Emily treat her as anything other than a lady, though she knew as well as anyone the arduous process that had gone into producing the fashionable damsel who stood before her tonight.

“You’re welcome, Miss Julia.” Emily smiled back at her, the round face lightening into impish prettiness. She turned away to pick up a fan with an intricately painted scene in gold and creme, and Julia’s shawl, which was of gold lace and which was designed to droop negligently from the elbows. Just then a knock sounded at the door.

“Lord Carlyle is below, Miss Julia,” a voice called. Then footsteps hurried away, presumably to so inform Caroline and the countess. It was close on ten o’clock, and the ball had started at half past nine. Of course, no one who was anyone would dream of arriving on time, but it was not good manners to be too late. Forty-five minutes to an hour was about right. And Oliver, of course, was punctilious about matters of that sort.

It was foolish to let something so praiseworthy irritate her, Julia told herself as she scooped up her reticule and told Emily with a smile not to wait up for her. Oliver was to be her husband—in three days’ time, to be exact—and reliability was an excellent quality in a husband. If he dictated to her (such as by telling her, when he took her driving the afternoon after their aborted theatre visit, that they would be married in his London townhouse in four days’ time, when she would have preferred a far shorter wait for fear Sebastian would return and dash their plans), then she had best get used to it. Husbands had the absolute ordering of their wives’ lives, and the price she would have to pay for being Lady Carlyle, with all that that entailed, was being Oliver’s chattel. He was from all indications a kind and generous man, and she did not fear that he would abuse her. So surely putting up with his occasionally pedantic ways should not be too great a hardship. If she could just quit comparing his deliberate weighing of everything with Sebastian’s careless confidence. She would not compare him to Sebastian, she would
not
.

Oliver was looking very distinguished, she saw, in black evening clothes with a tall black top hat which he carried in one hand and an ebony cane. The silver streaks in his dark hair gave him a look of importance. Clearly he was a gentleman of influence, and she should be proud to be his fiancÉe.

“You are looking very nice, Oliver,” she called gaily down to him. He looked swiftly up at her as she came down the stairs, her golden skirts swirling around her feet. His eyes widened with appreciation, then he smiled his slow kind smile.

“And you are looking dazzling,” he responded, his eyes moving over her. He looked as if he would say more, but then his

eyes traveled beyond her and his smile changed to the merely polite.

“You look very lovely too, Countess,” he said. “And you too, as always, Mrs. Peyton.”

Julia reached the bottom of the stairs and looked up to see the countess, out of black for the occasion, clad in an elegantly severe gown of silver brocade. Beside her stood Caroline, dressed in a floaty organza in her favorite shade of pale blue. The countess smiled coolly at Oliver, of whom she approved, while her eyes passed over Julia with scarcely veiled malice in their depths. Julia had never forgotten the countess’ threat to make her regret speaking out in Sebastian’s defense, and that look made her shiver. The moment quickly passed as Smathers handed the ladies their cloaks, and Caroline and Julia exclaimed over each other’s gowns. Then they were off to the ball.

After fighting their way through the street that was thronged with carriages all on their way to Lady Jersey’s, Julia’s party was a good hour and a half late. But other late arrivals still streamed in the door, where they were relieved of their cloaks by liveried servants and pressed on up the wide staircase that led to the reception rooms on the first story. At the head of the stairs stood the receiving line, consisting of Lady Jersey and her seldom seen husband, her married daughter and the daughter’s husband, and Lady Soames, who Julia knew was a good friend of Lady Jersey’s, and her husband. She passed down the line as in a dream, murmuring polite phrases as the august ladies beamed at her.

The rumors about her forthcoming marriage to Oliver had been flying thick and fast through the ton in recent days; Julia suspected she had Caroline’s loose tongue to thank for that. Their effect was so beneficial that she could not regret her secret’s loss of secrecy. The wife of so influential a man as Lord Carlyle would be a person to be reckoned with in Society, and these ladies were prepared to take her to their bosoms. Once the marriage actually took place, she would be part of the crÈme de la crÈme of the ton.

The ballroom was long and narrow and burningly hot already, though tall windows at the rear had been opened onto the terrace and a light breeze stirred the tied back curtains. The orchestra was in place, and the strains of a lively country dance filled the air. Couples skipped merrily to the music in the center of the room, laughing and calling to one another as the movements of the dance gave them no opportunity for private talk.

More people milled around the edges of the floor, where the debutantes waited until they should be asked to dance and the dowagers sat as chaperones. It was incorrect to permit a gentleman who was not one’s husband or fiancÉ to claim more than two dances in one evening, but still the popular ladies were always surrounded while the less popular ones languished.

As the gentlemen who usually paid court to her perceived Julia’s arrival, she was immediately surrounded. Oliver frowned a little at all the compliments the gentlemen showered on her as they bantered good-naturedly over her dance card, but as he was not officially her fiancÉ there was little he could do besides putting his name down for the maximum two dances and for supper. As his first dance was not until right before supper—served at the fashionable hour of midnight—he was forced to relinquish her to Viscount Darby, who had put his name down for the first dance. Julia smiled an apology at Oliver as the thin young man led her away, and was rewarded by his reluctant smile. Oliver, it seemed, was not the type to be overly jealous.

Julia danced every dance, laughing and flirting with her partners and calling out to those of the ladies who had become her particular friends. Caroline spent more time than was proper in the arms of Lord Rowland, leading Julia to hope for a romance there. The dowager countess didn’t dance, but instead sat amongst her cronies at the edge of the floor, looking like an icicle in a room full of spring flowers. Julia felt those cold blue eyes on her once or twice, but she deliberately ignored the shivery sensation they caused. She would not let that horrid old woman intimidate her.

Supper was marvelous, and Julia thoroughly enjoyed herself gorging on chilled salmon mousse and lobster patties, roast goose and CrÈme Bruille. But by the time it was over and she had danced a couple more dances, her hair had started to fall from its pins and her feet had started to hurt. She began to find her partners’ chatter silly, and when the honorable Mr. John Somerset trod on a trailing flounce of her gown and ripped it, the magic of the evening disappeared completely.

She had to go to an antechamber and pin the flounce up. When she returned to the dance floor, she stood for a moment looking about her. She had lost her dance card sometime after supper, so except for Oliver, who had claimed the last dance, she had no idea who her partners for the rest of the evening would be. She looked over the crush of people talking and laughing, trying to divine who might have a claim on her for the dance that was just striking up. She spotted Tim Rathburn, looking forlorn on the other side of the room as he scanned the crowd, and she seemed to remember that he had signed her card. So she made her way toward him, weaving through the throng. He saw her coming at last, and his thin dark face lit up with relief. Quickly he pushed toward her until he was at her side.

“I’d thought you’d gone and forgotten our dance, Mrs. Stratham,” he said, smiling down at her as he took her elbow.

“Certainly not, Mr. Rathburn,” she replied, now having to force the gaiety that had come so easily to her at the beginning of the evening.

He pulled her into his arms, chatting about inconsequentials as Julia mentally sank into the movements of the waltz. She loved this dance, probably because it always reminded her of Sebastian and how he had danced her down the long gallery at White Friars.

“By Jove,” Rathburn said, sounding odd as he looked at something over her head. Julia, turning around, saw that everyone else on the dance floor was, one by one, doing the same thing. As heads turned and steps faltered, she too craned to see what was causing so much commotion. Then she did see, and caught her breath. It was Sebastian.

He was clad in impeccable black evening clothes that molded his broad shoulders and long muscular legs, and contrasted spectacularly with the gleaming silver-gilt of his hair. He appeared completely at his ease, and seemed impervious to the attention he was attracting. To Julia’s knowledge he had not attended a ton party since Elizabeth had died, and she doubted that he had been invited to this one. He was very much the social pariah, and people, particularly the ladies, were drawing back from him on all sides as he passed among them.

But if he noticed the silent hissing, he gave no sign of it. He looked remote and confident as though he were the only aristocrat amongst a roomful of peasants. His air of cold hauteur, combined with the dazzling good looks that made Julia’s heart speed up and completely eclipsed every other man in the room, set him apart quite as effectively as the silent withdrawal of the others.

Julia saw the dowager countess sit up a little straighter as she became aware of her son and the treatment he was receiving, but other than that she made no sign that she was even acquainted with him as he stood there, quite alone at the edge of the dance floor, surveying the awkwardly turning couples.

Then he saw Julia. She saw those blue eyes fix steadily upon her, and she felt suddenly, fiercely glad that he had come. Despite everything…. She smiled at him brilliantly, defying the shocked stares of the curious and her partner’s sudden intake of breath.

Sebastian saw that smile and looked at her for a long moment, his blue eyes blazing into her gold ones with an intensity that sliced through the heavy, largely silent air that had fallen over the crowded room. He started walking toward her, and the other dancers parted like the Red Sea before Moses. She watched him come and her heart swelled. She had wished for him, oh, she had wished for him….