Scandal of the Year (6 page)

There, lounging back in a plum-colored evening gown and long white gloves, diamonds round her throat and an amused smile on her lips, was the woman he’d been trying to forget all day, all week, all year—the same woman, in fact, he’d been trying to forget since he was seventeen years old.

Chapter Five

Dorset, 1891

T
he first time Aidan ever saw Julia, he thought he’d stepped out of a forest in Dorset and into a storybook.

He’d finished his final term at Eton, and he was enjoying a much-needed summer holiday before going on to Oxford for the autumn. On a glorious afternoon in July, he was taking a walk through the woods when he caught sight of a beautiful girl lying as if asleep on a footbridge over a meandering brook. The sight was so much like a storybook illustration, he stopped in astonishment.

Dressed in a blue velvet gown, her eyes closed, her face relaxed in repose, and her hands clasped beneath one cheek, she made him think at once of Sleeping Beauty, if one could imagine the heroine of that particular fable with hair of raven black rather than angelic gold. The long, curly tresses spilled over her bent arms and off the side of the bridge, where the ends just grazed the water. Behind her on the bridge, a spinning wheel completed the scene, and though the item was in keeping with the tale of Sleeping Beauty, it was hardly the sort of thing one stumbled across in the midst of English woods.

Aidan blinked several times, but each time he opened his eyes, the sleeping girl and her spinning wheel were still there.

She made a charming, if incongruous, picture lying there, dappled by the sunlight that filtered down between the weeping willows. Aidan wasn’t a fanciful man or a macabre one, but if the bridge were changed to a glass coffin, the picture of Princess Aurora would be complete. The only thing lacking, he thought, was the prince to kiss her.

But that moment, she seemed to awaken without that sort of heroic assistance, and when she spoke, his impression of the sweet, dulcet heroine waiting to be awakened by a kiss was utterly and completely shattered.

“Oh, bloody hell!” she cried, sitting up, swinging her legs over the side—her bare legs, he realized as her hem caught on the edge of the bridge, bunching her skirts up around her knees. Her toes hit the water with a splash, and Aidan lifted his gaze, forcing himself to look at her face rather than her legs.

“What the devil comes next?” she muttered in vexation. “I’ll muff this, I know I will, and then I’ll be sunk.” Grinding her teeth, she pressed a palm to her forehead. “Sunk like a damned ship. What am I going to do?”

With her words, the spell was broken, for no fairy-tale heroine would make use of such language. But the girl did seem to be in some sort of distress, and Aidan stepped forward.

“Good afternoon,” he said, emerging from amid the trees. “Are you in need of assistance?”

She gave a gasp at the sound of his voice and looked up. “Damn and blast!” she cried, pressing a hand to her chest. “How you startled me!”

He stopped at the foot of the bridge, and as he studied her face, his initial impression faded even more, for now that Sleeping Beauty had awakened, he was more inclined to think of street urchins than storybook heroines. Her heart-shaped face was lovely, but in a rakish sort of way, with big, violet-blue eyes, sooty lashes, and a pointed chin. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders, not in perfect, picture-book waves but a riot of rebellious curls.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he apologized, giving her a bow. “I didn’t mean to startle you. My only excuse is that I was a bit shocked myself. I thought for a moment you were Sleeping Beauty.”

Her frown transformed at once into a grin, revealing a pair of dimples and a streak of impudence. “That’s the idea.”

He frowned, puzzled by this cryptic reply, but before he could ask what she meant, she reached into the pocket of her skirt and spoke again. “That is,” she said, pulling out several folded sheets of paper, “if I can manage to remember my lines.”

She unfolded the papers and scanned the top sheet, and as she did so, her legs swayed idly back and forth, her toes skimming the water, and Aidan froze, suddenly riveted.

In the entire seventeen years of his life, he’d never observed a woman’s bare legs. As a young boy, he and some of his friends had stumbled upon a group of girls their own age bathing naked, but since they’d all been about nine years old at the time, that hardly counted. During the years since, he’d caught occasional glimpses of stocking-clad ankles when gusts of wind sent the skirts of young ladies whipping up. He’d even been given a view of the shadowy contours of a courtesan’s body not long ago, in the dim light of a brothel after a somewhat disillusioning first coupling. But he’d never before been given a view like this—a view of shapely calves, delicate ankles, and slender feet boldly displayed in broad daylight. Adolescent lust began coursing through his body in the space of two heartbeats, a sudden, powerful wave that disconcerted him, embarrassed him, and robbed him of the ability to think or even breathe.

She wiggled her toes in the water, pretty pink and white toes that splashed the surface, and he began to feel a bit desperate, not sure if he’d be able to hide or suppress what was rapidly overtaking him. Ever since he could remember, Aidan had taken great pride in having a well-disciplined body and mind, of always being in complete control of himself and any situation. But this unaccountable slip of a girl was testing his notions of self-discipline in a way he’d never had to overcome before.

Striving to think of things like honor and good breeding and gentlemanly codes of conduct, he tore his gaze away from her naked legs and forced himself to remember what they’d been discussing. “Lines? Are you in a play, then?”

“Heavens, no!” she answered at once, looking up from her sheet of paper. “I go about the forest in my blue velvet gown all the time. And my spinning wheel? I cart it along everywhere I go.”

He grinned at that. She certainly was a saucy creature.

She laughed, watching him. “There!” she cried, sounding triumphant. “A smile. I was beginning to think you had no sense of humor. I mean, any other bloke who’d run across this situation would have been laughing long before now, in disbelief, if nothing else.”

“Forgive me. I didn’t realize a woman in distress was something to smile about,” he said with a polite bow.

“Oh, don’t!” she cried, sounding vexed and frowning again. “Don’t turn all stiff and formal on me, not now, not when we’ve begun to be friends.”

He doubted he and this wild girl could ever find the common ground to be friends. She seemed to be some sort of actress, and he was a duke, and the only friendship that could come from that sort of situation was a rather unsavory one. Still, it would be unseemly to express that thought aloud. “So,” he said instead, “you are an actress?”

“No, no, but I am in a play.” She caught his puzzled look and laughed. “It’s just a skit, really, to raise money for the orphanage fund. All the events today are for the orphanage.”

“Ah,” he said, a bit more enlightened. “So there’s a fete on?”

“This afternoon.” She waved the sheaf of papers in her hand again. “I have only a bit of time left to learn my lines, so I decided to find a nice quiet spot and see if I can memorize enough to keep from making an utter fool of myself today. I fear it’s hopeless, though, for I’ve left it too late.”

Aidan, who never made a fool of himself if he could avoid it, and who never left anything until the last minute, felt impelled to point out the obvious. “Wouldn’t it have been wise to spend more time preparing for your part?”

“Well, yes,” she conceded with another grin, “but why do today what one can put off until tomorrow?”

“You don’t seem to be taking your role very seriously.”

“Petal, I don’t take anything seriously.” She cast him a shrewd glance. “You, I’ll wager, have the opposite problem. Do you drink?”

He blinked, taken rather aback by this seemingly irrelevant question. “No,” he answered with a decided shake of his head. “I don’t. Why do you ask?”

“You should drink, at least a little. You’re wound a bit tight. A drink now and again would loosen you up.”

“It did, I’m afraid. With disastrous results.”

“Really?” she exclaimed with lively curiosity. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. I was sixteen. I, along with my friends, raided my father’s wine cellar, and we drank his entire stock of French champagnes.”

“Oh my.” She chuckled. “I’m beginning to like you.”

“The next thing I remember was waking up in a room at the local inn without any idea how I got there. It was morning, and I don’t remember much of anything about the night before, but from the accounts of my friends, it seems I let all my father’s dogs out of the kennels, rode horseback into the village, serenaded the vicar around three o’clock in the morning, and tried to seduce the innkeeper’s daughter—” He stopped, astonished he was telling such embarrassing things to a complete stranger. “It was stupid.”

“So why did you do it?”

The question made him grimace. “I don’t know.”

“Of course you know. You did it because you wanted to.” She tilted her head to one side, studying him thoughtfully. “You’re one of those dutiful sons, I’ll wager, the sort who never causes his parents any anxiety, who always does the right thing, obeys the rules, works hard, is determined to make good.”

He stared at her, shocked by this seemingly haphazard but astute guesswork. “What are you, miss? A Gypsy fortune-teller?”

“That’s not fortune-telling. It’s common sense. And experience.”

“Your own experience?”

“Heavens, no! I’ve been rebelling since birth. My parents, I fear, have nearly given up on me. But my cousin Trix is like you—all about duty and responsibility. Ugh. It’s so tiresome being good all the time. One of these days, she’s going to burst out, break free, go on a tear, and then . . . whew, who knows what will happen?”

“And what about you?” he asked. “Being a rebel carries consequences, does it not?”

Her expression darkened a little and she looked away. “So it does,” she murmured. “And I’m about to pay the piper, I’m afraid. But,” she added, looking at him again, her face lighting with a dazzling, unexpected smile that made him think of the sun shining out between storm clouds, “we’re not talking about me and my beastly past. We’re talking about you and your desire to rebel against authority.”

That mention of her past made him curious, but he was reluctant to pry, and besides, he felt compelled to protest her words about him. “I don’t wish to rebel.”

“You already did. And probably had a hell of a good time in the process, even if you can’t remember most of it. Why not just admit you wanted to do it?” She shook her head. “No wonder you’re wound so tight, if you can’t even admit you wanted to carouse and have a bit of fun. And why shouldn’t you? You’re young, you’re handsome, you’re obviously wealthy, if your clothes are anything to go by. Why not enjoy yourself?”

He thought of his father, who’d done enough carousing for both of them. The late duke had caused both his wife and son a great deal of pain in the process, and the last thing Aidan wanted to do was be like that.

“If you went on a tear more often,” she added, “you’d be less of a prig. Happier, too.”

He frowned, not liking this assessment of his character at all. “You offer your advice to strangers very freely, miss.”

“You think it’s cheek? It is, rather, but if you knew me better, you wouldn’t be surprised.” She looked at him with an expression of mock apology, but there was an unmistakable glint of mischief in her violet-blue eyes. “I’m very cheeky. My greatest flaw, I fear.”

“That,” he countered with a nod to the paper in her hand, “or procrastination, perhaps.”

“Now you’re teasing! But I can’t contradict you, for I do procrastinate, which is why I’m in the suds today. I fear I shall truly embarrass myself in front of my fiancé, and his mother, too. She wrote the skit, and if I bungle it, I shall fall even more in her estimation, though I’m not sure that’s possible.”

“You are engaged to be married?”

She wrinkled her pert nose at him. “Your surprise is hardly flattering, sir.”

He wasn’t surprised by her engagement, but by his own disappointment at the news of it, a disappointment that was all out of proportion to the situation. He didn’t even know this girl, and from what he could discern so far, she was not his sort at all. In fact, he’d never met anyone quite like her. Being disappointed made no sense, and he tried to dismiss it. “My congratulations,” he said instead.

“Don’t congratulate me yet.” She gave him a wink. “If I do make an utter fool of myself this afternoon, my fiancé might jilt me at the altar.”

The careless, offhand way she spoke of a circumstance most people would deem calamitous seemed quite odd to him, but it would be rude to inquire about such an intimate topic. “I should be on my way,” he said instead, “so you can be alone to study your part.”

“Perhaps it would be better if you stayed.”

Against his will, his gaze slid down over her knees and along her bare shins to her toes idly skimming circles on the water. “I don’t think so.”

“You could read the lines with me, which would help me enormously.”

He set his jaw. “It wouldn’t be proper. There’s no chaperone.”

“Well, it isn’t as if we’d be doing anything naughty! And I fear you’re too much of a gentleman to even attempt to take advantage of me. Rather a pity, that,” she added with a glance over him. “You’re terribly good-looking.”

He realized, much to his chagrin, that he was blushing. Not because of the compliment, but because images of “being naughty” with her were going through his mind.