The Abandoned Bride Read online

  “Addled and confused with the weight of my years?” the baron supplied, leaving off gazing out the window to look hard at her. “I am four years Robin’s senior, Miss Hastings, but I am, nonetheless, his uncle. And, I assure you, in full command of my senses. It is Robin that has left off his,” he added angrily in an undervoice.

  As Julia only gazed at him with incomprehension, he went on in annoyance, “Come, Miss Hastings, I have not traveled all this way to entertain you with our family history, which I am convinced you know as well as I do myself. It is Robin that I speak of. Three years ago, I will freely admit, I opposed the match. Events have transpired that have caused me to change my mind. You have won. Oh, I do not say that I will be delighted to see you wed my nephew. I’m sure you know better than that. Let us have the truth with no wrappings on it. Say rather that I will contrive to accept the union. In short, Miss Hastings, I am prepared to remove all obstacles.”

  Julia only gazed at him as though he were demented, so he went on angrily, “As I said in the letters you were so contemptuous of, I will pay the piper. Not only will I countenance the union, I will pay you a sum to ensure that you accompany me to Robin’s side. But be aware, Miss Hastings, that if you seek to continue your way of life after the wedding, or disappoint Robin in any fashion, it will not go easy for you. I am still Robin’s ‘mentor,’ as you say, and I have some social power. So, I tell you now, as I did not, for obvious reasons, in the letters, if you should decide against the marriage, I will make that decision worth your while. There is no way you can lose in this, my dear,” he added when he saw that she did not speak.

  “What are you talking about?” Julia cried.

  The baron made a sound of annoyance, then walked to her and raised her chin in one cool hand so that she had to look directly into his now narrowed eyes.

  “I leave for the Continent in a week. Accompany me and you shall have...” and then he named a sum so large that Julia gasped, despite herself. With a smile of grim satisfaction, he went on, “Marry Robin and you will, of course, have the run of his purse. But husbands are notoriously unreasonable creatures, and there is no guarantee that he will not grow economical with the years. And you are not inexpensive, I’ll wager. Refuse to marry him, once and for all, and you may find that decision even more lucrative. But we do not have to cross that particular bridge as yet. We shall have time to talk about it on our journeys, never fear.”

  Noting her absolute stillness and still looking steadily into her eyes as he held her chin fast, he went on gruffly, “You needn’t fear for your safety, if that’s what’s troubling you. I won’t pitchfork you into a nest of Frenchies. We shall circumvent them entirely. We go by sea to Greece. There’s no danger,” he insisted, as he waited for response to flicker in her wide eyes, “but only profit in it for you.”

  Julia struck his hand away, and rose to her feet. She found herself shaking, her rage was so complete and so completely contained.

  “You may not be addled with age, but you are certainly mad,” she said wildly. “I do not want to marry Robin. Nor does he wish to marry me. I have not laid eyes upon him for three years, nor do I wish to ever see him again. I do not know what maggot you have gotten into your head, but I am nothing to your nephew. I haven’t heard from him, or seen, spoken, or thought of him for three years,” she cried, knowing that this last, however, was untrue.

  For she could not count the times she had thought of him. Once, each time she had to apply for a new post, twice, each time a gentleman looked at her and she remembered that terrible night and reminded herself that she would be no fit wife for any man, and a dozen times at least, each night she lay awake and thought of the bleak future she had bought for herself in that reckless past.

  The anger left the baron’s face, and he only gazed at her with resigned and weary patience.

  “Oh yes,” he said with an undercurrent of disgust evident in his low voice, “and all those letters he wrote to you were writ on the wind, were they? And all those tantalizing replies you sent to him were figments of his imagination? Come, Miss Hastings, have done with it. You have exacted your revenge. I am come to you, if not precisely on bended knee, then at least with full pockets. You can ask no more. Indeed, I will give no more. Are you coming with me then?”

  She shook her head in the negative, as much to attempt to clear it as to deny him.

  “It is no use,” he said angrily. “I don’t know what game you play, but I do know all. I put it to you bluntly then,” he said on an exasperated sigh, though Julia could not see how much more bluntly a gentleman could speak.

  “Look you, Miss Hastings,” he said, facing her directly and speaking as though he were containing himself with much effort. “You cried off that once, the very night of your wedding, fearing, and rightly so, that Robin’s family would come down upon you if you wedded him. He left for the Continent to recover from the incident. But he did not. God knows why he did not,” the baron said, scowling, “but he did not. He wrote you to that effect. You ignored him. His letters grew more and more plaintive, and then you began to encourage him. For months you led him on, only then to announce that it was quite impossible to ever reunite with him, as you were already wed. A master stroke, Miss Hastings. A neat revenge. A creative and most superior lie. I congratulate you, indeed, perhaps I even understand you. He was, as you intended, utterly crushed. In time, perhaps, he could recover from-even that. But now, you see, he has not the time to spare.

  “His father lies dying, Miss Hastings,” the baron said roughly, “and though there was never any feeling between them, Robin must return to his home. He cannot go on denying his heritage, solacing his wounds with excess upon the Continent. No one of the family can persuade him to return. Not even I. But you can, and you must. Even if you were indeed wed, with three babes at your knee, I would insist upon it. ”

  Julia hugged her arms around each other in front of her. She was badly frightened. Although the baron was young and vital, spoke coherently, dressed perfectly, and seemed sane, it was becoming apparent to her that she was alone in a room with a lunatic. Mrs. Bryce might not be far off, she might even be eavesdropping upon this weird conversation. The butler certainly would be within shouting distance. But Julia feared that if she were to call out for assistance, the baron might become uncontrolled or destructive. She tried to remember all the advice she had read about such cases, and remembered only that she must try to remain calm so as not to excite him the more, and that she must not call him insane or risk sending him off into a rage.

  She drew in a deep breath and then said softly, reasonably, as she backed slowly to the door, “No, my lord. I’m so very sorry, my lord, but I cannot. Indeed, I think you have the wrong opinion of me.”

  He showed strong, even, white teeth as he threw back his head to laugh harshly and she winced, despite her resolve to be collected.

  “Now how could I have gotten that opinion?” he asked, halting her backward movement by staring pointedly at her and her proximity to the door, his eyes alert and amused. “Could it be from the interviews my agent obtained? You passed seven months with the wealthy Mrs. Pomfret in Leeds, and then you were summarily dismissed because of the attentions you received from her eldest, a seventeen-year-old lad. Six months with the Honorable Miss Carstairs as companion, dismissed abruptly when Miss Carstairs noted the unseemly approval with which her noble fiancé soon came to regard you. Ah,” he went on with a theatrical air of discovery, as he took a paper from his pocket and scrutinized it, “A blameless year with old Lady Wingate in the Midlands, terminated perhaps because of her vile temper, I grant. But also perhaps because she abhorred males and there was never a susceptible one in sight? And two months, fancy that, only two months before Lord Wycliffe’s interest came to the attention of his lady. Really, Miss Hastings, you ought to have known that the lady has the eye of a hawk and the gentleman already enjoys the services of that Turner woman.

  “And now,” he went on, taking his attention from his
notes, putting the pages back in his pocket, and glancing up just as Julia was about to make a lunge for the door, “leaving dear little Mrs. Bryce and her charming Toby, whom you profess to adore, in the lurch because you are homesick? Or because, truthful for once, you have told her there are no eligible males in the district? Yet, according to the townspeople, Miss Hastings, you have many admirers here. But, I will admit, no wealthy ones.

  “Oh, I have done my homework,” he sighed, noting her grimace and misconstruing her complete distress at his false interpretation of true events. “And I know your history as well. It makes for colorful reading. But you have not been as good a scholar, my dear. Did you not remember that Robin is in line for a more august title? When his father dies, he will be no less than a marquess. Now how can you think to do better? You cannot have anyone in mind with more pleasant prospects. You will come with me next week?”

  But Julia had been moving, inch by inch, quietly to the door. Now that she felt the handle firm against her spine, she drew herself up and said clearly and decisively, as she turned the handle unobtrusively behind her back, “No. I shall not. I am not what you think me, no matter what bits of paper you have amassed about me. I do not wish to ever see Robin again and I tell you that I have not even been in contact with him once since that night we parted. It is all a mistake, my lord.

  “And,” she added with relief, as she at last felt the door sway open a crack behind her, “I wish never to see you again as well. And I shall certainly not leave with you for anywhere, at any time.”

  But Julia did not have to race from the room, shrieking for help as she sought a hiding place from a violent madman as she had envisioned herself doing. The baron merely stood still for a moment and looked at her as he might look upon something found wriggling upon the earth after a rain. Then he bowed, and as she shrank back and poised to run, he simply walked past her and out the door. But he turned back to face the salon as the butler approached with his hat and driving cape. He ignored Mrs. Bryce, who came to wish him good day, and gazed only at Julia.

  “Oh, but you shall,” he said softly, as though taking a vow. “One way or another, my dear, you certainly shall.”

  The next few days wert among the most uncomfortable Julia had ever passed in her brief span. For now her employer exhibited not only the symptoms of jealousy, but those of deep distrust as well. Julia attempted to cope with the uneasy atmosphere as she had done in such situations before, by occupying herself completely with her tasks and by so doing blinding herself to hateful reality. But as the days wore on and she still did not get a response from her letter to the Misses Parkinson, the situation became increasingly less tolerable. The present so neatly imitated the past that the same learned responses were called into action. Thus, on a heavily scented late spring night almost a week after the mad baron’s visit, Julia began to pack her bags.

  Just as she had fled the comforts of her home when gossip and innuendo had become too distasteful to bear, now, even without assurance of a new situation, she prepared to bolt again.

  Mrs. Bryce was admittedly in an untenable position as well. Whether the captain’s good wife had stood in an adjacent room, or ordered the butler away so that she could actually put her ear to the door, there was no doubt that she had heard every word the baron had uttered in private to Julia. Now her sense of propriety obviously warred with her notions of morality. She could not bring herself to admit to having actually done something so crude as eavesdropping. So she could neither condemn Julia for her scandalous behavior, nor discuss the accusations with her to get at the truth of the matter. Instead, she consistently cast shocked glances toward her, or studied her with badly concealed amazement. She seldom directly addressed Julia if she could help it, yet her every action showed that she could not decide whether her governess-companion were something as exciting as a shameless Delilah, or merely as contemptible as a common lightskirt. In any case, Julia had not the heart to bring the matter up herself.

  For even if she told no less than the truth, the truth itself was enough to have her dismissed and lose her the foolishly effusive recommendation she would need to secure a new position. For, Julia thought as she opened her largest traveling case, although she had not deliberately committed any of the crimes she had been accused of, the bare facts were sadly true. She had been no more than kind to Jamie Pomfret, the young son of her first employer, and he had fallen immediately into calf love with her. His obsession had shown itself in no more than bad poetry, but it was that overheated verse that his mama had found, and it was her shock at the depth of her beardless boy’s ardor which had caused Julia’s dismissal.

  Mrs. Pomfret had been a fair-minded female and Julia had gotten her letter of reference. Similarly, her second period of employment had ended abruptly. Yet even as the Honorable Miss Carstairs had swallowed down her disappointment, she too had resignedly penned a glowing commendation. “For it is not your fault, dearest Julia,” the Honorable Miss Carstairs had sighed. “I know that Teddy will be a sadly unsteady husband, and there is nothing for it, because you see, I am unfortunate enough to love him. I know the world will hold many other decorative females, but at the least, I must remove a source of unhappiness from my own household. So you see, my dear, I’m sorry for it, but you must go.”

  Lady Wingate’s temperament had estranged her from every one of her relatives, and considering the amount of her estate, that was no mean accomplishment, but still Julia had managed to endure her company for a full year. That, Julia thought now, as she arranged her linen in the traveling case, was not due to virtue, nor was it any moral credit to her. She had stayed on solely because the Misses Parkinson, while sympathetic, had firmly told her that a succession of brief periods of employment would look badly upon her record, however much she might be blameless in their cause. On the precise day to a year after she had arrived to companion Lady Wingate (Julia was sure of that reckoning, as she had kept track with a pen on a calendar upon her wall, just as any other prisoner might), she offered up her resignation. Surprisingly, her dreadful old ladyship had written a perfectly unexceptional reference as well, perhaps because she had been amazed that any employee could have stayed on with her for that long a time.

  Lord Wycliffe and his despicable actions, Julia thought, as she resolutely fastened up her largest traveling bag, did not bear refining upon. And so, even as she began to carefully wrap and stow away the last of her possessions, Julia could not find it within her to blame Mrs. Bryce. For, on the face of it, she supposed that she might well appear to be a mercenary, conniving, husband-hungry opportunist. Yet, even if she could explain all these things away, there still was one basic truth that was unalterable and inexcusable.

  When she was seventeen, she had gone off unchaperoned with a wealthy young nobleman to be wedded to him, and had returned the next night, accompanied by a different gentleman, still very much unwed.

  It could not matter that she had not cared a jot for his riches or title, or that she had gone with the full cognizance and approval of her family, or even that she had vowed that she had returned, as she had left, a maid. The thing that was not done had been done. Her good name was as lost to her as her betrothed clearly was. Her family had rallied around her, and it made no difference. Both love and guilt impelled them to support her. Though Mama had wept for her daughter’s distress and her own shortsightedness, and the other children had stoutly defended their sister, Papa had blamed himself the most.

  He had no word of censure for Julia. For it had been he who had listened to the sincere young nobleman when he had come to ask permission to pay his addresses, and it had been he who then, had weighed all the risks of an elopement and had finally agreed to it. How easily Robin had brushed away his doubts, admitting in straightforward fashion that, yes, his family might protest or have an eye on a more equal match for him, but that nonetheless he was resolved to wed only where his heart lay. How plausibly and convincingly he had added that as his family loved him, they would come in
time to accept his choice of bride, and come to love her as well, but only after the wedding.

  Robin had insisted on elopement, explaining reasonably that he would not have his family think his new in-laws in any way coerced him to his decision. However much Julia’s papa shrank from the idea of a run-away wedding, foremost in his mind was the question of how he could deny his daughter happiness with the handsome and clever young gentleman. But deep in his heart, clouding his clear judgment, there also arose the question of how he could ever hope to obtain a better match for her. She was a mere estate-manager’s daughter, and to see her securely wed to a member of the nobility, even if the thing had to be done in secrecy, was more than he had ever dared envision.

  Ill-advised as it was, young as they both were, it was this secret dream of advancement for her that decided him. It was, in the end, simply too good an opportunity to ever come again. But if it was greed for his child that caused his acquiescence, it was the remembrance of that greed which was to torment him later.

  But who could have resisted Robin? Julia wondered now. Light and laughing Robin, who had sworn to Papa with earnestness evident in every word and gesture, that as he loved and respected his daughter, he would so care for her throughout her life. And if he had conquered practical Papa, he had completely swept away Mama and overwhelmed all the children of the house, herself included.

  At seventeen she had known no real beaux, though it was said in the neighborhood that she was bidding fair to becoming a beauty. When Robin had arrived suddenly to visit with her father’s employer, Lord Quincy, he had seemed to her to be a prince from out of one of the fairytales she had just left off reading. When he deigned to speak with her that first time they met on a country lane, she had been staggered that he had even noted her existence upon the earth. He might have become, as he should have become, an idealized standard of masculinity that she could base her future choice of husband upon when she had grown to adulthood. But he had continued to meet her by chance, and then by happy accident, and then, finally, by secret arrangement. And he became instead of her distant ideal, her betrothed.