“Last night, we talked it through. We’ll marry by special license. His father is an Anglican dean, so Will knows the Archbishop of Canterbury.” Mary laughed and said, “Isn’t that unlikely?”
Julia smiled. “A little.”
“With a special license from the archbishop, we won’t have to post the banns for three weeks and wait. We can leave for Paris almost immediately. We’re not running away. We’ll slip away and start over.”
Julia raised her coffee cup. “Here’s to simple truths—and to traveling new paths.”
* * *
At six o’clock on Wednesday evening, Julia and her Aunt Caroline were the first down to the drawing room. Her grandfather would follow soon, and they expected Dr. and Mrs. Franklin, her grandparents’ oldest friends, to arrive at seven thirty for their weekly dinner party.
That evening was the first time Julia had seen her aunt since Louisa’s death two days earlier.
“Mary Allingham, that poor child,” Lady Aldridge said. “But at least she’s found . . .” She roused herself. “How is that young assistant of yours faring? Doctor Barnes.”
“Very well, Aunt.”
“So, you don’t have to spend every waking minute at the clinic?”
“Well, I—”
“I lunched yesterday with the widows’ club.”
Her aunt’s changes of conversational direction were head-snapping, and Julia smiled at her nickname for the surviving wives of her late husband’s law colleagues.
“I can’t remember how,” her aunt said, “but that business involving Richard’s father came up. He was the lawyer in that financial scandal back in the fifties. The guilty banker absconded, but William Tennant remained to face the music, although the authorities exonerated him in the end.”
“I remember the story.”
“The ladies agreed. It was high time that nice man, his son, had a little luck with the women in his life.”
“Oh?”
“His mother was a . . . well, I won’t use that word, although ladies of a certain age who are old friends sometimes do. Let us say that Mrs. Tennant was not an amiable woman. Nor was Isobel.”
“Isobel?”
“Richard’s fiancée. Someone said she tossed him away in the middle of the scandal like a bad penny.”
“Aunt Caroline, I think—”
“You think too much, Julia. That is your trouble. You grew up amongst ancient relatives, and it’s given you an old head. Try feeling for a change, my dear.” She sighed. “My interference will not set you against him. You are too intelligent for such nonsense.”
Julia smiled. “You know I value your opinion, Aunt.”
“Well, listen to me now and think if you must. Think of it as fact-gathering and adding to your case notes. Observe the symptoms and reach the diagnosis that is obvious to me: Richard loves you.”
“You sound very sure.”
“I am. The only question is this: What do you feel for him?”
“Aunt, you’ve hardly given me a chance to speak. I—” Julia broke off at the sound of a knock and looked at the clock. “It’s a little early for the Franklins.”
“Simple gifts, Julia,” her aunt said before the visitors arrived. “I shall ask Andrew to invite Mrs. Davies to play it once a week until its message sinks in.”
But Paddy O’Malley, and not the guests they expected, walked in with her grandfather.
“Sergeant, you know my sister, Lady Aldridge.”
