“It isyouwho is tarnishing her,” Sarah continued. “You were entertaining her in your private rooms. Even if alone, you both would seem less guilty if I’d discovered you in the drawing room. My sister showed terrible judgment going upstairs with you.”
“I think she made a particularly fine choice in doing so,” Jasper shot back.
Julia was about to berate them for discussing her as if she wasn’t there when her dear sister turned her gaze upon her and said words that broke her heart.
“I have failed you.”
Julia rushed forward and clasped Sarah’s hands, hearing Jasper mutter something under his breath that sounded like “calculating crone.”
“No, you haven’t,” Julia insisted, feeling tears well. “There is no calamity.” She knew Sarah would say nothing to anyone, and thus her reputation was as intact as her frustrating virginity.
“Why are you trying to throw your life away on this worthless rogue?”
“I say,” Jasper began. “That’s rather harsh.”
“You don’t even know him,” Julia said, although she didn’t know him too well herself — except that he kissed divinely, smelled like a God, had muscles as if sculpted by Michelangelo, and had the ability to make her purr. “He isn’t worthless.”
She couldn’t quite get herself to declare himnot a rogue. In fact, she feared he was.
“I know his type,” Sarah continued. “More to the point,youknow his type. Again, I ask, why are you being reckless?”
Julia could do nothing but sigh. She could hardly say she wanted to experience passion. Nor could she confess she was growing a ridiculous affection for this particular rogue. That way lay madness. She knew it, but there was no denying her heart had become entangled.
“Let’s go home and leave his lordship in peace,” Julia said.
“Miss Sudbury,” Jasper started behind her, sounding as if he were going to protest her imminent departure.
Finally, she looked him squarely in his coffee-brown eyes. She could clearly recall how he’d watched for her reaction while sliding down her body to kiss her most private area. She curled her hands at her sides, thinking of his gaze holding hers, then lowering at the last second, as his mouth touched her—
“Surely you must understand,” Julia said, “I need to leave with my sister.” Sarah would probably wash her hands of her altogether if she did aught else. And what an unfathomable insult it would be to send her away and return to Jasper’s warm, inviting bed.
Still, she couldn’t help wishing her sister had never come and interrupted them.
“Will I see you again?” he asked, rather outrageously given the circumstances.
“No,” Sarah’s voice exclaimed.
Julia sighed and offered him a smile, thinking it best not to give him an answer until she sorted out her emotions.
“Good evening, my lord.” With that, she turned, took her sister’s arm under hers, and departed.
Sarah had come after Julia in a hackney, and so they drove home together in the Worthington carriage she’d borrowed. Resting against the late-earl’s leather squabs, Julia saw no reason to speak, but simply let Sarah lecture her endlessly.
Something had shifted irrevocably inside her that night. She’d meant what she’d said in Jasper’s foyer. She was beholden to no one. As outrageous as it was to even think it, Julia was determined to make Sarah understand she would no longer allow herself or her actions to be curtailed. She was not of the Mayfair set, and she would stop pretending as though she had to be ruled by their strict code.
“If discovered, you wouldn’t be allowed to attend the meanest of social gatherings, never mind a ball at Lady Stilton’s.”
Those few words penetrated her brain. The only thing Julia would continue to do was take Mrs. Zebodar as chaperone when necessary in order to gain proximity to thebon ton’s wealthiest members — and their jewelry — for as long as she could.How else could she help the poor?
If her father or sister ever saw the types of places she’d been going to, carrying large amounts of coinage and bank notes, they would be livid. But the workhouses in Shoreditch, Whitechapel, and Wapping, the better of the worst districts east of London, had received her donations gratefully.
Occasionally, she caught families of women and children at the poorhouse gates prior to admitting themselves. Then Julia gave them enough money to turn away from the institution. At least for a month, sometimes longer. Now, as the winter months approached, the biting misery on the streets of London would get worse.
Sometimes, Julia felt as if she were the only one throwing money at the problem.
“I could send you back to Father,” Sarah continued.
That got Julia’s full attention. But it wasn’t the threat her sister supposed. After all, life was peaceful and easy in Chislehurst. If Julia could forget the squalor she’d seen and the hollowed cheekbones and sunken eyes of the Rookery children, perhaps she could relax in the country and find herself a solid gentleman farmer —a Johnny-raw,as Jasper had once called such a fellow. She might become a contented wife.
