Mary Balogh - Slightly Wicked

“How much money?” she asked, her lips feeling suddenly stiff.

“Five hundred guineas,” he said, his smile ghastly. “There are fellows who owe ten times more than that, but no one is pursuing them .”

“Five hundred—” For a moment Judith thought she was going to faint. The necklace landed with a thud in her lap.

“The thing is,” Branwell said, pacing to the window, “that Papa is going to have to cough up more of the blunt. I know this is a lot, and I know I cannot do it again. I must mend my ways and all that. But it is done this time, you see, and so Papa is going to have to get me out of it. But he will explode if I go and ask him in person or even if I write to him. You write to him for me, will you, Jude? Explain to him. Tell him—”

“Bran,” she said, her voice seeming to come from a long way off, “I am not sure Papa has that much money to give you. And even if he does, he does not have anything more. He will be beggared. So will Mama and Cass and Pamela and Hilary.”

He turned paler if that were possible. Even his lips were white.

“Is it that bad?” he asked. “Is it, Jude?”

“Why,” she asked softly, “do you think I am here, Bran? Because coming to live with Aunt Effingham is my life’s dream?”

“Oh, I say.” He looked at her with frowning sympathy. “I am dreadfully sorry, Jude. I did not want to believe it. Is it really so, then? I have done this to you? Well, no longer. I’ll come about, you’ll see. I’ll pay off my debts and restore the family fortune. I’ll see to it that you are fetched home and that there are portions to attract husbands for all of you. I’ll—”

“How, Bran?” Far from feeling touched by his outpouring of remorse, she was angry. “By playing for higher stakes at the races and the gentlemen’s clubs? We would all be far happier if you settled to some respectable career and made a decent living for yourself.”

“I’ll think of something,” he said. “I will , Jude. I’ll think of something. I’ll come about and without applying to Papa either. Good Lord.” His eyes had been absently focused on the jewelry box. “Whose glitters are all those? Grandmama’s?”

“They were all jumbled together,” she explained, “except for her most precious pieces in the bag here. I offered to sort them for her.”

“There must be a fortune there,” he said.

“Oh, no, you don’t, Bran,” she said grimly. “You will not apply to Grandmama to pay your debts. These are her jewels, her mementos of her life with our grandfather. Maybe they are worth a fortune, but they are hers, not mine and not yours. We have never even paid her much attention in our lives, have we, because Papa has always given the impression that she is not quite respectable, though I cannot imagine why. She can be tiresome in some ways, always forgetting things in another room, always complaining about her health, though she has done less of that recently. But I have grown remarkably fond of her. She is fun and loves to laugh. And I do not believe she has a mean bone in her body—which is more than I can say of her daughter or ... or her son.” She flushed at having said something so very disloyal about her father.

Branwell sighed. “No, of course I’ll not ask the old girl for help,” he said. “It would be humiliating to have to admit to her that I am in difficulties, for one thing. Good Lord, though, she would not even miss one or two or ten of those pieces, would she?”

She fixed him with a severe eye.

“I was joking , Jude,” he said. “Do you not know me better than to believe I might consider robbing my own grandmother? I was joking .”

“I know you were, Bran.” She got to her feet and gave him an impulsive hug. “You are going to have to find your own way out of this difficulty. Perhaps if you call on the tradesmen involved, you can come to some agreement with them to pay them so much a month or—”

He laughed, a mirthless sound.

“I ought not to have bothered you with my troubles,” he said. “Forget about them, Jude. They are not your troubles, after all. I’ll come about. And as for you, I don’t see why you should not attract a decent husband even though you are living here without any fortune. But you will not do it looking like that. I never understood why Papa always insisted that Mama keep you in caps when the other girls don’t wear them half the time. I have never seen what is so dreadful about your hair. I have always thought red hair on women rather attractive.”

“Thank you, Bran.” She smiled. “I must finish off here and get this box back to Grandmama’s room. I confess it makes me somewhat nervous to have all this wealth in my own keeping. I wish I could help you, but I cannot.”

He grinned at her and looked more himself. “Never fear,” he said. “Fellows go through this all the time.

But they always come about. I will too.”

It had become something of a catch phrase with him, Judith realized. He would come about . But she did not see how.

Papa would be dragged into it eventually, she thought, and Mama and the girls too. And she would be stranded forever and ever at Aunt Effingham’s. She had not realized until this moment how a part of her had still held out hope of one day going back home, of everything being restored to normal again.

The weather cooperated in grand style for the garden party at Grandmaison. Despite a cloudy morning that looked for a while as if it might have been the prelude to rain, the afternoon was clear and sunny, with just enough heat not to oppress the senses. The sitting room was in use for anyone who felt more inclined to sit indoors than out, but the French windows were opened back and most of the guests remained outdoors, walking the paths of the formal gardens, sitting in the rose arbor, or strolling over the lawns or down along the stream path. On the terrace, long tables covered with crisp white cloths were laden with appetizing foods of all descriptions as well as tea urns and large jugs of lemonade and punch.

Judith was determined to enjoy herself. She was wearing what she had always considered her prettiest dress, the pale green muslin, though like most of her dresses it had not escaped alteration. And she was wearing one of her own caps beneath the bonnet Aunt Louisa had given her. She did not feel pretty, but then she had never been under any illusions about her looks. However, this afternoon she did not feel so very different from a number of the other guests who had been invited from the neighborhood. Most of them did not look nearly as elegant or fashionable as the Harewood set. And Judith had the advantage of having made the acquaintance of some of them the day before when she had delivered invitations to the ball.

She spent the first half hour with the vicar’s wife and daughter and believed that she might in time develop a friendship with them. They in turn introduced her to a few other people who spoke politely to her and did not look at her with disdain or—worse—turn immediately away as if she simply were not there. After an hour or so she went to join her grandmother in the sitting room and brought her a plate of food from the terrace. They sat there, comfortable together until Lady Beamish found them and bore them off to the rose arbor after persuading Grandmama that the air was warm and the breeze really close to being nonexistent.

She was enjoying the party, Judith told herself after leaving the two old friends together to chat with each other. All around her she could hear the sounds of laughter and merriment. It seemed as if the young people were all moving about in groups, sometimes in couples, looking youthful and exuberant, enjoying one another’s company. Even all the older guests seemed to have someone with whom they belonged or felt thoroughly comfortable—as did she, of course. She had her grandmother.

Julianne was surrounded by the closest of her female friends and a few of the gentlemen from the house party. Lord Rannulf was at her side, as he had been almost all afternoon, and she was sparkling up at him though she must have said something to make the whole group laugh.

He really was going to marry Julianne .

Judith longed suddenly for solitude, having discovered— as she had never done at home—that it was possible to feel at one’s loneliest in the midst of a crowd. No one was taking any notice of her at the moment. It was almost a certainty that the back of any grand home would be quiet. She took a path around the side of the house and found the expected kitchen gardens at the back. Fortunately they were deserted and immediately she breathed more easily.

She was going to have to get over this, she told herself sternly—this feeling of displacement, this loss of all confidence in herself, this self-pity.

The stables were at the far side of the house with a paddock behind them. She walked past the fenced-off area, looking at the horses grazing there, relieved that there were no grooms outside to see her and wonder what she was doing so far from the party.

Beyond the stables the ground fell away down a steepish grassy slope into a wooded area. Judith half ran down it and found herself among rhododendron bushes, surrounded suddenly by their heavy fragrance. And ahead of her, now that she was down, she could see a pretty little summerhouse and beyond it a lily pond.

The summerhouse was hexagonal and completely closed in beneath its pointed shingled roof though there were windows on all sides. She tried the door and it opened inward on well-oiled hinges to reveal a tiled floor and a leather-covered bench all around the wall. That it was sometimes used was obvious. It was clean. There were a few books strewn along one side of the bench. But surely it was not someone’s completely private retreat. It was not locked.