Julia followed Diana to one of the bay windows that looked out upon the side lawns. Worthington Park had one of the most ordered gardens in the country. Behind the house, paths followed a delicate design leading through beds to a central fountain.
A footman brought a silver tray with two enormous glasses, truly the size of finger bowls. Bubbles floated up through the liquid, which was tinted pink.
“Champagne cocktails,” Diana said. She took several long swallows.
“Diana—” Julia frowned. “You should slow down.” Diana had been drinking much too much of late. They had been in London together last week and she’d rescued a drunken Diana from a party and taken her to the Savoy to keep Diana from getting behind the wheel and driving when she could barely stand.
“It’s for courage,” Diana protested. “They found the heir and he’s coming here to see exactly what he’s inherited—what he gets to take away from us.”
Diana’s ominous words made Julia shiver. The heir to Worthington had been found. After the old earl had died at the end of the War, Anthony’s younger brother, John, had inherited the title. Tragically, John Carstairs had died a year ago in a car crash and the hunt had begun for the next in line to the title.
“What do you mean, what he gets to take away from you?”
“Mummy believes this man—who’s American—will turn us out to starve. He hates us all.”
“For heaven’s sake, why?”
Diana drained her cocktail. “It’s all very thrilling. His mother was Irish, a maid working in a house in New York City. My grandmother disowned her younger son—my uncle—over the marriage and the family cut off all ties. It left them in poverty. So Mummy fears he will throw us out into poverty now.”
“Surely your mother is wrong. That was years ago, and it was not your fault. This man can’t still be bitter and mean to be so harsh.” Now Julia saw how pale her friend was beneath her rouge. She was truly afraid. “Diana, it would be ridiculous. After a World War, this man must see that family feuds are utterly meaningless. He must have a decent nature that can be appealed to.”
“Mummy doesn’t think so. And to protect us, Mummy wants me to marry him. He is my cousin, but royal cousins marry all the time, including first cousins. It would all be quite legal.”
“This is 1925. No one will force you to marry, Diana, against your will.”
Diana laughed a cold, jaded laugh that sent another chill down Julia’s spine. “The thing is—I am willing to marry him. By all reports, he’s quite handsome. He’s going to be an earl. Master of my home. If one of my brothers had become the earl, I would have had to marry to survive. It’s what women like us have to do. And this way I can have everything—a rather sexy husband, the title of countess and the home I grew up in.”
How strong were these cocktails? “But you haven’t even met this man. Don’t let your mother push you into something ill-advised.”
“I’ve decided that I really must have a husband. And there are so few men left for us. The War took them from us.” Suddenly Diana grasped her forearm. “I need you to help me, Julia. He’s arriving in time for dinner, then he’s going to stay. I must convince him to propose.”
Julia looked at Diana’s worried face and huge blue eyes. “I suspect he will fall in love with you the first moment he sees you.”
“He won’t. He really does hate us because the family cut his father off. Apparently, this Cal holds rather a grudge. He doesn’t even use his real name. That’s why it took so long to find him. He goes by his mother’s maiden name of Brody.”
The footman came past and Diana snatched another cocktail. “I think convincing him to marry me might prove a challenge. Because, you see, I have to convince him to like me.”
“Why shouldn’t he like you?”
“Because...well, isn’t it obvious? He will see me as the privileged daughter who had everything while his family lived in squalor. I need to be more like you, Julia. Doing good works and such. Mummy is going to try every trick in the book to force a marriage, but her ideas will be crude and obvious. They will be the kind of plots intended to work on Englishmen with a sense of honor and obligation. I don’t think that’s going to work on an angry American.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
Diana waved her hand and champagne sloshed over the glass. “Oh, Mummy would think that if the American was found in my bedroom, he would feel he had to marry me. She’s dreadfully Victorian when it comes to scheming. My plan is to be the sort of woman he can admire. Of course I have no idea what sort of woman that is. Maybe it isn’t the noble saint. Maybe he would like a bad girl. You observe people and understand them. Figure out the kind of woman he wants and help me to convince him I’m that woman.”
“Diana, this is mad. How can you possibly want to marry a man you do not know—” and apparently fear “—based on trying to be someone you are not?”
The Countess of Worthington was approaching and Diana put her lips right beside Julia’s ear. “Darling, I’m pregnant,” she whispered. “I have to marry. I have to.”
Pregnant? Julia floundered to think of something to say, but Diana looked to the door and said, in husky tones, “Oh Lord, it’s the American. He’s arrived.”
The butler, Wiggins, looked as if he’d sucked on a lemon, but he cleared his throat, gave a glance of complete disdain at the astonishing-looking man beside him—he had to look up to do it—and announced, “His lordship, the Earl of Worthington.”
“It’s Cal,” the man said. A slow, wicked grin curved his mouth as if he was enjoying himself immensely.
“Oh, good heavens,” the countess moaned quietly. “He looks like he was found in a ditch. How can this man be the earl instead of my sons?” Unsteady suddenly, she almost fell over. Julia hastened to the countess’s side and supported her.
The man who called himself Cal stood well over six feet tall. A threadbare blue sweater stretched across his chest, topped by a worn and faded leather coat. He wore a laborer’s rough trousers. His black boots had never seen a lick of polish.
His tanned face set off his golden hair, which was slicked back with pomade, but light, shimmering strands fell over his eyes. Eyes of the purest, most stunning blue. Vivid and magnetic, they looked like a blue created by an artist, as if they could never be real.
He looked a great deal like Anthony. But the new earl was more grizzled, his features sharper and more intense. His nose had a bit of a kink to it, as if it had once been broken.
The entire room had gone silent, staring at him in shock and horror. As if a bear had wandered into the drawing room.
For a fleeting moment, Julia saw the American’s expression change. The confident smile vanished and a look of hard anger came to his eyes.
Was this evidence of his bitterness? Or perhaps these were all the clothes he had and their shock had hurt him.
Julia helped the countess down to the settee, next to her grandmother.
Then
