we give a tinker’s damn what anyone else thinks of us? No, Julia, we don’t. However, I am probably the exception, so please don’t shriek and faint when I introduce you to my sisters as my affianced wife.”
“So you’ll lie to your sisters, your own daughter? I don’t believe you. All of this deception because of what I saw and heard on the Marsh last night?”
“Among other concerns I or anyone in my family might harbor, yes. Not that we’re announcing the banns, as I’m still in mourning. In other words, our betrothal is for here and for now, that’s all. Give me a month, Julia. I won’t press my attentions on you again. After a month, it won’t matter who you talk to or what you think you know.”
Julia protectively pressed her hands to the center of her chest, then realized she had waited much too long to worry now about her modesty. “It’s…it’s as if I were a prisoner here at Becket Hall.”
“True enough.” Chance smiled as he held out his arm to her. “Nevertheless, Miss Carruthers—welcome to the family. Shall we go down to breakfast?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
JULIA SAT IN THE MAIN salon at Becket Hall, her stomach comfortably full after a plentiful and well-prepared dinner, wondering how long she would have to wait before she’d be allowed to retire to her newly assigned bedchamber on the second floor.
She hadn’t seen Chance Becket all day. He’d simply left her alone outside the morning room to muddle through coddled eggs on her own, and she really was more than a little angry with the man. Even if he had looked so very handsome tonight at the dinner table, arriving late, with no apologies and only a warning squeeze of her shoulder as he bent to kiss her cheek before taking up his own chair.
Callie had giggled, and Julia had known that her cheeks had gone red. But then everyone had started talking at once again and Julia had had to choose whether to sit and stew or join in. She’d joined in. And taken peeks across the table, drat that huge candlestick, to see if Chance might be looking at her.
He had been, several times. But was that because he wanted to see her or because he thought he should appear as if he wanted to see her?
If only she could forget that assault on her person this morning. And, more especially, her reaction to Chance’s kiss, the intimate way he had touched her, the words he had spoken to her. Open your mouth…let me in….
She felt caught up in a dream, one that could just as easily become a nightmare. Even now, Julia’s head was still spinning from everything that had occurred from the moment the coach had stopped on the Marsh last night.
She’d come face-to-face with the most benevolently frightening man she’d ever seen. She’d met Cassandra and the rest of the Beckets. She’d been kissed by Chance Becket.
She’d kissed Chance Becket.
At least the family called “happily uncivilized” by Chance Becket had adopted the trappings of civilization. Becket Hall was wonderfully appointed, if located in a very isolated area of Romney Marsh.
And his sisters were delightful.
Morgan Becket amazed Julia, simply amazed her. The young woman was exotic, with darkest brown hair and deep gray eyes. She had the glow of the sun about her on her flawless skin and she seemed…ripe. Yes, that was the word. Ripe. Lush. Stunningly beautiful. But perhaps what was most beautiful about Morgan Becket was that the girl seemed to have no idea of that beauty—or, at the least, did not act as if she cared.
Morgan Becket walked and spoke as if she wore breeches, not her simple but well-made palest blue gown, more than once quietly cursing her skirts for tangling when she crossed her legs at the knee.
She’d told a story at the dinner table, a more than slightly bawdy joke, then waited until Ainsley Becket had smiled a small, indulgent half smile before she’d laughed.
Julia thought at the time that Morgan hadn’t really understood the joke but had simply parroted something she’d heard and hoped for a reaction from her family.
For as lively and animated as Morgan was, another Becket “daughter” was quiet.
Julia looked across the large room, pretending not to watch as Eleanor Becket adjusted the skirt of her simple gray gown over her legs, then bent to rub at the calf of one of them. Eleanor was small and slight, ethereal-looking, with huge brown eyes in a gamine face that wore a much too serious expression for such a lovely young woman.
“Her leg pains her,” Cassandra whispered as she sat down beside Julia. “We don’t notice.”
“I’m sorry,” Julia said, quickly lowering her eyes. “I didn’t mean to stare.”
“Elly didn’t see you looking,” Cassandra assured her, then popped another sugarplum into her mouth. “Now please pretend you are enjoying my company very much or else someone will take it into their head to send me back upstairs to bed, and I’m heartily sick of being sick in bed.”
Julia smiled at the girl. “I think we’d be smart to keep Alice away from you. You may be a disquieting influence on her.”
Cassandra considered this. “No. That would be Fanny. Odette says she’s got the devils in her. I’m simply spoiled straight down to the bone because Papa thinks I look like Mama, and he loved her very much.”
“Is that her portrait above the mantel?” Julia asked, sure it was, for Cassandra looked very much like the smiling young woman in the portrait, captured in all her youth and beauty. The woman’s hair was darker, but the smile was so like her daughter’s it was almost uncanny. “She’s wearing the most beautiful gown. All those colors!”
Cassandra looked at the portrait. “Odette says Mama called it her rainbow gown. Papa found the silk somewhere and brought it to her as a present. But it’s gone now. It got lost.”
“Callie, why are you still here? I went to your room to tuck you up and you weren’t there.”
Cassandra Becket sighed theatrically and Julia hid a smile behind her hand.
“You didn’t want to tuck me up, Fanny,” Cassandra said. “You wanted to ask me questions about Julia. What’s she like, Callie? Will I like her, Callie? Why don’t you just sit down and find out for yourself?”
“You’re an odious child,” Fanny said in an offhand tone that told Julia she’d offered those sentiments often in the past, and then she smiled at Julia. “Callie’s such an infant. Come along, infant, you belong in bed. If Papa comes in here after his brandy and cigar and sees you, he’ll look at you. You don’t want him looking at you, do you?”
Apparently Cassandra did not. “I have to go upstairs now, Julia,” she said, scrambling to her feet. “But don’t worry, I’ll see you in the morning.”
Julia watched Cassandra and her sister Fanny leave the room holding hands, Cassandra already chattering to her sister, Fanny nodding her blond head as she smiled a delightfully wide smile down at Callie.
“Fanny makes it sound as if Papa would punish Callie if he found her still here,” Eleanor said from her chair. “It’s hardly that. Callie’s been sick, and no one wants to worry Papa about anything.”
“I see,”
