life had changed. He had settled down at home in Kent, and had become much more serious and attentive to the business matters of the estate. Selby would travel to London sometimes on his own, and occasionally he and Phoebe would go up for a round of parties and such, but, especially after the birth of their son, they lived a quiet country life. Unfortunately, it had been Selby’s wilder, younger times that people had remembered when Stonehaven had accused him of thievery.
“Stonehaven was pleasant enough,” Phoebe continued, her brow wrinkling. “A little remote and stiff, I thought. We never talked long. I always thought he found me boring.”
“Nonsense,” Julia replied stoutly, although she could understand, deep inside, how some could find Phoebe’s sweet personality a trifle insipid. “If he did, then it was he who was to blame, not you.”
“I was always glad when he moved on to talk to someone else. He made me a trifle…uncomfortable.”
Stonehaven had made her a trifle uncomfortable, too, Julia thought, but not, she suspected, in the way he had affected Phoebe. He had unsettled her, brought out strange responses that both puzzled and surprised her. No one had ever kissed her the way Lord Stonehaven had last night—one of the things she had been careful to not tell Phoebe—and the way she had felt when he did so shocked her. Her body had raged with all sorts of wild sensations, and she had wanted, shockingly, to feel more of them. Julia wondered if that made her a wicked person. Was that how “loose” women felt? And was it those feelings that made them abandon all propriety?
What was most disturbing to her was that she had felt those things with Lord Stonehaven. She hated him! Yet when he kissed her, when he crushed her body against his and his mouth consumed her, she had melted. How could a man she despised have made her feel that way?
The only answer she could find was that it was the kiss, not the man, that had made her react so strangely. She had not felt such a kiss before; gentlemen didn’t kiss that way, or at least they did not kiss ladies like that. No doubt it was part of the licentious life Lord Stonehaven lived, sinful knowledge that he had gained with women of dubious repute. It was probably the very sinfulness of the kiss that had rocked her. Their vicar, in his sermons, often warned of the temptations of sin, of the lure that evil held for humans. Julia had not really understood it before, but now she did. That kiss had tempted her, had made her feel and act in a way she would never have dreamed she could, had overridden, at least for a moment, her thorough dislike of Lord Stonehaven. She supposed that if any other man had kissed her in that way, she would have felt the same. She had a tendency toward lewd behavior, apparently.
Well, she knew now what she had to watch out for, Julia thought. Next time she would be prepared for that kiss, and she would stand firm against it. She would not let herself be swept into such a maelstrom of pleasure.
“Will you see him again?” Phoebe asked now.
“Oh, yes,” Julia responded quickly. “I mean, well, I shall have to, of course. Last night was just the beginning. I wanted to catch his interest, that was all. I didn’t expect to gain any knowledge. It will take a little while to get my hooks firmly into him, and then I will begin to reel him in.”
Phoebe giggled. “Honestly, Julia, you do say the funniest things. You make him sound as if he were a fish.”
“Well, and so he is,” Julia responded. “A prize fish, whom I intend to hang on our wall.”
“Are you—will you go back to that place?”
“I shall have to. I have no other way to meet him. Naturally I couldn’t tell him where we live.”
“Oh, no,” Phoebe agreed with a little gasp of horror. “When will you go back? Tonight?”
“No,” Julia replied reluctantly. She wanted very much to return to Madame Beauclaire’s tonight—only because she was filled with eagerness to get the truth out of Stonehaven, she told herself—but she knew that to do so would ultimately work against her. “I cannot let him think that I am eager to see him again. Men like a chase, I understand, and Stonehaven seems to me to be a man who likes it particularly. I have to build up his anticipation, make him begin to worry that he will not see me again. Then, when he does see me, he will be much more enthusiastic.”
Phoebe nodded. “I’m sure you are right. I am merely impatient. I want so much to hear his confession.”
“I think I shall return on Friday. That will give him two days to stew and wonder. How does that sound?”
“I don’t know. I was never much good at that sort of game. The only man I cared about was Selby, and I wanted to see him so much that I could not pretend otherwise.”
Julia smiled at Phoebe’s slightly guilty expression and reached out to link her arm through hers. “’Tis just that you are too honest and good a person to prevaricate, my love. It rather makes you wonder about me, doesn’t it—that I find it so easy to do so?”
“Julia! Don’t say such things!” Phoebe would never allow any negative words about one of those she loved, even from the loved one herself.
“Lady Armiger!” A man’s delighted voice came from the left of them. Phoebe and Julia turned to see a man and woman walking toward them. The man was smiling delightedly. The woman looked frozen in stone. “Miss Armiger,” the man continued. “How wonderful to see you. I had no idea that you were in town.”
“Varian.” Phoebe smiled, holding out her hand. “How good it is to see you. But how can it be that we have become Lady Armiger and Miss Armiger, when before we were Phoebe and Julia with you?”
Varian St. Leger had been a good friend of her husband’s, and he had visited many times at their home. At the time of the scandal, Varian had been one of the few who had not been immediately convinced of Selby’s guilt. “I cannot believe it of Sel,” he had often said. “I know the evidence looks black, but, damme, it just seems impossible.” They had seen little of Varian the past three years, though he had stopped in once or twice when he had been by to see young Thomas. Being Thomas’s cousin, he had taken on the responsibility of visiting with Thomas and his mother as Selby had formerly done.
“Phoebe, then.” Varian took her hand, smiling down warmly at her. “I did not wish to presume. And Julia.” He took her proffered hand next, smiling. “I have been lax this year, I am afraid. I haven’t visited Thomas even once. It is fortunate that he and his mother are in London this summer.”
“Yes, of course.” Phoebe cast a rather timid glance at the woman who was standing stiffly beside Varian, not saying a word. “How do you do, Mrs. St. Leger?”
Pamela St. Leger did not speak, merely gave Phoebe a short nod, her face not softening even slightly. Pamela, Thomas’s mother, had been long and loud in her condemnations of Selby. Julia had heard that she had wanted to sue Selby’s estate for the monies that had been removed from the trust. However, the decision had not been up to her, of course, but to the trustees, and they had not done so—due primarily, Julia felt sure, to Varian St. Leger’s influence. All Pamela had been able to do was cut them socially, and that she had proceeded to do with a vengeance. She had refused to attend any gathering where Phoebe or Julia were in attendance, and had been heard to declare at the slightest provocation that she was sure she did not know how either woman dared to show her face anywhere. She had even gone so far as to move her patronage each Sunday from St. Michael’s in Whitley, the local village, to St. Edward’s in Marsh-burrow, on the other side of the St. Leger estate. Julia suspected that her move had been at least in part influenced by the fact that the vicar’s wife, Mrs. Fairmont, had
