The Belle of Belgrave Square (Belles of London #2)(34)

Julia knew that well enough. Her father had dismissed many a maid and footman on the flimsiest suspicion of telling tales. Prolonged illness had made him prone to paranoia. “The servants weren’t gossiping, Papa.”

“No? What else did they say to you? Lies, I’ll wager.”

“Pray don’t distress yourself. They only said the doctor had come, and that you’d sent George off to the telegraph office.”

Mollified, he relaxed back in his chair. “I had no choice, did I? I’ve the state of things with Gresham to consider. You’ll need someone to keep you out of the clutches of fortune hunters until he comes to the point. I’m not well enough to do it myself. Would that I’d had a son!”

A sense of foreboding crept over her. The same ominous feeling she’d had when Lord Gresham had mentioned she might, someday soon, play hostess to one of his dinner parties. “What has Lord Gresham to do with it? I know he’s visited you, but—”

“Just as any gentleman should, given his interest in you.” Her father’s hand emerged, white and frail, from the cocoon of his blankets to retrieve his glass of tonic. “He’s a fine man, Gresham.”

“He’s an old man,” Julia retorted before she could curb her tongue.

Annoyance flashed in her father’s eyes. “Too right. A young girl requires a seasoned husband to take her in hand.”

Husband.

Her breath stopped. “Are you saying . . . Has the earl asked to marry me?”

“Not as yet, but he intends to.” Her father drank the remainder of his tonic, swallowing it down in great noisy gulps. “Until such time, I’ve given him permission to pay court to you. He’ll be here this evening to escort you to the ball.”

She shook her head. “No, Papa.”

“No, you say?” A flush of anger darkened his face. “You forget yourself, my girl.”

“Not without reason.” She folded her hands in her lap, trying hard to ignore the panicked skittering of her pulse. “I don’t like him. Not in that way. We don’t suit at all.”

“What do you know of it?”

“I know myself,” she said. “And I know enough about him to make me uneasy.”

She knew Lord Gresham was arrogant and overbearing and that his wife had perished in childbed.

There had been talk of the late countess’s plight. Rumors that Gresham had kept the woman in a perpetual state of pregnancy, desperate for her to produce his heir, even if she might die in the attempt.

And she had.

It was why Gresham was in London looking for a new wife. A young wife.

“Rubbish,” her father said. “These matters are a man’s business. It’s for me to decide who suits you. I say Gresham will do nicely. He has a house in Grosvenor Square. An easy distance from here.”

Julia continued to shake her head in protest. She was being backed into another cage. An even smaller one than she resided in now. Once married, there would be no escape from it, not until Lord Gresham died.

Or she did.

“You don’t understand,” she insisted. “I could never bring myself to—”

“If you’ve any maidenish apprehensions, your poor dear mama will quell them. I’ve commanded her to leave Bath this very day.”

Her mother was coming home?

The prospect did nothing to alleviate Julia’s fears.

Her mother could be as tyrannical in her infirmity as her father. They both of them believed that children should obey absolutely. That the entire purpose of a daughter was to be of service to her parents. But unlike Papa, who dismissed Julia the moment she became quarrelsome, Mama didn’t flinch from enforcing her orders with a hard pinch or a slap.

“She’ll be home by morning,” he said. “And then you may speak with her on the subject.”

“What about tonight?” Julia asked. “I don’t wish to attend the ball with Lord Gresham. I’d rather go with Mrs. Major. Either that or not at all.”

“Enough.”

“Indeed, I’d much prefer staying home.”

“Enough. I’m too poorly to listen to your screeching. My heart aches and my head’s a misery. If you knew what I suffer you wouldn’t plague me so. Go on now, and leave me in peace.”

Julia rose, her legs unsteady beneath her. “My heart is aching, too, Papa,” she said quietly. “If you force me to marry Lord Gresham, I fear it will break.”

“Bah. You and your romantic claptrap.” He returned his hand to the shelter of his blanket cocoon. “Away with you before you send me to an early grave.”





Eleven





During the London season, there were many hostesses who measured the success of a ball by the number of fashionable bodies they were able to pack, sardine-like, into the confines of their home. To Julia’s vast discomfort, Lady Clavering was one of them.

There were easily more than four hundred people inside the Claverings’ lavish gaslit ballroom, with its gilded cove ceiling painted to resemble a cloud-covered cerulean sky. Couples swirled in harmony around the polished wood floor; gentlemen in understated eveningwear and ladies in extravagant gowns, their tinsel-festooned skirts floating out over enormous crinolines.

Music from the orchestra swelled from the dais, and the air was redolent with the scents of perfume and pomade. Those who weren’t dancing lined the walls, both sitting and standing. Wallflowers and matrons alike, staring, whispering, and wafting their fans.