The Worthington Wife Page 31

  Julia’s heart soared. “Of course. Ellen Lambert.”

  “The woman with the small boy? The one who—”

  “That one.”

  “Do you really see her working as a lady’s maid at Worthington?”

  “Zoe, you are an American. You can’t turn snobbish on me now.”

  Zoe waved her hand. “Lots of Americans are terrible snobs. We’re worse than the English because we don’t have our social structure all laid out.” Then Zoe winked. “But I agree with you—it would be perfect. I just wanted you to know you’ll have to fight prejudice to do this. Not from me—from other people.”

  “I’m willing to fight. Ellen needs a second chance. This would give her references. And Ben loves Worthington,” Julia said. “It’s perfect.”

  This whole day would be perfect. Diana was to be her maid of honor and would go to Switzerland after the wedding. Cal had wanted her to go on from Paris with the companion, but Diana had pleaded to come back for the wedding. Cal relented to make Diana happy. Sebastian had come home to England to pursue Captain Ransome.

  Julia smoothed down her skirts, aware of Zoe gazing at her thoughtfully.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You left for Paris determined to strike out on your own. You came back engaged to Cal—and ready to be mistress of Worthington Park. How did he convince you to give up your plan?”

  Julia frowned. She hadn’t really thought about “giving up” anything. “He proposed—and I realized I wanted to marry him. I realized this is where I belong.”

  “Callie, would you check on Lady Isobel?” Zoe said. Then when they were alone, Zoe stood and clasped her hands. “You went with him to Paris and came back engaged. You aren’t marrying him because you think you have to, are you? Because something happened in Paris?”

  “Something came very close to happening in Paris, but didn’t quite.”

  Zoe looked grave. “You don’t have to marry him just because you want to make love with him. He’s bold, wild, and he’s angry—and brooding anger is gosh-darn sexy in some men.”

  “There’s more to Cal than just that,” Julia declared. “That’s why I love him. And why I’m marrying him.”

  “That’s good enough for me.” Zoe pulled out a handkerchief. “Now I’m going to cry. Because when I first came to Brideswell, I wanted to see you become happy. And here you are—about to be happy for the rest of your life.”

  Julia hugged Zoe and together they left her room. She took one last look—this was not to be her room any longer. Then she walked down the hall.

  Did all brides feel this strange mixture of emotion—half anticipation and half poignant sorrow at leaving their homes?

  Here was the little niche in the wall where she used to hide and jump out at Nigel to scare him. Here was the landing where she and Sebastian had dropped peas onto the heads of guests—they’d gotten in enormous trouble for that.

  She was going to Worthington, which was full of memories, too. But she was going to make new memories. New and happy ones with Cal.

  She’d reached the top of the stairs when her mother caught up to her. Zoe was ahead on the stairs.

  Mother looked nervy and pale and Julia worried, until mother said, “Now I must tell you what you must expect for your wifely duties.”

  “Oh no,” she said hastily. “Don’t worry. I know what to expect.”

  “You know?” Mother gasped. “Has the earl compromised you? He seemed so gentlemanly.”

  Julia was rather delighted Mother thought so. And Cal, for all his insistence he wasn’t a gentleman, had always been one with her. He had kissed her with her skirt up...but he’d still been quite a gentleman. “I haven’t done anything. But I have an idea what is involved.”

  “Well...it is the most intimate you will ever be with another person,” her mother said.

  “It’s not necessary for you to explain, Mother—”

  “It can be the most wonderful thing—shocking but special,” her mother continued, regardless. “Or it can be the most dreadful thing. I shall not say more. I just want you to be happy, but I have no advice to give you about a happy marriage, I fear.”

  “I will be happy. I don’t need advice. It is just wonderful to know you want me to be happy and that you are here.”

  “I am always here for you. I was so sad for such a long time. Your husband-to-be said you feel you failed me because I was grieving for so long.”

  “Cal told you that?” Julia was shocked. She’d never said that to him.

  “He came to my little chapel to introduce himself. I had no idea, Julia. My unhappiness was not your fault. I am sorry my pain pushed you away.”

  Julia felt her mother kiss her forehead and her heart wanted to break. Tears came, but they were happy ones. “I love you, Mother,” she whispered.

  “Now we must get to the church or your groom will think you’re not coming.”

  She hadn’t heard Mother be joking and firm for ages. It made her so happy, even as she scrambled to gather up her train and hurry downstairs to where Nigel waited in the foyer. Her mother was going to follow in a second car with Zoe and Isobel.

  Nigel smiled. “You are so beautiful.” But he scrubbed his hand over his jaw. “You are marrying Cal for love, aren’t you, Julia? I wouldn’t accept this union for any other reason.”

  “Nigel, only you could drive me mad and touch my heart in one statement. It would not matter if I had your acceptance or not. But I am moved that you want me to marry for love. It shows that marriage to Zoe has been the making of you.”

  He cleared his throat. “I can see many good traits in Worthington. But I cannot see what you have in common with him. People are often attracted to opposites, but it might not be the strongest foundation for a marriage—”

  “I think we have many things in common—he cares about people as I do. I also love him for all the things about him that are different. Cal put a paintbrush in my hand and showed me how thrilling it is to paint. He showed me Paris. Each time I am with him, I feel like I am having a whole new world unfurled for me.”

  “I was worried you were marrying him for Worthington Park.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Nigel, I am marrying him for love.”

  “Julia!” Sebastian waved from the top of the stairs, ran down and jumped the last four steps.

  His jaw dropped as he saw her. “You look like a star plucked from the heavens and brought to earth. That Earl of Worthington is an attractive man. Full of sex appeal, I have to say. But will he make you happy?”

  “Not you, too! Nigel has already been through this with me. I know Cal will make me happy”

  Sebastian pouted. “We love you and are doing our protective brotherly duty.”

  “And I love both of you for it,” she said, and hugged them both.

  * * *

  Cal stood at the altar. How had he got here—to a four-hundred-year-old church in the English countryside, a title attached to his damn name and a beautiful English lady about to marry him innocently, without knowing the truth about him?

  He could give her the whole world—could give her anything she wanted.

  But without Worthington Park, he knew he wouldn’t be enough for her.

  A week ago, he’d been in the study of the Duke of Langford, telling the man he intended to marry Julia. Langford had asked about his past and Cal had said bluntly, “I grew up in a seedy tenement in Hell’s Kitchen. My father was working as a rag-and-bone man and was murdered on the street, likely by members of a gang. My mother was beaten to death. And if that hadn’t killed her, she would have worked herself to death, because she worked so hard to support my brother and me. So that’s my inglorious past. I’ve got an earl’s blood in me, but you would never know it.”

  He’d said it carelessly, casually
, making it sound like the whole truth. But he’d left out a few important things.

  Langford had studied him. “Julia told me that you had devised a plan of revenge when you learned you had inherited Worthington Park. She told me what she has done to make you change your mind.”

  And Cal knew, then, he’d carried off the bluff. “She tried to make me love Worthington Park with the same passion and fire as she does,” he’d said.

  “She believes you intend to keep the estate intact and live there. But I understood that you agreed because if you’d said no, she wouldn’t have married you,” the duke had said. “I want you to understand something, Cal. Worthington was a second home to her when she was growing up. A refuge from our parents’ unhappy marriage. It represents her first great love in Anthony Carstairs. It would destroy Julia to watch it go, especially if she was mistress of it.”

  “I know how much it means to her.”

  “It would destroy her if you went back on your word. It would destroy your marriage. I’d be damn tempted to destroy you,” Langford had said.

  Cal respected a man who was direct. “I love her and would never hurt her. I know what the estate means to her.”

  “Good. Then you have my blessing.”

  He knew he didn’t need approval. He and Julia were both adults. But what surprised him—scared him—was that he wanted Langford’s approval. Langford, he’d learned, was a man who helped his tenants. Who, since his marriage, embraced new technologies and industries. Langford was a duke born and bred, but one who apparently enjoyed tinkering on airplane engines with his wife. For a moment, Cal had thought: I’d like to be worthy of the approval...

  But if Langford knew the truth, he wouldn’t have let Julia within a mile of Cal.

  “You okay, Cal?” David’s voice, at his side, brought him back to the present—to the interior of the church, filled with women wearing fancy hats, and men in funny coats with tails. Morning coats, they were called. Like the one Langford had insisted Cal had to wear.

  David was his best man. To Cal’s surprise, his cousins had thought that idea brilliant. Thalia had added flowers to his brother’s chair, and David had been happy to let her do it.

  He couldn’t tell David why he was so damn nervous. That guilt had kept him away from Julia for the past few days. But before he could give his brother a lie for an answer, the wedding march burst out, soaring in the church. Sunlight filled the arched doorway like a curtain of gold. Into all that gold stepped Julia, her arm linked with her brother’s. Right then, Cal didn’t give a damn about their differences. Or that he’d lied to her. It was worth it for this moment. To know she was coming down the aisle to him.

  Even down the length of the aisle, she glowed with happiness. Her lips parted and her tongue swept them.

  His knees almost buckled.

  Love didn’t conquer all. He knew that. His parents had loved each other but poverty, fear and violence had destroyed them. But he was still going into this marriage hoping that he could make love—and lust—work for him. Hoping he could keep Julia happy and keep her from learning the truth about him.

  Then she was there, at his side, and her brilliant smile was for him. Her radiance almost knocked him on his heels. Flowers and people filled the church, but the only thing that existed for him was Julia.

  He was supposed to take her hand. He did it gently. The significance of it almost floored him. They were to go through life hand-in-hand now.

  They’d practiced the vows but now he couldn’t remember a word. Somehow he managed to repeat the words after the reverend, so dazzled by Julia that he forgot each one as it came out.

  “I do,” he said. In his head, he thought, guiltily: I do agree to lie to you, to keep my past hidden from you because I want you so much.

  Clearing his throat, the reverend read Julia’s vows. She got through his name—Calvin Urqhart Patrick Carstairs—without even a look of surprise. She recited each word with clear precision.

  Then the reverend reached the words “to love, honor and...” and the man hesitated. Cal heard a hushed gasp ripple over the assembly. There was something going on.

  Or maybe the reverend could see Julia had changed her mind... Maybe she’d found out the truth and she’d let him cling to a dream until this point, when she’d confront him over his past, over what he’d done, tell him she didn’t love him...she hated him—

  No, the man kept going.

  Then they got to the question that really mattered. Cal couldn’t breathe. No man, he realized, knew for sure what his bride was going to say until those two words came out.

  “I do,” Julia said, her lovely voice rising in the sunlight-filled church.

  The usual stuff came next. About any man who knew of a reason why they should not be joined, etc. He was the only one who knew of a reason and he kept his peace.

  “You may now kiss the bride.”

  One kiss and it was official. Lady Julia Hazelton was his.

  She gasped as he lifted her off her feet into his kiss. His lips caressed hers. A surge of desire—the most damned inappropriate thing—swelled in him. He almost let her go in case a bolt of heaven-sent lightning fried him to a crisp because he was lusting in church. Mam would have been shocked. But after all, he was bad.

  He broke away from the kiss. He wanted to paint Julia at this moment and capture the flush of her ivory cheeks, the sheer radiance of her. He had two unfinished paintings of her. Now he had a lifetime with her to complete them.

  But first, he wanted to carry her off to bed.

  “Now, we have to sign the marriage registry. Then we are to go outside,” she reminded him. She tightened the link of their hands. “I want to make you happy, Cal.”

  He wanted to believe it. But in his gut, he knew what she meant: I want to make you happy to be an earl, to be a gentleman, to have Worthington Park.

  A slow grin lifted his mouth. “Remember I want to make you happy, too.”

  He swept her into his arms and he kissed her again, even though they were supposed to be leaving the church. His desire felt like what happened when you tossed airplane fuel on a bonfire.

  Minutes later, he was signing the names he’d hated—Carstairs and Worthington—to a paper that was intended to represent the happiest moment of his life.

  It stunned him to realize those names didn’t represent the old earl to him anymore. It felt like they represented him. He was so stunned Julia had to lead him out of the church.

  Rice showered them. People rushed forward with hugs, kisses, congratulations. Flashbulbs popped. A photographer with a camera mounted on a tripod took photos of Julia and him, then commanded, cheerfully, “Now the family of the Earl of Worthington. All together.”

  Cal grasped the handles of David’s chair and wheeled him. Diana and her sisters took their places. Then, Cal offered his arm to the countess. In a low voice he said, “The dower house is ready for you to move, whenever you want, like I promised.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “I shall go this afternoon. I am ready to go.”

  He caught Julia looking at him with surprise. Then she smiled again and he saw the hope in her eyes.

  When he’d told the countess he was marrying Julia, he’d asked her about her sons and the three missing women. She had insisted Anthony had looked at no one but Julia, and that John was too young for driving motorcars and flirting with women. Then she’d apologized, profusely, for not helping his mother. She’d broken down in tears. He’d tried to harden his heart, but Julia had gotten to him.

  He was tired of hatred, tired of anger. That fantasy of a happy home—it had wrapped around his heart, and that afternoon, he’d made peace with the countess.

  Glowing, Julia brought her brothers, her sister and Zoe over for photographs. Then she fetched her frail-looking mother and her autocratic, tough-loo
king grandmother.

  After the photos were done, Julia tossed the bouquet. A chubby girl tried to push Isobel aside, but his new sister-in-law caught the flowers. Then tossed them quickly away, where young women jumped for them like cats on a mouse.

  Ignoring the melee, Isobel came up to him. “I am happy to have you as my brother by marriage.”

  “I’m happy to have you as a new sister.”

  Together they looked over to Julia, who stood with her mother and grandmother and chatted with guests.

  “Did you like her dress?” Isobel asked. “It’s all anyone has talked about since she got back from Paris. What she would wear and how long it should be.”

  “She was wearing a dress?”

  “Of course! She would have looked pretty shocking in the church without one.” Then she grinned. “You were teasing.”

  “Sure I was.”

  “Did you hear Reverend Wesley pause? He looked at me as if he was going to smite me.”

  “The reverend can’t smite you, Isobel. Only God can do that—and he’s not going to do it to innocent young girls.”

  “You don’t know what happened last time, when Nigel got married. I scratched out the word obey in his sermon book. Zoe didn’t want to say it, and the reverend wouldn’t omit it to please her. So I took it out.”

  Cal had to laugh.

  “I got caught out at the ceremony. Anyway, if a woman has to obey her husband, why shouldn’t he also agree to obey her?”

  “Maybe because two people can’t be masters in one house. It’s better if they’re equals.” But he and Julia could never be that. They were from different worlds.

  “I suppose that is true.” Isobel frowned. “There’s a man standing there, smoking a cigar. I’ve never seen him before. He looks like one of the pictures in the newspapers of Al Capone.”

  Cal turned. The man, standing beneath an oak, had his hat pulled low. It was like the feeling of having his fighter plane engine cut out on him. Kerry O’Brien was here. At Worthington. On his wedding day. What the hell—?

  “Is he a friend of yours?” Isobel asked. She must have seen the recognition on his face.