Swept Away

“What?” Phoebe whirled and looked out the window, then turned back to Julia. “Oh, no! What shall we do?”

The sound of the front door knocker resounded through the house. Julia started toward the sitting room door, the only thought on her mind to tell the footman not to answer the door. But that efficient servant was already swinging open the front door, and Julia ducked back inside the room.

“Miss Julia, what is it?” the housekeeper asked, concerned by the look of fear on Julia’s face.

“A visitor. Tell him we aren’t home, Mrs. Willett,” Phoebe suggested, her face pleading.

How could he have found out who she was? There had been no one at Madame Beauclaire’s who knew her, except Geoffrey, and Geoffrey would never have told Stonehaven who she really was.

“He must—he must be coming to pay a call,” Julia stated, reason overcoming her initial spurt of fear. “Somehow he’s found out that we are here. That’s all, I’m sure.” But it would still be disaster if he saw her here!

She could hear the footman walking toward the door, Stonehaven’s steps right behind him. In another few seconds he would be here. She glanced around wildly. There was no other way out of the room. Aside from slamming the door in his face, there was no way to avoid his seeing her. Julia’s mind raced.

“Pardon me, Mrs. Willett,” she murmured as she reached over and pulled the woman’s spectacles from her face, followed by her large mob cap. Grabbing her own shawl from the back of her chair, Julia dived behind the chair just as the footman stepped into the room.

“Lord Stonehaven, my lady,” he droned.

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Phoebe numbly turned toward the door, where Lord Stonehaven stood right behind the footman.

“My lord,” she said through bloodless lips, struggling not to look toward the chair where Julia had disappeared nor at her astonished housekeeper, who stood clutching at her disarranged hair and blinking.

At that moment Julia popped up from behind the chair like a jack-in-the-box. Phoebe let out a gasp, quickly smothered. Julia had wrapped the long shawl loosely around her, effectively hiding her figure. Atop her head she wore the housekeeper’s outmoded mob cap, covering up every last strand of her distinctive red hair. The older woman’s glasses were perched on her nose, turning her lovely blue eyes strangely large and swimming. To add to the disguise, she was frowning, her jaw set and her mouth narrowed into a thin line.

Stonehaven’s brows rose slightly at the sudden appearance of this apparition, and he faltered in the midst of saying Phoebe’s name. He added tentatively, “And, uh, Miss Armiger?”

“Yes!” Julia barked in a hoarse voice. “That is who I am—not that it’s any concern of yours.”

“Julia…” Phoebe protested weakly. She disliked the man fully as much as Julia, but she could no more bring herself to be rude than she could jump off the top of the house.

“Well, ’tis true,” Julia snapped. Her heart was thundering inside her chest so loudly that she thought the others must hear it. She wished she could see Stonehaven’s face, so that she could tell whether he recognized her in her disguise or not. But with Mrs. Willett’s spectacles on, the entire room was a blur. Lord Stonehaven looked like nothing except a large smudge of black and white.

“Mrs. Willett, you may go now,” Julia said, turning in the woman’s general direction. It was not really her place, but Phoebe’s, to dismiss the servant, but Julia suspected that Phoebe was too stunned at the moment to remember to do so, and she wanted the housekeeper out of the room before she could make any remarks about her cap and glasses.

“Yes, miss.” The housekeeper, looking confused, sidled past Lord Stonehaven, feeling her way along the wall and out the door.

Julia, equally blind, edged around the chair, thinking that if she could just get around it and sit down, she would be all right despite the sorry state of her eyesight. However, she had forgotten the footstool sitting beside the chair, and she stumbled over it, sending the stool flying. She let out a cry as pain shot up her foot, and she staggered, bumping into the arm of a chair. That was all it took: the bump, combined with her swimming vision and the fact that she instinctively hopped off her hurt foot, made her lose her balance, and she tumbled ungracefully into the chair.

Phoebe let out a gasp, and both she and Lord Stonehaven started toward her. Julia quickly waved them away, blushing a fiery red.

“No!” She swung her legs down off the arm of the chair and sat up straight. In her embarrassment, her voice had slipped back into its normal register, but now she brought it back down to a gravelly growl. “I’m fine. Just fine. Sit down.”

Phoebe turned toward their visitor and tried to smile. It was not a successful effort. “Why—why don’t you sit there on the sofa, my lord?” she said, her voice quavering a little, and gestured toward the low velvet sofa, which lay at some distance from where Julia sat.

Julia glared in the general direction of Stonehaven. Disconcertingly, her gaze lit somewhere in the general vicinity of his shoulder.

“What are you doing here?” Julia asked abruptly.

Stonehaven raised his eyebrows slightly at her rudeness, but said only, “I met St. Leger at my club yesterday evening, and he told me that you were in town. I came to pay a call.”

“I realize that,” Julia retorted, increasing her scowl. She wanted to get rid of this man before he could see past her disguise and realize who she was. Otherwise, their whole plan was ruined. She could think of no better way to do that than to drive him off with rudeness. Besides, she thought, it was quite refreshing to be rude to him, especially after having to hide her true feelings toward him the other night. “What I meant was, why would you come to call on us? We cannot benefit you in any way. I think that you have done the worst that you can do to my family. Surely you cannot think that we would wish to see you. So what purpose does your visit serve?”

“You are certainly a forthright young woman, Miss Armiger.”

“Yes, unlike some people.”

“Julia…” Phoebe blushed at her sister-in-law’s bluntness.

“Why try to hide how we feel, Phoebe?” Julia asked. “I am sure that Lord Stonehaven must not be surprised to learn that we dislike him.”

“It does not surprise me, no,” he said, “though I must tell you that it does distress me. I hope you realize that I never meant either of you any ill.”

Anger blazed across Julia’s face as she said acidly, “You certainly did us ill enough by accident, then.”

There was a long, uncomfortable pause. Finally Lord Stonehaven said, “Miss Armiger, I am not the one who brought dishonor to your family. Selby did that. I know that you loved your brother, but—”

“You’re right. I did. I still do. And I don’t know how you can have the nerve to come here today and force Phoebe and me to look at you, the man who ruined him!” She realized that the growl was slipping again in her agitation, and she stopped, clearing her throat.

“Please, Miss Armiger, do not distress yourself so much.”

“It is not I who is causing my distress!”

Lord Stonehaven sighed. “I am sorry. Obviously I should not have come. Please believe me when I say that I have no desire to cause either you or Lady Armiger pain. I—I had hoped to heal some of the rift that lies between us.”

“That will never happen.” Julia shot to her feet, glaring at him, her arms stiff at her sides. “Do you think that you can ruin my brother and then be forgiven?”

Stonehaven sighed, rising to his feet also. “No. I can see that that is too much to expect.” He turned toward Phoebe. “Lady Armiger, please accept my regards. I want you to know that if I can be of service to you in any way, you have only to call on me.”

Julia let out an inelegant snort. “She would as soon call on a snake for help.”

“I’m sorry, Lord Stonehaven.” Phoebe cast a nervous glance toward Julia. “But I think it would be best if you left now.”

“Yes, of course.” He bowed over Phoebe’s hand formally, but, after a wary glance in Julia’s direction, was wise enough not to approach her. “Good day, ladies.”

He turned and left the room. Phoebe and Julia stood frozen, listening to his receding footsteps upon the Carrera marble floor. There came the sound of the footman opening the massive front door, and a moment later it closed.

Julia ripped the mob cap off her head and slammed it down on the chair, following it with the spectacles. “Oh! I cannot believe the nerve of that man! How could he come here? How did he dare! Did he think that we would welcome him? That he could just waltz in and charm us into forgetting that he is the man responsible for Selby’s—”

Phoebe let out a little inarticulate noise of distress, and Julia was instantly contrite, “I’m sorry, Phoebe. I should not have said that. It was upsetting enough for you to have to meet that man. I should not have added to your distress. It just makes me so angry.” She slammed one fist into the other hand. “Lord Stonehaven is utterly without feeling.”

Timidly Phoebe offered, “It was rather nice of him, I suppose, to call on us. No one else does. Most people just snub us. It would have been far easier for him not to come, and no one would have thought badly of him.”

“Nice!” Julia sneered. “There was nothing nice about it. Trust me. He merely came here to gloat. Or perhaps it suited him to appear to be magnanimous. No doubt he thought we would grovel in gratitude at his being so kind as to notice us. Well! He’d better think again!”

“I am sure he has—now,” Phoebe replied dryly.

Julia glanced at her sister-in-law in some surprise, then chuckled, much of her anger draining out. Julia let out an explosive gust of air and sank back into the chair, picking up the cap and spectacles and holding them in her lap. Now that it was all over and she was no longer consumed with rage, her legs were suddenly trembling, unable to hold her up any longer.