Richard’s instinct was to say no. He didn’t really want his friend to know how pathetic his life here had been. But he couldn’t go anywhere near Willow Woods himself. Time hadn’t changed his appearance as much as he’d thought it would. His body might have changed, but apparently his face hadn’t altered drastically in nine years, or in eleven years in Julia’s case. She had recognized him, or thought he looked familiar enough to pry with her question, which made him realize who she was.
Good God, he hadn’t seen that coming. She bore absolutely no resemblance to the scrawny little savage who had tormented him when they were children. He couldn’t even say what color eyes she’d had back then, they were always so narrowed on him with rage. Her hair had been much lighter, nearly white, when she was a child, not the ash blond it was now. She’d actually turned out pretty! Who would have thought? But he knew the vicious little termagant was still inside her. Look how quickly her rage had sprung forth the moment she’d guessed who he was.
“I know where to find Charles, at least I assume he and his wife, Candice, are still living at Willow Woods with my father,” Richard said. “I just can’t go near the place myself, or I’ll risk being dragged back into the fold.”
“So you do feel you have obligations?”
“No, not a single one. But actually I could use your help.”
Ohr nodded and started packing as well. He didn’t ask what Richard feared would happen if his father found him. His restraint really was amazing.
Richard decided to volunteer a little bit about his life anyway. “It’s a complicated story, Ohr. I might be my own man now, but my father won’t take that into account. He uses—harsh means—to see his will done and employs brutes to enforce that will. He’s Milton Allen, Earl of Manford.”
“That makes you as aristocratic as the Malorys?”
“Yes, but I’m the second son. I won’t be inheriting the title. My father, while not poor, is by no means rich either. Comfortable in the pocket barely describes his lot. So uncaring tyrant that he is, he decided to barter his sons to improve his circumstances.”
“That’s not an uncommon practice, to plump up the coffers through marriage.”
“Agreed, but in this day and age, parents take their children’s preferences into account. My brother and I should have been allowed to choose our own wives, keeping our father’s criteria in mind. But we weren’t even consulted, we were simply told who we were going to marry, and before we even came of age.
“Charles, with the title coming to him, was logically used to marry up the social ladder, and you can’t ascend much higher than marrying a duke’s daughter. That’s so lofty, it wouldn’t be conceivable for an earl’s son under normal circumstances. But Candice, the girl to whom Charles became engaged, was so unappealing in appearance and disposition that her father, the Duke of Chelter, couldn’t get rid of her after three Seasons of trying. She’s what you might call a screecher. She’s also a habitual complainer. All of which made her suitors, and there were plenty of them who sought the connection to the duke by marrying his daughter, go running in the opposite direction long before they got to the altar. It was becoming something of a joke, the number of engagements broken off with her. So the duke jumped at my father’s offer of his eldest son, despite that the girl was four years his senior. They were married two years before I left home, and his marriage became the nightmare Charles and I guessed it would be.”
“You apparently left to avoid the marriage your father arranged for you. Why didn’t he?”
“As the eldest son, he had much more to lose. And he’s not the rebel that I turned into. He might have raged and bemoaned his fate, but in the end he always did whatever Father told him to do. He wants to become an earl someday. God, I used to get so furious at him, for always buckling under. And look where he is now because of it, married to a woman who makes his life a living hell. She drove him to drink, you know. I don’t think I ever saw him sober after the day he married her.”
“You thought the same thing would happen to you, didn’t you?” Ohr guessed.
“Are you joking? I knew it would be exactly like that. Actually, I was afraid I’d end up killing my intended, if she didn’t kill me first. We hated each other on sight.”
“Why?”
Chapter Fourteen
RICHARD HAD TO THINK about Ohr’s question for a moment. From the day they were born, he and his brother had never been allowed to make their own choices about anything. Their toys, their pets, their friends, their clothes, even the way they wore their hair, everything had been decided by the earl, not them. He wasn’t just a hard taskmaster, he was a tyrant in his domain, and an overzealous disciplinarian. Richard couldn’t remember ever loving his father. So it would be easy to say that Richard’s arranged marriage had been the clincher, the worst instance of his father’s controlling every single aspect of his life. That was why he’d resented Julia Miller before he even met her.
He tried to remember that first meeting, which wasn’t easy. All the angry, rambunctious ones after that stood out in his mind.
He hadn’t even known about her for the first four years of their engagement. When his father finally told him a month prior to their meeting that he was going to be marrying down for money, he’d told his father he wouldn’t do it. A rather bold statement for a ten-year-old, and he’d been severely punished for that insolence. The stick his father used to discipline him and his brother had actually broken on Richard that day, and the welts hadn’t completely healed by the time he met his intended. Perhaps he’d transferred some of the hate he felt for his father to Julia without even realizing it.
But the true rebellion against his situation had begun when he was fifteen and he and his bratty fiancée had promised to kill each other. He’d told his father about that and had asked him to break the engagement contract. Milton had laughed and told him, “If you can’t get along with the chit, ignore her after you get an heir or two. How simple is that, eh? It’s bloody well what I did with your mother, may she rest in peace, the witch.”
Richard had no memory of his mother. She’d died the year after he was born. But Charles had told him how bitterly their parents used to fight. Apparently, they’d had no choice in their marriage either.
So knowing there was no way out of that horrid match unless his father disowned him, Richard had actually started a campaign to accomplish that very thing by running up high gambling losses that could break the earl financially. But that campaign never bore fruit. It hadn’t been the least bit easy to find men who would gamble with him at that young age, and when he’d succeeded in finding a few dissolute bucks he could lose to, none of them had been willing to go to his father for payment of those debts because his father was a peer of the realm. Instead, they’d politely hounded Richard and had been too bloody congenial about it, willing to wait for however long it took him to pay up. Two years later he knew he’d have to leave England. That was his only way out.
But his memory of that long-ago day at Willow Woods, when Julia’s parents had brought her to meet him for the first time, was so vague all he could remember was the pain she’d caused him. Hard to forget that. And she’d only been five years old!
She’d approached him on the wide lawn behind the large manor house where he’d been throwing sticks for his dog to chase. She wouldn’t raise her head to actually look at him so he could see her face. Pretending to be shy, no doubt. Her white pigtails tied with pink ribbons lay over her bony shoulders. Her little bonnet was a mass of white and yellow flowers. Her rose-and-white gown was made of the finest linen money could buy, he was sure. Such a darling little girl, anyone might think—until they got a peek at the little monster’s eyes.
He knew their parents were watching them from the terrace. His father had called out to him, notifying him of the Millers’ arrival, and was probably seething because Richard hadn’t immediately run back to the house. But the girl had been sent down to join him instead. Surely he’d been on his
best behavior despite his resentment at having to meet the fat purse he was being forced to marry.
Had he actually said something about it? He couldn’t recall, but she’d amazed him when she’d unexpectedly burst into tears. He did recall wondering what the deuce had brought that on, so it must not have been anything he’d said. But the girl’s tears hadn’t lasted more than a minute before she suddenly flew at him with her fists flying, and one of those fists had struck his groin, probably unintentionally, but it had brought him to his knees. That put him more or less on her level, unfortunately, so she kicked him in exactly the same spot, that time quite intentionally he was sure, and thus began the war.
Her father had been appalled and had rushed down to tear her off him, but not before she’d bloodied Richard’s lip as well while he’d been groaning on the ground. She’d screamed at Gerald Miller that she didn’t want to marry a damned Allen. Her mother had been red-faced with embarrassment and speechless. Gerald had actually turned to Milton and said, “Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea after all.”
Milton had scoffed at the concerned father and made light of it, assuring him, “Children will be children. Mark my words, they won’t even remember this incident when they’re older. And it’s too late to reconsider. The engagement has already been announced. Your daughter will reap the benefits even before the marriage. The moment the contract was signed, she gained entrée to the ton. So do try and teach her some manners before they meet again.”
It was so typical of Richard’s father to react that way. Gerald Miller wasn’t pleased. It wasn’t the last time Julia’s father tried to persuade Milton to tear up that contract. At one point he’d even offered to pay the entire promised dowry to end it. But Milton had grown even greedier by then. The Miller name appeared often in the papers because of some new business deal, acquired property, or other success, and Milton crowed every time he read something about the Miller family’s good fortune because it would soon be his. Richard had hoped for a while that Gerald Miller would break the contract anyway, but, apparently, the harm it might do to his business reputation as well as the social scandal his wife, Helene, feared had stayed his hand.
If Julia had ever learned any manners, she certainly never displayed them around Richard. He had a scar on his ear from when she’d tried to bite it off. His nose had been disfigured for life when she’d broken it and he’d been too ashamed to admit it, so no doctor had been summoned to fix it. Not once did they ever get along on those visits, which, thankfully, were infrequent. But always in the forefront of his mind was the knowledge that he was going to have to marry that little monster. Just because his father wanted the enormous dowry and the access to the Miller fortune that would come with her. Why in the bloody hell didn’t he try to marry her if he wanted her in the family that much?!
He’d actually asked his father that question one of the many times he’d tried to get out of that contract himself. “Don’t be ridiculous, boy,” Milton had chided him. “You see, her father loves her. He’s not going to saddle her with a man even older than he is.”
“But they’re marrying up, so why should that matter?” Richard had demanded.
“Because Miller is a rare commoner. He isn’t a social climber. He’s so rich he doesn’t care about titles or the opportunities that would open to him with an aristocrat in the family.”
“Then why did he even agree to this mismatch?”
“The females in his family apparently feel differently about it. If I hadn’t found out when I researched their family that one of the Miller women had bought herself a lord to marry a few centuries ago, and another did the same thing just two generations ago, I probably wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on. But I used that information as the cornerstone of the deal. The Miller line will go forward as aristocrats now, once you produce some offspring, exactly what they tried but failed to do before. Miller’s wife was certainly thrilled with the betrothal. Still, Gerald might not have committed his daughter to a marriage partner at so young an age if you didn’t take after your mother and weren’t such a fine-looking lad that his daughter couldn’t help but be pleased with you.”
“She’s not pleased with me a’tall, she despises me as much as I do her!”
“Which makes not a jot of difference, boy. Her mother agreed with me that it would be a fine match, which clenched the deal.”
That was the bottom line, a deal that was going to make the Allens as rich as the Millers, and Milton wasn’t giving that up for any reason, least of all because the young couple couldn’t stand each other.
But Milton had added that day, “So grow out of this ridiculous animosity you two have developed. She’s still a child. She’s not old enough yet to be attracted to you. When she is, you won’t see the spitfire anymore.”
In that prediction, his father had obviously been wrong, so it was just as well that Richard hadn’t held out for that false eventuality. Julia had been attracted to him today, right up until she realized who he was and then turned into the she-devil that he remembered so well. But even if his father had been right, and as an adult now he had to allow he might be able to woo her out of her animosity, it was pointless to try because he still wouldn’t have her. He wasn’t about to give that bastard who’d sired him and put him through hell what he wanted most—the means to bring the Millers and all their wealth into the Allen family fold.
Having told Ohr most of that, Richard ended with, “No one was happy with that engagement except my father, and he wasn’t the one getting married. But I didn’t just leave England because of her. It wasn’t even mostly because of her. I left because I wanted to live my own life, not have my father live it for me. And I hated him too much to make him happy with that marriage.”
“I’ll get us a coach,” was all Ohr said to that.
Richard almost laughed. That was so typical of Ohr. He was a firm believer in fate. He never interfered with it. He might make suggestions, he might point out things he thought were being overlooked, and he’d offer help. But he wouldn’t try to change someone’s mind once it had been made up. That would be tampering with fate.
“I think horses will get us there more quickly,” Richard said.
“Me on a horse?” Ohr asked. “You’re joking, right?”
Richard grinned. “I guess I am.”
Chapter Fifteen
JULIA HAD GONE DIRECTLY home and locked herself in her room. She’d thought about finding Carol. She really needed someone to talk to. But she was in such a state that she feared she might unintentionally lash out at anyone. She didn’t really want her friend or anyone else, including the servants, to see her like this.
She was beyond upset. Agitated, enraged, and feeling some potent fear, she couldn’t even sit down she was trembling with so much emotion. Her worst nightmare was back, now when she was so close to unlocking that chain his horrid father had wrapped around her neck when she was just a baby.
But she hadn’t dreamed it. She’d seen him with her own eyes, heard his nasty remarks, felt the rage overcome her the way it always did in his presence. Eleven years had passed since she’d last seen him, and except for his appearance, he hadn’t changed, not even a little. The proof was in the first thing he’d said to her when he’d recognized her. Wring her neck? And he hadn’t been joking! Once, when she was a child, he’d held her over a balcony railing two stories up just to terrify her.
But she had changed. She no longer took offense so easily. She no longer let anger rule her actions. She no longer let anyone upset her so much that she wanted to hurt them the way she’d always wanted to hurt him. She’d outgrown that kind of impulsive behavior. Look at her today. She hadn’t tried to scratch Richard’s eyes out. She’d run away from him instead. The sensible thing to do!
But her anger wouldn’t go away. Was he back to fulfill that horrid contract? Or had he never even left England? That remark he’d made about falling in love with Georgina Malory last year implied he’d been here then, and London was
certainly a big enough town to disappear in. Had he been in town all these years, laughing at her for being stuck with their engagement without his having to actually marry her?
That would be so like him, despicable rogue that he was! But she could live with that. As long as his father didn’t find out about his presence and drag them both to the altar. She certainly wouldn’t tell the earl that his son was back in England. She would proceed with having Richard declared dead. Gabrielle Anderson knew he was alive, but Julia wasn’t sure if Gabrielle knew who he really was or simply knew him as Jean Paul, as she’d called him. But Gabrielle was only visiting and would soon be gone anyway. And the Malorys, who might know him by sight, didn’t know him by either name! So she could proceed with her petition. She’d just have to make sure that horrible contract was destroyed in the process.
Could it still work? As long as no one else knew of his existence, why not? And with the contract gone, Richard wouldn’t have to hide anymore. Actually, she ought to make a deal with him to make sure it happened exactly like that—no, good Lord, what was she thinking? Knowing him, he’d reveal his presence in England just long enough to thwart her plan, then disappear again. She’d have to wait another ten years before she could try again!
But whether he’d been in England all along or was just visiting as he’d mentioned, he obviously had no intention of marrying her. He hadn’t gone home. The earl would immediately have sent her notice if he had. Instead Richard had gone to a London ball to moon over his love! And even though he was in love with someone else, he’d admitted that he’d tried to seduce her! It was so like an aristocratic rake to be ruled by rampant carnal instincts. Why should she be the least bit surprised that that was what Richard had turned into?
How could she have been attracted to him? She was disgusted with herself for thinking him charming even for a moment! What a pathetic, desperate old maid that made her! His charm was probably just as fake as he was, with his pretense of being a Frenchman. How could she have even found him handsome today when his appeal was so superficial? Nothing about him on the inside was handsome. He was mean, spiteful. He was the worst sort of snob, the kind who couldn’t keep his mouth shut about his supposed superiority. He’d always looked down on her, thought she wasn’t good enough for him, and let her know it. Good grief, the memories were flying at her. She’d thought she’d put all that behind her, never thought about those days.