"I feel seasick," Frances said from somewhere close on the platform.
"Hold on to me," Lord Malmsey said. "You have delicate nerves, my love."
His love? Blinking in the twilight, Juliana tore her gaze from the panorama and turned toward the voices.
But the couple was no longer nearby.
THIRTY-TWO
"WHERE'S MY aunt?" Juliana cried. "And Lord Malmsey?"
James curved an arm around her, pulling her close. "We'll find them later," he said, his low voice seeming to vibrate right through her.
Though she knew she shouldn't, she leaned into him. "Where are the duke and Lady Amanda?"
"Does it matter?"
"Yes!" Amanda was supposed to be here with James in the dark. Kissing him. No matter that the thought of his kisses made Juliana's stomach feel queer.
She swayed.
"Are you feeling seasick, too?" he asked.
"No." It was just the sound of his deep chocolate voice making her dizzy. And the thought of kissing him. She couldn't kiss him. Not again. If she was going to kiss anyone, it should be the duke.
But the duke didn't want to kiss her until they were married, and in any case, he was with Amanda. In fact, Amanda had probably latched on to him knowing he wouldn't kiss her.
If a woman feared being kissed, the duke was a much safer bet than James.
"Do you see them?" she asked James, trying to peer around him.
He drew her toward the staircase. "Maybe they've gone downstairs. I think we should go and see."
They walked all the way down, around and around, but the others were nowhere to be found. At the bottom, they retraced their steps down the corridor, laughingly feeling their way along the walls again. James, Juliana noticed even in the darkness, was definitely limping more than usual. Reaching the end, they opened the door and looked out into Leicester Square.
She blinked in the bright sunshine. There was no sign of her aunt or Amanda or the other men. "They must still be upstairs," she said.
"They must." A family was approaching the door, so James drew her back inside to let them pass.
The children giggled when the door closed behind them and the corridor plunged into darkness. "Don't run!" the parents cautioned as their offspring made their way toward the staircase.
The youngsters giggled again and again, bumping each other and the walls. Still, when James took Juliana's hand and began to follow them, she could hear his uneven gait.
"Your leg is hurting you, isn't it?"
She felt rather than saw him shrug. "It was a tall staircase. I'm fine."
The vast number of steps hadn't occurred to her when she'd suggested today's outing. Unlike Amanda, she never really thought about James's limp at all. He never mentioned it, and it was usually so slight. "Does it hurt very often?"
"Only when it's cold and rainy."
"Dear heavens." She gripped his arm with her other hand, effectively dragging him to a stop. "It must hurt all the time this year."
His laughter echoed down the corridor. "It's not that painful. The limb is stiffer than I'd like, but the sensation is just a dull ache. Nothing to merit your concern. In a strange sort of way I actually embrace the discomfort—it reminds me how fortunate I am to still have it."
"When did it happen? And how?"
"Peninsular War," James explained. "Took a ball right below the knee." The giggles grew fainter as, at the other end of the corridor, the family started up the staircase. "The army surgeons wanted to amputate, but one managed to save it instead."
"I'm glad," Juliana murmured, thinking he was stoic and brave.
Amanda should be so grateful to have him.
"I was lucky." The footsteps faded away, and James continued walking down the corridor. "And extremely grateful for the man's skill. Since I could no longer march with the army, I needed another profession, and—"
"That's why you became a doctor," she interrupted softly.
"Have you still been puzzling over that?" he wondered with a low laugh as they neared the steps. "Yes, this time you're more or less correct. Eventually, though, I chose the life of a physician over that of a surgeon. I decided I'd rather work with stethoscopes than saws."
Suppressing a sickening vision of a surgeon's saw covered in blood, Juliana took a while to notice that instead of starting up the staircase, he'd drawn her around and underneath it.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"People will bump into us if we wait in the corridor. We'll wait here instead."
It was very dark under the steps, and James would take advantage of the dark. He'd claim he wanted to practice and try to kiss her again. She'd told Amanda as much, hadn't she, because she knew it to be true from experience. "I think we should go back upstairs."
"If we wait here," he argued, "your aunt and the others will surely come down."
"Aunt Frances won't be able to see us under here." Especially considering Frances was probably busy kissing Lord Malmsey. Bold men had a tendency to take advantage of the dark, and while Lord Malmsey might have started out rather shy, he was obviously getting bolder by the minute. Already today he'd been bold enough to kiss Frances in James's carriage and call her my love.
Juliana's stomach felt queer—and suddenly she knew why.
Lord Malmsey had called Aunt Frances my love.
Juliana wanted someone to call her my love.
She wanted James to call her my love.
Because she loved James, and she wanted him to love her back.
But that would never happen.
"I don't know what to do," she said.
She wanted to love the duke. But she loved James instead, because James was warm and affectionate and charitable and everything else
