It seemed an auspicious beginning. Maybe after a year or two they'd progress to kissing on the lips.
Perhaps within a decade they'd make a child.
The negotiations complete, they summoned Juliana. In the course of the next half hour, the three of them came up with a plan. After church tomorrow, they would all attend Lady Hartley's breakfast party, where, at precisely three o'clock, Amanda would be caught in the library with the duke, her dress unbuttoned down the back.
Amanda blanched when Juliana suggested the last bit, but they all agreed it was necessary to assure her ruin. By the time Amanda's father arrived that evening, her compromise would be a fait accompli. He would have to allow her to marry the duke.
"Will you ask Lord Stafford to help 'discover' us?" Amanda asked.
"No. He told me he won't be in attendance." Juliana thanked goodness for that, because he'd never approve of their plot. "But I'm sure plenty of other people will come running when I call, so there's no need for him to be involved."
With any luck, James would never hear about what happened at all.
And after all was said and done, if she was fortunate enough to learn he loved her, she would never—never ever—meddle again.
FORTY-ONE
IN HIS STUDY at Stafford House the next day, James pushed aside his paperwork and sighed.
Sometime during the sleepless night, the hot fury had settled into a coldness deep inside him. Cornelia had the sniffles. He'd passed the morning in a haze, hoping she'd decide she was well enough to leave for Lady Hartley's breakfast. When she finally did, he'd sat down at his desk, added the same column of numbers three times, and come up with three different answers.
He couldn't concentrate. He still couldn't wrap his mind around the fact that Juliana had been hiding Amanda's engagement from him for all the time since they'd met. He'd thought he knew her.
But then again, he'd thought he knew himself, too. And when it came right down to it, his disappointment in himself was much harder to swallow.
True, Juliana had done wrong. But she was a meddler, and he'd known that all along. Sometimes her scheming worked—with his aunts, for example—and sometimes it didn't.
Everyone made mistakes, and as bad as her actions had been, his own had been no better. He was hardly in a position to judge. They'd both been playing games. His games had hurt Amanda, and Juliana's games had nearly saddled him with an unwanted wife.
But he loved her nonetheless. He loved every scheming, meddling inch of her. Should he be fortunate enough to marry her, he would gladly put up with her antics for the rest of his life.
And he, for one, was finished playing games.
Decision made, he pushed back from the desk, summoned his valet, and went to his newly renovated bedroom to change. The red-and-yellow-striped bedroom he hoped to share with Juliana.
It was time to buy her roses.
ONLY THE CREAM of society held "breakfasts" in the afternoon.
Beneath a tent in Lady Hartley's garden, the breakfast was well underway when James arrived just before three o'clock. As he scanned the several hundred guests seated at round tables, searching for Juliana, Lord Occlestone rose from one nearby.
"You owe some lady an apology, Stafford?"
James glanced down to the flowers he held, a dozen red roses. "Something like that." In his carriage between the florist's shop and Lady Hartley's, he'd unwrapped and nervously dethorned them. Now, rewrapped in the crumpled paper, they didn't look like much.
"I missed you in Parliament all this week. Or rather, I didn't miss you."
"I was there Thursday," James said mildly, still searching the crowd. He had more important things to do than bicker with Occlestone.
"Oh, yes, you were there Thursday. How could I have forgotten your arguments regarding your ridiculous notion that we should return the Elgin Marbles to Greece rather than purchase them for the British Museum?"
"It's a matter of morality," James snapped. "We have no right—"
"Where the devil is my daughter?" another gentleman cut in.
Grateful for the interruption, James turned to him, then blinked at his stern demeanor. "And your daughter is…?"
"Lady Amanda Wolverston," Occlestone answered for him, clapping the man on the shoulder. "Good to see you at long last, Wolverston. What has it been, two years? Three? We Tories have sorely missed your voice of reason."
While Lady Amanda's father muttered something about excavating antiquities on his property, James looked him over. He was rather short, with fair hair and beady, pale blue eyes. His mouth was compressed and turned downward, and deep lines on either side gave the distinct impression such a frown was his habitual expression.
He didn't look the least bit pleasant. Poor Lady Amanda. The thought of Wolverston as a father-in-law would make any man think twice before proposing to the unfortunate girl.
A flash of yellow caught James's eye. Juliana, leaving the tent. "Excuse me," he said quickly and moved to follow her.
He reached the garden just in time to see her enter the house. Wondering what could possibly compel to her to go into a house during a garden party, he crossed the threshold just in time to see her reach the other end of what seemed an impossibly long corridor. From there, best he could tell, she turned and stole into a room.
He hurried after her, composing apologies in his head, desperate words spilling from his brain in a rhythm that matched the cadence of his rushing feet.
Juliana, I shouldn't have judged—
Juliana, please listen—
Juliana, I love you—
Reaching the end of the corridor, he opened what he hoped was the right door and stepped into a library. As he quietly shut the door behind him, his mouth fell open.
It had
