Louise Allen – The Officer and the Proper Lady (страница 12)

Marcus, he scrawled.

Read this. What the hell is going on? Can’t someone put a bullet in the bastard?

Say the pretty to the parents and my love to Nell and the girls,

Yr. affect. brother,

Hal

Not his greatest literary work, but the best he could do with this headache. Hal folded Mildenhall’s letter inside his own, sealed it in four places and wrote the country address on it, adding To be forwarded, just in case Marcus had taken it into his head to travel. He doubted it. His sister-in-law was increasing again and Marcus, deeply protective, was certain to have her tucked away in deepest Hertfordshire.

Monty about to be a father, Marcus with a little son already and another child on the way. People no sooner got married than they were fathering brats, he thought irritably, despite the fact he was fond of young William George Carlow. He was half way to the bell pull to have the letter taken down, when a mental picture of Julia with one hand resting protectively on the swell of her belly hit him like a blow.

He made a sharp gesture of shocked repudiation. First he had almost ravished her, now his imagination had made the wild leap to her carrying his child. Which she might well be, if some shreds of self-control hadn’t saved them both yesterday. He tried to recall what had stopped him, but he couldn’t, it was all too confused. But one thing was clear: this could go no further. There was no way he could allow himself to see her again.

Julia tried hard to look regretful while Mama and Lady Geraldine regarded her with expressions of deep disappointment over their tea cups. She was not used to disappointing anyone and it was an unpleasant novelty.

‘You quarrelled with Mr Fordyce?’ Mrs Tresilian said in tones of disbelief. ‘But you never quarrel with anyone, Julia. You would never do anything so unladylike, surely?’

‘He was priggish and jealous beyond bearing,’ she said, setting her cup down with a rattle. So much for making a clean breast of it—of some of it, she corrected herself—you got lectured. Being a fast and disobedient young lady was beginning to have its attractions. ‘I was sharp with him.’

‘Jealous of whom?’ Lady Geraldine enquired. ‘Mr Smyth or the colonel?’

‘Major Carlow,’ Julia said, hurling oil on flames.

‘Hal Carlow!’

‘But you said he was a rake, Julia,’ Mrs Tresilian said into the silence that followed Lady Geraldine’s exclamation. ‘What could you possibly have done with him to make Mr Fordyce jealous?’

‘Nothing,’ she denied vehemently, managing to blush rosily at the same time. She had done nothing that Charles Fordyce knew about, that was true. But she had done more than enough with Hal Carlow to send her mother into fits of the vapours.

‘Julia,’ her mother began as Lady Geraldine’s eyebrows arched in surprise.

‘I let slip that I know him. So Mr Fordyce treated me to a lecture on the danger to my reputation. Which he had no call to do,’ she added hotly, guilt making her protest too much. ‘Anyone would think he had made me an offer.’

‘Who?’ Mrs Tresilian gasped. ‘Which of them? What kind of offer?’

‘Mr Fordyce. Marriage,’ Julia said, hanging on to her temper with difficulty. ‘But he has not.’ What was the matter with her? She never lost her temper, never answered Mama back. And now listen to her!

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