“Surely your mother is wrong. That was years ago, and it was not your fault. This man can’t still be bitter and mean to be so harsh.” Now Julia saw how pale her friend was beneath her rouge. She was truly afraid. “Diana, it would be ridiculous. After a World War, this man must see that family feuds are utterly meaningless. He must have a decent nature that can be appealed to.”
“Mummy doesn’t think so. And to protect us, Mummy wants me to marry him. He is my cousin, but royal cousins marry all the time, including first cousins. It would all be quite legal.”
“This is 1925. No one will force you to marry, Diana, against your will.”
Diana laughed a cold, jaded laugh that sent another chill down Julia’s spine. “The thing is—I am willing to marry him. By all reports, he’s quite handsome. He’s going to be an earl. Master of my home. If one of my brothers had become the earl, I would have had to marry to survive. It’s what women like us have to do. And this way I can have everything—a rather sexy husband, the title of countess and the home I grew up in.”
How strong were these cocktails? “But you haven’t even met this man. Don’t let your mother push you into something ill-advised.”
“I’ve decided that I really must have a husband. And there are so few men left for us. The War took them from us.” Suddenly Diana grasped her forearm. “I need you to help me, Julia. He’s arriving in time for dinner, then he’s going to stay. I must convince him to propose.”
Julia looked at Diana’s worried face and huge blue eyes. “I suspect he will fall in love with you the first moment he sees you.”
“He won’t. He really does hate us because the family cut his father off. Apparently, this Cal holds rather a grudge. He doesn’t even use his real name. That’s why it took so long to find him. He goes by his mother’s maiden name of Brody.”
The footman came past and Diana snatched another cocktail. “I think convincing him to marry me might prove a challenge. Because, you see, I have to convince him to like me.”
“Why shouldn’t he like you?”
“Because...well, isn’t it obvious? He will see me as the privileged daughter who had everything while his family lived in squalor. I need to be more like you, Julia. Doing good works and such. Mummy is going to try every trick in the book to force a marriage, but her ideas will be crude and obvious. They will be the kind of plots intended to work on Englishmen with a sense of honor and obligation. I don’t think that’s going to work on an angry American.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
Diana waved her hand and champagne sloshed over the glass. “Oh, Mummy would think that if the American was found in my bedroom, he would feel he had to marry me. She’s dreadfully Victorian when it comes to scheming. My plan is to be the sort of woman he can admire. Of course I have no idea what sort of woman that is. Maybe it isn’t the noble saint. Maybe he would like a bad girl. You observe people and understand them. Figure out the kind of woman he wants and help me to convince him I’m that woman.”
“Diana, this is mad. How can you possibly want to marry a man you do not know—” and apparently fear “—based on trying to be someone you are not?”
The Countess of Worthington was approaching and Diana put her lips right beside Julia’s ear. “Darling, I’m pregnant,” she whispered. “I have to marry. I have to.”
Pregnant? Julia floundered to think of something to say, but Diana looked to the door and said, in husky tones, “Oh Lord, it’s the American. He’s arrived.”
The butler, Wiggins, looked as if he’d sucked on a lemon, but he cleared his throat, gave a glance of complete disdain at the astonishing-looking man beside him—he had to look up to do it—and announced, “His lordship, the Earl of Worthington.”
“It’s Cal,” the man said. A slow, wicked grin curved his mouth as if he was enjoying himself immensely.
“Oh, good heavens,” the countess moaned quietly. “He looks like he was found in a ditch. How can this man be the earl instead of my sons?” Unsteady suddenly, she almost fell over. Julia hastened to the countess’s side and supported her.
The man who called himself Cal stood well over six feet tall. A threadbare blue sweater stretched across his chest, topped by a worn and faded leather coat. He wore a laborer’s rough trousers. His black boots had never seen a lick of polish.
His tanned face set off his golden hair, which was slicked back with pomade, but light, shimmering strands fell over his eyes. Eyes of the purest, most stunning blue. Vivid and magnetic, they looked like a blue created by an artist, as if they could never be real.
He looked a great deal like Anthony. But the new earl was more grizzled, his features sharper and more intense. His nose had a bit of a kink to it, as if it had once been broken.
The entire room had gone silent, staring at him in shock and horror. As if a bear had wandered into the drawing room.
For a fleeting moment, Julia saw the American’s expression change. The confident smile vanished and a look of hard anger came to his eyes.
Was this evidence of his bitterness? Or perhaps these were all the clothes he had and their shock had hurt him.
Julia helped the countess down to the settee, next to her grandmother.
Then she realized the silence had stretched from awkward to insulting.
No one seemed to know what to do with the earl—Cal—so she smiled at him and stepped forward. She curtsied. “How delightful to have you arrive and I do hope your journey was not too taxing. Shall I have one of the footmen show you to your bedchamber so you can change for dinner? Perhaps you would care to freshen up.”
Stubble graced his jaw, as if he had not shaved for days. Up close, she saw how different he looked from Anthony. He looked too challenging, too bold.
At her small speech of welcome, his golden brows lifted. “My journey wasn’t ‘taxing’ as you put it. I know you aren’t the countess. Are you one of my cousins?”
“No, I am a friend of the family. We are neighbors. I am Julia Hazelton. I was engaged to be married to Anthony, who was your cousin, but Anthony was killed at the Somme.” She rushed through that bit, giving herself no time to dwell on the words. “Allow me to do the introductions—and if there’s a name you forget, don’t hesitate to ask.”
“Aren’t you the sweetheart, Julia?”
The countess made a horrible pained sound. Julia heard her grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Langford, sputter in outrage.
The mocking tone in his voice made her wary, but she made the introductions of all those in the room. The eligible bachelors had not yet arrived, so it was just the Carstairs family—the countess, Diana and the two other daughters, Cassia and Thalia. And Julia’s family.
Zoe greeted Cal with open American charm, welcoming him. Nigel accepted his handshake. Her mother and Grandmama threw looks of sympathy toward the Countess of Worthington. Diana and her younger sisters curtsied.
Julia struggled to not stare at Diana’s waist beneath her gold dress. She feared if she did, everyone would read her mind and know her friend’s secret. It might be 1925, but to bear a child out of marriage meant a woman was ruined forever.
Would Diana really marry Cal and keep her secret? Julia turned her gaze to Cal. Would her friend really marry him on such an enormous lie?
Goodness, she had looked at him for far longer than was polite—and he was staring right back at her. With anger crackling in his blue eyes. She smiled calmly at him, though inside her stomach fluttered with shock.
She had grown up around Englishmen—they either showed no emotion at all or they clumsily displayed it. But the energy