Candace Camp - Swept Away

“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, her hand flying to her throat. She stepped back quickly.

Phoebe was on her feet in an instant, hurrying toward her in concern. “What’s wrong? Who is it?”

“Lord Stonehaven,” Julia croaked. “He’s found out.”

“What?” Phoebe whirled and looked out the window, then turned back to Julia. “Oh, no! What shall we do?”

The sound of the front door knocker resounded through the house. Julia started toward the sitting room door, the only thought on her mind to tell the footman not to answer the door. But that efficient servant was already swinging open the front door, and Julia ducked back inside the room.

“Miss Julia, what is it?” the housekeeper asked, concerned by the look of fear on Julia’s face.

“A visitor. Tell him we aren’t home, Mrs. Willett,” Phoebe suggested, her face pleading.

How could he have found out who she was? There had been no one at Madame Beauclaire’s who knew her, except Geoffrey, and Geoffrey would never have told Stonehaven who she really was.

“He must—he must be coming to pay a call,” Julia stated, reason overcoming her initial spurt of fear. “Somehow he’s found out that we are here. That’s all, I’m sure.” But it would still be disaster if he saw her here!

She could hear the footman walking toward the door, Stonehaven’s steps right behind him. In another few seconds he would be here. She glanced around wildly. There was no other way out of the room. Aside from slamming the door in his face, there was no way to avoid his seeing her. Julia’s mind raced.

“Pardon me, Mrs. Willett,” she murmured as she reached over and pulled the woman’s spectacles from her face, followed by her large mob cap. Grabbing her own shawl from the back of her chair, Julia dived behind the chair just as the footman stepped into the room.

“Lord Stonehaven, my lady,” he droned.

Phoebe numbly turned toward the door, where Lord Stonehaven stood right behind the footman.

“My lord,” she said through bloodless lips, struggling not to look toward the chair where Julia had disappeared nor at her astonished housekeeper, who stood clutching at her disarranged hair and blinking.

At that moment Julia popped up from behind the chair like a jack-in-the-box. Phoebe let out a gasp, quickly smothered. Julia had wrapped the long shawl loosely around her, effectively hiding her figure. Atop her head she wore the housekeeper’s outmoded mob cap, covering up every last strand of her distinctive red hair. The older woman’s glasses were perched on her nose, turning her lovely blue eyes strangely large and swimming. To add to the disguise, she was frowning, her jaw set and her mouth narrowed into a thin line.

Stonehaven’s brows rose slightly at the sudden appearance of this apparition, and he faltered in the midst of saying Phoebe’s name. He added tentatively, “And, uh, Miss Armiger?”

“Yes!” Julia barked in a hoarse voice. “That is who I am—not that it’s any concern of yours.”

“Julia…” Phoebe protested weakly. She disliked the man fully as much as Julia, but she could no more bring herself to be rude than she could jump off the top of the house.

“Well, ’tis true,” Julia snapped. Her heart was thundering inside her chest so loudly that she thought the others must hear it. She wished she could see Stonehaven’s face, so that she could tell whether he recognized her in her disguise or not. But with Mrs. Willett’s spectacles on, the entire room was a blur. Lord Stonehaven looked like nothing except a large smudge of black and white.

“Mrs. Willett, you may go now,” Julia said, turning in the woman’s general direction. It was not really her place, but Phoebe’s, to dismiss the servant, but Julia suspected that Phoebe was too stunned at the moment to remember to do so, and she wanted the housekeeper out of the room before she could make any remarks about her cap and glasses.

“Yes, miss.” The housekeeper, looking confused, sidled past Lord Stonehaven, feeling her way along the wall and out the door.

Julia, equally blind, edged around the chair, thinking that if she could just get around it and sit down, she would be all right despite the sorry state of her eyesight. However, she had forgotten the footstool sitting beside the chair, and she stumbled over it, sending the stool flying. She let out a cry as pain shot up her foot, and she staggered, bumping into the arm of a chair. That was all it took: the bump, combined with her swimming vision and the fact that she instinctively hopped off her hurt foot, made her lose her balance, and she tumbled ungracefully into the chair.

Phoebe let out a gasp, and both she and Lord Stonehaven started toward her. Julia quickly waved them away, blushing a fiery red.

“No!” She swung her legs down off the arm of the chair and sat up straight. In her embarrassment, her voice had slipped back into its normal register, but now she brought it back down to a gravelly growl. “I’m fine. Just fine. Sit down.”

Phoebe turned toward their visitor and tried to smile. It was not a successful effort. “Why—why don’t you sit there on the sofa, my lord?” she said, her voice quavering a little, and gestured toward the low velvet sofa, which lay at some distance from where Julia sat.

Julia glared in the general direction of Stonehaven. Disconcertingly, her gaze lit somewhere in the general vicinity of his shoulder.

“What are you doing here?” Julia asked abruptly.

Stonehaven raised his eyebrows slightly at her rudeness, but said only, “I met St. Leger at my club yesterday evening, and he told me that you were in town. I came to pay a call.”

“I realize that,” Julia retorted, increasing her scowl. She wanted to get rid of this man before he could see past her disguise and realize who she was. Otherwise, their whole plan was ruined. She could think of no better way to do that than to drive him off with rudeness. Besides, she thought, it was quite refreshing to be rude to him, especially after having to hide her true feelings toward him the other night. “What I meant was, why would you come to call on us? We cannot benefit you in any way. I think that you have done the worst that you can do to my family. Surely you cannot think that we would wish to see you. So what purpose does your visit serve?”

“You are certainly a forthright young woman, Miss Armiger.”

“Yes, unlike some people.”

“Julia…” Phoebe blushed at her sister-in-law’s bluntness.

“Why try to hide how we feel, Phoebe?” Julia asked. “I am sure that Lord Stonehaven must not be surprised to learn that we dislike him.”

“It does not surprise me, no,” he said, “though I must tell you that it does distress me. I hope you realize that I never meant either of you any ill.”