Read Online Swept Away by Candace Camp - Free Book Online

our wall.”
    â€œAre you—will you go back to that place?”
    â€œI shall have to. I have no other way to meet him. Naturally I couldn’t tell him where we live.”
    â€œOh, no,” Phoebe agreed with a little gasp of horror. “When will you go back? Tonight?”
    â€œNo,” Julia replied reluctantly. She wanted very much to return to Madame Beauclaire’s tonight—only because she was filled with eagerness to get the truth out of Stonehaven, she told herself—but she knew that to do so would ultimately work against her. “I cannot let him think that I am eager to see him again. Men like a chase, I understand, and Stonehaven seems to me to be a man who likes it particularly. I have to build up his anticipation, make him begin to worry that he will not see me again. Then, when he does see me, he will be much more enthusiastic.”
    Phoebe nodded. “I’m sure you are right. I am merely impatient. I want so much to hear his confession.”
    â€œI think I shall return on Friday. That will give him two days to stew and wonder. How does that sound?”
    â€œI don’t know. I was never much good at that sort of game. The only man I cared about was Selby, and I wanted to see him so much that I could not pretend otherwise.”
    Julia smiled at Phoebe’s slightly guilty expression and reached out to link her arm through hers. “’Tis just that you are too honest and good a person to prevaricate, my love. It rather makes you wonder about me, doesn’t it—that I find it so easy to do so?”
    â€œJulia! Don’t say such things!” Phoebe would never allow any negative words about one of those she loved, even from the loved one herself.
    â€œLady Armiger!” A man’s delighted voice came from the left of them. Phoebe and Julia turned to see a man and woman walking toward them. The man was smiling delightedly. The woman looked frozen in stone. “Miss Armiger,” the man continued. “How wonderful to see you. I had no idea that you were in town.”
    â€œVarian.” Phoebe smiled, holding out her hand. “How good it is to see you. But how can it be that we have become Lady Armiger and Miss Armiger, when before we were Phoebe and Julia with you?”
    Varian St. Leger had been a good friend of her husband’s, and he had visited many times at their home. At the time of the scandal, Varian had been one of the few who had not been immediately convinced of Selby’s guilt. “I cannot believe it of Sel,” he had often said. “I know the evidence looks black, but, damme, it just seems impossible.” They had seen little of Varian the past three years, though he had stopped in once or twice when he had been by to see young Thomas. Being Thomas’s cousin, he had taken on the responsibility of visiting with Thomas and his mother as Selby had formerly done.
    â€œPhoebe, then.” Varian took her hand, smiling down warmly at her. “I did not wish to presume. And Julia.” He took her proffered hand next, smiling. “I have been lax this year, I am afraid. I haven’t visited Thomas even once. It is fortunate that he and his mother are in London this summer.”
    â€œYes, of course.” Phoebe cast a rather timid glance at the woman who was standing stiffly beside Varian, not saying a word. “How do you do, Mrs. St. Leger?”
    Pamela St. Leger did not speak, merely gave Phoebe a short nod, her face not softening even slightly. Pamela, Thomas’s mother, had been long and loud in her condemnations of Selby. Julia had heard that she had wanted to sue Selby’s estate for the monies that had been removed from the trust. However, the decision had not been up to her, of course, but to the trustees, and they had not done so—due primarily, Julia felt sure, to Varian St. Leger’s influence. All Pamela had been able to do was cut them socially, and that she