“If it involves Nicholas, then it is my business!”She refused to be treated like some simpering ninny afraid of the truth.
Her father’s brow rose.“Nicholas is it now?”
Julia felt the warmth of a blush in her cheeks.“We are betrothed.What else am I to call him?”
“The last you spoke on the subject, you made it clear you had no intention of marrying him.”
“Yes.Well.”She frowned in frustration.“It is the right of anydecentyoung lady to change her mind.”She used his own words to mock him.
His brows rose even higher.“Does Wolfingham know of your change of heart?”
She glared.“I do not recall mentioning my heart had changed toward him!”
Her father’s expression softened, and he reached out to gently squeeze her forearm before releasing it again.“You are an intelligent and beautiful young lady whom any man would be proud to call his daughter.Which I am,” he assured.“As such, please listen to me when I tell you that pride is no substitute for the happiness of having the person you love in your life.”
Julia knew that.Of course she did.But she was helpless to change things between herself and Nicholas when no one would even tell her where he was.
She drew in a deep breath before speaking.“I said some terrible things to Nicholas the last time we met, and I—I have now come to regret them very much.”
“Ah.”Her father nodded.“You are still under the misapprehension that he is a flirt and rake.”
“No.He’s told me the truth about that.”
Her father appeared startled.“He has?”
“Yes.He also told me about the other members of the Prince Regent’s private army.Not their names,” she hastened to assure when her father looked alarmed.“Only that they exist.I—I guessed that you and Uncle Broom are two of them.”
Her father smiled wryly.“As I said, intelligent as well as beautiful.But if you talked so freely together, sharing secrets, why did the two of you not come to some sort of agreement regarding— Ah, this is because of Freddie,” her father guessed heavily.
Tears stung her eyes.“He was so young when he died, Papa.And it feels… I feel disloyal for falling in love with his brother.”There, she had spoken the words out loud.To her father, of all people.
But she knew it to be the truth.She loved Nicholas in a way she had never, nor could ever, have loved Freddie.Her love for Freddie was that of a sister compared to the dizzying heights of a grand passion that made her heart pound every time she so much as thought of being with Nicholas and the way in which they had kissed and touched each other.
“If Freddie had lived, would you have married him?”
Her eyes widened, but she answered without hesitation.“Absolutely not.”
Her father’s visage softened.“He asked me, you know.If I would give my approval and consent to him asking you to marry him.”
She gasped.“He did?”She had never heard anything of this before tonight.But it made Amanda’s comment that Freddie loved her and had joined the army because he wished to impressherseem more believable.
“Yes.”Her father sighed.“I told him that he was asking the wrong person.That if you were agreeable to the marriage, then your mother and I would do everything we could to support your decision.”
“Even knowing of my betrothal was to the eldest Harding son?”
“I am sure that if your heart was with Freddie, we would have been able to come to some sort of compromise regarding the clause in your grandmother’s will so that you could marry the brother you loved rather than the eldest living Harding son.”
Julia’s gaze roamed searchingly over her father’s features.The half-smile curving his lips didn’t reach his eyes the way it normally did.“You did not approve of Freddie for me,” she stated with certainty.
“No, I did not.Nor did your mother.”He grimaced.“Understand, love, we liked Freddie, loved him even.But as a son, not as a husband for you.But, having said that, we would still have respected your decision if you had chosen to accept his proposal.”
“He never asked me.”
“Perhaps he intended doing so when he returned home a hero from the fighting,” her father said sadly.
Perhaps he had.But he had not returned home and had instead died on a battlefield far from home.
A loss Julia would feel for the rest of her life.
