Chapter Twenty-Two
On the day of the audience with the queen, Jasper was a wreck. Beneath his court jacket, his skin was uncomfortably warm and his shoes, which had always fit perfectly up until that moment, had begun to pinch.
It wasn’t just that he was afraid they would be refused again. Or that he was nervous for Julia, who was holding up remarkably well under the circumstances. It was also the elaborate piece of jewelry weighing down the inside pocket of his jacket that he couldn’t keep his mind off of.
“There’s no way this ends favorably,” Nicholas said for the third time.
“Likely not.”
“And you’re going through with it anyway.”
“It’s what Julia wants.” Jasper pulled at his cravat without actually untying it.
Julia and Amelia finished their perusal of the Green Drawing Room, and Jasper saw his opening. Ruby had disappeared to discuss their place on the list of audiences with a clerk. He wasn’t going to get a better chance before they saw the queen.
“Could I speak with you a moment, Julia?” He tried to keep his tone as neutral as possible, but he failed miserably.
Julia exchanged a look with Amelia and dragged him off to a corner. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong.”
“Something is wrong. Jasper, I can’t have anything go wrong right now. I’m—”
He dropped down to his knee.
Julia stared at him, mouth open.
He searched for the words he’d planned to say, but for the first time in his life he was at a loss. He’d crafted a whole speech and he couldn’t remember it.
“Jasper?”
He shook himself. Just say what you feel. “I wanted to do this somewhere special, but then I thought—Buckingham Palace—there are worse places.”
“Worse places for what?” She was looking at him like he’d lost his mind.
Maybe he’d be better off trying a different tactic. He gave it another shot, this time without words. Jasper reached into his pocket and pulled out the ring.
Julia gasped.
A halo of white diamonds, set in gold, surrounded a much larger yellow diamond that reminded him of the color of her hair in sunlight. When he first saw the ring at the jewelers, it made him think of the night she showed up in the drawing room wearing that outrageous black dress and dripping with diamonds.
“Julia Bishop, will you be my wife?”
She didn’t take her eyes off the ring. “We don’t have the queen’s permission yet.”
“I don’t care what the queen wants.” Despite where he was kneeling, no lightning bolt arrived from the heavens to strike him down. “What do you want?”
The wait for her answer felt like an eternity.
Slowly, Julia took the ring from him and held it out in front of her. Her hand shook, and she kept her lips pressed together, like her answer might fly out if she didn’t keep them clamped shut.
Please say yes. “If you say no, it doesn’t change anything. I still love you. I still want us.”
No matter how complicated things were, no matter what Victoria said, he still wanted to be with her—but he also wanted her to want to be his wife.
She slid the ring over the fourth finger of her left hand and held it up to the light. Her lips parted. Finally, finally, she looked at him.
“Yes.”
It came out as a whisper but Jasper would have heard her even if they were in the middle of traffic on Piccadilly Circus.
“Yes,” she said again, louder.
He jumped to his feet and wrapped her in his arms. She pulled his head down, and her kiss answered all the questions he didn’t have time to ask. She wanted to marry him—entirely for herself. Not because he’d asked. Not because they were afraid of losing each other. They were in this together. They wanted the same thing.
When they pulled back, it was only enough to let each other breathe. His forehead rested on hers and he brought her fingers to his lips. “Nothing else matters. Just this.”
“Just us.” She kissed him again, quickly, catching her own fingers in the process. As they laughed, she peeked around his shoulder, and her lips spread into a wide smile. “They might matter, too, a little.”
Jasper turned around to find Amelia practically bouncing with excitement, and Nicholas doing his best to contain her.
Nick grinned at him. “Welcome to the ranks of the hopelessly devoted.”
Amelia was squealing in delight. “I knew it. I knew it! How many times did I say—”
“Nobody likes a sore winner, sweetheart.” Nick winked at her.
Jasper tucked Julia in closer to his side, unable to keep from smiling.
She smiled back, before taking a deep breath. “Now I just have to face the queen, and convince her to like me.”
“It’s not too late to back out,” Nick told her.
Amelia elbowed her husband. “You’re not helpful.”
“It really is too late,” Ruby informed them all, overhearing Nick’s comment as she rejoined them. “Jasper has already walked out on one appointment with the queen, and that’s one time too many for any family.”
Julia leaned close, whispering under her breath. “Did your sister just refer to me as family?”
“I don’t think she realizes,” he whispered back.
“What don’t I realize?” Ruby looked at each of them, going pale when she saw the ring. “Take that off.”
If she were his brother instead of his sister, Jasper would have become the first person to strike someone in the Green Drawing Room.
But Julia proved perfectly capable of handling the situation herself. “No.”
“I mean it. Take that off right now.”
“I meant it when I said no.”
Ruby closed her eyes and pressed at the crease between her eyebrows. “I’m not resisting your match, but you cannot go into an audience with the queen wearing the engagement ring of a man she has forbidden you to marry.”
“I’m not taking it off.” Julia’s chin had raised a few notches.
Jasper squeezed her arm in support. His sister was probably right—she usually was where this sort of thing was concerned—but he was glad Julia had refused. Now that she’d put it on, he never wanted her to take it off.
“Why you both insist on making everything as difficult as possible, I will never understand.” With her eyes still closed, Ruby inhaled and exhaled slowly. When she opened them, the dark-brown depths were sharply focused. “All right. Lady Julia, come with me. If we’re going to get through this with a favorable result, you need a plan.”
It was nearly impossible to walk in the heavy ivory court gown Ruby had loaned her, but Julia was too nervous to be still and sitting wasn’t an option without crushing the unwieldy train. Instead, she and Ruby made slow laps up and down a nearby gallery.
“I’m not taking the ring off.” They would have to pry it from her corpse if they wanted her to remove it. Jasper had proposed. Even if they could never marry, that ring proved how they felt about each other. She wasn’t about to let anyone take that away.
“I’ve moved on,” Ruby announced. “So should you.”
“All right.”
“Keep your right hand covering your left. It will look demure, and most women keep their hands clasped after they curtsy anyway.”
“About that…”
Ruby stopped dead. She turned to face Julia. “You can’t curtsy.”
“I can try, but especially in this dress—it’s not likely to go well.”
She was almost beginning to feel sorry for Ruby. Almost.
“You’re going to be the Duchess of Albemarle. We can’t have you falling over in the throne room.” Ruby resumed walking, and it didn’t escape Julia’s notice that it was at a slower pace. “Acknowledge your limitation gracefully, and then skip to the next thing. Don’t linger on it.”
“What is the next thing, according to your strategy?”
“You can go one of two ways. Express how devoted you are to Jasper, or enumerate the ways in which you are qualified to be his duchess.” They reached the end of the gallery, and turned to head back down. “Normally I’d say stick to the qualifications, but Victoria is something of a romantic so professing your love for my brother might actually work.”
Professing her love wouldn’t be so bad, albeit a bit awkward in a room full of courtiers and stewards, but the qualifications would be trickier. Julia didn’t imagine they counted chess mastery, excellent horsemanship, or a love of gossip among the desirable attributes for a duchess.
“What if I’m not?”
“Not what?” Ruby asked.
“Qualified.”
They stopped again, and Julia had to hide her shock when Ruby took her hand. “Under no circumstances can you let them see you flinch.”
Julia had never before wondered how many times Ruby had walked past a group of whisperers with her chin held high. She could desperately use some of Ruby’s poise right about now.
“You’re bold, and you have a superior intellect. Those will help you as a duchess, and they’ll help you get through this audience.”
They returned to the Green Drawing Room as the guard was calling their names. It was their turn. Julia clasped her hands, using the pressure of Jasper’s ring against her palm to keep herself focused.
The whole court ceremony had been explained to her in detail, but Julia had zero hope of remembering it all. Fortunately, she wouldn’t have to. Ruby was ahead of her in rank, so Julia just copied everything she did. At the door, Ruby dropped her dress train to the carpet and let the lords-in-waiting fan it out for her as she passed, so Julia did the same. Ruby presented her name card to the man standing in front of the queen and curtsied when he called it.
It was the moment of truth. She looked at Amelia, then at Jasper. They both smiled. Julia handed the man her card.
“Lady Julia Bishop,” he announced.
Julia stood completely straight, with her shoulders back, looking into the face of her queen. “There are circumstances, of which I believe you are aware, that prevent me from curtsying.”
A murmur went through the assembled lords and ladies-in-waiting. The slightest of sneers lifted the upper lip of the queen.
Julia’s chin rose a notch higher, gathering every ounce of bravery she could muster. “I came today to tell you I reject your refusal.”
Beside her, Ruby whimpered. “Oh, God.”
“I will be marrying Jasper DeVere, Duke of Albemarle, at my family home in Berkshire in one fortnight, whether or not the crown chooses to recognize it.”
“Lady Julia!” A steward came forward, trying to stifle her.
Do not let them see you flinch.
“You cannot keep us apart. You cannot tell us who we can love.”
Chaos erupted around them. Victoria never said a word. Guards hauled them all off to a side room while advisors argued over what to do with them. Presumably someone went to consult with the queen about whether she would like to revive the previously abandoned tradition of beheadings.
“That was not the statement we discussed in the gallery,” Ruby hissed once they’d been left alone.
“I decided to improvise.” Julia looked to Jasper. “Do you mind terribly about the fortnight and the wedding?”
He took her hand and kissed her knuckles. “Not at all.”
Ruby threw her hands up. “You’re both fools. It won’t be legal. It will be treason, in fact, if you try to have a clergyman do it. We could have petitioned the privy council in a year, but after this debacle—”
She was interrupted by the arrival of the Duke of Buccleuch, Victoria’s Lord Privy Seal. He looked over the group with a stern eye.
“They dinnae call ye the scandalous Bishops by accident, do they?” His Scots brogue held no warmth. “I’ve been instructed to let ye go with the understanding that none of ye are welcome back at court. Is that clear?”
It was Nicholas who answered for them. “Yes, your grace.”
“Ye’ll leave out a side door—your carriages have been instructed on where to meet ye—and I will not be reading about today’s little drama in any of the papers, or ye can expect formal charges.”
They all nodded and murmured their agreement. They were shown out a servants’ entrance where, as promised, their carriages were waiting. Ruby took one on her own, fuming in murderous silence over her ejection from court, and the four of them piled into the remaining coach.
Jasper turned to Julia and asked, “What would the woman who just mouthed off to the queen of England like to do with the rest of her day?”
The answer was easy.
“If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to go home.”
She’d told off the queen, and lived to tell the tale. Victoria had just sat there, looking at Julia like she’d grown a second head. So much for Julia’s childhood fantasy of them becoming the best of friends, but her dream of spending the rest of her life with Jasper was back on.
They were going to have a wedding—albeit an illegal one, on her father’s land instead of in a church—in just two weeks. There was something to be said for shirking all convention. They wouldn’t have been able to secure Westminster Abbey on such short notice, and Julia didn’t want to wait a moment longer than necessary to start her life with Jasper.
At the townhouse, Jasper held her hands against his chest while he smiled down at her with the same grin he’d been wearing since she said yes. “Will you be terribly disappointed if I take a later train? I need to make amends with Ruby for putting her on the queen’s bad side.”
“Of course.” Julia didn’t want to let him go, but she didn’t want him at odds with his sister, either. Not after everything Ruby had done to help her prepare. “Tell her I’m sorry she got caught in the middle.”
“I will.” He kissed her with enough heat to melt her slippers.
“I’ll give you a ride,” Nick offered. “I’ve got to stay and sort some business for next term.”
Amelia cleared her throat. “So, you’re going to abandon me.”
Nick kissed her cheek. “You know you were going to ignore me the whole trip anyway, so you could plot with your sister.”
He wasn’t wrong. On the train back to Reading, Julia didn’t waste any time getting started on the planning.
“Do you think gold is too ostentatious for a wedding?” she asked Amelia.
“Would my saying yes stop you?”
Gold might be a bit much. Then again, only a few people would be in attendance and they already knew Julia’s tastes. It would go beautifully with her ring. “You’re right. I want everything done in gold.”
“That’s easy, then.” Amelia brushed her palms against each other to indicate a job well-done. “We’ll just transfer your bedroom to the back lawn, and voila. Gold wedding.”
“You think you’re very amusing, don’t you?” Her room was not that gold. There were notable patches of ivory.
Nevertheless, Julia would have a gold dress made, with lots of netting and diamonds. She would look like a star plucked down from the heavens. She devoted a few minutes to waxing lyrical about her debut as a celestial body of light. It helped her keep herself anchored to the earth.
She was going to marry Jasper.
No matter what anyone said, it would be a real marriage. They would promise to cherish and obey each other, and never part.
“I don’t think I truly appreciated the simplicity of being married in a smithy,” Amelia grumbled.
“You planned your wedding to Montrose,” Julia reminded her.
“Mother planned that. I just stayed out of the way.”
Mother. It was a topic they didn’t discuss very often anymore—not after she’d done her best to ruin Amelia’s life—but it was Amelia who asked the question.
“Will you invite her, do you think?”
Julia didn’t want to need her mother there, but she couldn’t help but feel a twinge. “Would you be upset if I did?”
The day with her father, talking about being apart from the people they loved, still weighed heavily on Julia’s mind. She didn’t forgive Lady Bishop, but if she could ease her father’s pain without causing Amelia any, she wanted to.
“Even after everything she did, I still missed her at my wedding. I wish you’d all been there,” Amelia admitted. “Just don’t tell her until it’s all planned.”
Otherwise it would end up another debacle like Amelia’s first engagement. It would be so much worse, because Jasper was a duke. If their mother had lost herself over the social prospects of the boring Earl of Montrose, who knew what she would do when she found out about Jasper.
“We’ll give her four days,” Julia decided. “It’ll be enough time to come, but only if she leaves straight away. No time for meddling.”
Hopefully. Now that Julia had allowed herself to want this, she wouldn’t let anything take it from her. With the matter settled, she set her mind back to planning.
“Candles!” Julia exclaimed. “We’ll need heaps of candles. How long do you think it takes to order a field’s worth?” The concerns spilled out of her, each one a piece of tangible proof that she would actually be marrying Jasper. “I’m sure Papa can find someone, don’t you think?”
“I—”
“Oh, Mia!” Julia flung herself back against the seat. “Can you believe it? Can you believe I’m really getting married? That we’re in love? I don’t even care that he’s a duke.”
“Very big of you,” Amelia agreed. “Before your mind bounces off on a new wedding tangent, don’t you think there’s something you should take care of first?”
“What do you mean?” What else was there, except the wedding, and her and Jasper’s glorious future?
“Did you ever resolve that issue, about trusting Jasper—completely?”
Julia pinned her sister with a flat stare. “I told the queen to sod off. I think my demons are conquered.”
“Does he know that?”
She was about to tell Amelia that of course he did, but she stopped. Did he? Did she? Julia had no doubt that they loved each other, but she hadn’t yet given him the one thing he’d asked of her. Amelia was right. There was something more pressing than the wedding to plan.