Free Scandal of the Year by Laura Lee Guhrke Page B

muttered around the cigarette between her lips. She lit it, then tossed the match into the water and exhaled a stream of smoke overhead. “No velvet draperies that the overworked maids shall have to shake out later,” she added, took another pull on the cigarette, and blew a perfect smoke ring in his direction. “Why shouldn’t I smoke?”
    He moved aside and the wispy ring sailed past him, disintegrating on the summer breeze. “It leaves an unpleasant odor on clothes as well as drapes and cushions,” he pointed out.
    “Well, yes, I suppose it does, but it’s not as if one cigarette makes much difference there. Simply everyone smokes nowadays.” She made an up-and-down gesture at him with the lit cigarette. “Present company excepted, obviously. But unless you live like a hermit, you’re bound to smell like tobacco most of the time anyway, so what does my little cigarette matter to the scent of your clothes?”
    “Women should not smoke. It isn’t decorous.”
    “Decorous?” She burst out laughing. “I’ve never been decorous in my life.”
    “It’s vile,” he repeated stubbornly. “And some doctors fear it has an adverse effect upon the lungs. Bad enough that men engage in it, but for women to do so is even worse.”
    “How puritanical you are! You don’t smoke, you don’t drink, and you’re filled with moral rectitude and propriety.” She frowned. “I don’t think the handsome prince ought to be like that.”
    “And I don’t think a baron would want his wife to smoke.”
    Her violet eyes met his, and there was a cool, metallic flash of defiance in their depths as she took another pull on the cigarette and exhaled the smoke. “I already told you, I’ve been defying authority all my life. I’m about to make a respectable marriage and atone for all my sins, but I shall have my petty rebellions all the same. No other way to keep my sanity.”
    “Your fiancé might cry off if he found out.”
    “He already knows.” There was such hardness in her piquant face that he was startled, but when she spoke, her voice was quite cheerful. “But he’s determined to have me despite all my flaws.”
    “But that’s a good thing.” He paused. “Isn’t it?”
    “Of course!” She tossed her cigarette into the stream and reached for the velvet slippers beside her. “Well, handsome prince, I’d best be off,” she said as she put them on. “It’s almost curtain time, and if I’m late, they’ll be thinking I’ve done a funk. If you want to come and watch me ruin the show, we’ve set up the stage on the village green. Admission one shilling.” With that, she stood up, lifted her spinning wheel into her arms, and turned away, whistling as she started down the other side of the bridge.
    “Wait!” he called after her. “I don’t even know your name.”
    “Julie.” She laughed, turning around to look at him even as she kept walking away. “At least that’s what my friends call me.”
    “Friends? But we aren’t friends. We’re barely acquainted.”
    “We shall be friends though. I’m quite determined.”
    “Why should you be?”
    “Because you don’t like me, that’s why.”
    He shook his head, bemused. “Even if that were true, it makes no sense.”
    “Yes, it does. I hate not being liked. Besides . . .” She paused to glance over her shoulder to see where her backward steps were taking her, then she returned her intense gaze to him and went on, “I like you, despite your snooty manner and your morality and your hopelessly old-fashioned ideas. We shall be friends one day. You might as well resign yourself to it now,” she added before he could protest that he was not snooty, “for you haven’t a hope of resisting me. Cheerio.”
    She shifted the spinning wheel to one arm, pressed the palm of her free hand to her lips and blew him a smacking kiss, then turned her back and walked away.
    Aidan watched her go, telling himself he ought to be relieved by her departure. She did