Page 71 of Forget Me Not

“Do you promise at least some of the stories will be embarrassing for Lucas?”

Mischief touched every face in the room. Julia had been nervous upon first hearing that Lucas’s friends, the ones he’d kept in contact with, had descended upon Brier Hill. But now, she was glad they’d come.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Lucas had climbed mountains withthe Gents before. They’d covered nearly all the Peak District and had summited a few mountains in Scotland. He had mountaineered throughout Europe with Kes. But the mountains surrounding Brier Hill were, by far, the most familiar to all of them. Anytime they visited his home, they made a point of undertaking treks. This, however, was the first time they’d made a climb with Julia among them.

She fit the group perfectly. No matter that Lucas had been their friend for years, having her with him deepened the connection he felt to the group.

“I think Charlotte would have been a little bit in love with you, Digby.” Julia had begun calling all the Gents by the same names Lucas did, and they called herOur Julia.

“Stanley would never have permitted it,” Aldric said. “He was very protective of your sister.”

Julia looked at Lucas. “He was?”

“We both were.” He set his hand on her back, guiding her around a jutting rock in the trail. “Charlotte was so quietly tenderhearted that we worried people would take advantage of her. We didn’t want her to be hurt.”

“Did you worry about me?”

Lucas slipped his hand in hers. “Of course we did, but for different reasons. We feared someone would hurt her. We worried thatyouwere going to murder someone.”

She laughed and adjusted her hand so their fingers threaded. “I was not so terrifying as that.”

“You most certainly were. I recall a time when you bullied the two of us into spending an entire night out on the old stone bridge in wind that would have felled a sailing ship.”

Chuckles rumbled through the group of Gents.

To them, Julia said, “They were very impressionable children.”

“We were seventeen,” Lucas said.

The chuckles exploded into full-throated laughter. Julia grinned. Her smiles were coming more easily of late. His efforts on that score were proving fruitful.

Whatever his friends had said to her in the sitting room the morning before, it was already helping. Part of their plan, no doubt. They would help, and they wouldn’t give up. Knowing they were implementing another of the General’s plans, Lucas felt less like he was walking on thin ice.

“There was also the time,” he said, “when you and Philip climbed onto the roof of the Collingham church to check a bird’s nest for eggs and couldn’t get back down, and you nearly convinced him to try to jump.”

She shook her head. “I am very glad he didn’t listen to me.”

“I wish you hadn’t listened to James the time he dared you to steal a horse from the Lampton stables. You were nearly killed.”

“C’est terrible.What happened?” Henri sounded properly terrified on her behalf.

Julia wrapped her other arm around Lucas’s, embracing his arm in hers. “I wasn’t old enough or skilled enough for anything beyond a pony. The horse I’d taken proved too much for me. In an instant, the mare was running, and I was helpless.”

Lud, he remembered that awful sight with perfect, horrible clarity. Had she been thrown, as tiny as she’d been and as fast as that horse had been running...

“Lucas jumped onto one of the other horses and raced after me. Somehow, he managed to calm my panicking mount and transfer me onto his.” She looked up at him. “And you didn’t even yell at me.”

“I did, however, give James a piece of my mind.”

“Did you tell your parents?” Kes asked him.

“I couldn’t toss James into the muck without getting Julia in trouble as well. She had suffered enough.”

Digby walked a bit ahead of them, somehow managing to strut even as he scrambled over a bit of rock. “We could have used Julia’s help when we stole those horses in Devon.”

Far from horrified, Julia looked intrigued. “You stole horses?”

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