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* * *
Jervis bowed himself out. A moment later Nancy bustled from the dressing room with her arms full of towels, bobbed a curtsy in the direction of the bed and hurried after the valet. The outer door closed with a heavy thud, the inner one stood open on to an apparently empty room.
Will lay back against the heaped pillows and got his breathing under some sort of control. He was bone-weary, aching and the night fever was beginning to sweep through him, but he had to stay in sufficient control to cope with Julia who, it seemed, had not thought beyond the marriage ceremony. She is a virgin, he reminded himself.
‘Are you still in there?’ he enquired. ‘Or have you climbed down the ivy to escape me?’ There was a pause, then she appeared in the doorway in a gown of floating white lawn, her hair loose on her shoulders, her hands knotted before her. His breathing hitched. ‘You are a white ghost tonight, not a grey one.’ She was certainly pale enough to be a spirit.
Julia took one step into the chamber. Her feet were bare. For some reason that was both touching and disturbing. ‘I had not realised that you would expect me to share your bed,’ she said. Her chin was up.
‘I am sharing my title, my home and my fortune with you,’ Will pointed out, goaded by her obvious reluctance into tormenting her a little.
She went, if anything, paler. ‘Of course. I have no wish to be difficult. It is simply that we had not discussed it.’
‘True. I have to confess that I have no experience of virgins.’
‘I am glad to hear it,’ Julia said, with so much feeling that Will blinked. ‘I mean, one would hope that a gentleman does not go around seducing virgins.’ She bit her lip, then put back her shoulders, tossed her robe on to a chair and walked over to the bedside.
Will was powerfully reminded of pictures of Christian martyrs bravely facing the lions and felt a pang of conscience. For all her maturity and poise and her scandalous circumstances, Julia was an innocent and his own frustrations at his weakness were no reason to scare the poor girl. ‘Perhaps I should make it clear that I do not expect you to do anything but sleep in this bed.’
‘Oh.’ Julia froze, one hand lifting the covers to turn them back. The colour seemed to ebb and flow under her skin and he wondered if she was about to faint. ‘Truly?’
Her relief was palpable. Will told himself that he was a coxcomb to expect anything else: she scarcely knew him, he looked like a skeleton, he could hardly stand up half the time—why on earth would the poor woman want to make love with him? The very fact that she feared he might attempt it showed how innocent she was.
‘Get into bed, I promise you are quite safe.’
Julia pushed back the covers, climbed in and sat upright against the pillows. A good eight inches of space and the thickness of his nightshirt and her gown separated their shoulders: it must be imagination that he could feel the heat of her skin against his. She smelled of roses and Castile soap and warm woman and her tension vibrated between them like a plucked harp string.
‘It is important that no one can challenge this marriage,’ he explained, more to keep talking until she relaxed than anything else. ‘We have a licence from the Archbishop, we were married by the local vicar in the face of the largest congregation I could bring together and now both our houseguests and our servants will vouch for the fact that we spent the night in this room. If and when my aunt decides she is going to challenge your control of the estate, she will not be able to shake the legitimacy of this marriage or contest your position as my wife.’
‘I see. Yes, I understand why it is necessary.’
It sounded as though Julia was having difficulty controlling her breathing. She was not the only one, Will thought with an inward grimace. The spirit was very willing indeed as far as he was concerned—but the flesh was certainly too weak to do anything to upset the composure of the warm, fragrant, softly rounded and very desirable female so close to him. She was not a beauty, but she was, he was uncomfortably aware, an attractive, vibrant woman.
‘Go to sleep,’ he suggested and reached out to snuff the candles.
‘Goodnight,’ she murmured and burrowed down under the covers.
Will willed himself to stillness as gradually her breathing slowed and he waited for sleep to take her. Then a small hand crept into his. He froze. After a moment Julia shifted, murmured something and, before he could react, she snuggled right up to his side, her cheek on the thin cotton of his nightshirt over his heart.
‘Julia?’ His heart pounded in his chest until he felt dizzy. Or perhaps it was simply the scent and the feel of her. Somehow Will managed not to put his arms around her and drag her tight against him
‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘I should have known I would be quite safe with you, that you are a gentleman. I do not want you to think I was unwilling because you are ill.’ She wriggled and came up on her elbow. Before he realised what she was doing she bent her head. The kiss would have landed on his cheek—instead, as he turned his head, their lips met.
Soft warmth, the yielding curve of that lovely mouth he had been trying to ignore for days. The whisper of her breath between slightly parted lips, the hint of the taste of her—champagne, strawberries, woman.
Hell. The torture of this was going to kill him. He couldn’t breathe, his heart would surely give out. He wanted to touch her, caress her, because he was suddenly acutely aware that this trusting sensuality could overcome his body’s weakness.
But he had just given her his word. He pressed his lips lightly to hers and then murmured, ‘Goodnight, Julia. Better that you sleep on your side of the bed or you will find me a very hot companion with this fever.’
‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ she asked. He could almost feel her blushes as she lay down a safe distance from him.
Yes, kiss me, touch me, let me make love to you. ‘No, thank you.’ Will closed his eyes and made himself lie still. It would be a long night.
* * *
Julia woke in the dawn light. Exhausted by fears and emotion and the strain of the wedding, she had slept as though drugged and Will had let her. ‘Will?’ Silence. As she turned something crackled on the empty bed beside her. The note when she unfolded it said simply,
Goodbye. I will write when I can. All the information and addresses you need are in my desk in the study. I have taken Bess with me. Good luck. Will.
A key slid out of the folds and fell into the creased hollow where he had lain beside her all night. She was alone. A widow in all but name.
Her fingers closed around the key as they had around his hand last night. Will Hadfield had given her her life back, as his was ending. He had not realised what a gift he was making her, what he had saved her from, but he had shown trust and confidence in her and that was balm to her bruised soul. She had tried, in sheer self-preservation, to feel nothing for him but a polite, remote concern, but she was aware that somehow the essence of the man had touched her heart.
‘Oh, Will.’ Julia curled up on his side of the bed and buried her face in his pillow. Was it imagination, or did it still hold a faint warmth, a trace of the scent of his skin?
Chapter Six (#ub9426148-d4f7-562f-8aa6-288b0bed96a9)
Three years later, 21st June, 1817— Assembly Rooms, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire
‘Do try and look as if you are enjoying yourself, Julia!’ Mrs Hadfield scolded in a whisper. ‘Do you have a headache?’
‘A little. I really do not think I should have agreed to come to this dance, Aunt Delia.’ Julia eyed the noisy throng around them with misgiving as they made their way into the market town’s Assembly Rooms. She tried to avoid any kind of large public gathering where she did not know everyone present. Even after three years she had nightmares of someone pointing an accusing finger at her, shouting Murderess! Arrest her! She made herself breathe slowly, shallowly, and focused on negotiating the steps up to the front doors. Usually the panic could be kept under control by such tactics.
It was a long time since she had attended a dance of any kind, let alone a public assembly, and she should have known she would regret not standing up to Aunt Delia’s bossiness. She cast around for an explanation for her subdued spirits. ‘Under the circumstances—’
The older woman bridled. ‘The circumstances are that my nephew took off in a most ill-considered manner three years ago. The fact that you have not heard anything from him for almost eighteen months does not mean you should be behaving like a widow.’ The words not yet hung unspoken between them
On the surface Mrs Hadfield had mellowed since her first resentment over Will’s marriage, disappearance and the events that followed. After nine months, when she finally appeared to accept that Henry’s position was unassailable and that Julia was not doing anything to damage his inheritance, she unbent towards the younger woman, although her tendency to patronise and to attempt to organise her niece by marriage grated on Julia’s nerves.
But she suppressed her own forceful nature and worked hard to foster good relations between the households. She suspected that the other woman, foolish though she was in the way she indulged her son, was both a realist and also potentially a danger.
Julia knew that Delia had demanded that the vicar show her the licence and Nancy had confided indignantly that Mrs Hadfield had questioned her about where her mistress had slept on her wedding night.
‘And did you tell her?’ Julia asked.
‘I did that! She asked me about the sheets, would you believe? I put her straight, interfering old besom,’ the maid said darkly.
So, Julia reflected, the pain of jabbing a large sewing needle into her thumb and sacrificing a few drops of blood had been worthwhile.
Mrs Hadfield might have accepted the marriage, but she had a clear eye on the calendar, and had no doubt consulted her lawyer over the necessary action to take in 1821 in the absence of proof of Will’s fate. She was intelligent enough to know that they must wait, even if she was probably crossing off the days in her almanac, and the fact that Julia made a point of consulting Henry upon every decision relating to the estate at least appeared to mollify her.
‘I do not behave like a widow,’ Julia protested now as they inched their way to the foot of the stairs, Henry protectively at their backs. ‘I do not wear mourning.’ She glanced down with some complacency at the skirt of her highly fashionable shell-pink evening gown with its daring glimpse of ankle and then the months when she had worn black, when her heart had seemed frozen with grief, came back to reproach her for her mild vanity.
She pushed away the memory of those months, of the child she had lost, and made herself focus on the present. ‘I will not give up on Will until I absolutely have to.’ And somehow that was true. A whimsical part of her mind had a fantasy of Will well and happy and living an exotic life as an eastern pasha although the letters, the straightforward letters sent via his lawyer saying where he was, had long since ceased. She had never written back for he made it quite plain he was constantly on the move and had nowhere to send the letters.
The fantasy Will was strong and handsome and responsible for some rather disturbing dreams about things that, in the cold light of day, she preferred not to contemplate.
‘I go to dinner parties and hold them,’ she went on, calmer now they were climbing the stairs and she had something to concentrate on. ‘I attend picnics and soirées and musical evenings. It is just that this seems rather...boisterous.’
And exposed. And full of people she did not know, people from outside the small, safe circle of friends and acquaintances around King’s Acre. Improbable though it was after three years that anyone would recognise a half-naked, distraught murderess in the fashionably gowned, utterly respectable, Lady Dereham.
‘Boisterous? The young people may romp. I shall not regard it,’ Mrs Hadfield observed. ‘For myself I am just thankful to be out of the house now that wretched summer cold has left me. I confess I am starved of gossip and fashions, even provincial ones.’
A faint headache, irrational fears and a growing, inexplicable, sense of foreboding were no excuse to be churlish, Julia told herself. And the Assembly Room, when they finally managed to enter it, was certainly a fine sight with the chandeliers blazing and the ladies’ gowns and jewels like a field of flowers in sunlight. She relaxed a trifle as Henry, on his best behaviour, found seats for the ladies and melted away into the crowd to find them lemonade.
‘He wants me to agree to him going off to the Wilshires’ house party next week,’ his doting mama said. ‘Which probably means there is a young lady he has his eye upon amongst the other guests.’
More likely some congenial company his own age and a tempting array of sporting pursuits, Julia thought cynically as one of Mrs Hadfield’s bosom friends greeted her with delighted cries and bore down upon their alcove. Henry was maturing, but he was still not much in the petticoat line and far more likely to flee than flirt if confronted by a pretty girl.
‘I will take a turn around the room, if you will excuse me, Aunt.’ Mrs Hadfield, already embarked upon some prime character assassination, merely nodded.
Everyone was having a very good time. So why could she not simply settle down and enjoy watching? Or even dance, if anyone asked her? The familiar crowd-induced panic was gone, but there was still this odd feeling of apprehension, of tension. Perhaps she was coming down with something. Not Aunt Delia’s cold, she sincerely hoped.
Julia stopped by a pillar halfway down the room and fanned herself, amused by the chatter of a group of very young ladies who could only just have come out that Season.
‘I do not know who he is, I have never seen him before,’ one said as she peeped through the fronds of a palm. ‘But have you ever seen such wonderful shoulders?’
‘So manly,’ another agreed with a sigh. ‘And his hair—so romantic!’
Julia looked to see the paragon who had attracted their wide-eyed admiration. Goodness. There was no mistaking which man it was as he stood surveying the room with his back to them. Silly chits they might be, but they could recognise a fine figure of a man when they saw one. That certainly is a magnificent pair of shoulders. And his glossy brown hair was indeed romantically long.
The young ladies were far too bashful and shy to do more than giggle and swoon at a distance. Julia told herself that she was a matron and therefore perfectly at liberty to wander closer to inspect this threat to female susceptibilities.
She was not given to admiring gentlemen. She was a respectable lady with a reputation to maintain and the loss of her virginity had taught her that yearning after a handsome face was one thing—the reality of amorous men, quite another. Her body might disagree sometimes, her dreams conjure up fantasies, but, waking, she knew better. A solitary bed at night was a positive benefit of life as a grass widow, as she frequently reminded herself.
Even so, this man intrigued her for no reason she could put a finger on. She paused a few feet away from him, swept her fan languidly to and fro and studied him from the corner of her eye. This was easier when the heroine of a romantic tale did it, she realised, eyes watering. What she could tell, without blatantly staring, was that his valet and tailor had between them contrived to send him forth outfitted to constitute a menace to any woman who set eyes upon him.
He was clad in a close-fitting swallowtail coat and skin-tight silk evening breeches that between them left very little of the gentleman’s well-muscled form to the imagination. Julia glanced casually around the room and managed to register, in profile, tanned skin, an arrogant nose, a very decided chin and long dark lashes which were presently lowered in either deep thought or terminal boredom.
The knot of apprehension that had been lodged uncomfortably in the pit of her stomach all evening tightened. I know you. Which was impossible: she could not have forgotten this man. I know you from my dreams. He shifted, restless, as though he felt her scrutiny and then, before she had the chance to move away, he turned his head and stared right into her face. And he was not bored or thoughtful now for he was studying her with eyes that were the amber of a hunting cat’s, the deep peaty gold at the bottom of a brandy glass.
They were the eyes she had last seen burning with scarce-suppressed frustration in the face of a dying man. The eyes of her husband.
Julia had always imagined that fainting was a sudden and complete loss of consciousness: blackness falling like a curtain. But now the margins of her sight began to narrow down until all she could see was the face of the tanned man, those extraordinary eyes locked with hers. Will. Then the only noise was the buzzing in her head and the blackness came and on a sigh she escaped into it without a struggle.
* * *
He could hold one tall, curvaceous woman without trouble. Will registered the fact with the faint surprise that still struck him when his body obeyed without faltering, when his sinews and muscles flexed and responded with their old confidence and power.
‘The lady has fainted. There is nothing to be concerned about.’ The cluster of helpful matrons surrounding him were still thrusting smelling bottles forwards, waving fans, calling for sal volatile. ‘If someone could please direct me to a quiet retiring room with a couch?’
Several led the way, bustling around and offering advice until he secured peace by the simple expedient of shouldering the door shut behind him and leaving them on the other side. Julia slid limply from his arms on to the rather battered leather chaise and he shot the bolt to give them privacy.
They appeared to be in a storeroom, now doing service as a makeshift retiring room with a cheval glass propped against the wall, a few chairs and a screen. Not the place he would have chosen to be reunited with his wife, but it had the virtue of privacy at least.
It was not the time of his choosing either, which should be a lesson to him not to yield to sudden impulses. He should have stayed in his bedchamber and ignored the lights and music from the Assembly Rooms opposite and then, as he had planned, arrived at King’s Acre in the morning. So close now to his dream, so close to coming home.
He had been thinking of the morrow when something had made him look up, glance to the side. He had recognised her at once, although this was no longer the anxious, tired woman he had married, but a poised and elegant young matron. Her eyelids flickered as he watched her now.
‘Will?’ The whisper from the chaise was incredulous. He spun a chair round and sat beside her. No time for dreaming yet. This was not going to be easy for he had no idea of what his own feelings were, let alone hers. Julia lay still, her face white, but she was thinking, calculating, he could tell. She might have fainted, but she was not in a daze any longer. ‘I thought you were a ghost,’ she murmured.
‘That was my line when we first met, if I recall. I am perfectly real, Julia.’ He remembered the courage and the pallor and the height. He recalled his body’s surprising arousal and, looking at her now, he was no longer so amazed that Julia had sent tremors of desire through a dying man.
‘I am very glad. And you are perfectly well by the look of you, which is wonderful,’ she said slowly, as though she could still not believe in him. ‘But, Will, what happened? You were so ill, and there has been no letter from you for eighteen months at least. I am delighted to see you again, of course, but it is such a shock!’
The colour was beginning to come back to her cheeks. Three years had indeed wrought changes in her. The clinging silks of her evening gown revealed lush curves, smooth skin. Her hair was fashionably dressed, glossy with health. Julia was not a fashionable beauty, but she was undeniably attractive. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, drawing his eyes to the fullness and sending a bolt of desire through him. This was his wife. The emotions that produced were confusing and not all welcome, not yet. She was real now and he was going to have to deal with that reality.
‘Yes, I am completely well.’ He might as well explain now and get it over with. ‘I was very ill in Seville and the doctor that Jervis found, quite by accident, was one who practised Jewish and Moorish medicine. He gave me some drugs, but mainly he made me rest, out in the sunshine. He took over my diet and gradually the coughing stopped and the night sweats got less frequent. I began to sleep and gain strength.
‘Then he sent me south to the coast and from there over to North Africa to a doctor he knew.’ Will shrugged. ‘There is more to it than that, of course. Exercise, massage, swimming to build up my muscles again, days when I feared I would never get back to how I was before.
‘But the miracle happened, although for months I could not believe I was really cured. Every time I picked up the pen to write I did not know what to say. If I said I was getting better and it was just a false hope... I have been fully well for over six months but it is hard to believe it sometimes.’
It was no easier speaking of it than it had been to try to write. Eventually he would learn to accept that he was going to have a future. A life. ‘I thought it would be better simply to come home.’
Julia sat up and swung her feet on to the ground. Pink satin slippers and a provocative amount of ankle showed beneath her hem. His wife had obviously decided it was far too early to go into mourning for him, or perhaps she had simply found it easier to forget him.
She is still damnably self-possessed, he added mentally as she studied him, her face almost expressionless. And yet, there was something beneath that cool scrutiny. What is she thinking? He did not like secrets. Probably she was still recovering from the shock of seeing him and that was all it was.
‘Why are you here?’ she asked. ‘At this dance, I mean.’
‘I intended to come to King’s Acre in the morning rather than turn up on the doorstep when you were about to sit down to dinner. And then I saw the lights and heard the music and decided to dip my toe into English life once more. It never occurred to me that you might be here.’
‘Aunt Delia persuaded me to come. I am not much given to large public assemblies.’ Julia studied him. ‘And you have had no news of home, of course.’
Something was wrong, he could sense it. ‘I have had no news at all. I collect that you and Aunt Delia are on good terms?’
‘We have learned to rub along together,’ she said drily. ‘And I have learned to bite my tongue even if she still sees no need to hold hers. But I should not be disrespectful, I have found her kind on many occasions. This is going to be a considerable shock to her; she has quite decided that you...that Henry is definitely going to inherit.’
‘Did you travel with her this evening?’ Time enough tomorrow to face Delia and Henry and shatter their hopes.
‘No. I used my own carriage. It is out of their way to collect me and I prefer to be independent.’
‘Then we will go back together, you and I.’ Now this meeting had happened there was no going back, no retreat into the neutral ground of a solitary inn bedchamber for the night. ‘If Delia has not seen me there is no need to tell her I have returned, not until tomorrow. Are you well enough to find her and let her know you are returning home?’ Julia nodded. ‘Then I will go and settle my account, pay off the postilions and collect my baggage. Jervis and I will meet you in the yard of the Stag’s Head opposite.’
Something flared in her eyes, but it was gone before he could analyse it. Julia pressed her lips together as if on a retort and nodded again. This was not the place to talk. Will got to his feet and let himself out, wary now that Delia or Henry might see him. A confrontation in a crowded ballroom would set the district on its ears for weeks. That was the only reason for the knot in his gut, surely? He would be home within the hour. His life could begin again—on his terms now.
* * *
Julia stared blankly at the battered door panels as the catch clicked shut. She was not a widow. She was not even the pretend-wife of a man who had vanished as though he had been a dream. Her husband was alive and fit and, as far as she could tell, in the very best of health. Which meant he would find out exactly what had happened at King’s Acre in his absence.
She had no idea what Will imagined he was coming home to, but she rather suspected that he had not thought through the implications of surviving his hasty marriage. Finally she would find out exactly what manner of man she was tied to, for this was all going to shake him off balance enough to reveal his true character. The baby. Her mind shied away from how she was going to break that to him.
Think of something else. My goodness, but he is attractive. Julia jabbed loose hairpins in securely and told herself that physical attractiveness was no guide to inner character. And if Will Hadfield thought he was coming home to her bed tonight he must think again. There was far too much to be said, to work out, before things became that intimate. She swallowed. If they ever did. She was not at all certain what she wanted, although that was probably academic. Her desires were not going to affect Will’s reactions. For all she knew he might try to repudiate her now he no longer needed her. He certainly might when he learned what had happened in his absence.
But that was something to worry about when she was alone. Now she must leave without arousing Delia’s suspicions. Julia opened the door and almost bumped into Henry. She slid her arm into his and produced a faint smile. ‘Cousin Henry! Just the person I need. I have such a headache—would you be a dear and let your mama know I am returning home now?’
‘Of course. Shall I go and call your carriage?’
