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‘I habitually rise early,’ Julia said. ‘And not just because unexpected noises outside my room waken me.’ Although not, normally, as early as she had got up that morning to pen letters to all the men of business who must wait on the returning baron. She had just sealed the last letter when the sound of his fist on the nursery door had brought her into the corridor. ‘But before you do anything else we must call on the Hadfields.’
‘Must we, indeed?’ There was more than a hint of gritted teeth about his polite response.
Julia swept out of the breakfast room, along the corridor and into the library. ‘If you are going to shout, please do it in here and not in front of the servants,’ she said over her shoulder.
‘Was I shouting?’ Will closed the door behind him and leaned back on the panels. ‘I do not think I raised my voice.’
‘You were about to. We need to call because it will appear very strange if we do not, and as soon as possible.’
‘You will find, Julia, that I very rarely shout except in emergencies. I do not have to.’ He crossed his arms and studied her as she moved restlessly about the room. ‘You are very busy organising me. I am neither an invalid nor Cousin Henry.’
‘You have been away for three years.’ She made herself stand still and appear calm. ‘I am in a position to bring you up to date with everything. I am only trying to—’
‘Organise me. I do not require it, Julia. I am perfectly fit and able. You have done very well, but I am back now.’
‘Indeed you are, you patronising man!’ The words escaped her before she could bite them back. ‘I apologise, I should not have said that, but—’
At his back the door opened an inch and slammed back as it met resistance. Will turned and pulled it wide. ‘Gatcombe?’
‘I beg your pardon, my lord. Mrs Hadfield and Mr Henry have arrived and are asking to speak to you, my lady. I was not certain whether, under the circumstances, you are At Home.’
‘Yes, we are receiving, Gatcombe.’ Her stomach contracted with nerves. This encounter was not going to be pleasant, especially if Will continued in this mood. And if she could not keep Delia from blurting out something about the baby it might well be disastrous.
The butler lowered his voice. ‘Mrs Hadfield is complaining about a stupid hoax and rumours running around the neighbourhood. I did not know quite how to answer her, my lady. I did not feel it my place to apprise her of his lordship’s happy return.’
‘I quite understand. You did quite right, Gatcombe. Where have you put them?’
‘In the Green Salon, my lady. Refreshments are being sent up.’
‘Thank you, Gatcombe. Please tell Mrs Hadfield we will be with her directly.’
‘Will we?’ Will enquired as the butler retreated. ‘This is an uncivilised hour to be calling.’
‘She is not going to believe it until she sees you with her own eyes,’ Julia said with a firmness she was far from feeling.
‘And she is not going to want to believe it, even then.’ Will opened the door for her. He sounded merely sardonically amused, but she wondered what his feelings might be behind the façade he was maintaining. Her husband had come back from the dead and it must seem to him that the only people who were unreservedly pleased to see him were the servants.
She listened to his firm tread behind her and told herself that soon enough he would make contact with his friends and acquaintances and resume his old life. But he had come home to a sorry excuse for a family: an aunt and cousin who would be happier if he were dead and a wife who had fainted at the sight of him and who was very shortly about to release a bombshell.
‘Good morning, Aunt Delia, Cousin Henry.’ She tried to sound as happy as a wife with a returned husband should be.
‘Have you heard this ridiculous rumour?’ Mrs Hadfield demanded before Julia could get into the room. She was pacing, the ribbons of her bonnet flapping. ‘It is all over the village! I had Mrs Armstrong on my doorstep before breakfast demanding to know if it true, of all the impertinence!’
‘And what rumour is that?’ Will enquired from the shadows behind Julia.
‘Why, that my nephew Dereham is alive and well and here—’ She broke off with a gasp as Will stepped into the room. ‘What is this? Who are you, sir?’
‘Oh, come, Aunt.’ Will strolled past Julia and stopped in front of Mrs Hadfield. Her jaw dropped unflatteringly as her face turned from pale to red in moments as she stared up at him. ‘Do you not recognise your own nephew? Is this going to be like those sensation novels where the lost heir returns only to be spurned by the family? Well, if you require physical proof, Mama always said you dandled me on your knee when I was an infant. I still have that birthmark shaped like a star.’
He put one hand in the small of his back, where only Julia could see, and tapped his left buttock with his index finger. Mrs Hadfield was beginning to bluster and from behind his mother Henry was trying to say something and failing to get a word in edgeways. Julia decided it was time to support her husband.
‘You mean the birthmark on your, er, left posterior, my lord?’ she enquired. ‘This is hardly the conversation for a lady’s drawing room, but I can assure you, Aunt Delia, the birthmark is most assuredly where you will remember it.’
‘Mama,’ Henry managed finally. ‘Of course it is Will—look at his eyes!’
‘Oooh!’ With a wail Mrs Hadfield collapsed onto the sofa and buried her face in her handkerchief.
‘Aunt Delia, please do not weep, I realise what a shock it must be—we were going to send a note and then come and call on you later today.’ Julia sat down and put her arms around the older woman. The main thing, she thought rather desperately, was to stop Delia saying something that must cause an irrevocable rift and to prevent her leaving and creating a stir in the neighbourhood before she had time to consider the situation rationally.
The men, as she might have expected, were absolutely no help whatsoever. They stood side by side, Henry looking hideously embarrassed, her husband, wooden. ‘Will.’ He looked at her, his dark brows raised. ‘You remember I was telling you how kind Aunt Delia has been to me and how helpful Cousin Henry has been with the estate.’
Henry, who, to do him justice, was no hypocrite, blushed at the generous praise. ‘Dash it all, I only did what I could. You helped me far more with my lands than I could ever repay here, Cousin Julia.’
‘You were very supportive to me. But indeed, Will, Cousin Henry has been making improvements on his own estate. Why do you not both go to the study and talk about it—and have a glass of brandy or something?’
Will looked from her to the clock, his brows rising still further. Admittedly half past nine in the morning did seem a little early for spirits, but she needed to be alone with Delia. Giving up on subtlety, Julia jerked her head towards the door and, to her relief, Will took his cousin by the arm and guided him out.
‘Now then, Aunt Delia, you must stop this or you will make yourself ill. Yes, I know it is a shock and you could quite reasonably have believed that Henry would inherit the title and King’s Acre. But Will is home, hale and hearty and quite cured by a very clever doctor in Spain, so you must accept it, for otherwise you will attract the most unwelcome and impertinent comments from the vulgarly curious. And you do not want our friends and neighbours to pity you, do you?’
Will’s aunt emerged from her handkerchief, blotched and red eyed. ‘But Henry—’
‘Henry is a perfectly intelligent, personable young man who has started to retrieve the mistakes he made with his own inheritance, if you will forgive me for plain speaking,’ she added hastily as Delia bristled. ‘If he finds a sensible, well-dowered young lady to marry in a year or two all will be well.’
‘But the title,’ Delia muttered and then bit her lip.
‘If Will had married before he fell ill then he would probably have his own son by now and you and Henry would never have had your hopes raised,’ Julia said. There was no point beating about the bush. But Delia had been kind to her when she was pregnant, she reminded herself. She owed it to the older woman to help her through this and not condemn her for her ambitions for her son. ‘You do not truly wish Will dead, do you?’ she asked.
‘No.’ It was almost convincing. ‘Of course not.’ That was better. ‘It was just the unexpectedness of it.’
‘I know. I fainted dead away when I saw him. It is such a comfort to me to have a female friend at a time like this,’ Julia said, crossing her fingers in her skirts. ‘And, please, can I ask you and Henry to say nothing about the baby? I have got to break the news to Will and it will be a shock.’
The other woman nodded. ‘Of course, you can rely on me.’
Thank Heavens! If she could only do this right, then Delia would leave the house convinced she had supported Julia in her shock, had greeted Will with open-hearted warmth and was a paragon of selflessness. It might help quell the rumour-mongers.
* * *
An hour later the Hadfields left and Julia followed Will back to the study. There were, indeed, glasses and a decanter standing on the desk and she felt like pouring herself a stiff drink, despite the hour and her dislike of spirits.
‘He has improved,’ Will remarked. He stood beside the big chair, the one she always used, courteously waiting for her to sit. Julia took the chair opposite—she was going to have to find herself a desk, they could hardly share this one. ‘How much of that is due to your influence?’
Julia found herself studying the long, elegant figure, thinking how right he looked in the ornate chair. He sat with his fingers curling instinctively around the great carved lion heads at the ends of the chair arms. Her own hands were too small to do that.
‘To me? The improvements in his character I can claim no credit for. I believe he is maturing as you had guessed he would once he began to escape from his mother’s apron strings. He does not enjoy being made to think hard, or to face unwelcome truths, but he is learning.’ She felt her mouth curving into a smile at the memory of some of their tussles. ‘I do believe I would make a good governess after the way I have had to cajole, lecture and bully poor Henry.’
Will did not speak. A ploy to make her gabble on, no doubt. It was, unfortunately, working. The relief of having the dreaded encounter with Delia over with was having its effect. ‘If he can just find a nice girl to marry, I think it will be the making of him, although he is still very shy of girls.’
‘You think you can recommend marriage from your own experience, do you?’ Julia glanced up sharply to find Will doodling patterns up the margins of the sheet on which she had been calculating wheat yields.
She would not let him fluster her. ‘Hardly,’ she said with a smile, making a joke of it. If he wanted plain speaking, he would get it. ‘A husband who vanishes less than twenty-four hours after the ceremony and returns three years later with no warning is hardly a model of ideal matrimony.’
Will raised a quizzical eyebrow, prepared, it seemed to be amused. He steepled his fingers and regarded her over the top of them. ‘You dealt with Delia very effectively. I must thank you for your support. The tone in which you said left posterior was exactly right, although it was a miracle I kept my countenance.’
‘It was fortunate that it was you who raised the subject of birthmarks—if Mrs Hadfield had asked I would not have had the slightest idea what to say.’
The left side of Will’s mouth quirked into a half-smile that produced, improbably in that strong face, a dimple. Julia stared at it, distracted by how it lightened his whole expression. ‘I wouldn’t worry about that kind of slip,’ he said. ‘She is perfectly well aware that for a couple married three years we have had only two nights when it was theoretically possible to see each other’s...shall we say, distinguishing marks.’ The smile slipped easily from amused to wicked. ‘So far. And, for all my aunt knows, we might be a most prudish couple who retire to bed in our nightgowns and blow out all the candles.’
Julia’s mood moved just as easily as that smile, from almost relaxed to exceedingly flustered. If Will was not regarding her so watchfully from those heavy-lidded predator’s eyes she would think him flirting. Perhaps he was, or perhaps he was trying to unsettle her—and succeeding very effectively, she had to admit. The thought of being naked with him, in a well-lit room, brought back all the memories of losing her virginity and added an all-too-tangible layer of apprehension and embarrassment to the mix of emotions that were unsettling her breakfast.
‘I will show you the books now to save time when Mr Wilkins arrives.’ Accounts, rents and the problems of the unsatisfactory tenant of Lower Acre Farm should divert her thoughts from the bedroom most effectively. The clock struck the half-hour, reminding her that distractions only served to bring bedtime closer and she still had no idea how she was going to react when Will came to her chamber door. Or how she was going to tell him what she must.
‘That can wait.’ He stood up, long and lean and as disturbing as a panther in the civilised room. Julia sat quite still in her chair as he walked past her. If he was going out, it would give her a soothing half-hour with the books...
‘You were very kind to Aunt Delia, although she cannot have been easy to get on with, these past three years,’ he said. Right behind her.
‘We have learned to rub along. Your return was a shock and I feel sorry for her—she knows Henry is slipping out of her control and she has invested all her energies in him. It can only get worse when he begins to take an interest in courting. She will be a lonely woman soon.’
‘And you were not only supportive to my aunt.’ Will must be standing immediately behind her. Julia imagined she could feel the heat of his body. The upholstered chair back moved slightly and she realised he had closed his hand over it, just beside her shoulder. ‘You have been loyal to me. Wifely.’ He seemed to find the word amusing: she could hear the smile in his voice.
‘Naturally. I am your wife, after all. It is important to keep up appearances.’ She was not smiling. In fact, even to herself, she sounded miserably priggish.
‘You are anxious to make this marriage work, then?’ A featherlight touch on her shoulder, barely discernible through the light muslin scarf that filled the neckline of her morning gown. Imagination. No, real. Now the finger was stroking across the muslin, touching the bare skin of her neck, lingering to explore the sensitive skin just behind her right ear.
When she swallowed he must have felt it. She hated to betray her agitation, even by a little involuntary movement. ‘Of course I am.’
‘What is this?’ Will’s breath stirred the fine wisps along her hairline. He must have bent close. If she turned, they would be face to face, their lips might meet...
Chapter Nine (#ub9426148-d4f7-562f-8aa6-288b0bed96a9)
She felt as though she was made of tinder and Will was holding a flame so close, so very close. Julia kept still with an effort and said lightly, ‘The scar? I was chased by a bull and had to throw myself into a hedge. I emerged rather the worse for wear.’ It was only a little scar, just a quarter of an inch long. She could feel it under her fingers when she washed or dabbed scent behind her ear. ‘I had not thought it showed. Is it very red?’
‘Not at all. I only noticed it because I was looking very closely.’ The warm breath moved, trailed its caress right round to the other side of her neck. Julia rolled her eyes uncomfortably to the left, rigid with the effort not to shiver. Will loomed beside her.
After a moment, to her intense relief, he straightened up and strolled back to hitch one hip on the edge of the desk. ‘Farming appears to be a dangerous operation when you undertake it. I never found it necessary to traipse around fields looking at bulls, let alone provoke them into chasing me.’
‘Which explains why the one you had was an inferior specimen with an unreliable temper. Unlike my...our current bull.’ From the way he narrowed his eyes at her Julia could only assume that criticising a man’s bull was like criticising his own virility.
‘It will not be necessary for you to get your hands dirty, or your shoes muddy, or to endanger yourself in any way connected with the estate from now on. Let alone indulge in such occupations as judging stud animals. Hardly a ladylike thing to be doing in any case.’
That was the attitude she had feared he would adopt. ‘But I am good at it. And I enjoy it. All of it. It is, after all, why you married me.’ She kept her tone free from any hint of pleading, or of aggression.
‘But the situation has changed. And there are many things in life that we enjoy that it is not acceptable that we indulge ourselves in.’
Julia swallowed the very rude retort that sprang to her lips, although the impulse to demonstrate just how unacceptable her behaviour could be by going upstairs, changing into her divided skirt and boots and riding astride round the estate was almost overwhelming. She folded her hands neatly in her lap and remarked, ‘That is the sort of remark that gentlemen make when they intend it to apply to wives and daughters, never to themselves.’
‘Are you suggesting that I behave in a manner not befitting a gentleman?’ The lazy amusement had quite vanished although Will still lounged there, apparently at ease.
Julia shrugged. ‘Gentlemanly behaviour appears to encompass gaming, whoring and drinking. All wives can do about it, so I understand, is to hope that the mistresses are not too expensive, that the gaming is for low stakes and that the drinking does not lead to imprudent expenditure on the other two entertainments.’
‘I see.’ Will got off the desk and went back to his chair. All inclination to flirt, or tease her by caressing her neck, had obviously vanished. ‘It is a little late to be enquiring about my character, don’t you think?’
‘If it was vicious, or your activities scandalous, I would doubtless have heard about it by now.’ Julia got up and went to the pile of ledgers stacked on a side table. She knew where she was with those. They did not answer back, play with words or look at her with eyes that tried to strip her to the soul. She wanted to tell him that of course she knew his character was good, but she could not find the words.
‘You may rest assured, my dear, that I dislike over-indulgence in drink, I gamble well within my means and I am not in the habit of whoring.’ When she did not reply Will added, ‘I assume you also wish to know whether I have a mistress in keeping, but do not like to ask directly?’
She had not meant this to go so far, or even to mention the subject. Her back to him, Julia shrugged, pretending an indifference she found she certainly did not feel. What she felt was a surge of uncivilised jealousy at the very thought. ‘I presume that you have.’
‘No.’
The heavy cover of the ledger for the Home Farm slipped from her fingers and banged shut as she turned. ‘But you have been gone three years.’
‘Until I began to get better again I had neither the inclination nor the strength for...dalliance.’ Will was doodling again so she could not see his face, but his voice was stiff. ‘Since I regained both I have reminded myself that I am a married man who made certain vows.’
Oh. She believed him. It was not easy for a man to admit that his virility had suffered in any way, she suspected. But that meant her husband was not simply feeling normally amorous. He had been celibate for months, so the restraint he had shown with her so far was nothing short of amazing.
Will had made vows and so had she. She had no intention of keeping him from her bed, however frightened that made her. But she was damned if she was going to allow him to seduce her into being simply a meek little wife—in bed or out of it.
‘Then I imagine I should be looking forward to tonight?’ she asked. It came out sounding more flippant, or perhaps provocative, than she intended and she saw from the flare of heat in his eyes that she had both aroused and shocked Will.
‘Julia,’ he said, his voice husky, getting to his feet, ‘you may be certain of a most appreciative reception.’
‘Mr Wilkins, my la...my lord, I should say.’ Gatcombe sounded unusually flustered. Julia could only hope it was as a result of getting in a tangle over who he should be addressing and not because he had heard anything of their conversation when he opened the door.
The steward was a wiry Midlander with a cautious attitude and a depth of knowledge that Julia admired. It had taken her several weeks to break down his reserve when he discovered he was expected to take orders from a woman, but the realisation that she knew what she was talking about, and was quite tough enough to hold her own in an argument, soon swayed him.
Now, she could tell, Wilkins was uneasy because he was uncertain who was in control. ‘I’m right glad to see you back with us, my lord,’ he said, when greetings had been exchanged. ‘I’ve no doubt her ladyship’s been telling you all we’ve been about while you’ve been away.’
‘Nothing, beyond the fact that you have been most effective, Wilkins.’ Will gestured to a chair. ‘Come and brief me.’ He stood up and smiled at Julia. ‘Thank you, my dear.’
It was a polite dismissal she had no intention of accepting. Julia smiled sweetly back and feigned not to understand him. ‘It was my pleasure,’ she said, settling back into her own chair. ‘Mr Wilkins, perhaps you could bring those ledgers over.’
For a long moment it seemed likely that Will was going to order her from the room, witness or no witness, then he smiled wryly and sat down again. ‘Let us begin with the livestock, Wilkins. I understand we have a new bull.’
* * *
Julia had done a good job, Will had to acknowledge—it far exceeded his hopes when he had thought up this scheme in the first place. She had gone beyond offering Wilkins informed support, she had taken the lead and steered the rather cautious steward into projects and changes he would never have dreamt of on his own initiative.
But now she was not going to hand back control without a fight. Will let them both talk, interjected a question now and again and realised it was going to take a while to break Wilkins of the habit of looking to his wife for approval with every comment. He did not want to be unkind to her, or unappreciative, but damn it all, he was master here and he was going to make that clear. In the estate, on the farm, in the bedchamber.
‘I have horses arriving in a few weeks,’ Will said when they had talked themselves to a standstill.
‘Fifteen, Wilkins,’ Julia said. ‘We are going to need new paddocks, stabling. More staff...’
‘I have men coming with them,’ Will overrode her smoothly. ‘And plans for the stables. Where would you suggest for the paddocks, Wilkins?’
‘To the west of the existing ones,’ Julia answered before the steward could. ‘I have been considering it. We can move the beef cattle down to Mayday Field and Croft Acre and—’
‘We do not have fields with those names.’
