Читать книгу The Complete Regency Season Collection - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 71

Chapter Ten

Will did not leave her alone in the salon for long. Julia had hardly picked up her embroidery, sorted her wools and begun on one of the roses that formed a garland on the chair seat she was working when he walked in, still carrying his wine glass, Charles on his heels with the decanter.

‘What are you making?’ He sank into the wing chair opposite her, stretched out long legs and sipped his port. Charles put the decanter down and took himself off. They were alone at last, with no servants present to keep the conversation on neutral lines.

‘A new set of seat covers for the breakfast room.’ She tilted the frame to show him. ‘The existing ones are sadly worn and the moth has got into them.’

‘My paternal grandmother made those.’

‘I was not going to throw them away,’ Julia hastened to reassure him. ‘I will try to save as much of her embroidery as I can and perhaps incorporate it into window seat covers or something of the sort.’

‘It is a lot of work for you.’ Will was twisting the stem of the glass between his fingers, watching the red wine swirl in the glass.

‘I do not mind. I dislike being idle.’

‘Hmm.’ It seemed her husband did not wish to make conversation. Perhaps he wanted her to retire. Well, my lord, I have no intention of going to bed at half past nine so you can exercise your conjugal rights! Nor was she looking forward to the conversation that she knew she must have with him first. She could not talk about it down here and risk being interrupted.

Julia executed a complex area of shading and worked on in silence attempting, with what success she had no idea, to exude an air of placid domesticity. At nine forty-five she rang for tea and contemplated her husband over the rim of her cup.

If she did not know better she would think him not nervous, exactly, but certainly edgy. Which was nonsensical—women were the ones supposed to be anxious about this sort of situation, not adult males with, she had no doubt, years of sexual experience behind them.

Now she had made herself nervous. Julia set down her cup with a rattle. ‘I shall retire, if you will excuse me.’

Will stood up with punctilious courtesy and went to open the door for her. She had thought that she had got used to his presence, but the sense that he was too big and too male swept over her again and it was an effort not to scuttle into the hall like a nervous mouse. Calm, seductive, she reminded herself. Make him want you, not just any wife. But perhaps, when she had told him as much as she dare about Jonathan, he would not want her at all.

* * *

Nancy was waiting to help her undress when she made her way to her new suite. ‘I’ve moved all your things, my lady. Such a nice spacious dressing room: there’s plenty of room for your new gowns. And Mr Gatcombe brought all the jewellery boxes up and has put them in the safe. Shall we check the inventory tomorrow, my lady? I don’t like to be responsible when we haven’t got a list of what’s there.’

‘Yes,’ Julia agreed, studying the room as if she had not seen it before. It was large with a deep Venetian window, a marble fireplace and a handsome bed in the classical style with pale-green curtains. The pictures were dull, she thought, attempting to divert her thoughts from the bed. There were others in the house that would look better here—that was something to do tomorrow. And there was the jewellery to look at. And she must think about new gowns for the entertaining Will was sure to want to do.

If she was not careful her day would become filled with all the trivial domestic duties her husband thought she should be engaging in.

‘Such a pity we didn’t know his lordship was coming home,’ Nancy said as she picked up the hairbrush and began to take down Julia’s hair. ‘You could have bought some pretty new nightgowns, my lady.’

Now the butterflies really were churning in her stomach. She was about to sleep with a man for only the second time in her life. No, third, she supposed, although sharing a bed with Will on their wedding night had been sleeping only in the literal sense.

She was not in love with him and he was certainly not in love with her. She did not have a pretty new nightgown, and, rather more importantly to her confidence, she had carried a child to term, which doubtless would make her body less desirable to him.

When he learned that she was not a virgin perhaps he would expect considerably more sensual expertise than she could possibly muster. She was not at all sure what sexual expertise consisted of for a woman. Her resolve to make him desire her just as much as she desired him was beginning to look much like wishful thinking.

But sitting up in bed ten minutes later she did feel rather more seductive. If, that is, one could feel seductive and terrified simultaneously. Her nightgown might not be new, but the lace trim was pretty, her hair was brushed out smoothly about her shoulders and she could smell the scent of rosewater rising from a number of places that Nancy assured her were strategic pulse points.

All she needed now, Julia thought as Nancy left the room with a cheerful, ‘Goodnight, my lady’, was a gentleman to seduce. She kept her eyes on the door panels and tried to conjure up the image of Will to practise on. Smiling was too obvious. She tried to achieve a sultry smoulder. The nightgown was too prim. She unlaced the ribbon at the neck and pushed it down over her shoulders a little. Even without the help of stays her bosom, she decided, was acceptably firm and high. Men liked bosoms, she knew that much.

Now, all she had to do was to maintain that look and manage not to be sick out of sheer nerves until the door opened. Then she realised that she had her confession to make first and that to attempt seduction and then to reveal the unpleasant truths would seem as if she was trying to manipulate him. Julia threw back the covers to climb out of bed.

‘Very nice.’ The husky voice came from inside the room to her left.

Julia gave a small scream and twisted round to find her husband lounging against the frame of an open jib door she had quite forgotten about. Of course, she realised as she fought for some poise, it led to his dressing room, but it was so cunningly set into the panels it was almost invisible when closed. ‘You made me jump.’

‘And that was very nice, too.’ He strolled into the room and closed the door behind him. His eyes were on her body and when she looked down she realised that her involuntary start combined with the loosened ribbon had revealed more of the swell of her bosom than she ever intended.

Will was still wearing the thin evening breeches and his shirt, but everything else had gone, the shirt was open at the neck and the cuffs turned back. The casual disarray seemed even more intimate than the silk robe he had been wearing that morning and the part of her brain that was not either panicking, or thinking shamefully wanton thoughts, wondered if that was deliberate.

‘May I join you, my lady?’ His hands were on the open edges of his shirt.

‘I... Of course. But not in bed. Not yet. I have to talk to you.’

‘Talk? We have been sitting downstairs for some time this evening. I would have thought that the time for talking was past.’

Julia took a shuddering breath. ‘This is not something I wanted to discuss downstairs. This is in the nature of a confession.’

The amusement, and the sensuality, were quite gone from Will’s face now. ‘Confession?’

Julia took a key from the bedside table. ‘We need to go back to my old room.’

‘Very well.’ His eyes were narrowed in calculation, or perhaps suspicion, but he waited while she tied her robe and led the way along the passageways until they were outside the door next to her room. She unlocked it and stood aside, feeling sick. With a sharp glance at her face Will pushed it open and went in.

* * *

What the devil was going on? Will had expected to be making love to his wife by now, not looking at spare rooms. He glanced around. When he had left this had been a sitting room, a little boudoir for lady guests using the bedchambers at this end of the house. Now there was a cradle draped in white lawn, a low nursing chair, a pretty dresser.

The nursery was up on the floor above. It still had, he recalled, his old crib, his childhood bed, his toys. What was this room doing furnished as a nursery? This unoccupied room? Behind him Julia was silent. Will opened a drawer in the dresser. It was full of tiny garments, a lacy shawl, little caps. One pile was weighted down with a rattle, silver and coral that jingled as he lifted it.

He dropped the rattle back into the drawer with a faint tinkle of bells, the realisation of what this meant stealing through his consciousness. He felt sick.

‘Where is the child?’ he asked as he turned back to the door.

His voice was perfectly calm, but Julia flinched as though he had shouted, struck at her. ‘He was born dead.’

Will stayed precisely where he was until he got the flare of anger under control. If it was anger, that sharp nauseating pain under his breastbone. He had never lifted a finger to a woman in his life and he was not going to now. He was not his father: civilised men dealt with these things in a civilised manner. But he had not expected to be cuckolded, which, he supposed, showed a lack of imagination on his part, given the family history.

‘Well,’ he drawled, ‘I have heard of some interesting accidents of birth, but I hope you are not going to tell me fairy stories. Whose child was he?’

‘Yours,’ Julia said flatly. ‘In law. He was born nine months after I married and was bedded by my husband. By you. The law accepts any child born in wedlock as legitimate unless the husband refuses to acknowledge it. If you deny him, then you can only do it by revealing our marriage for the sham that it was.’

It took him a moment to find his voice. ‘That little speech sounded rehearsed. Have you been lying awake all night fretting over how you were going to talk yourself out of this predicament? No wonder the door was locked. How long did you expect to keep me in ignorance?’

Julia pushed herself away from the door, walked across to the table set in the window alcove and began to shift things around with jerky, nervous movements. ‘This is not how I meant to tell you. I could not find the words and now it has all gone wrong. But predicament? Is that what you call it? A child died. It was a tragedy.’

She started to turn away, but Will caught her wrist, the narrow bones delicate in his grip. She went white, but pulled against him with surprising strength. He stopped himself from tightening his hold, but he did not let her go.

‘Whose child was he? Henry’s?’

‘Henry’s?’ Her expression was one of total shock. ‘Of course not! How could you think I would do such a thing? He was the child of Jo—of the man I eloped with.’

‘You eloped? You didn’t run away from home to avoid a forced marriage as you told me? So what you told me was a lie?’ What a fool he’d been. Respectable ladies did not run away from home like that. Of course there had been a man.

Julia pressed her lips together and her gaze dropped from his. ‘Yes. I...I thought you would not help me if you knew what I...the truth.’ She was stumbling over the words, biting her lip. ‘I thought he loved me, would wed me, but it was all a plot between him and my cousins to get rid of me. I lay with him before I realised he never had any intention of marrying me.’

‘So you ran away from him soon after you had eloped?’

‘Yes, the very first evening. When I realised we were not heading north I confronted him. He admitted he was taking me to London. I waited until he was...asleep and then I ran away.’

There was something wrong with the story, he could sense it. Not all lies, but not the whole truth either. ‘And after one bedding you were with child?’ To his own ears he sounded as sceptical as he felt. ‘I do not think so. You ran off when he refused to provide for a fallen woman with a brat in her belly. It explains why you were so anxious to secure a husband.’

Julia flinched at his crudity and Will bit back the instinctive apology. ‘You think that was why I agreed to your scheme?’ She pulled back against his grip and this time he let her go, expecting her to retreat. Instead she stayed where she was, a puzzled frown on her face, as though she looked back to that night and was surprised at what she saw there. ‘You may believe what you will, but strangely enough the possibility that I might be with child did not occur to me then. I was ruined and desperate: that was enough.’

No, my lady, I do not believe you, he thought. There was something she was hiding, he could sense it, almost smell it. How the devil had he been so deceived that he had thought her an innocent, a respectable woman with nothing to hide except a bullying family? The memory of her reluctance to share his bed on their wedding night, of that innocent, trusting kiss came back. Innocent. He had been sick, exhausted, in a fever—he supposed that accounted for his lack of perception.

‘Henry and Delia must have been frantic when they realised you were pregnant,’ Will observed, finding a certain grim humour in the thought. He would have liked to have been a fly on the wall during that conversation—and yet Julia was on good terms with Delia now. That argued some clever diplomacy. Oh, no, it would not do to underestimate his wife. Not just another man’s mistress and a liar, but as intelligent as he had first thought.

‘They were as relieved as you obviously are that my child was stillborn, although at least they managed to conceal it decently.’

‘And what would you have done if the baby had lived?’ How subtly the colour ebbed and flowed under her skin, he thought, studying the curve of cheek that was all he could see of her averted face. She had grown into a kind of understated beauty that he could have sworn she had not possessed before. One tear trembled on the end of her lashes. Very effective, Will told himself, fighting the instinct to pull her into his arms and comfort her. That was what she wanted, hoped—to twist him round her little finger.

‘If he had lived, I would have had to admit the truth. I was prepared for that: I could not have cheated Henry out of his rights.’

‘No? You expect me to believe that you could deny your own child a title and an inheritance? Keep silent and you would have been the mother of the heir. You would have had another twenty-one years as mistress of King’s Acre.’

‘It would not have been right,’ she said doggedly, as though she really believed what she was saying.

‘So you would have bastardised your own son? Forgive me if I do not believe you.’

She swung back, control lost at last, her fury with him plain on her face. ‘You think I could live a falsehood like that?’ Her voice was low and shaking with vehemence. ‘You think I could defraud a decent man of his inheritance and make my own child an innocent party to that for his entire life?’

‘I have no idea what you might do, Julia,’ Will said, as much to see the fire spark in her eyes—flint struck against steel—as to continue the argument. His body was beginning to remind him that he had been celibate for a very long time. Too long.

‘Well, I could not do such a thing. You hardly know me, so you will just have to accept my word.’ She caught her full lower lip between her teeth in a way that had him biting his own lip until the pain reminded his body just who was in charge. When he did not speak she turned and went to the dresser, smoothed her hand over the garments that lay inside the open drawer, then pushed it closed.

‘Do I?’ Will asked her unresponsive back. ‘What if I chose not to accept it? What if I decide that you have lied to me, deceived me from the start in order to foist another man’s bastard on me? What would the law’s opinion of our unconsummated marriage be then, I wonder?’

Julia turned and looked at him steadily as though down the blade of a rapier. ‘You think to cast me off? You may try if you are so unkind—and so uncaring of the world knowing you were incapable of making me your wife. But if you think to do it so you may court your pretty Caroline Fletcher, you will be disappointed. She is betrothed to the Earl of Dunstable who appears to be in complete possession of all his faculties and a great deal of money besides.’

Of course she is. Caroline had thought him dying and could not cope with that. Once she believed him dead she would not have gone into mourning. Curiously, he found he did not care in the slightest. Will shrugged. ‘She is beautiful, richly dowered. It is a miracle she is not already wed. It is nothing to me.’

Julia turned towards the door. The white-muslin wrapper flounced around her feet as she walked, her steps rapid and jerky as though she really wanted to run and was holding herself in check. The sash was belted tight around her natural waistline and showed the curve of hip and buttock, the elegant line of her back.

His mouth dried and he had to moisten his lips before he said, ‘We can hope that the next one is also a boy to put poor Henry out of his misery.’

‘The next one?’ Julia stammered.

She was going to refuse to sleep with him? ‘You want to have it both ways?’ Will demanded. ‘You want me to acknowledge that I was the father of your stillborn child, you want the rights of marriage and yet you would deny them to me?’

‘You would not expose me?’ She had gone bone-white, whiter even than when she had told him about the baby. The possibility of scandal seemed to terrify her.

Will shrugged. ‘No, of course not. I am not attempting to blackmail you. But if you cannot be truly my wife, then we will have to end this marriage somehow for both our sakes. Coming back from the dead rearranges one’s priorities somewhat. You’d be amazed what I find utterly unimportant now. What I do find important, what I have always, is that we have the truth between us. I will not be deceived and lied to, Julia. I grew up in a household of lies and deceptions and I’ll not stand for it now. I cannot live like that and I certainly cannot bring up children in that atmosphere.’