Читать книгу The Complete Regency Season Collection - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 73

Chapter Twelve

By the time she and Will sat down to luncheon Julia had managed to stop colouring up every time he looked at her. After a prolonged, very instructive and shatteringly pleasurable interlude in bed Julia had managed to take her horseback ride after all.

Nancy had fetched her conventional riding habit without being asked and Julia was glad to be saved the temptation to put on her divided skirt. She didn’t want an argument with her husband to spoil the remarkable closeness their lovemaking had created. Will had accompanied her and even listened, without apparent irritation, to her comments on how the fields were being used and what the situation was with the tenants. He had admired the rebuilt cottages that replaced the row he had shown her that first morning and complimented her on the design of the well cover and the pigsties.

Perhaps, after all, things were going to settle down. He would accept her as a partner, her position would be safe and, with shared interests, they could begin to build a marriage.

And yet... She watched him from beneath her lashes. Will had been attentive, had listened and yet somehow she had felt that he was flirting with her, humouring her. He knew, because quite plainly he was a man of very considerable experience in these matters, that she was attracted to him, that she had enjoyed herself in his arms. The balance of power, she mused. My lord and master. In bed and out of it—is that how he sees it?

‘I expect we will be besieged by visitors,’ Will remarked now as he cut into a cheese. ‘Aunt Delia will have spread the gossip all about the neighbourhood. We were spared all the bride-visits three years ago, but we are in for them now.’

‘I suppose we will be.’ People would soon sate their curiosity, surely? Then they would leave them in the peace she was used to, with only morning calls from close neighbours and her particular friends.

‘We must hold a dinner party as soon as possible.’

‘We must?’ Will did not mean the informal dinners she enjoyed, with good plain food on the table and casual card or table games, music and gossip afterwards.

‘Certainly. A series of small ones, I thought, rather than try to deal with everyone at once. In fact, I have a list of guests drawn up we can use to sort out the invitation list for the first one.’

A series of dinner parties would mean hours of planning. They would be an event in the neighbourhood and people would compare notes, which meant a different menu for each, and different table decorations. ‘I will have to buy some new gowns.’

‘Is that such a hardship? I never thought to hear a woman say that sentence in such a depressed tone of voice.’

Julia smiled and shrugged. ‘It is simply the time, but I can go into Aylesbury tomorrow and order several.’ She made no mention of the discomfort she felt walking around the crowded streets full of strangers.

Will had said nothing about pin money or housekeeping and she had no intention of bringing the subject up until she had to. It was not that she had been extravagant while she had sole control of the money, but she did not relish the thought of having to account for every penny spent on toothpowder or silk stockings. She had been earning the money that she spent so prudently. Now she would be beholden to her husband for everything.

‘We will go up to town in the autumn,’ Will said. ‘Presumably you go fairly frequently.’

‘No. I have never been.’ Ridiculously it seemed more dangerous than any other place, as though Bow Street Runners would be waiting around every corner for her. Fingers would point, constables would pounce and drag her before magistrates...

‘Why not? Is this another foolish scruple, like not wearing the jewellery?’ Julia shook her head, unable to think of a convincing explanation, and Will frowned. ‘Well, we will go up in a week or so. It will be short of company, but we can both shop, I can make myself known at my clubs again and so forth.’

‘Of course. I shall look forward to it.’ The irrational panic was building inside, beating at her, and Julia made herself sip her lemonade and nibble at a cheesecake. She needed peace and time to reflect.

* * *

The next day after luncheon Will rode off to interview the village blacksmith about the ironwork for the new stables. Julia waited until his long-tailed grey gelding had vanished from sight, then went into the garden to gather a handful of white rosebuds. Ellis the gardener controlled his usual grumbles about anyone picking ‘his’ flowers and gave her a smile as she passed him. He knew what the little bouquet was for.

The path wound through the shrubbery, past the vicarage and into the churchyard. The ancient village had been moved by some autocratic baron early in the last century when it got in the way of his new parkland. As a result the villagers found themselves with new homes, but a longer walk to the now-isolated church which also served as the chapel for the castle.

Julia made her way round to the south side and pushed open the ancient oak door. Inside the light was dimmed by the stained glass windows and the silence was profound and peaceful. She made her way to the Hadfield family chapel with its view through an ornate stone screen to the chancel.

The table tomb of Will’s fourteenth-century ancestor, Sir Ralph Hadfield, stood in the centre. The knight, his nose long since chipped off, lay with a lion under his feet and his hand on his sword hilt. Beside him his lady, resplendent in the fashions of the day, had a lapdog as her footrest.

Between the east end of the tomb and the chapel-altar steps was a slab with a ring in to give access to the Hadfield vault beneath. Delia always said the thought of the vault gave her the horrors, but Julia found the chapel peaceful. The ancestors beneath her feet, lying together in companionable eternity, held no terrors for her. It was quiet, cool, strangely comforting in the chapel as she gathered up the drooping roses from the vase standing on the slab and added the new flowers, then sat and let her tumbling thoughts still and calm.

That morning she and Nancy had folded and packed away all the tiny garments, the shawls, the rattle, the furnishings for the nursery. Now they were in silver paper and lavender, the cot stripped of its hangings, everything put away in the attic.

She had set the door wide open on to the room and left it for Will to find, or not. She did not feel able to talk about it. What if she was already with child again? All that pain to risk. Not the physical pangs, but the mental pain of nine months of anxiety and then...

But she was well and healthy now, she reassured herself, not the nervous girl who had spent those first months jumping at her own shadow, convinced that she would step out of her front door and find the constables waiting for her, her new neighbours pointing, crying, Imposter! Murder! Surely that would make a difference? And part of her ached for a child.

She was not sure how long she had sat there before she heard the creak of the outer door being pushed open and footsteps coming down the aisle. The vicar, she supposed. Mr Pendleton was gentle and kindly; she did not mind his company.

The realisation that it was not the elderly scholar came over her with a sort of chill certainty. Julia did not turn, but she was not surprised when Will said, ‘He is here, then?’

She should not have risked it, coming to the chapel while there was the slightest chance Will would find out. He would be furious that this was something else she had kept from him. He would insist that the interloper was removed...

‘I know it is wrong.’ She found she was on her feet, standing on the slab as though she could somehow stop this. Will stood with his hat in his hands, his face serious. ‘I know he isn’t yours and he has no right here. But he wasn’t baptised, so they would have buried him outside the churchyard wall in that horrid patch under the yew trees and Mr Pendleton understood when I was distressed, so we put him here...’

‘Does he have a name, even though he was never baptised?’ Will said gently.

It was the last question she expected. ‘Alexander, after my father,’ she stammered.

‘Alexander is very welcome here,’ Will said and came to her side. ‘Do you know who he is lying there with?’

‘No.’ He was not going to insist the tiny coffin was taken and buried in that dark, dank patch with the suicides and the other tiny tragedies?

‘My brother and two sisters,’ Will said and she saw his fingers were curled tight over the edge of Sir Ralph’s tomb. ‘The loss of two children after I was born shattered my parents’ marriage.’ His mouth twisted in a wry smile. ‘Not that it was well founded in the first place. Afterwards things went from bad to worse. They hardly communicated other than by shouting and the third child, a daughter, was not my father’s—or so he always maintained. You may imagine the atmosphere.’

‘Oh, the poor things!’ Julia cried.

‘The babies?’

‘Well, of course. But for your mother to lose so many and for your father... He lost two children himself and then they were obviously not able to reach out and comfort each other or things would not have gone so wrong between them.’

‘You are an expert on marriage now?’ Will asked harshly. Was he recalling that she had taken a lover before she had come to him? Might he fear she would do what his own mother had done if she was unhappy?

‘No.’ Then she saw the pain in his eyes. How hard it must have been to grow up in a household full of grief and anger. ‘No, but I can understand a little of what your mother felt. If she had no one to talk to, the loss of the children would have been so much worse.’ She hoped she had kept her voice steady and not revealed how much this cost her to speak of.

Will half-turned away and stood staring down at his long-ago ancestor, then he looked back at her as though he had been translating her words in his head and had just deciphered the meaning. ‘And you had no one, had you? Even if Delia behaved decently, you would have known that in her heart she was relieved that Henry had not been displaced.’

‘That is true.’ She fought to find a smile. ‘I managed.’ Somehow. ‘There was not much choice.’

‘You should not have had to,’ Will said roughly and the anger in his voice undid her in a way that gentleness would never have done. ‘Damn it, I didn’t mean to make you cry. Julia—’ He pulled her into his arms and for the first time since he had returned there was nothing in his touch but the need to give comfort. He cupped her head with one big hand and held her against his shoulder. ‘Perhaps it is not a bad thing if you weep now. Were you even able to cry properly after it happened?’

She shook her head, afraid to speak and lose control.

‘Then do it now. Mourn for the first child of this marriage.’ Julia gave a sob and then simply let the tears flow while Will stroked her hair and held her tightly and murmured comfort.

How long they stood there she had no idea. Eventually the tears ran their course and Julia lifted her head and looked up into Will’s face. ‘Thank you.’ She became aware that her lashes were sticking together and she wanted to sniff and her nose was probably red. The breast of his coat was dark with moisture. ‘Have you got a handkerchief?’

‘Of course.’ Will eased her down on to the pew, produced a large linen square from his pocket and moved away to study the memorials on the walls.

Julia put herself to rights as best she could and found she could express the anxiety that she had thought she could never speak of to him. ‘Will, what if it happens again? What if I am not able to give you an heir?’

He came back and sat beside her, his hands clasped between his knees. He seemed to be engrossed in the design of a hassock. After a moment he said, ‘I hope that is not the case, because I would hate to see you suffer such a thing. But if it did, then Henry, or his son, inherits. It is not the end of the world and besides, do not anticipate troubles. Now come back into the sunshine or you will get chilled. It is like an ice house in here and it is a lovely day outside.’

Julia took the hand he held out to her and went out, arm in arm with him as fragile hope began to unfurl inside her. Will understood how she had grieved and her need to weep and be comforted. He had been kind about letting her place Alexander in the vault and she had seen, with piercing clarity, just how wounded he must have been as a child by his parents’ unhappy marriage.

Perhaps one day he might even come to trust her, even though she knew she would never be able to burden him with her secret. Perhaps, Julia thought optimistically as the sunshine and the relief of the tears did their work, this was the real beginning of their marriage.

‘Will, how much did you understand of what was happening? When your brothers and sisters died?’

‘Understand? Nothing. They told me nothing other than that I was now the only son because my brother was dead so I must grow up to be the perfect Baron Dereham because there was no other option. They didn’t tell me at all about the little girl my father said was not his. I only found out about that when I overheard two maids talking about it afterwards. I would have liked to have had a brother,’ he added after a moment, his voice utterly expressionless. ‘And little sisters. I asked my tutor what it meant when the maids said one of them was a bastard. So he told me and then I was beaten for eavesdropping.’

‘That is outrageous!’ Julia forgot her own melancholy in a burst of anger for the unhappy, confused small boy. ‘They should have told you the truth, all of it, but kindly so a child could understand.’

He shrugged. ‘Water under the bridge now.’

They walked on in silence, but it seemed to Julia that some of the tension between them had lifted a little. The roofs of the Home Farm came into sight to their right and Julia recalled that the workmen had finished building the foundations for the extension to the stables and were beginning on the walls. With the new horses arriving so soon Will had decided on a single-storied wooden building to save time and he had ordered the work without, of course, any reference to her.

Now, as they strolled back from the church, it seemed the time to build on the intimacy of the moment by showing an interest rather than offering suggestions. ‘I would like it if you would show me the new stables. They seem to be coming along very well.’

Will changed direction and took the path to the farm. ‘You have not been to look at them yet?’

‘You made it clear that you did not require my interference.’ She tried to say it lightly, but his arm stiffened under her hand.

‘I am sorry you see it like that,’ Will said. ‘But there can only be one master giving orders or it confuses the servants and the workers. And I am the master.’

‘I realise that.’ Julia bit her lip. If he was prepared to be conciliatory, then she must not be grudging. ‘And perhaps I had not taken that into account sufficiently when you came home. But this has been my life and my responsibility for three years. It is what interests me, what has always interested me. I do not want to displace you—I could not do that even if I wanted to—but I cannot bear to be shut out. May I not be involved? Can we not discuss things together?’

He was silent as he opened a gate for her. ‘Will, I will go mad if you expect me to retire into the house and become a domestic paragon!’

‘You seem to be that already,’ he remarked. ‘I do not recall the house ever looking better.’

‘Thank you. But there is nothing left to do except maintain it, whereas there is always something with the estate.’ He raised an eyebrow and she knew she was being too enthusiastic, but she could not help herself. ‘I love it! There are always new things to try, experiments to plan, even a crisis or two to enliven the week.’ They stopped abruptly, confronted by a six-foot wide patch of mire where the cows had churned up the entrance to the milking yard after an unseasonal cloudburst a few days before. ‘See? This needs filling with rubble and tamping down.’

Will stopped, pushed his hat firmly on to his head, took her around the waist and swung her over the mud to a large flat stone in the middle, hopped across to it himself and then swore under his breath. ‘I’ve misjudged this—there isn’t enough room to stand securely and swing you across to the hard ground.’ They clung together in the middle, swaying dangerously.

‘You must let me go or we’ll both fall in. We will just have to wade,’ Julia said. Will was enjoyably strong and large to cling to, even if it did seem they were both about to land in the mud. What we must look like... ‘I have old boots on.’

‘Well, I have not!’ Will protested as he took a firmer grip around her waist. ‘These are Hoby’s best.’

‘They are very beautiful boots.’ She had noticed. And noticed too how well they set off his muscular legs. ‘If I go, then you will have room to get your balance and jump.’ An irrepressible desire to laugh was beginning to take hold of her. Where on earth had that come from? Relief, perhaps, after the cathartic tears in the church.

‘I am not going to leave my wife to wade through the mud in order to protect my boots,’ Will said. Julia managed to tip her head back far enough to see the stubborn set of his jaw. There was a small dark mole under the point of it and the impulse to kiss it warred with the need to giggle. He sounded so very affronted to find himself in this ridiculous position.

‘If we shout loudly enough, someone will come and they can fetch planks or a hurdle,’ she suggested. ‘Or is that beneath your dignity?’

‘Yes,’ Will agreed and she saw the corner of his mouth turn up. ‘It is. I feel enough of an idiot, without an audience of sniggering farmhands. Can you put your arms around my neck?’

Julia wriggled to lift her arms. The stone tipped with a sucking sound. ‘I think it is sinking. How deep can this mud hole be?’

‘We are not going to find out.’ Will put his hands under her bottom. ‘Jump up and get your legs around my hips.’

‘My skirts—’

‘Are wide enough,’ he said with a grunt as he boosted her up and then, with a lurch, made a giant stride to the milking-parlour threshold with Julia clinging like a monkey round his neck. She gave a faint scream as he landed off balance, jolting the breath out of her, then, with a ghastly inevitability, they were falling.

Will twisted and came down first into a pile of straw with Julia on top of him. ‘Ough!’

They lay there gasping for breath until Will said, ‘Would you mind moving your elbow? Otherwise we are endangering the future heir.’

Shaking with laughter, stunned to find she could laugh about it, Julia untangled herself and flopped back beside him. ‘At least it is clean straw.’

‘You find this funny?’ He was grinning with the air of a man caught out by his own amusement. It was the first time she had realised that he had a sense of the ridiculous and it was surprisingly attractive.

‘Exceedingly,’ she admitted. ‘Look at us! You have lost your hat somewhere, you have straw in your hair, your shirt is coming untucked from your breeches and, my lord, despite your exquisite boots, you look the picture of a country swain tumbling his girl in a haystack.’

‘And what do you resemble, I wonder?’ Will raised himself on one elbow and looked down at her. ‘Your bonnet is no doubt with my hat in the mud, those boots are deplorable, your skirts are mired around the hem, your cheeks are pink and I do not blame the country swain for wanting to tumble you in the least.’

He leaned over and slid his hand into her hair, very much the lord of the manor exercising his droit de seigneur, she thought, rather than a farmhand. ‘Now then, my milkmaid...’

He kissed her, laughing. She kissed him back, as well as she could. Will’s weight pressed her down into the straw as his free hand began to creep up her stockinged leg. Julia’s giggles turned into a little gasp of arousal. ‘Will...’