Читать книгу The Regency Season: Shameful Secrets: From Ruin to Riches / Scandal's Virgin - Louise Allen - Страница 16

Chapter Eight

At length Nancy, her maid, arrived. Julia bathed, dressed and, still deep in thought, walked to the head of the stairs to be greeted by loud wailing rising from the breakfast room. When she ran down and along the passageway she was confronted by a view of the door jammed with all three of their strapping footmen, craning to see what was going on inside. Julia tapped the nearest liveried shoulder and they jumped apart, mumbling shamefaced apologies.

The wailing female was revealed as Cook, her apron to her face, sobbing with joy on Will’s shoulder. ‘I never thought to see the day... Oh, look at ’im... Oh, my lord...just like when he was a young man!’

Will had the usual expression of a man confronted by a weeping female, one of helpless alarm, as he stood patting Cook ineffectually on the back.

‘Mrs Pocock, do calm down!’ The relief of having some ordinary crisis to take control of almost made Julia laugh out loud. ‘Gatcombe, will you please find someone to take Cook downstairs and make her a nice cup of tea and the rest of you, get on and fetch his lordship’s breakfast. He will think he has come home to a madhouse.’

‘My lady, I must apologise.’ The butler glared at the footmen until one of them helped Mrs Pocock from the room, then waved the others in with the chafing-dishes. ‘Cook had retired to her room when you returned last night and the kitchen maids did not inform her until this morning of his lordship’s presence and his good health.’

‘Of course.’ Julia took her place at the foot of the small oval table as Will straightened his rumpled neckcloth and collapsed into his chair. ‘I had forgotten that Cook has known Lord Dereham for many years.’ Gatcombe went out, closing the door on the sounds from the corridor and leaving them alone.

‘Coffee, my lord?’ Will looked decidedly off balance. Whatever he had been doing for the past three years, he had certainly not been gaining experience in dealing with difficult females. But then, since he had recovered his health, they had probably been all willing complaisance. Julia tried hard not to imagine just how her husband would have celebrated his returning health and vigour.

‘Thank you.’ The heavy-lidded look had shivers travelling up and down her spine, but all Will said was, ‘You appear to have rather more control over the domestic staff than I have, my lady. Mrs Pocock would not stop wailing.’

‘It is only to be expected,’ Julia said as she racked her brains to recall whether her husband took cream and sugar with his coffee. He could say if it was wrong, she decided with a mental shrug and simply passed the cup. ‘They are all delighted at your recovery and as for control, I have been dealing with them daily for three years, after all.’

‘I trust there will be no more weeping females today.’ Will sipped his coffee without a grimace, so she had that right at least. None of the servants knew the true story behind this marriage, or even where they had first met—the more familiar she seemed with Will’s habits, the better it would be.

‘I doubt any more of the female staff will shed tears at the sight of you.’ Julia studied him over the rim of her chocolate cup as Charles came in and began to serve Will breakfast.

As was her habit, Julia started her day with only chocolate, bread and butter and preserves, but it seemed someone had warned the kitchen and Cook had managed to at least put a decent breakfast for a hungry man in train before her emotions overcame her.

Bacon, eggs, a slice of sirloin, mushrooms. Will nodded thanks to Charles when his breakfast plate was finally filled to his satisfaction. The contrast with the emaciated invalid picking at a spoonful of scrambled egg during their first breakfast together could not have been greater.

‘What are you thinking?’ Will asked as he reached for the toast.

‘Thank you, Charles, that will be all.’ Julia waited until he footman had closed the door behind her. ‘I was reflecting that I would not have recognised the man I married if it were not for your eyes.’

‘And that recognition was enough to make you faint?’

‘You must know perfectly well how distinctive a feature your eyes are. I had thought you must be dead, although I never once admitted it to anyone else. To tell the truth, I was surprised to receive the letters for as long as you sent them. When you left I had not expected you would make it across the Channel. So the shock of seeing you again with no warning was...intense.’

Will pushed the empty plate away with sudden impatience. ‘I will not beat about the bush. What is the matter, Julia? You know I am the same man you married, but you have changed. You are wary now and it is not simply the shock of seeing me. What else are you hiding from me?’

Hiding? For a moment Julia froze. Had Will the powers to read her mind? Of course I am wary! A ghost appears, kisses me until I am dizzy with desire...and whatever happens I must reveal one secret that may break our marriage into pieces and hide another for my very life.

Julia spread honey on a roll to give herself time to collect her thoughts, then answered as though the situation was as uncomplicated as everyone else believed it to be. ‘Of course I have changed. I have been alone for three years and I have just had a severe, but very welcome, shock.’ That was not entirely a lie. ‘You try hiding so much as an extravagant piece of shopping with Aunt Delia’s beady eye on you.’ Will gave a snort of laughter and she added, ‘Any woman would be wary if her lord and master had been away for so long and then returned unexpectedly.’

He paused, one hand outstretched to the fruit bowl. ‘Is that how you see me now you have had time to think it over? Your lord and master?’

‘Certainly not,’ she answered with as much composure as she could summon and was pleased to see the amusement vanish from his face. ‘It is how society views you. I regard you as an unknown and very uncertain factor in my life.’

He was peeling an apple, his eyes clashing with hers as the peel ran slowly over his fingers. The chocolate threatened to slop over the cup. Julia put it down carefully before he noticed the effect he had on her. ‘I have no idea if I will be happy married to you. Or you to me. But I will do my level best.’ She braced herself for an explosion of wrath.

‘Happiness? You aim high. I was hoping for mere contentment as a starting point. An absence of scandal would be desirable.’ There was an edge to that, she noticed, puzzled. He could have no idea what she was hiding, so why the reference to scandal? ‘Well, we will see. My experience of marriage is as brief as yours, but I have no doubt you will point out to me where I am going wrong.’

All very calm and polite, Julia thought, but under the civilised words was more emotion that he was keeping hidden from her. Which was fair enough, she supposed. She had no intention of making her own emotions any more transparent than most of them undoubtedly were just now, not yet.

‘Your own childhood memories will guide you, I imagine,’ she replied with equal calmness.

‘Do you? If you mean I should seek for a model of the ideal husband in my own parent I am afraid you would not be very happy with the result. He gave me these eyes and he left me the only thing I love: King’s Acre. I suspect you would want something more from me in the way of conjugal virtues.’ He drained the coffee and tossed his napkin onto the table. ‘Have you finished, Julia?

‘Certainly.’ In the face of that matter-of-fact bitterness there were no words of comfort to offer to a virtual stranger. She waited as he came round to pull her chair back. ‘What do you wish to do first?’

‘Any number of things, but please do not let me interfere with your morning. I will go and speak to my steward.’

‘Mr Wilkins will wait on us at eleven o’clock. Mr Howard from the Home Farm will be here after luncheon. I have sent for Mr Burrows, the solicitor, but I would not expect him until tomorrow.’

‘You have been very busy, my dear.’ The blandly amiable expression had ebbed from Will’s face. Those strong bones she had been so aware of when he was ill were apparent still, the stubborn line of his jaw most of all.

‘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...