Since it was far too cold for ices, they had stopped for some hot cider before setting off into the fray again.
By the end of the day, Julia was quite worn out. She hadn’t slept much the night before, and it was certainly catching up to her now.
Poor Charles must feel even worse than she. From what the ladies had said, he quite literally had not slept, watching over her instead.
Though they eluded to this, however, none of them spoke in detail, either about the events of the night before or Charles’s scandalous kiss that morning.
Julia was grateful to them for it. She was not yet ready to discuss Charles’s actions and what they could mean, and it would be entirely inappropriate to talk about her past and her panic attack whilst stomping round the shops of Dublin.
The ladies moved on from discussing their return to England to the upcoming Season and which debutants were due to make their come out. Julia let the conversation wash over her. She should have had a Season but never had, so she wasn’t as well-versed in the preparations as the other ladies.
Besides, her heart was no longer in the conversation. She would have to leave soon, much as the thought broke her heart.
But rather than sulk about it, perhaps she should just embrace the time she had left here. Enjoy making memories with Charles and enjoy the fact that, even if it could not last forever, she had at least experienced real love for the first time in her life.
IT WAS DECIDED THAT, rather than go out, the group would enjoy a quiet dinner and an early night before setting back to Offaly on the morrow. Julia suspected this was for her benefit, and she was grateful to them for it.
After dinner, she made her excuses and bid them all a good night, hoping that Caroline and Rebecca would remember their promise to visit her bedchamber before they retired.
She hadn’t gotten the chance to speak to Charles much today, but until she confessed her past and sought advice about what to do, this was something that Julia was grateful for.
He addled her brain too much, and she needed to be able to think clearly.
Julia had just thanked the maid and sent her away when a knock sounded on her door. For a wild second, she thought it was Charles before common sense returned.
He may have flouted every rule of polite society this morning, but even he wouldn’t go so far as to leave his family to come to her bedchamber.
The door opened at her call, and Caroline swept in, followed by a much slower Rebecca.
Julia smiled as Rebecca eased herself into a chair. It wouldn’t be long before the arrival of her daughter or son. Julia felt so envious her breath caught. She imagined preparing to have Charles’s baby, to have him watch over her the way Edward watched over Rebecca, to have such an obvious love for each other like Edward and Rebecca and Caroline and Tom had.
It was beautiful to see.
“Are you all right?” Rebecca asked without preamble.
Julia nodded then sat down on the bed. She’d been mentally preparing herself to start her story since before dinner ended. And now she found that she just wanted to get it over with.
“You should know,” she started, hoping her voice conveyed her sincerity. “I am truly, truly sorry for deceiving all of you. I felt sure that it was necessary at the time. But now, well, there seems little point anymore. Since I’ve been recognised it can only be a matter of time before my past catches up to me.”
Caroline nodded understandingly, though she couldn’t possibly understand. Rebecca seemed blatantly curious, her mouth open as she leaned forward in her chair.
Julia couldn’t blame her. She’d created quite the mystery of herself.
“My name isn’t Julia Channing. It’s Julia Berkley. Channing is my uncle’s name. And I never did live with that uncle because — because I’m not an orphan. My father is alive.”
At this point, even Caroline’s mouth had dropped, and Rebecca nearly fell off her chair. If only they knew, her tale was about to get a lot more shocking.
“My father is — he is…” Julia struggled to find the words. “…frankly, he is the most evil man I’ve ever met. Or one of them, in any case. As a child, he treated me with nothing but contempt. Always shouting, violent at times, and he treated my poor mother appallingly. In fact, the woman we met last night was his mistress. Or one of them. Except, he didn’t keep her tucked away in a house somewhere. He paraded her around our house whenever he saw fit.”
She began to wring her hands. A habit of hers of old. “My mother, she — she was a shell of a woman. I never saw her smile. I never heard her laugh. At night, she used to come upstairs and lock us in my bedchamber while my father hosted his friends, friends like Mrs. Birch downstairs. S-sometimes, he would stagger upstairs and demand that she join them. I used to hear her screams, hear her begging him to let her go. But he never did.”
Julia felt the tears run down her face, but she made no move to stop them. It was as though a dam inside her had burst, and now that she’d started telling her sorry tale, she did not want to stop until she was purged of it all.
“My father’s lifestyle was as expensive as it was evil. I was only young when he had gone through all of our money. That’s when he started — started using my mother. His cronies would come and pay, and then he would come and get her. M-make her—” She broke off, unable to form the words.
But they understood. Looking up, she saw their tears run as freely as her own. In a strange way, it gave her comfort.
“Anyway, it went on for years that way. Except that he drank more in the day, and sometimes his guests wouldn’t leave. He began getting me to play and sing for them, Mrs. Birch in particular. Bring them drinks, act like a servant, really. If I didn’t do something fast enough, he would beat me. If I cried or objected, he beat me. So I became exactly what my mother was, silent and docile and broken.”
As she relived the childhood she’d had, Julia became more agitated. Suddenly she couldn’t sit still.
She stood and began pacing, no longer in the present but right back there in the hell that was her existence.
“He never allowed anyone to touch me — my father, I mean. Not — not in the full sense of the word. Sometimes he’d make me come down and — and they would paw at me, even kiss me. He would laugh and then tell them that was enough and send me away. And I used to think, Well, at least there’s that. He must care a little for me. Otherwise, he would just use me, like my mother. Anyway, as it turned out, I was wrong. He had just been biding his time.”
“One night, I sensed that something different was going on. He’d been drinking far heavier than usual, and he’d given up all pretence of keeping the house even remotely respectable while I was around. It wasn’t safe to go into any room except my own. The servants had long since departed, except a couple who were loyal to my father, since he included them in his activities. I was preparing for bed, and my mother burst into my room. She was the most animated I’d ever seen her. Her eyes were wild, her hair flying everywhere; she looked quite mad. I recognised it since I’d suffered the same thing, or used to. The attack I had yesterday… I had them all the time as a child, but as I grew I learned to contain them, not least because they seemed to amuse my father and his cronies greatly.”
“I’d never seen my mother have one before, though, and it terrified me. She ran to me, grasping my arms. She was screeching, telling me he’d done it at last. I had no idea what she meant. I tried to calm her, but it was no use. She kept screaming to barricade myself in. I wasn’t to move, no matter who came or who tried to get in. I was to stay where I was, and in the morning I was to run.”
“I’d lived in that house for long enough. I knew what she meant. B-but I didn’t want to believe her. ‘Mama,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t let them touch me, not like that.’ She laughed then. It was the most horrible sound I’d ever heard. ‘Don’t you realise, you foolish girl? He was just saving you for the highest bidder,’” she told me.
Julia could feel the panic closing her throat o
nce again, the pain coming back in her chest. But she pressed on. In a way, it was therapeutic. “I heard him then, staggering up the stairs. I was so terrified. I begged Mama to stay with me so that we would both be safe, but she wouldn’t. She said that she had failed me my whole life, and she wouldn’t fail me any longer. I had no idea what she meant. Then, suddenly my father bellowed my name. I-I began to cry, and my mother hugged me. It was the first time since I was a tiny child that she had touched me at all. She said she loved me, and she was sorry for what I had been born to. Then she told me again to run. She stepped out, and I could hear them fighting. He was trying to get past her. I started to shut the door, started the ritual of barricading it, but all at once, it went quiet. I didn’t know what had happened, so I looked out and—”
Julia could barely speak past the tears and the lump in her throat. She could feel the panic returning as she relived that horrid night. But she had started, and she wanted to finish. There was a sense of release, she could feel it, in telling her tragic tale.
“There was blood. So much blood. It was everywhere — on his hands, on his clothes — and she was lying there in a pool of it.” Julia took a gasping breath. “He didn’t meant to kill her, I know that. He struck her and — and she fell.”
“I stood there frozen. I didn’t even cry. Just stood, and then he looked up at me and spoke as though nothing had happened. ‘It’s time you earned your keep,’ he said. He’d been in negotiations for my — well, the truth of it is there is no way to make it sound better. My father had sold me to Lord Larsden, a man double my age. And that night he had expected me to—”
Julia could hear the sniffles from Rebecca and Caroline and knew they were still crying for her, but just like all those nights in her father’s house, she felt distant from them. From everything. She was locked in her bad memories.
“I ran. Just like my mother said. Only I didn’t wait until morning. I managed to get the door of my bedchamber locked, and I threw together anything I could get. There was nobody to help me, since the servants who would have helped were long gone. I had some coins, though very few, that I had always kept hidden so that we could eat. I took them too. My father kept hammering on the door, later joined by Larsden. I could hear them bellowing at me, my father saying that I was his property and would do as he bid. It went on and on. I was so terrified that they would get in. I climbed out the window, as ridiculous as that probably seems, and I ran until I couldn’t run any more. I got to the next village over and caught the mail coach to London.”
Julia felt a rush of relief as she came toward the end of her confession. All this time, she had kept her secret pain inside, never once revealing herself. Now it felt as though a colossal weight had been lifted from her shoulders.
“You know the rest,” she said. “I have tried to be as unnoticeable as possible. But I began to feel so comfortable, so happy with you all. I began to feel as though I was safe. I began to enjoy my life. Enjoy being in Ireland. I never thought I would see someone I knew, not here. Last night — I-I thought I should leave, I must leave really. Because if my father finds me, he’ll make me return, and what can I do but go with him?”
She looked up to face Caroline and Rebecca, to face their reactions, no matter what they would be. Caroline looked so sympathetic, so upset for her that Julia felt a rush of gratitude. Rebecca, however, wore a different expression entirely. Although there was no doubt that she sympathised, if her tears were any indication, she didn’t look upset. She looked furious. Like a tigress whose cubs had been attacked.
Bizarrely, Julia remembered a conversation a week or so ago where Edward had called Rebecca a little tiger. She thought it odd then; she understood it perfectly now.
“You’ll go bloody nowhere with that monster,” she said fiercely.
It was a testament to the seriousness of the situation that Caroline didn’t scold Rebecca for her language.
Julia smiled in spite of herself.
“Thank you for your support, but I would have no choice. There was a marriage contract signed and—”
“I don’t give a stuff about a contract. I won’t let anything happen to you. None of us will. Especially Charles.”
At the mention of his name, Julia felt her heart speed. How would he react to her years of deceit? How would he react to her tale? Would he think her soiled? Damaged?
“Rebecca, not even Charles is above the law.”
“Well… well, Edward then. He’s a duke! I’ve never seen anyone refuse him anything.”
Caroline, who had been silent, spoke up then.
“Becca, calm down before that baby makes an appearance,” she said brusquely, recovering herself and showing that stiff spine she was so famous for. “We need to think logically about this. Julia is right. If a legally binding contract exists, then it may cause a problem. Especially since Julia is not yet twenty-one.”
“What? So we should just let her go?”
“Of course not, but if we go running to Charles and Edward now, what do you think will happen? Likely, Charles will hunt the man down and tear him apart, which is no use to anyone.”
“I beg to differ,” Rebecca muttered mutinously, but she soon quieted back down at Caroline’s expression.
“Charles stuck in Newgate is no good to any of us. What we need is to figure out a way to break Sir William’s ties to Julia. We have not even ascertained if the man is still alive or not. We can hope he isn’t, but that doesn’t make it so.”
“So, what do we do?”
Caroline bit her lip, frowning in concentration.
“I believe it would be best if we were to keep this to ourselves for now. We will return to Ranford Hall. Even if Mrs. Birch gets word to Sir William, it will take him time to get here from England. And he can’t very well turn up at the Hall and snatch her away. If he does come, then we will stop him by any means necessary.”
“Ooh, we could shoot him,” said Rebecca excitedly.
“Well, let’s not plan any murders just yet,” said Caroline, looking a little concerned at the zealous gleam in Rebecca’s eyes. “When we return, I will make discreet enquiries into Sir William and Lord Larsden. Tom has a man that he uses for various activities such as this, and I am sure he will keep our secret. In the meantime, we go on as before. Nowhere will be safer that Ranford Hall.”
“How can you be so sure?” Julia asked shakily, hating how helpless she sounded.
Caroline smiled for the first time since Julia began her tale.
“Because Charles wouldn’t let anyone hurt a single hair on your head. I’d stake my life on it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHARLES FELT AS THOUGH he was losing his mind.
He’d gone another night with practically no sleep. He had hoped that Caroline and Rebecca would return after their talk with Julia, but they hadn’t, and so he’d ended up getting completely foxed with Tom and Edward then passing out fully clothed on his bed.
His valet was angry with him. His head was pounding like a runaway stallion, and he hadn’t yet seen Julia.
She hadn’t been herself last night at dinner. She’d looked quiet and worried, and though Charles had told himself that he didn’t care what was going on as long as she wasn’t hiding a husband somewhere, he was starting to worry about it again.
He hated that she’d been deceitful. Try as he might, he couldn’t help being disappointed about that. He’d been so convinced that she didn’t have a dishonest bone in her body, it was rather more jarring than he cared to admit to know that he had been wrong about that.
He hadn’t made it to breakfast this morning, and by the time he’d surfaced, the ladies were supervising their packing, and Edward and Tom had come to the stables to arrange the carriages.
He joined them, letting the biting December air clear his head a little.
“Ah, you’re alive,” said Tom, his voice entirely louder than necessary.
“We weren’t sure you would be,” added Edward.
“And yet none of you came to check?”
Their answering shrugs did very little for Charles’s ego.
“Did my sisters return from Julia’s room last night?” he asked, anxious for information.
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Well, what happened?”
Edward and Tom shared a look.
“You want to know what happened when your sister returned to my bedchamber last night?” asked Tom, while Edward smirked like a big child.
Because his brain was still brandy-soaked, it took Charles a moment to pick up on Tom’s words, and his stomach, which had been feeling less than stellar, objected strenuously.
“For God’s sake,” he roared. “Of course, that’s not what I bloody well meant.”
He turned to Edward, hoping for better sense. The man was a duke, after all. He had to be sensible.
“What about you?”
“Oh, I’d imagine we probably did the same thing as Tom and Caroline.” He grinned. “Only better.”
Tom scoffed.
Charles knew that the mental images they were creating would haunt him for the rest of his life, and he went about telling them, using as many profanities as he could think of, that he was none too pleased about it.
“Charles, really. Behave yourself. Swearing like a sailor in public. It is the outside of enough.” The countess’s admonishments rang through the crisp morning air, and Charles turned to see all the ladies standing there, their expressions varying. The countess and Caroline looked fiercely disapproving. The dowager looked most amused. Rebecca looked delighted that he was getting into trouble like a schoolboy; no doubt because it was usually her getting into trouble. And Julia — well, Julia wasn’t looking at him at all, which did nothing to improve his mood.
“It’s not my fault,” he whined. “They started it.”
The countess merely raised a brow and turned toward the waiting carriage.
“Come, Charles,” said Edward, clapping him on the back and nearly making him cast up his accounts. “A nice, long journey on horseback will set you to rights.”
Mysterious Miss Channing (Ranford Book 3) Page 19
