Lawrence and Juliet stared at each other, appalled.
Then she knew.
She swallowed back her horror, and took a deep breath. "It's all right," she said in her most reassuring tone. "Lawrence would never hit me. I'm fine. Just because we argue sometimes doesn't mean we don't love each other. That he's going to hurt me."
"Please don't leave us," Andrew wept.
She stroked the sobbing boy's hair, close to tears herself. "No, pet, no, I'm not going to leave. We're a family. Nothing bad is going to happen, I promise.
"Now come, Lawrence will tell you the monkey story again, and we'll have our cake and some milk." She rose from the floor unsteadily, her husband gripping her elbow to aid her.
She looked into his turbulent silver eyes pointedly. "Lawrence, darling, will you please get the milk?"
He nodded wordlessly, shocked to the core by what the boys had unwittingly revealed, and ran to the kitchen.
He steadied himself with both hands on the large table in the center of the room, breathing deeply until he felt he could face his family once more. The darkness which always felt as though it were lurking in the corners of his mind had now begun to show itself, and he was as horrified as his wife.
It certainly explained a lot though. Things he had never wanted to remember now teemed in his brain. No.
He grabbed the milk jug and some glasses and small cups for the boys, and stalked back out as though the hounds of hell were after him.
By the time he returned he saw that she had got them settled on the sofa, one on either side of her. His heart shrivelled in his chest when he saw all three of them huddled in a forlorn heap looking at him so suspiciously. He put the tray down on the table, poured a drink for each, and pulled up a chair to sit across from them.
He took a drink from his own cup, hardly able to trust his voice as he repeated their favourite story. His tone came out reassuringly normal as he began, "The first Monkey tea allegedly came from Mount Ying-T'ang near Wenchow in Chekiang Province. It's a lonely place haunted by wild beasts. But in the hidden valleys there were numerous monasteries with monks or tenants engaged in farming and fruit growing.
"According to the legend, a very young novice from the Heavenly Wisdom Monastery was looking after some pear trees covered with ripening fruit. Suddenly a large tribe of monkeys came swarming from the forest and set about gobbling up all the pears. By the time a few monks came running over in response to the little novice's cries for help, the trees had been stripped bare.
"They returned to the monastery with heads held low, expecting a severe scolding from the abbot. Instead, the old man said resignedly, 'Heaven commands us to show compassion to all living creatures, and so does the teaching of the Buddha. Things come and go. Moreover, monkeys, like all sentient beings, have a spiritual nature. They have taken our pears. Well, so be it.'
"From then on, those holy men allowed the mischievous little monkeys to come and go freely. The wild monkeys gradually lost their fear of the men, and came to regard the monks as friends.
"The winter that year was unusually cold. Heavy falls of snow lay upon trees and mountains, and hundreds of unfortunate beasts starved to death.
"After weeks of bitter weather, a horde of ravenous monkeys invaded the monastery grounds and, in an agitated state, ran about half-pleading, half menacing, as though to say, 'Please give us food, or else we shall just have to break in and take it.'
"So the abbot ordered that bags of food be taken out and distributed to the monkeys, whereupon the animals, responding with loud cries, seized the bags and ran back into the forest.
"With the arrival of spring came the time for harvesting all the tea leaves. While this arduous labor was being performed, hundreds of monkeys came swarming down from the peaks. Only this time, instead of looking for food, they were dragging along the old burlap bags they had been given, which now bulged with freshly picked young tea leaves.
"The tea, having been picked in places inaccessible to the monks, was found to be of unrivaled quality. Because of this, fine tea from China is often known as Monkey tea."
By the time Lawrence reached the end of the story, the two overwrought boys had fallen asleep.
"You need to rest too," he whispered to his wife, who looked so bone-weary it made his heart ache. "I'll get supper."
"Hand me my work basket as long as I'm sitting here," Juliet whispered back.
He shook his head. "Bugger the work basket. Just rest."
He went behind the sofa and stroked her neck, then kissed her on the brow.
When supper was ready, Lawrence called them in to the dining room, but the meal was a remarkably silent affair. Soon the children asked shyly to be excused, and went up to bed and lay down without a murmur or request for a story.
Juliet hugged and kissed them both, and they allowed Lawrence to stroke their hair. He felt as though he had kicked a pair of kittens, and almost couldn't contain his longing to be alone with Juliet and make it up to her.
As soon as she stepped into the hallway and closed the boys' door behind her, he said, "I'm sorry about earlier. I shouted at you and scared the boys. I mustn't let that happen again." He sighed. "I can't promise to curb my tongue all the time, my dear, but I never want them to be frightened or insecure."
She nodded. "Thank you. I understand. Neither do I. I really don't know what set them off, but I shall try to be vigilant. If we have any personal matters to discuss, we should make sure we do it when they're safely in bed."
"Quite," he said with a wink.
Juliet sighed, and looked away from his intense gaze. She began to walk down the corridor to her own chamber. "But what you have accused me of is inexusable, so if you will forgive me, it's been a long day. I think I would like to retire to my room alone."
His face fell. They hadn't spent one night apart since he had returned from his trip to the north. "But I've said I'm sorry."
She turned to face him. "And you think that's just going to wipe the slate clean?"
Lawrence stared at her silently.
Juliet stepped up to him and took his face in both her palms. "I know this has been hard for you. Please believe me when I say I love you, Lawrence. Yes, love you, in spite of everything," she said in response to his startled look.
"But I can't go on like this any more. It's evident you don't love me. I doubt you ever will. Because you don't even know who I am. To you I'm Juliet Howard, the inconvenient whore and wife you've been leg-shackled to."
"Now that's not—"
"Isn't it?" she challenged. "Things are fine between us for a little while, then it all pops right back up again. And how could it not? After all these weeks, you still don't know me.
"In the normal way of things we would have courted, learned all the essentials. Now you're too busy with work and our new family. Not that I blame you for that. I do blame you for hardening your heart against me. Or maybe it isn't possible for us to be happy. Perhaps you really just don't know what love is. How to bestow it. Or maybe you think it's what you do between my thighs all night, every night."
He blushed at that.
She shook her head. "I don't know. All I can say is, I'm giving up, I love you, but I'm not going to beg and plead for you to see me, understand me, love me. I can't try any harder than I already have to knock down all the brick walls around your heart. The rest is up to you, my love."
She kissed him gently on the cheek and retired to her room, closing the door behind her.
Lawrence stared at the closed oaken portal and sighed. Then he dragged himself to his room and threw himself onto the bed, and cursed himself for a bloody fool. Juliet loved him.... Loved him.
But she was right. What did love really mean? He recalled his former fiancee, the boys' mother. Laughing, vivacious.
Remembered his own mother...
No. God, no.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Lawrence sat bolt upright in the bed, and mopped his sweating brow with his sleeve. Now tha
t the blessed veil of forgetfulness had been torn away from him by the boys, he felt as though he were living in a nightmare.
His normally peaceful slumbers had been unsettled all night by memories he thought he had wiped from his mind by sheer force of will. Now they bubbled up like a noisome cesspool, disturbing his rest, ruining his appetite.
But he was not his brother or father. And Juliet was his wife, and had said she loved him. He clung onto that thought for succour as he shaved and dressed with trembling hands. It would all be fine. He wasn't upset, he told himself, it was just a summer ague. He'd be better soon.
All the while his inner self mocked at him. You know what happened. You're as bad as they ever were. Worse.
He ran out of his room to look for his wife, and discovered it was so late in the morning already that she had headed to the tea shop in Bath without him. Feeling dreadfully shamed and reluctant to face her after his outburst yesterday, he wandered out into the woods and soaked up the late morning sunshine for a moment.
Juliet was right. He had been in a dark place for a very long time. And might never leave it if he didn't do something to haul himself out into the light.
He came upon a charming little clearing behind the house, isolated in the woods, with a fine old oak tree and a carpet of flowers. The place was secret, shadowy, yet dappled in sunlight. Just the kind of place a romantic husband might take his wife for a bit of privacy.
He looked at the tree and stroked the trunk, then climbed up it using its old knots as footholds. He sat in the branches and looked down at his house in the distance.
His house. His choice. Heaven or hell. He had hurt Juliet badly through his evil minded suspicions and bitter accusations against her and her whole family.
Suddenly Lawrence realised he didn't care about her past, only her future. Her future with him. He never wanted to spend another night without her by his side. Not if he had the power to stop it.
And he most certainly didn't want to run the risk of anyone else in their lives taking her from him. He wasn't a bad man, for all he had discovered about himself yesterday. He was not his father and brother, he reminded himself again with a shiver. There had to be a rational way to look at this.
He turned over the often painful events of what should have been the triumphant opening of the tea room. He could see now that even when he was successful, he always felt as though he wasn't good enough. It was this underlying insecurity which made him feel at such a loss around Juliet. She was clearly smart, as well as beautiful. A whore? She was a goddess in every way.
Or the most consummate actress known to man, he reflected. But thinking over her patience, her clear love for the boys, all she gifted him with, he could find no flaw in her.
Perhaps that was the trouble, he acknowledged with a sigh, shifting on the tree branch to swing his legs disconsolately, like a sad young schoolboy. She was so remarkable, she took his breath away, and left him feeling out of control, in her power utterly.
Yet he couldn't afford to be vulnerable. Not when there was so much riding on his business, for him and his whole family. And he couldn't afford to really love someone, because in his experience, to love them was to lose them.
He felt his guts churn again, and dropped down out of the tree to sit on the ground, leaning his back up against the broad trunk and hugging his arms around himself, feeling chilled to the bone.
Business, now that was what he excelled at. So what had gone wrong yesterday, right in the middle of what everyone in the tea room had described as a great success? He turned over his feelings like the pages of his account book, and at last came to a few conclusions which helped lift his spirits at last.
He was proud of his wife, but he had been insecure seeing her talking to the two huge dark-haired men yesterday, Ash, then Thomas. Well, might she not have been equally insecure seeing Matilda and Georgina Jerome drape themselves all over him as though they were lovers?
He had observed Martin and the other Rakehells enough to know they were very attentive and devoted to their wives. He had not mocked them for it, but actually envied them. There was no reason he couldn't do the same. Couldn't woo his wife. He looked around at the lush, bucolic locale. Perhaps this glade, this tree, might be just the place to start.
Ever the man of action rather than sentiment, Lawrence rose from the ground with a renewed sense of purpose. He headed for the stables and searched for some tools. Later he would go into Bath and find just the right things to give her, little gifts, the makings of a special picnic. He had never given her anything except her wedding ring, which had been intended for another woman, of all things, he recalled with a shamed pang, and a few paltry gowns.
Juliet had given herself over and over, to everyone who met her, from the boys when they cut their knees, to her friend Eswara when they sewed or worked in the garden together.
She gave to him, night after night, day after day, with never a word of complaint. And not just as his lover. She had turned their cold, empty house into a warm, loving home he not only looked forward to coming back to, but didn't wish to leave in the first place.
She had suffered terrible neglect from the moment they had wed, and yet had blossomed like a morning glory greeting the rays of the sun. It was about time he bathed her in warmth and sunshine, instead of chilly, dark disapproval.
He hefted a large plank of wood and a saw, and began.
Juliet's opening was a resounding success, but it was eclipsed slightly by a new brand of tea appearing on the streets of Bath and Bristol in a black tin with gold lettering labelled 'Han's Finest China Tea.'
It was being sold well below the prices Lawrence was offering, and he had to admit that for people who didn't know any better, it wasn't too bad.
When Lawrence came into the shop one afternoon at the end of the week, she made him taste the pack she had bought.
"Hmm. A lot of fannings and dust, and some really low grade tea, green tea in fact, mixed in. A half-decent cup, but not as good as mine," Lawrence said after a time. "Most definitely Assam and Darjeeling though as their base. Strange."
"Yes, isn't it," she agreed readily, hoping he would come to the same conclusion herself, that somehow his factor was up to no good. "Especially about the Assam. I mean, surely you must know every grower in the region. And Han's is a Chinese name, so what would they be doing selling Indian tea?"
He shrugged. "Well, you know, it would have a certain mysterious Eastern cachet. China tea is still seen as more expensive and exclusive, so people are getting a moderately good tea at a bargain price."
Her brow creased with a frown. "Still, it seems an awfully strange coincidence."
"No matter, darling. As I said, it's not as good as mine, and in any case, now that this tea room is so successful, we can barely keep our tins on the shelf," he said, indicating the bare planks with a wave of his hand. "I can't wait for my next ships to arrive."
"Let's hope it's soon. I'm delighted we're doing so well, but we need a steady supply."
"Never fear. As I said, Assam grows throughout the year. But we don't want to glut the market either."
She nodded, and now moved to speak to Mrs. Parkins, who had come around for some refreshment and was most impressed with the quality of women sipping tea and partaking of the delicacies Juliet's new cook had prepared with guidance from Eswara.
"I think I would like to knock that door through. If we could have the workmen in one Sunday?" Mrs. Parkins said, her gray curls bobbing excitedly.
"I think we can manage, yes. Thank you." Juliet smiled.
"I adore the menu."
"It's come out rather well, hasn't it. Please, stay and--"
"Oh, no, I couldn't," the older woman protested, but she was already licking her lips.
Juliet couldn't blame her. The wonderful aromas often made her hungry as well.
Randall and Isolde came in then, and Mrs. Parkins was thrilled to be introduced to the Earl of Hazelmere.
All thoughts of food no
w forgotten, she went scurrying off to tell everyone the news of whom she had just met, and was glad she had made the decision at last to throw her lot in with the feisty young Juliet and her dashing husband.
"I say, many congratulations. You're packing them in," Randall said, looking around and beaming his approval.
"I know. Wonderful, isn't it?" She smiled back at the handsome young Earl clad from head to toe in black save for a charcoal gray waistcoat.
Really, they might all be called Rakehells, Lawrence noted, but they dressed as soberly as parsons apart from the sumptousness of some of the fabrics. He had no reason to feel inferior, he reminded himself, nor jealous.
"And how did the tea sample campaign go?" Isolde asked.
The Rakehell Regency Romance Series Boxed Set 5 Page 27
