From Ruin to Riches

by Louise Allen

  If Will had his way, she would be as pale as a lily in no time. And drooping like one too, from sheer boredom. Her mind was still skittering away from contemplating the prospect of becoming pregnant again. It seemed very likely to happen quickly once her husband came to her bed: after all, she had lain just the once with Jonathan.

  Her fingers fumbled as she tried to replace the top of the bottle and Nancy fell to her knees and started to search under the skirts of the dressing table for the dropped stopper. Julia had dammed it up so long—the shock when she had realised that the changes in her body were not the result of terror and distress, then the joy at the realisation that she was carrying a child and the appalled comprehension of what she must do if it proved to be a boy.

  But, even with that hanging over her, the overwhelming emotion had been delight and love. If the child was a daughter, then she would not have to tell anyone, for a girl would be no threat to Henry’s rights. And even if it was a boy, she would work something out to give him a future and happiness.

  It never occurred to her, with all her worries and plans, that she might lose the baby. Now she wondered about future pregnancies. What if there was something wrong with her? What if she was not capable of safely birthing a child? She had not even considered it before, because she had expected to stay a widow for the rest of her days, contentedly farming King’s Acre and then, when Henry inherited, buying her own land. But now she was no longer a widow.

  ‘That lotion is working a treat, my lady.’ Nancy sat back on her heels with the stopper in her hand and regarded Julia with satisfaction. ‘I swear you’re a shade paler for using it.’

  ‘I fear it is simply that I have a slight headache, Nancy.’ Julia attempted a smile. ‘I will be better for a glass of wine and my dinner, I am sure.’

  *

  By the time her stays had been tightened and the gown was on and her hair dressed there was some colour back in her cheeks and at least the freckles were not standing out like dots on white paper.

  It was a warm evening, almost sultry. Julia draped her lightest shawl over her elbows, chose a large fan and went down to the drawing room. Her first proper evening as a married lady, she realised as the butler opened the door for her and she saw Will standing by the long window that was open to the ground to let in the evening air.

  He was dressed with as much careful formality as she. Julia admired the effect of silk evening breeches, striped stockings, a swallowtail coat that must have been bought in London on his way home and a waistcoat of amber silk that brought out the colour of his eyes and matched the stone in the stickpin in his neckcloth. Regarded dispassionately, she thought, her husband was a fine figure of a man. Discovering how to be dispassionate about him was going to be the problem. A lost cause, in fact, she told herself.

  ‘Good evening, Lady Dereham.’ He gestured towards the decanters set out on a tray. ‘A glass of sherry wine?’

  ‘Good evening, my lord.’ She sat precisely in the centre of the sofa and spread her almond-green skirts on either side as though concerned about wrinkles. They covered virtually all the available seat and left no room for anyone to sit beside her. She did not think she could cope with any sly caresses just now. ‘Thank you. A glass of sherry would be delightful.’

  Will poured a glass for both of them, placed hers on the table beside her and went back to the window and his contemplation of the view, which allowed her the perfect opportunity to admire his profile. Dispassionately, of course.

  ‘Did your meeting with Mr Burrows go well?’ Julia asked after a few minutes’ silence. She took a sip of her wine while her husband pondered his reply.

  ‘It was most satisfactory, thank you,’ he said politely and tasted his own drink.

  If this continues, I may well scream, simply for the diversion of seeing the footmen all rush in, Julia decided. ‘I have always found him extremely helpful.’

  ‘He tells me you have not asked for any of the jewellery from his strong room.’

  ‘I did not consider it mine to wear.’ For some reason decking herself out in the family jewels had seemed mercenary in a way that taking all the other benefits of their arrangement did not. Jewellery was so personal. ‘Besides,’ she added in an effort to lighten the cool formality, ‘think what a wrench to have to hand it all over after seven years when Henry inherited.’

  ‘There was no need for such scruples. But you will wear it from now on, I hope.’ She suspected that was an order. ‘Burrows brought it with him.’ Will gestured towards a side table and she noticed the stack of leather boxes on it for the first time. ‘There is a safe in your dressing room. If there are any pieces you dislike they can be reset, or go back to the vault.’

  There seemed a lot of boxes. Small ring boxes, flat cases with curving edges that must contain necklaces, complicated shapes that presumably enclosed complete parures including tiaras. Did Will expect her to pounce on them with cries of delight?

  He thought she had only married him for purely mercenary reasons and to protect her good name, of course, so he must find her lack of interest in this treasure trove puzzling. She could hardly tell him that she did not want his money or his gems, only sanctuary from the law.

  ‘Thank you. But I have not found a safe. Is it behind some concealed panel?’

  ‘Behind a panel, yes, but in the baroness’s dressing room. Nancy is moving your things there now.’

  Somehow Julia kept her lips closed on the instinctive protest. Will was high-handed, insensitive, but, of course, he was in the right and she had agreed he would come to her bed.

  He might not want her, of course, when she told him about Jonathan and about the child.

  She pushed that thought and its implications deep into her mind. There were practical reasons also. Her place should be in the suite that was the mirror image of his: anything else would cause gossip and wild speculation amongst the servants. She knew, however loyal they were, gossip always leaked out to the staff in surrounding houses, then to the tradesmen and in no time at all the entire neighbourhood would know.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said with a genuine smile and was rewarded by the faint surprise on Will’s face. He had expected a fight, but she was going to keep her opposition for the issues that were important to her. Jewels did not matter one way or the other, except that now she must make the effort to care for them and to select suitable ones for each occasion.

  *

  Julia exerted herself over dinner to make conversation and bring Will up to date with the local news. He would be riding round to visit their neighbours over the next few days, so she must set the scene for him. It also meant she could steer well clear of any personal matters. There was plenty to tell him about with a new curate, several marriages, some deaths, the strange case of sheep-stealing last year, Sir William Curruther’s new wife’s frightful taste in interior decoration and, of course, numerous births to the gentry community. She hurried over those and started enumerating the changes to their own staff while he had been away.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said drily when she reached the new scullery maid and the gardener’s boy as the dessert plates were cleared. ‘I will endeavour to recall all that tomorrow.’

  Julia bit her lip—he made it sound as though she had been prattling on and not allowing him to get a word in edgeways. She had kept pausing, hoping Will would pick up his side of the conversation and tell her about his three years away. But he showed no sign of wanting to confide in her. ‘I have got all the news I was saving for you off my chest,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow you can tell me yours.’

  ‘I have told you most of what there is to know.’ His long lashes hid his eyes as he looked down, apparently interested in the piece of walnut shell that lay beside his plate. ‘I have no wish to revisit the past.’

  ‘But your travels must be fascinating. I would so like to hear about them.’ A neutral subject of conversation on an engrossing subject seemed like a godsend.

  ‘I lost almost four years of my life to that ill
ness,’ Will said and looked up to catch her staring at him. ‘I just want to forget about it and get on with living.’

  She could hear the anger and the loss under the flat tone, see the heat in his eyes.

  ‘Very well.’ She had no wish to invite any further snubs. ‘I will leave you to your port.’ One of the footmen came to pull back her chair, another to open the door for her. Like all the staff, they were normally efficient and attentive, but somehow she sensed they were making a special effort to look after her at the moment, just as they had when she lost the baby. She could only hope that Will did not notice and feel they were being disloyal to him.

  If she could just focus her mind on those sort of worries and not what was going to happen when the bedchamber door closed behind them, then she could, perhaps, remain her normal practical self. As she walked across the hall to the salon she could feel the brooding presence in the room behind her like heat from a fire. Common sense seemed as much use as a fireguard made of straw.

  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.�
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  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.