by Louise Allen
‘Well,’ he drawled, ‘I have heard of some interesting accidents of birth, but I hope you are not going to tell me fairy stories. Whose child was he?’
‘Yours,’ Julia said flatly. ‘In law. He was born nine months after I married and was bedded by my husband. By you. The law accepts any child born in wedlock as legitimate unless the husband refuses to acknowledge it. If you deny him, then you can only do it by revealing our marriage for the sham that it was.’
It took him a moment to find his voice. ‘That little speech sounded rehearsed. Have you been lying awake all night fretting over how you were going to talk yourself out of this predicament? No wonder the door was locked. How long did you expect to keep me in ignorance?’
Julia pushed herself away from the door, walked across to the table set in the window alcove and began to shift things around with jerky, nervous movements. ‘This is not how I meant to tell you. I could not find the words and now it has all gone wrong. But predicament? Is that what you call it? A child died. It was a tragedy.’
She started to turn away, but Will caught her wrist, the narrow bones delicate in his grip. She went white, but pulled against him with surprising strength. He stopped himself from tightening his hold, but he did not let her go.
‘Whose child was he? Henry’s?’
‘Henry’s?’ Her expression was one of total shock. ‘Of course not! How could you think I would do such a thing? He was the child of Jo—of the man I eloped with.’
‘You eloped? You didn’t run away from home to avoid a forced marriage as you told me? So what you told me was a lie?’ What a fool he’d been. Respectable ladies did not run away from home like that. Of course there had been a man.
Julia pressed her lips together and her gaze dropped from his. ‘Yes. I…I thought you would not help me if you knew what I…the truth.’ She was stumbling over the words, biting her lip. ‘I thought he loved me, would wed me, but it was all a plot between him and my cousins to get rid of me. I lay with him before I realised he never had any intention of marrying me.’
‘So you ran away from him soon after you had eloped?’
‘Yes, the very first evening. When I realised we were not heading north I confronted him. He admitted he was taking me to London. I waited until he was…asleep and then I ran away.’
There was something wrong with the story, he could sense it. Not all lies, but not the whole truth either. ‘And after one bedding you were with child?’ To his own ears he sounded as sceptical as he felt. ‘I do not think so. You ran off when he refused to provide for a fallen woman with a brat in her belly. It explains why you were so anxious to secure a husband.’
Julia flinched at his crudity and Will bit back the instinctive apology. ‘You think that was why I agreed to your scheme?’ She pulled back against his grip and this time he let her go, expecting her to retreat. Instead she stayed where she was, a puzzled frown on her face, as though she looked back to that night and was surprised at what she saw there. ‘You may believe what you will, but strangely enough the possibility that I might be with child did not occur to me then. I was ruined and desperate: that was enough.’
No, my lady, I do not believe you, he thought. There was something she was hiding, he could sense it, almost smell it. How the devil had he been so deceived that he had thought her an innocent, a respectable woman with nothing to hide except a bullying family? The memory of her reluctance to share his bed on their wedding night, of that innocent, trusting kiss came back. Innocent. He had been sick, exhausted, in a fever—he supposed that accounted for his lack of perception.
‘Henry and Delia must have been frantic when they realised you were pregnant,’ Will observed, finding a certain grim humour in the thought. He would have liked to have been a fly on the wall during that conversation—and yet Julia was on good terms with Delia now. That argued some clever diplomacy. Oh, no, it would not do to underestimate his wife. Not just another man’s mistress and a liar, but as intelligent as he had first thought.
‘They were as relieved as you obviously are that my child was stillborn, although at least they managed to conceal it decently.’
‘And what would you have done if the baby had lived?’ How subtly the colour ebbed and flowed under her skin, he thought, studying the curve of cheek that was all he could see of her averted face. She had grown into a kind of understated beauty that he could have sworn she had not possessed before. One tear trembled on the end of her lashes. Very effective, Will told himself, fighting the instinct to pull her into his arms and comfort her. That was what she wanted, hoped—to twist him round her little finger.
‘If he had lived, I would have had to admit the truth. I was prepared for that: I could not have cheated Henry out of his rights.’
‘No? You expect me to believe that you could deny your own child a title and an inheritance? Keep silent and you would have been the mother of the heir. You would have had another twenty-one years as mistress of King’s Acre.’
‘It would not have been right,’ she said doggedly, as though she really believed what she was saying.
‘So you would have bastardised your own son? Forgive me if I do not believe you.’
She swung back, control lost at last, her fury with him plain on her face. ‘You think I could live a falsehood like that?’ Her voice was low and shaking with vehemence. ‘You think I could defraud a decent man of his inheritance and make my own child an innocent party to that for his entire life?’
‘I have no idea what you might do, Julia,’ Will said, as much to see the fire spark in her eyes—flint struck against steel—as to continue the argument. His body was beginning to remind him that he had been celibate for a very long time. Too long.
‘Well, I could not do such a thing. You hardly know me, so you will just have to accept my word.’ She caught her full lower lip between her teeth in a way that had him biting his own lip until the pain reminded his body just who was in charge. When he did not speak she turned and went to the dresser, smoothed her hand over the garments that lay inside the open drawer, then pushed it closed.
‘Do I?’ Will asked her unresponsive back. ‘What if I chose not to accept it? What if I decide that you have lied to me, deceived me from the start in order to foist another man’s bastard on me? What would the law’s opinion of our unconsummated marriage be then, I wonder?’
Julia turned and looked at him steadily as though down the blade of a rapier. ‘You think to cast me off? You may try if you are so unkind—and so uncaring of the world knowing you were incapable of making me your wife. But if you think to do it so you may court your pretty Caroline Fletcher, you will be disappointed. She is betrothed to the Earl of Dunstable who appears to be in complete possession of all his faculties and a great deal of money besides.’
Of course she is. Caroline had thought him dying and could not cope with that. Once she believed him dead she would not have gone into mourning. Curiously, he found he did not care in the slightest. Will shrugged. ‘She is beautiful, richly dowered. It is a miracle she is not already wed. It is nothing to me.’
Julia turned towards the door. The white-muslin wrapper flounced around her feet as she walked, her steps rapid and jerky as though she really wanted to run and was holding herself in check. The sash was belted tight around her natural waistline and showed the curve of hip and buttock, the elegant line of her back.
His mouth dried and he had to moisten his lips before he said, ‘We can hope that the next one is also a boy to put poor Henry out of his misery.’
‘The next one?’ Julia stammered.
She was going to refuse to sleep with him? ‘You want to have it both ways?’ Will demanded. ‘You want me to acknowledge that I was the father of your stillborn child, you want the rights of marriage and yet you would deny them to me?’
‘You would not expose me?’ She had gone bone-white, whiter even than when she had told him about the baby. The possibility of scandal seemed to terrify her.
Will shrugged.
‘No, of course not. I am not attempting to blackmail you. But if you cannot be truly my wife, then we will have to end this marriage somehow for both our sakes. Coming back from the dead rearranges one’s priorities somewhat. You’d be amazed what I find utterly unimportant now. What I do find important, what I have always, is that we have the truth between us. I will not be deceived and lied to, Julia. I grew up in a household of lies and deceptions and I’ll not stand for it now. I cannot live like that and I certainly cannot bring up children in that atmosphere.’
Chapter Eleven
They stared at each other and gradually Julia found she could focus and move from blind panic to actually listening to what they were saying to each other. Will thought she was going to try to keep him from her bed and that was never what she had intended.
Julia swallowed hard. ‘I have no intention of being other than a proper wife to you, if you will have me. I just needed a little time to come to terms with it, that is all. I am sorry if you cannot believe me about the elopement, but it was the truth.’
If only she could understand the roiling mix of emotions inside her. Over all of it was the terror that a public scandal would expose her and that she would be arrested for Jonathan’s murder. Below that, like fish swimming in muddy water, were layers of other feelings. There was fear of the intimacy, of being hurt again, physically and mentally. And there was the attraction she felt for Will, due, she supposed, to him being such an attractive man. But if she became pregnant again, what would happen? Could she carry the child safely? If she lost another… Her mind shied away from the thought because it was simply too painful to think about.
But she had her duty to her husband and she owed Will a great deal. If it had not been for him, goodness knows what would have become of her three years ago. The fear and the pain and the doubt she would somehow have to overcome.
He was studying her with those dangerous amber eyes. ‘It was a shock,’ he said eventually. ‘If it had not been for the baby, would you have told me about your lover?’
‘I do not know,’ Julia confessed. ‘Would you have been able to tell?’
‘Possibly,’ Will said with a wry smile. ‘Probably.’
‘Shall we…I mean, do you want to…?’ How difficult it was! To want something and yet to be so frightened of it.
‘Yes, I want to,’ he said. ‘If you are sure.’
Julia nodded and walked before him, back to her bedchamber. She turned when she reached the bed and watched her husband as he closed the door and came towards her.
Courage. Seduce him. Oh, who do you think you are fooling? You could not seduce anyone to save your life. No, don’t think that…
One glance at those skintight breeches told her that her husband did not need much encouragement. Of course, he had been without a woman for a long time, which would explain it. But she wanted him to want her, not just any woman to slake his desires with.
What would he expect her to do now? Jonathan had simply ripped off his clothes, then her clothes, tossed her on to the bed and threw himself down beside her.
Will pulled the shirt over his head, dropped it at his feet, flipped back the covers and waited courteously for her to get into bed. ‘Now that is a very piquant contrast,’ he said as he stood and studied her. ‘All that prim white cotton tight around your legs and all that slipping lace up above.’
Julia looked down. Her nervous shifting about had wrapped the nightgown around her legs. Then she looked up at Will. Looked properly and felt dizzy. When she had met him on the bridge that night and had held him in her arms she had felt nothing but skin and bone. Now she was contemplating muscle as defined as that on any classical sculpture of an athlete. Only this was not cold white marble, this was golden tanned skin, a dusting of dark-brown hair, the blue of veins, the nipples so much darker than her own.
Jonathan’s body had not made that much impression on her, she realised. When he had first undressed it had all been so fast she had no time to look at him and afterwards… Afterwards she seemed to recall thinking that he was beautiful. But not with the emotions that looking at this man produced. Better not to think about Jonathan.
It was hard to think about any other man clearly at all with this one so close and so nearly naked.
‘I am all in favour of piquancy,’ she managed, her gaze fixed firmly on his chest and the curls of crisp dark-brown hair.
‘Good,’ Will murmured, ‘because I am intending to leave you nicely wrapped up for a while.’ And while she tried to work out what that meant he slipped open the fastening of his breeches, slid them down his legs and kicked them away. Underneath he was quite naked. And quite magnificently aroused.
Will lay down on his side on the sheet, his body touching hot down the length of her. He propped himself up on one elbow so they were eye to eye, reached out, tugged one of the pillows away and followed her down when she fell back with a little gasp of surprise.
A gasp that left her mouth open, Julia realised as Will leant in and kissed her, his mouth warm and moist and tasting of brandy. The move had been assured and predatory and she found both amazingly arousing.
She had learned from that morning’s kiss and had learned, too, what she liked. If she tangled her tongue with his then Will thrust more deeply, if she closed her lips a little then he would nip and nibble at them. She tried nibbling in return and felt his mouth curve in response. He likes that. She tried a little nip and was rewarded by a growl deep in his throat.
That was encouraging, she thought. He no longer seemed shocked or angry with her. But what now? Jonathan had been fast, and, she was beginning to realise as Will nibbled down the line of her jaw and sucked gently at the base of her throat with leisurely relish, not at all subtle.
She should be doing something seductive, but it was difficult when she was not at all sure what that involved and when her legs were restricted by her twisted nightgown and Will’s arm was effectively pinning hers to the bed.
Julia moaned in frustration and arched up to try to free herself, squashing her breasts against Will, who was nuzzling into her cleavage. The effect was startling. He growled, twisted, seized the collar of her nightgown, ripped it clean down to her waist, then spread the two halves open and stared down at her.
Was something wrong? Why was he looking at her like that? It was her figure, that was it. She was no longer fresh and young and virginal… Just when she could not stand the suspense any longer he bent his head and licked, lavishly, slowly, over her right nipple. And then the left. And back. They went hard and tight and he caught first one, then the other in his teeth and Julia sobbed, arching again, wanting more. He increased the pressure until it was a tiny stab of pain that arrowed into her belly and became something else entirely: heat and weight and need. Then he licked again while his hand took hold of the torn edge of her nightgown and yanked down hard and it tore as far as her knees.
Now he would cover her with his body, push her legs apart, take her. She fought a silent battle with the memories and the fear. It had hurt and Jonathan had not been careful. And Will was very aroused, she knew enough to understand that. Julia tried not to let her apprehension show, tried not to freeze.
But Will kept on tormenting her breasts as he stroked down into the brown curls that were embarrassingly damp. Wet, she thought, shocked, as his fingers parted her and then she forgot to be self-conscious as the strange deep ache got worse and worse and she twisted, pushing up against the heel of his hand.
Am I supposed to feel like this? It was so much more than when she had lost her virginity. Then she had felt a little of this, but not the all-consuming desperate need for something. ‘I want you inside me,’ she gasped, beyond shame. That must be it, that was what her body was clamouring for.
‘Patience,’ Will said and blew on her nipples while his fingers played and teased and suddenly found a point of perfect, shocking pleasure.
‘Will.’
He came to his knees, freed her completely from the nightgown and finall
y, finally, covered her with his body. But his fingers did not stop their torment and everything was tightening into an impossibly tangled knot and she did not know how she could bear it.
‘Julia. Look at me.’ Will’s voice was husky and she dragged open her eyes and stared into the amber heat of his. ‘Are you all right?’
‘No! No, I’m not…I can’t bear it. Please…’ She had no idea what she wanted, only that she needed him inside her and his weight on her and his mouth on hers. And by some miracle he understood her incoherent plea. He lowered himself, speared his fingers into her hair, drove with his hips and filled her in one long, hard thrust. Everything unravelled, broke apart as she heard herself scream, felt her body close, tight, on Will as he moved and then he froze, shuddered under her clutching hands and collapsed on to her body.
*
Selfish bastard, Will thought as his brain stopped spinning. He lay pillowed on Julia’s sweet warmth and contemplated her lover, the one she had eloped with, the one who had not, apparently, thought to give her any pleasure at all while he took what he wanted.
She had been as ignorant of what her own body could experience as a virgin. He smiled into the crook of her neck and lipped gently at the warm skin. Her arms were still around him and he became aware of the gentle movement of her fingers. She was stroking his shoulders lightly, as if exploring, like someone blind reaching out to map their world with their fingertips.
Had she any idea how seductive that innocence was? How sensual and responsive he found her? Of course not. Which was a very good thing, he decided, as he reached out a hand and pulled the covers over them. If she had any idea, then she would use it against him, use her feminine power to try to weaken and undermine him. It was bad enough having her fight him for control of every aspect of the estate without her deciding she could seduce him into letting her carry on being master here. Not that it would work.
