by Louise Allen
Still, it was a pleasure how she had reacted to him. And fortunate, because after all those long months of celibacy he found it a miracle he had held out against his climax as long as he had. The next time—which had better be soon, he thought with a wry grin—would be even better. He was looking forward to teaching Julia the arts of love.
His harsh words when he had accused her of being another man’s mistress, of lying about her lack of experience, came back to deliver a sharp jab to his conscience. Her story had obviously been true and he must make that up to her. If only he did not have this nagging instinct that she was still not being completely honest with him.
God, this is comfortable. I must be squashing her. He rolled off the soft fragrant body cushioning his so uncomplainingly and gathered her into his arms. She came with a little sigh, snuggled up against his chest and went quite limp. Asleep. It was endearingly trustful, the way she simply let go, just as she had on that strange wedding night so long ago. He should slide out of bed now, let her rest, go back to his own chamber. In a minute…
*
Her right arm had gone to sleep and there was a warm draught in her ear which tickled, but was oddly pleasant. And a strange beat under her ear. In fact, the pillow was rather harder than feathers and was not a pillow at all.
Julia blinked her eyes open and found she was wrapped in Will’s arms, her cheek on his chest. He was asleep, breathing into her ear. And neither of them was wearing a stitch.
It was tempting to press her lips to his skin. She could smell the faint muskiness of sex and sleep and warm man and the nipple close to her mouth was puckered and hard, perhaps from her breath.
But if she did kiss him, then he would know how much she wanted him and she would only demonstrate all over again how inexperienced she was. She needed to think and she couldn’t do it here with her body distracted by Will’s closeness. He had not hurt her even though he had been so strong, so forceful. She could not quite believe it.
Her dreams had been as bad as always, the wisps of them still hung around her mind like dirty fog. The dream where she was running away on feet that were raw with blisters, the dream where she was so mired in guilt she could not move, the dream where they told her that her child was not breathing… But the waking memories were amazing. Would it always be like this?
Julia slid out of bed, held her breath until she could lower his arm to the mattress, and got to her feet. She would just tiptoe into the dressing room, put on her habit…
‘Good morning.’
She turned to find Will regarding her with sleepy appreciation. There was nothing to wrap herself in. ‘Good morning.’ Julia began to back towards the door.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Riding. I wanted the, er, exercise.’
One eyebrow lifted in mocking disbelief.
‘And the fresh air.’
‘Open a window wider for the air and come back to bed for the exercise.’
‘But I wanted to ride.’ I need to escape before you realise that you only have to touch me and I turn into melted butter. If you don’t know that already.
Will flipped back the sheet and lay back. ‘Come here and I’ll teach you to ride astride.’
There was absolutely no mistaking his meaning. Julia could feel the blush spreading from her toe-tips to her cheeks. She wanted to flee, she wanted to run to him. She tried to look as though it was actually a rational decision, as though she was in charge of her emotions. Julia held Will’s gaze and walked back to the bed, tossing her hair back over her shoulder as she did so. His eyes narrowed and she saw a perceptible reaction in his already aroused body.
I please him. And despite everything, the fears and the dreams and the knowledge that Will still did not trust her, the realisation that this aspect of their marriage might be happy was like a benison. If it lasts.
Chapter Twelve
By the time she and Will sat down to luncheon Julia had managed to stop colouring up every time he looked at her. After a prolonged, very instructive and shatteringly pleasurable interlude in bed Julia had managed to take her horseback ride after all.
Nancy had fetched her conventional riding habit without being asked and Julia was glad to be saved the temptation to put on her divided skirt. She didn’t want an argument with her husband to spoil the remarkable closeness their lovemaking had created. Will had accompanied her and even listened, without apparent irritation, to her comments on how the fields were being used and what the situation was with the tenants. He had admired the rebuilt cottages that replaced the row he had shown her that first morning and complimented her on the design of the well cover and the pigsties.
Perhaps, after all, things were going to settle down. He would accept her as a partner, her position would be safe and, with shared interests, they could begin to build a marriage.
And yet… She watched him from beneath her lashes. Will had been attentive, had listened and yet somehow she had felt that he was flirting with her, humouring her. He knew, because quite plainly he was a man of very considerable experience in these matters, that she was attracted to him, that she had enjoyed herself in his arms. The balance of power, she mused. My lord and master. In bed and out of it—is that how he sees it?
‘I expect we will be besieged by visitors,’ Will remarked now as he cut into a cheese. ‘Aunt Delia will have spread the gossip all about the neighbourhood. We were spared all the bride-visits three years ago, but we are in for them now.’
‘I suppose we will be.’ People would soon sate their curiosity, surely? Then they would leave them in the peace she was used to, with only morning calls from close neighbours and her particular friends.
‘We must hold a dinner party as soon as possible.’
‘We must?’ Will did not mean the informal dinners she enjoyed, with good plain food on the table and casual card or table games, music and gossip afterwards.
‘Certainly. A series of small ones, I thought, rather than try to deal with everyone at once. In fact, I have a list of guests drawn up we can use to sort out the invitation list for the first one.’
A series of dinner parties would mean hours of planning. They would be an event in the neighbourhood and people would compare notes, which meant a different menu for each, and different table decorations. ‘I will have to buy some new gowns.’
‘Is that such a hardship? I never thought to hear a woman say that sentence in such a depressed tone of voice.’
Julia smiled and shrugged. ‘It is simply the time, but I can go into Aylesbury tomorrow and order several.’ She made no mention of the discomfort she felt walking around the crowded streets full of strangers.
Will had said nothing about pin money or housekeeping and she had no intention of bringing the subject up until she had to. It was not that she had been extravagant while she had sole control of the money, but she did not relish the thought of having to account for every penny spent on toothpowder or silk stockings. She had been earning the money that she spent so prudently. Now she would be beholden to her husband for everything.
‘We will go up to town in the autumn,’ Will said. ‘Presumably you go fairly frequently.’
‘No. I have never been.’ Ridiculously it seemed more dangerous than any other place, as though Bow Street Runners would be waiting around every corner for her. Fingers would point, constables would pounce and drag her before magistrates…
‘Why not? Is this another foolish scruple, like not wearing the jewellery?’ Julia shook her head, unable to think of a convincing explanation, and Will frowned. ‘Well, we will go up in a week or so. It will be short of company, but we can both shop, I can make myself known at my clubs again and so forth.’
‘Of course. I shall look forward to it.’ The irrational panic was building inside, beating at her, and Julia made herself sip her lemonade and nibble at a cheesecake. She needed peace and time to reflect.
*
The next day after luncheon Will rode off to interview the village bla
cksmith about the ironwork for the new stables. Julia waited until his long-tailed grey gelding had vanished from sight, then went into the garden to gather a handful of white rosebuds. Ellis the gardener controlled his usual grumbles about anyone picking ‘his’ flowers and gave her a smile as she passed him. He knew what the little bouquet was for.
The path wound through the shrubbery, past the vicarage and into the churchyard. The ancient village had been moved by some autocratic baron early in the last century when it got in the way of his new parkland. As a result the villagers found themselves with new homes, but a longer walk to the now-isolated church which also served as the chapel for the castle.
Julia made her way round to the south side and pushed open the ancient oak door. Inside the light was dimmed by the stained glass windows and the silence was profound and peaceful. She made her way to the Hadfield family chapel with its view through an ornate stone screen to the chancel.
The table tomb of Will’s fourteenth-century ancestor, Sir Ralph Hadfield, stood in the centre. The knight, his nose long since chipped off, lay with a lion under his feet and his hand on his sword hilt. Beside him his lady, resplendent in the fashions of the day, had a lapdog as her footrest.
Between the east end of the tomb and the chapel-altar steps was a slab with a ring in to give access to the Hadfield vault beneath. Delia always said the thought of the vault gave her the horrors, but Julia found the chapel peaceful. The ancestors beneath her feet, lying together in companionable eternity, held no terrors for her. It was quiet, cool, strangely comforting in the chapel as she gathered up the drooping roses from the vase standing on the slab and added the new flowers, then sat and let her tumbling thoughts still and calm.
That morning she and Nancy had folded and packed away all the tiny garments, the shawls, the rattle, the furnishings for the nursery. Now they were in silver paper and lavender, the cot stripped of its hangings, everything put away in the attic.
She had set the door wide open on to the room and left it for Will to find, or not. She did not feel able to talk about it. What if she was already with child again? All that pain to risk. Not the physical pangs, but the mental pain of nine months of anxiety and then…
But she was well and healthy now, she reassured herself, not the nervous girl who had spent those first months jumping at her own shadow, convinced that she would step out of her front door and find the constables waiting for her, her new neighbours pointing, crying, Imposter! Murder! Surely that would make a difference? And part of her ached for a child.
She was not sure how long she had sat there before she heard the creak of the outer door being pushed open and footsteps coming down the aisle. The vicar, she supposed. Mr Pendleton was gentle and kindly; she did not mind his company.
The realisation that it was not the elderly scholar came over her with a sort of chill certainty. Julia did not turn, but she was not surprised when Will said, ‘He is here, then?’
She should not have risked it, coming to the chapel while there was the slightest chance Will would find out. He would be furious that this was something else she had kept from him. He would insist that the interloper was removed…
‘I know it is wrong.’ She found she was on her feet, standing on the slab as though she could somehow stop this. Will stood with his hat in his hands, his face serious. ‘I know he isn’t yours and he has no right here. But he wasn’t baptised, so they would have buried him outside the churchyard wall in that horrid patch under the yew trees and Mr Pendleton understood when I was distressed, so we put him here…’
‘Does he have a name, even though he was never baptised?’ Will said gently.
It was the last question she expected. ‘Alexander, after my father,’ she stammered.
‘Alexander is very welcome here,’ Will said and came to her side. ‘Do you know who he is lying there with?’
‘No.’ He was not going to insist the tiny coffin was taken and buried in that dark, dank patch with the suicides and the other tiny tragedies?
‘My brother and two sisters,’ Will said and she saw his fingers were curled tight over the edge of Sir Ralph’s tomb. ‘The loss of two children after I was born shattered my parents’ marriage.’ His mouth twisted in a wry smile. ‘Not that it was well founded in the first place. Afterwards things went from bad to worse. They hardly communicated other than by shouting and the third child, a daughter, was not my father’s—or so he always maintained. You may imagine the atmosphere.’
‘Oh, the poor things!’ Julia cried.
‘The babies?’
‘Well, of course. But for your mother to lose so many and for your father… He lost two children himself and then they were obviously not able to reach out and comfort each other or things would not have gone so wrong between them.’
‘You are an expert on marriage now?’ Will asked harshly. Was he recalling that she had taken a lover before she had come to him? Might he fear she would do what his own mother had done if she was unhappy?
‘No.’ Then she saw the pain in his eyes. How hard it must have been to grow up in a household full of grief and anger. ‘No, but I can understand a little of what your mother felt. If she had no one to talk to, the loss of the children would have been so much worse.’ She hoped she had kept her voice steady and not revealed how much this cost her to speak of.
Will half-turned away and stood staring down at his long-ago ancestor, then he looked back at her as though he had been translating her words in his head and had just deciphered the meaning. ‘And you had no one, had you? Even if Delia behaved decently, you would have known that in her heart she was relieved that Henry had not been displaced.’
‘That is true.’ She fought to find a smile. ‘I managed.’ Somehow. ‘There was not much choice.’
‘You should not have had to,’ Will said roughly and the anger in his voice undid her in a way that gentleness would never have done. ‘Damn it, I didn’t mean to make you cry. Julia—’ He pulled her into his arms and for the first time since he had returned there was nothing in his touch but the need to give comfort. He cupped her head with one big hand and held her against his shoulder. ‘Perhaps it is not a bad thing if you weep now. Were you even able to cry properly after it happened?’
She shook her head, afraid to speak and lose control.
‘Then do it now. Mourn for the first child of this marriage.’ Julia gave a sob and then simply let the tears flow while Will stroked her hair and held her tightly and murmured comfort.
How long they stood there she had no idea. Eventually the tears ran their course and Julia lifted her head and looked up into Will’s face. ‘Thank you.’ She became aware that her lashes were sticking together and she wanted to sniff and her nose was probably red. The breast of his coat was dark with moisture. ‘Have you got a handkerchief?’
‘Of course.’ Will eased her down on to the pew, produced a large linen square from his pocket and moved away to study the memorials on the walls.
Julia put herself to rights as best she could and found she could express the anxiety that she had thought she could never speak of to him. ‘Will, what if it happens again? What if I am not able to give you an heir?’
He came back and sat beside her, his hands clasped between his knees. He seemed to be engrossed in the design of a hassock. After a moment he said, ‘I hope that is not the case, because I would hate to see you suffer such a thing. But if it did, then Henry, or his son, inherits. It is not the end of the world and besides, do not anticipate troubles. Now come back into the sunshine or you will get chilled. It is like an ice house in here and it is a lovely day outside.’
Julia took the hand he held out to her and went out, arm in arm with him as fragile hope began to unfurl inside her. Will understood how she had grieved and her need to weep and be comforted. He had been kind about letting her place Alexander in the vault and she had seen, with piercing clarity, just how wounded he must have been as a child by his parents’ unhappy marriage.
Pe
rhaps one day he might even come to trust her, even though she knew she would never be able to burden him with her secret. Perhaps, Julia thought optimistically as the sunshine and the relief of the tears did their work, this was the real beginning of their marriage.
‘Will, how much did you understand of what was happening? When your brothers and sisters died?’
‘Understand? Nothing. They told me nothing other than that I was now the only son because my brother was dead so I must grow up to be the perfect Baron Dereham because there was no other option. They didn’t tell me at all about the little girl my father said was not his. I only found out about that when I overheard two maids talking about it afterwards. I would have liked to have had a brother,’ he added after a moment, his voice utterly expressionless. ‘And little sisters. I asked my tutor what it meant when the maids said one of them was a bastard. So he told me and then I was beaten for eavesdropping.’
‘That is outrageous!’ Julia forgot her own melancholy in a burst of anger for the unhappy, confused small boy. ‘They should have told you the truth, all of it, but kindly so a child could understand.’
He shrugged. ‘Water under the bridge now.’
They walked on in silence, but it seemed to Julia that some of the tension between them had lifted a little. The roofs of the Home Farm came into sight to their right and Julia recalled that the workmen had finished building the foundations for the extension to the stables and were beginning on the walls. With the new horses arriving so soon Will had decided on a single-storied wooden building to save time and he had ordered the work without, of course, any reference to her.
Now, as they strolled back from the church, it seemed the time to build on the intimacy of the moment by showing an interest rather than offering suggestions. ‘I would like it if you would show me the new stables. They seem to be coming along very well.’
Will changed direction and took the path to the farm. ‘You have not been to look at them yet?’
