by Louise Allen
Opposite her was the King’s Head and Oak, its sign of the crowned oak tree that had sheltered Charles II swinging in the light breeze. No baying onlookers hung from the windows. It looked respectable and well kept, a suitable lodging for minor gentry come to the city.
There was a bay tree in a pot by the front door, she saw as she hesitated there. Perhaps this was the last time she would walk outside as a free woman. Julia reached out and broke off a twig, crushed the aromatic leaf between her fingers as she entered and summoned up the dregs of her courage.
‘Mr and Mrs Prior, if you please,’ she said to the man who came out of the taproom as she entered. ‘Tell them Lady…tell them Miss Prior is here.’
They kept her waiting only a few minutes, which was a mercy for she was not certain which would go first: her nerve, to send her fleeing down towards the Fleet, or her legs, to leave her huddled on the floor.
The man came back before either happened. ‘You’re to follow me, if you please, miss.’
The old wooden stairs were well waxed, she noted as she climbed. Every trivial detail was imprinted on her senses. The man’s apron was clean, but his shoes were dusty and he had been eating onions. That picture hanging on the wall at the head of the stairs, so dirty it was impossible to tell the subject, was crooked. They were boiling cabbage below in the kitchens. Her guide tapped on a door, opened it and she stepped into a small parlour. Her relatives regarded her with identical expressions of supercilious amusement as she tried to control both her breathing and her face.
‘I’ll not pretend I am not surprised to see you,’ Cousin Jane said, her over-plucked eyebrows lifting as she took in the sight in front of her. ‘Where’s his lordship?’
‘I am here on my own account.’ Julia looked at Arthur, who lounged in a carved chair before the empty hearth. He had not troubled to get to his feet as she entered and the deliberate insult somehow steadied both her nerve and voice. For three years she had been Lady Dereham, used to receiving respect and courtesy—she was no longer the poor, subservient, relation.
‘I am sure that, having thought this over, you cannot wish to betray me to the law, not when you know full well I was deceived and forced by Jonathan Dalfield.’ That was her first suggestion, the one she knew they would ignore.
‘There’s no evidence of force. No one else was in the room, were they? No witnesses.’ Arthur folded his hands over his small paunch and smiled benignly. ‘You’re all alone, Cousin. Left you, has he? The baron, I mean. Can’t stomach what you did, or just doesn’t like being tricked into marrying used goods?’
Julia ignored him. Jane, after all, was the one who always wanted to keep up appearances. She tried her next bargaining chip. ‘Do you want the scandal to attach to your name, Cousin Jane?’ she demanded.
‘We will appear as the poor, deceived relatives who took you into our home and were grossly imposed upon,’ Mrs Prior said, perfectly composed. ‘How were we to know that you were a vicious, immoral little slut who was capable of such things?’
Well, that seemed to dispose of both appeals to their good nature. Time for threats. ‘If you hand me over to the law, then my husband will not pay you a penny and I will tell the magistrates that you were accessories.’
Arthur shrugged. ‘Your husband will pay up, never fear. That sort will do anything to safeguard their honour and good name.’
That seemed to dispose of the one feeble threat she could make. Julia realised she was not surprised. Her stomach felt entirely hollow and yet she had passed beyond fear. ‘Very well. I shall go to Bow Street and surrender myself. And while I am at it I will report you both for extortion.’ Would I? She realised she simply did not know.
Then, as Arthur still smirked, Julia’s fragile hold on her nerves snapped into temper. ‘I mean it. I will not have you threatening and impoverishing the man I love and as the only way to avoid that seems to be to expose this whole dreadful situation I will do my damnedest to see you are dragged down with me. And I promise you, Lord Dereham will make your life hell on earth from now onwards.’
That got through. ‘Wait.’ Arthur rose to his feet. ‘Now there’s no need to be hasty.’ With a glimmer of hope she saw there was sweat beading his brow now.
‘You want to negotiate, do you?’ Julia said. ‘Unfortunately I do not deal with—’
The inner door opened and a man strolled out from the bedchamber beyond. Will, an irrational voice in her head said and her heart leapt. Then he stepped fully into the room and she saw his eyes were cold, unreadable blue, not hot amber fire. This was a tall, dark ghost with a streak of pure white slashing through the forelock that fell on to his brow.
‘Perhaps you would like to deal with me instead, Julia,’ Jonathan Dalfield said and smiled as the room swirled around her.
Chapter Twenty
I will not faint, Julia thought grimly and spun round to the door. Jonathan reached her before she could lift the latch, his strong hands turning her, dragging her up against him. He smelled as she remembered, of lime cologne and the Spanish snuff he favoured and the oil he used on his hair. It was a scent that had once made her head spin with desire.
‘You are alive.’ It was foolishly obvious, but it was hard to believe that this was a flesh-and-blood man. Not so hard to believe was the remembered pain of his grip on her wrist. So close she could see that the line of his jaw had softened, that there were pouches under his eyes. He looked more than three years older, more dissipated. If he had approached her now, she would have seen him for what he was.
‘Alive, but no thanks to you, my dear.’ His smile was feral, bitter with all semblance of charm vanished. Once she had thought herself in love with this man. She must have been desperate indeed.
How had he survived that blow to the head? There had been all that blood. But she did not believe in ghosts—her wrist hurt with an exquisite pain that told her she was not dreaming, so it must be true. ‘Then let me go. You’ll have no money for blackmail now, Jonathan. My husband knows I was no virgin when I came to him, he’ll give you not a penny for whatever feeble scandal you think you can stir up.’
‘So I will have to get my recompense for this some other way, Julia my dear.’ He pushed back the hair from his forehead and she saw the scar, a red, puckered dent two inches long. ‘Pretty, isn’t it? And the headaches are not pretty either.’
‘It is your fault, Jonathan Dalfield,’ Julia threw at him. She felt giddy with relief that she had not killed him, but she could feel no regrets now for having hurt him—the man was even worse than she had thought. ‘You deceived me, ravished me, tried to rape me. Do you believe I had no right to fight back?’
‘Women don’t fight back, they do as they’re told,’ he said and smiled as cold ice trickled down her spine. Her anger was congealing into fear and she struggled not to let that show on her face. Bullies fed on fear, she knew that. ‘I didn’t get much fun for my pains last time. Now, I can only hope you’ve learned a trick or two from your baron.’
Julia saw it in his eyes, the truth that he was more than capable of dragging her into that bedchamber and ravishing her all over again. No one who cared for her knew she was there, Will thought she was dead, she had walked into this trap of her own volition. No one was going to get her out of it if she could not.
Julia curled her free fingers into talons and lashed out even as she realised that Jonathan had been expecting just that. He caught her arm and pulled her in close, so tight she could hardly struggle, then freed his grip on her wrist so he could hold her with one arm while he forced her chin up. She bared her teeth at him.
‘You’ll smile for me nicely, my dear, unless you want gaps in those pretty teeth,’ he said. ‘And if you bite, I can promise you a whipping.’
He bent his head and took her mouth with his, the same mouth she had sought to place shy, loving kisses on when they were courting. Julia tightened her lips, resisted the thrust of his tongue. She was going to survive this and she would see him brought to justice for wh
at he had done. Now she could only endure.
At her back the door slammed open like the crack of doom. ‘Jonathan Dalfield, I presume? Take your hands off my wife or I will break your neck,’ said a voice she scarcely recognised.
Jonathan freed her with a shove that sent her reeling across the room hard against Will’s chest. She grasped his forearms, looked up into burning amber eyes and saw nothing but murder there. ‘Will, thank God—’
Will glanced down at her, one searching, scorching stare. ‘Thank God I’ve found you. I did not expect to find you here.’ He touched one finger to her cheek. ‘He had his hands on you. His mouth.’ Then he pushed her gently into the arms of the man who had followed him into the room and took a step forward.
‘Will!’
‘Never fear, Lady Dereham, you are safe now,’ the man holding her said. He tried to bundle her out of the door but she stuck in her heels.
‘Major Frazer?’ How on earth had he got here? ‘No, please stop pushing me, I must stay with Will.’
‘There will be violence, ma’am,’ the major said pedantically. ‘It is no fit place for a lady.’
She simply ignored him. The Priors were standing together close to the bedchamber door, their faces white. Jonathan had backed up as far as the table and stood at bay, his hand at his side as though trying to grip the sword that was not there.
‘You think that even if we had weapons I would duel with you as though you were a gentleman, a man of honour?’ Will’s voice dripped contempt.
‘Julia ran back to me of her own free will,’ Jonathan said. ‘Why do you think she is here? Your quarrel is with her.’
‘You seem to have a death wish,’ Will observed. He pulled off his gloves, finger by finger, tossed them on to a chair, shrugged out of his greatcoat, laid that on top and added his hat, for all the world as though he was settling down for a comfortable chat. But Julia could read him now and what she saw was cold, focused fury.
‘Don’t kill him,’ she gasped.
‘You see?’ Jonathan’s sneering voice was at odds with his white face. There was a nerve twitching in his cheek and he did not seem to know what to do with his hands. ‘She would protect me.’
‘Lady Dereham appears to think that you are not worth hanging for. She is probably correct.’ Will took a step forwards. ‘So I will just have to deal with you some other way. Frazer, get her out of here.’
‘No!’
‘I am very sorry, Lady Dereham.’ Major Frazer picked Julia up bodily and marched out of the door, pushed it shut with his shoulder, then leaned against it when she lunged for the door handle. ‘I apologise for the liberty, but that is no place for a lady.’
‘There are three of them in there and Jonathan Dalfield will not fight fairly,’ she panted, trying to reach the door handle, but the major was almost as solid as Will. There was a crash from inside the room.
‘Will won’t be fighting fairly either,’ Major Frazer said with a grin that faded as he took in her distress. ‘You forget I knew him in his army days. He duels like a gentleman, but he fights scum like a gutter rat. There is no cause for alarm, I promise you. Ah, landlord.’
Julia turned as the man came running up the stairs. ‘What is going on, sir? I’ll not stand for fighting and my rooms being smashed up! I’ll call the constables, I warn you.’
‘Excellent idea,’ the major said. ‘Send for them at once. Your guests have set on this lady’s husband in an unprovoked manner—I can only hope they have sufficient money to pay for the damages.’
‘But if the constables come they might arrest Will,’ Julia protested, as the man turned and ran downstairs, shouting for the pot boy. The door at the major’s back was hit with a massive crash that had him rocking on his feet.
‘When they come, if we are still here, they will be met by me, in my capacity as a London magistrate, investigating a case of extortion and the forcible imprisonment of a lady. With any luck, we’ll be away before it comes to that.’
‘You are a magistrate?’
He nodded, his head half-turned as though listening. It had gone very quiet. ‘Will knew I was at my town house. Ah, here we are.’
He stepped away from the door and Will came out. One eye was half-closed, there was a cut on his right cheekbone and his lip was split. ‘Right, come on.’ He clapped his hat on his head, shrugged into his greatcoat and took Julia’s arm. ‘My thanks to you for your support, Frazer. I owe you a good dinner, but you’ll forgive me if we leave at once.’
‘Will, your face—’
‘Not here.’ He took her arm and went briskly down the stairs and out onto the forecourt.
The major tipped his hat to Julia. ‘Obedient servant, ma’am. Dereham.’
Will hailed a passing cab, bundled Julia into it without ceremony and called up, ‘Grillon’s Hotel’, before climbing in beside her.
The vehicle rattled away down Ludgate Hill and Julia, speechless, simply stared at her husband. He was here, she was safe. She had killed no one. Julia dug her handkerchief out of her reticule and sat with it clenched in her hand, waiting for the tears of sheer relief to come. Strangely, they did not, nor did the rush of relief she experienced when she dreamed that everything was all right.
Will tossed his hat on to the seat beside him and took the handkerchief when she held it out to him. He dabbed at his cheek with some caution. ‘Are you all right, Julia?’
‘Am I all right!’ She found her voice in a flood of anger that encompassed fear, anguish, anxiety and shocked relief all in one muddle of feeling. ‘Yes, of course I am. Will, you might have been seriously injured, even killed.’
He raised one eyebrow, gave a wince at the unwary gesture and grinned, somewhat lopsidedly. ‘That is not very flattering, my dear. Your Mr Dalfield is licking his wounds and contemplating the warning I gave him and your cousins: go back to where they came from and never speak of this or approach you in any manner. If they do not comply, they will have a respected magistrate to vouch for their attempts at extortion.’
‘Then it is really all over.’ It did not seem possible that the nightmare that had haunted her waking and sleeping for over three years had simply dissolved into thin air.
Will nodded. ‘I am hoping this is the last of your deep dark secrets, my love.’ His face was serious, but his eyes smiled at her.
‘I promise.’ Had he really said my love? Most likely it was a careless endearment, or wishful thinking on her part. She was certainly feeling very strange. Light-headed, in fact, although with that came a certain clarity of thought. ‘You were not surprised when you came into the room just now, were you? You said Jonathan’s name without even having to think about it. How did you know?’
‘I realised he was not dead in the early hours of this morning.’ Will got up and changed seats so he could put his arm around her. Julia tried not to lean into him, anxious about cracked ribs, but the warmth of his body was like a balm to her own aching one.
‘It was all about surprise, that was what had been niggling at the back of my mind ever since your cousins came to Grillon’s. Their purpose was to blackmail us, of course. But all they threatened us with at first was scandal about your elopement and the fact that you had struck Dalfield. Violence, they said. Not murder, not killing. No one said anything about death or murder until you blurted out your confession. They mentioned Jonathan’s poor head, not his dead body.
‘They had come all prepared with a shocking tale of a woman who had lost her virtue and assaulted, and probably scarred, a man. They threatened to paint you as a woman who had run away from home, one whom society would be appalled to find as a baroness. They expected me to pay up simply to preserve our good name from unpleasant slurs.
‘And then you said what you did. I was stunned. But so were they and that must have registered with me without my grasping the significance, fool that I am.’
‘You could hardly be expected to notice nuances when you had just been told your wife had killed a man,’ Julia said.
‘I was not looking at them,’ Julia murmured, and turned so she could see his profile. Will was miles away, looking back on that appalling scene, she could tell. ‘I heard them but I was watching you.’ Only you, while my heart broke.
‘They had thought I would pay them a few hundred pounds to shut their mouths and go away, I’ll wager that was the sum of their ambition. And then they found that you believed you had killed your lover. I have to give Arthur Prior credit, the man can think on his feet. With a brain like that he should be a lawyer. It was a gift to him and he knew what to do with it at once: tell the big lie, ask enough money, and it all becomes that much more convincing. And you, my darling, could not but help them because you believed it and I, knowing you were still hiding a secret, had believed the very worst of you.’
‘How could I have been so mistaken?’ Julia felt her mind clearing, her strength returning. Perhaps, like Will, she was having to come to terms with the fact that she had a future. The certainty she had lived with so long like a leech on her conscience had been disproved. It was hard to believe she was free. ‘Jonathan looked so…dead.’
‘All head wounds bleed dreadfully. You saw an unconscious man lying face down, his head laid open by an iron poker. He must have sprawled as still as death amidst scattered fire irons on the hearth. There was blood everywhere. You had experienced betrayal, fear, violence, all within minutes and you had done something utterly alien to you—struck another person. The room was suddenly full of cries of Murder! from an ignorant, excited crowd. I can see it as plainly as if I had been there.’
‘If I had not assumed the worst and fled—’
‘You might have been taken up for assault, for it would have been his word against yours and he was the one with the cut head. And besides, I would never have met you,’ Will said as the carriage came to a halt. ‘Of course, you may well say that all these years of anxiety and guilt were not worth it, but selfishly I hope you will come to think they were.’
