‘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?’