From Ruin to Riches

She leaned against Will’s wonderfully solid and reassuring shoulder. ‘I am just a little tired with all the preparations.’

‘And I have been

keeping you awake at night,’ he teased.

Julia felt herself blushing. Even with the fear gnawing at the back of her mind of what would follow when she slept, their lovemaking was perfect. At least, it seemed so to her. Drowsing in his arms, her body limp and replete, she felt so safe that just for a while she could believe nothing could hurt her. But in the cold light of dawn she knew even Will’s strength and courage could not protect her from the terrors in her own mind.

‘It would have been a saving to have taken the carriage instead of two chaises,’ she said repressively. Across the yard the other vehicle with Nancy and Jervis had just drawn up.

‘I wanted to be alone with you,’ Will said.

‘In the chaise!’

‘What a very wicked mind you have, Lady Dereham.’ He chuckled and dipped his head to give her a fleeting kiss on the lips. ‘I meant so we could talk. There is something I wanted to know and a journey means we can be uninterrupted. You have been remarkably quiet about your life before we met by the lake.’

It was so apposite to her thoughts that his remark almost struck her dumb. ‘What…what do you want to know?’

‘What your home was like, the estate. Tell me about your parents. Did you have a dog, a pony?’

‘Oh.’ The relief was physical and air rushed back into her lungs. ‘You want to know about my childhood.’

‘I was not intending to interrogate you about your lover,’ Will said drily as the chaise left the yard and turned eastwards.

‘Thank you, although I do not mind speaking of him…a little.’ She did not want to leave Will with the impression that she had anything to hide from him. ‘He was a mistake. A terrible mistake.’

‘What is his name?’

‘He was…is…called Jonathan.’ She remembered how Will had not believed her story when he had first come home. Suddenly it was important to tell him as much of the truth as possible. ‘When you first found out about him, you did not believe that I had only been with him a short while—a day and not quite a night. But that was honestly how it was. Before I ran away he had always treated me with respect, courted me with propriety. I truly thought we were eloping, I believed he would take me to Scotland and marry me. We lay together only the once.’

‘I know.’ His voice was firm and definite.

‘How can you know? Or are you simply trusting me?’

‘I would trust you, of course I would.’ Was he trying to convince himself as much as her? She could sense a slight reservation. ‘I know you now, Julia. Before, when I was so disbelieving, it was simply the shock of coming home, of being alive, of hearing about the baby. I was not thinking straight. But when I made love with you, I realised. It was all very new to you, was it not?’ She bit her lip and stared out of the window and tried not to remember. ‘It was not simply that he was too selfish to make it good, it was all unfamiliar because you were so inexperienced.’ She nodded.

‘Then we can forget him. Pretend he doesn’t exist,’ Will said. ‘That’s all behind you now unless there is anything it would help to talk about?’

‘Yes, I can try to do that,’ Julia said. Pretend he doesn’t exist. That is easy, he doesn’t, because I killed him. He was a wicked man, but he did not deserve to die for it. ‘But I cannot promise that his ghost is not going to haunt me sometimes.’ Every night.

‘It will have to get past me,’ Will said. ‘Now, forget him and the past. I’ll not stir that up again. Can you read in the chaise without getting sick? Because my London agent has sent me details of a number of eligible houses he thinks would be suitable to rent for the Season. See what you think.’

‘How exciting.’ Julia took the portfolio he handed her and infused her voice with as much enthusiasm as she could. Will was looking forward to London, to the London Season in the new year, to the sort of married life a man of his station should expect. And she could bring it crashing down around his head at any moment if she did not have the courage to keep her mouth shut and the intelligence to hide the truth. Whatever happened, she must make his happiness last as long as she could, she owed it to him.

‘My goodness.’ She riffled through the stack of papers. ‘The addresses all sound very grand. I like the sound of this one.’

He took the paper. ‘Half Moon Street? Why? It might be a trifle small, I thought.’

‘I like the name.’

As she guessed it would, that made him laugh. ‘Julia, you are a delight of a wife.’

And she laughed, too, as her conscience tore at her.

*

It was only half an hour later as she laid the stack of house particulars on one side that Will’s actual words came back to her. A delight of a wife. Did he truly mean that? She watched him as he studied the work he had brought with him, his dark head bent over the papers, his face remote and intelligent as he studied the pages. She had wanted him to want her as his wife, to build a relationship with him. Certainly things were good in the bedchamber and harmonious in everyday matters. She believed he would be faithful. That was all she had hoped for, surely, so why did her heart beat faster at his affectionate teasing? Did she want him to fall in love with her?

Julia stared out of the carriage window at the passing landscape. Do I? Am I in love with him? She was not certain what that meant any more. She had thought herself in love with Jonathan, so much in love that she would trust her entire future to him, and yet that feeling had evaporated the moment she realised his deception.