Nancy was waiting to help her undress when she made her way to her new suite. ‘I’ve moved all your things, my lady. Such a nice spacious dressing room: there’s plenty of room for your new gowns. And Mr Gatcombe brought all the jewellery boxes up and has put them in the safe. Shall we check the inventory tomorrow, my lady? I don’t like to be responsible when we haven’t got a list of what’s there.’
‘Yes,’ Julia agreed, studying the room as if she had not seen it before. It was large with a deep Venetian window, a marble fireplace and a handsome bed in the classical style with pale-green curtains. The pictures were dull, she thought, attempting to divert her thoughts from the bed. There were others in the house that would look better here—that was something to do tomorrow. And there was the jewellery to look at. And she must think about new gowns for the entertaining Will was sure to want to do.
If she was not careful her day would become filled with all the trivial domestic duties her husband thought she should be engaging in.
‘Such a pity we didn’t know his lordship was coming home,’ Nancy said as she picked up the hairbrush and began to take down Julia’s hair. ‘You could have bought some pretty new nightgowns, my lady.’
Now the butterflies really were churning in her stomach. She was about to sleep with a man for only the second time in her life. No, third, she supposed, although sharing a bed with Will on their wedding night had been sleeping only in the literal sense.
She was not in love with him and he was certainly not in love with her. She did not have a pretty new nightgown, and, rather more importantly to her confidence, she had carried a child to term, which doubtless would make her body less desirable to him.
When he learned that she was not a virgin perhaps he would expect considerably more sensual expertise than she could possibly muster. She was not at all sure what sexual expertise consisted of for a woman. Her resolve to make him desire her just as much as she desired him was beginning to look much like wishful thinking.
But sitting up in bed ten minutes later she did feel rather more seductive. If, that is, one could feel seductive and terrified simultaneously. Her nightgown might not be new, but the lace trim was pretty, her hair was brushed out smoothly about her shoulders and she could smell the scent of rosewater rising from a number of places that Nancy assured her were strategic pulse points.
All she needed now, Julia thought as Nancy left the room with a cheerful, ‘Goodnight, my lady’, was a gentleman to seduce. She kept her eyes on the door panels and tried to conjure up the image of Will to practise on. Smiling was too obvious. She tried to achieve a sultry smoulder. The nightgown was too prim. She unlaced the ribbon at the neck and pushed it down over her shoulders a little. Even without the help of stays her bosom, she decided, was acceptably firm and high. Men liked bosoms, she knew that much.
Now, all she had to do was to maintain that look and manage not to be sick out of sheer nerves until the door opened. Then she realised that she had her confession to make first and that to attempt seduction and then to reveal the unpleasant truths would seem as if she was trying to manipulate him. Julia threw back the covers to climb out of bed.
‘Very nice.’ The husky voice came from inside the room to her left.
Julia gave a small scream and twisted round to find her husband lounging against the frame of an open jib door she had quite forgotten about. Of course, she realised as she fought for some poise, it led to his dressing room, but it was so cunningly set into the panels it was almost invisible when closed. ‘You made me jump.’
‘And that was very nice, too.’ He strolled into the room and closed the door behind him. His eyes were on her body and when she looked down she realised that her involuntary start combined with the loosened ribbon had revealed more of the swell of her bosom than she ever intended.
Will was still wearing the thin evening breeches and his shirt, but everything else had gone, the shirt was open at the neck and the cuffs turned back. The casual disarray seemed even more intimate than the silk robe he had been wearing that morning and the part of her brain that was not either panicking, or thinking shamefully wanton thoughts, wondered if that was deliberate.
‘May I join you, my lady?’ His hands were on the open edges of his shirt.
‘I… Of course. But not in bed. Not yet. I have to talk to you.’
‘Talk? We have been sitting downstairs for some time this evening. I would have thought that the time for talking was past.?
?
Julia took a shuddering breath. ‘This is not something I wanted to discuss downstairs. This is in the nature of a confession.’
The amusement, and the sensuality, were quite gone from Will’s face now. ‘Confession?’
Julia took a key from the bedside table. ‘We need to go back to my old room.’
‘Very well.’ His eyes were narrowed in calculation, or perhaps suspicion, but he waited while she tied her robe and led the way along the passageways until they were outside the door next to her room. She unlocked it and stood aside, feeling sick. With a sharp glance at her face Will pushed it open and went in.
*
What the devil was going on? Will had expected to be making love to his wife by now, not looking at spare rooms. He glanced around. When he had left this had been a sitting room, a little boudoir for lady guests using the bedchambers at this end of the house. Now there was a cradle draped in white lawn, a low nursing chair, a pretty dresser.
The nursery was up on the floor above. It still had, he recalled, his old crib, his childhood bed, his toys. What was this room doing furnished as a nursery? This unoccupied room? Behind him Julia was silent. Will opened a drawer in the dresser. It was full of tiny garments, a lacy shawl, little caps. One pile was weighted down with a rattle, silver and coral that jingled as he lifted it.
He dropped the rattle back into the drawer with a faint tinkle of bells, the realisation of what this meant stealing through his consciousness. He felt sick.
‘Where is the child?’ he asked as he turned back to the door.
His voice was perfectly calm, but Julia flinched as though he had shouted, struck at her. ‘He was born dead.’
Will stayed precisely where he was until he got the flare of anger under control. If it was anger, that sharp nauseating pain under his breastbone. He had never lifted a finger to a woman in his life and he was not going to now. He was not his father: civilised men dealt with these things in a civilised manner. But he had not expected to be cuckolded, which, he supposed, showed a lack of imagination on his part, given the family history.
‘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?’