The Regency Season: Shameful Secrets: From Ruin to Riches / Scandal's Virgin

‘Had you some other plans for the day after tomorrow?’ Will persisted.

Safe, protective irritation took the place of whatever insane emotions she had just been experiencing. The man is completely focused on what he wants without a thought for me. It is a very good thing he is going away, Julia thought, otherwise we would be falling out for certain.

‘I haven’t said yes yet,’ she protested. He just looked at her. ‘Oh, very well! Yes! But I do not have a thing to wear.’ His eyebrows shot up. ‘Except this.’ She swept a hand down to encompass her skirts. ‘I can hardly marry a baron in a creased, stained walking dress and old cloak.’

‘Then go shopping tomorrow. I will give you money. There are no shops of very great fashion in Aylesbury, not even for ready to wear, but you will find something adequate and you can always go up to London shortly. Just hire a town house, if you wish, Julia.’

She had a sudden, welcome, thought. ‘Everyone calls me Julia, but for the licence you must have my first name. Augusta.’ She saw his face and almost laughed. ‘I know. It was the name of my mother’s godmother and they were in hopes of some generous present from her. No one ever uses it—in fact, I doubt anyone recalls it now.’ Even if they saw any mention of the marriage in some newssheet, no one would think that Augusta Prior, making an excellent match to a baron in Buckinghamshire, might be Julia Prior of Wiltshire, fugitive.

‘But what of your cousin?’ she worried. ‘I cannot help but feel we are cheating him.’

‘If I had married as planned, I could have an heir due shortly and Henry’s nose would be permanently out of joint. Or if I had not been caught in that blizzard I might be in excellent health now. What we are doing is ensuring that when he does inherit he will have an estate in fine heart and, I trust, the maturity to appreciate it.’

Julia prodded herself with the thing that was troubling her conscience, deep down below the worry and the fear. ‘And I am being rewarded for sin,’ she muttered as she sat down again. She had eloped with a man, slept with him out of wedlock and then, however unintentionally, killed him. She could not absolve herself from blame—if she had not done that first shocking thing, then Jonathan would still be alive.

‘Sin?’ Will Hadfield must have ears like a bat. ‘Running away to save your virtue? And fleeing from physical abuse—I saw your wrist.’

Her fingers closed protectively around the yellowing bruises. Eyes like a hawk as well. ‘It was poor judgement,’ she argued. ‘I had no plan other than escape. Goodness knows how I would have found a respectable way of supporting myself.’ She had to remember the story she had told him, act in character. ‘I should have thought of something else, something less shocking.’

After a moment she added, ‘All you know of me is what I told you. I wonder that you trust me with this scheme of yours.’

‘But my judgement, my dear Miss Prior, is excellent. I have watched you and listened to you. I have seen how you look at the land, how you talk to the people. I have heard how you think things through and deal with problems. I have every confidence in you—after all, once you are safely married to me, you will not be a target for predatory young men.’

He blithely ignored her sharp intake of breath and continued before she could reply. ‘Will you go shopping tomorrow? I will send a maid with you and a footman for your parcels, and Thomas the coachman will deliver you to the Rose and Crown where you will find a private parlour and reasonable refreshments.’

‘Thank you, I shall do as you advise. It seems you have thought of everything,’ she added, managing with an effort not to allow her ungrateful resentment at his masterful organisation to show in her voice. It would serve him right if the archbishop refused to give him a licence and he found himself saddled with a fallen woman with a price on her head and a very large pile of bills.

And then her conscience pricked her. Will Hadfield was doing this because he was driven to it, he had been kind to her and now he was helping her out of danger in a way that was little short of a miracle. She wished she had known him before he had become ill, wished she could know him better now.

Or perhaps not. Even ill he was dangerously attractive. She did not want to grow to like him, to be hurt when he left, to agonise more than she would over the fate of any chance-met stranger.

* * *

‘You have known my nephew for how long, exactly? I do not think I quite caught what dear William said.’ Mrs Delia Hadfield had doubtless heard perfectly well everything that had been said to her and her façade of vague sweetness did not deceive Julia for a moment. The widow, she was certain, was aghast that her husband’s nephew had married and was consumed with a desire to discover everything she could about the circumstances.

Julia saw that Will was seated on the far side of the room, deep in conversation with the vicar. She could hardly expect him to rush to her side to rescue her. ‘It seems only days,’ Julia parried with an equally sweet smile and sipped her champagne. ‘But it was something we simply felt compelled to do.’

‘And we had thought him so happy in his engagement to Caroline Fletcher. Of course that could never be once he was so ill, but I had no idea dear William would prove so fickle. Such a suitable girl. So beautiful.’ The widow’s smile hardened and her eyes narrowed. She thinks she is sliding her rapier under my guard.

People were watching them, Julia could feel their curious stares like a touch. The salon was a long room, but even with the windows open wide on to the terrace overlooking the dry moat it was crowded with the wedding guests that Will had managed to assemble at such very short notice. She dared not let any of her true feelings show, but the recollection of the last time she had been in a press of people was making her heart beat faster and her skin feel clammy.

She made herself breathe slowly and shallowly. These people laughing and talking were nothing like that avid crowd and no one looking at her would guess that the new Lady Dereham in her pretty gown and elegantly coiffed hair was a fugitive with a deadly secret.

‘I thought I loved another, you see...’ Julia let her voice trail off artistically. ‘And then...’ Really, where did I get this ability to play-act! I have been reading too many novels. Desperation, I suppose. ‘Then we found each other again, when Will’s betrothal had been ended and I had realised that there was no one else for me but him,’ she finished. ‘So romantic, is it not?’

‘So William knew you some time ago?’ Mrs Hadfield was intent on pursuing this mystery.

‘I would rather not talk about the past,’ Julia murmured, improvising frantically. Will had assured her no one would ask awkward questions. He might have been correct so far as he was concerned, for she was sure he could depress vulgar curiosity with one look, but she had been an idiot to take his word for it and not prepare a careful story.

‘I was sadly disillusioned in the man I thought I loved and that made me see Lord Dereham’s qualities in a different light.’ Set against a scheming, mercenary rake who tried to force her, she was certain even Will’s undoubted faults would be preferable.

‘Lady Dereham—or may I call you Cousin Augusta?’ With an inward sigh of relief she turned to Henry Hadfield, Will’s cousin and heir. She could see the relationship in the height and the straight, dark brows and something about the way his mouth curved when he smiled, but there was no strength of character in the handsome, immature, face. She tried to imagine those features superimposed on Will’s strong bones and experienced a slight shock of...what? Attraction? Not desire, surely, not after what she had experienced.

The momentary feeling passed and she was able to concentrate again. It would not do to let her guard down with either of the Hadfields. Henry had not quite worked out what a threat to him she represented, but his mama would soon enlighten him.

‘Why, Cousin, certainly. But Julia, please. I never use my first name.’ She smiled. He was young and it was up to her to get to know Henry and to influence him if she could, instil in him a love for an estate she did not know and remain on good terms through seven long years of uncertainty.

The setting sun slanted in through the long windows, setting the silverware gleaming and painting a pink glow over the faces of the guests. Not that they needed much colouring, Julia thought. Will had not spared the champagne and cheeks were flushed and conversation still lively, although it was almost half past seven and the party had gathered to eat after the church service at noon.

‘Friends.’ Everyone turned. Will was standing in front of the cold hearth, a glass in his hand. Did everyone see how his knuckles whitened where his left hand gripped the mantelshelf, or was it only she who realised how tightly he was controlling himself?

The image of the statue of the dying Gaul that she had seen once as an engraving caught at her imagination. Will was still on his feet but only because of that same indomitable refusal to give up and die. What was it? she wondered. Pride? Anger partly, she was certain. Courage. He was fighting Death as though it was a person who had attacked his honour.

Her eyes blurred and she swallowed hard. If she had met him before he became sick... He would have been betrothed to Caroline Fletcher, she told herself with a sharp return to reality. And he would probably have been as dictatorial and single-minded as he was now.

‘Firstly my wife and I must thank you for your support today at such short notice. Secondly, I must ask you for further support for Lady Dereham as I will be travelling abroad for some months and must leave immediately on the morrow.’

A babble of questions broke out and then the tall man who had come down from London to stand as groomsman, the friend from Will’s army days, Major Frazer, said, ‘Abroad?’

‘I intend to develop the stud here and I wish to purchase Andalusians from Spain and Arabians from North Africa.’ The major said something in an undertone, but Will answered him in the same clear voice. ‘My health? I am feeling much stronger. It is best that I go now while the weather holds. And finally, my friends, I must ask your indulgence if we retire so I can rest before the start of my journey.’ He raised his glass, ‘To my wife, Julia.’

‘To Lady Dereham!’

Blushing, Julia made her way through the scarcely repressed whispers and speculation to Will’s side. ‘That has put the cat amongst the pigeons with a vengeance, my lord,’ she murmured. ‘I had no idea you intended to leave so abruptly.’

She saw with a pang of anxiety that the lines of strain around his eyes and mouth were even more pronounced than before. ‘There is not a great deal of time to waste, is there?’ he said with a wry smile. ‘Come, let us go up.’

He was so determined. She felt sick at the thought of what he was going through, but there was nothing she could do to help him except what, for such selfish reasons, she was doing now.

People were considerate and did not detain them with more than a few words of good wishes. Julia made her way into the deserted hallway before she slid her hand from resting on Will’s arm to a steadying pressure under his elbow. ‘I will ring for your valet,’ she said when they paused at the second turn.

‘Jervis will be already waiting with your maid in our bedchamber.’

‘Our chamber?’

‘Certainly.’ Julia looked up sharply and thought she caught just the faintest hint of a smile. ‘In my state of health you surely do not expect me to be negotiating draughty corridors in the middle of the night in order to visit you?’

‘Are you saying that you expect me to share your bed tonight?’ It had never occurred to her for a moment that this marriage would be anything but one in name only. Surely a man in his state of health could not...could he? She stumbled on the next step with images, sensations, shuddering through her memory.

‘Shh,’ Will murmured as a door below opened and the noise of the dispersing guests filled the space. ‘This is not the place to be discussing such matters.’

Julia swallowed, nodded and somehow managed the rest of the stairs without blurting out the protests that were on the tip of her tongue. When Will opened the door to the master bedchamber Nancy, the chambermaid, was waiting there, chatting to Jervis, filmy white garments draped over her arm and a wide smile on her lips. This was no place for that discussion, either. The servants had to believe this marriage was real as much as anyone.

‘There you are, my lady! I’ve had hot water brought up to the dressing room for your bath and Mr Jervis will see to his lordship in here.’ She swept Julia in front of her through another door into a small panelled room with a steaming tub standing ready.

‘I’ve sprinkled that lovely nightgown with rosewater,’ she went on chattily as Julia stood like a block to be undressed. She had indulged herself with a pretty summer nightgown and robe when she had shopped for her wedding clothes and the other wardrobe essentials in Aylesbury. What she had not expected was that anyone but herself and her maid would ever see them.

‘Excellent,’ she managed as she climbed into the bath and began to soap herself. From the other room came the sounds of conversation, the bang of a cupboard door closing, the rattle of curtain rings. Next door was a man, a virtual stranger, getting ready to go to bed and expecting her to join him. The last man with those expectations had played on every one of her love-filled fantasies, taken her virtue and then betrayed her.

This one, she reflected as she climbed out of the bath and was swathed in towels, had at least married her. But could a man in Will’s state of health consummate a marriage? She had no idea how the mechanics of male desire actually worked, but the performance was certainly physically demanding. What if Will expected her to do something...? With Jonathan she had simply lain there, held him and tried to do what he wanted of her. It seemed from his words that she had not been very good at it. Julia pressed her hand to her midriff as if that would calm the rising panic.

* * *

Jervis bowed himself out. A moment later Nancy bustled from the dressing room with her arms full of towels, bobbed a curtsy in the direction of the bed and hurried after the valet. The outer door closed with a heavy thud, the inner one stood open on to an apparently empty room.

Will lay back against the heaped pillows and got his breathing under some sort of control. He was bone-weary, aching and the night fever was beginning to sweep through him, but he had to stay in sufficient control to cope with Julia who, it seemed, had not thought beyond the marriage ceremony. She is a virgin, he reminded himself.

‘Are you still in there?’ he enquired. ‘Or have you climbed down the ivy to escape me?’ There was a pause, then she appeared in the doorway in a gown of floating white lawn, her hair loose on her shoulders, her hands knotted before her. His breathing hitched. ‘You are a white ghost tonight, not a grey one.’ She was certainly pale enough to be a spirit.

Julia took one step into the chamber. Her feet were bare. For some reason that was both touching and disturbing. ‘I had not realised that you would expect me to share your bed,’ she said. Her chin was up.

‘I am sharing my title, my home and my fortune with you,’ Will pointed out, goaded by her obvious reluctance into tormenting her a little.

She went, if anything, paler. ‘Of course. I have no wish to be difficult. It is simply that we had not discussed it.’

‘True. I have to confess that I have no experience of virgins.’

‘I am glad to hear it,’ Julia said, with so much feeling that Will blinked. ‘I mean, one would hope that a gentleman does not go around seducing virgins.’ She bit her lip, then put back her shoulders, tossed her robe on to a chair and walked over to the bedside.

Will was powerfully reminded of pictures of Christian martyrs bravely facing the lions and felt a pang of conscience. For all her maturity and poise and her scandalous circumstances, Julia was an innocent and his own frustrations at his weakness were no reason to scare the poor girl. ‘Perhaps I should make it clear that I do not expect you to do anything but sleep in this bed.’

‘Oh.’ Julia froze, one hand lifting the covers to turn them back. The colour seemed to ebb and flow under her skin and he wondered if she was about to faint. ‘Truly?’

Her relief was palpable. Will told himself that he was a coxcomb to expect anything else: she scarcely knew him, he looked like a skeleton, he could hardly stand up half the time—why on earth would the poor woman want to make love with him? The very fact that she feared he might attempt it showed how innocent she was.

‘Get into bed, I promise you are quite safe.’

Julia pushed back the covers, climbed in and sat upright against the pillows. A good eight inches of space and the thickness of his nightshirt and her gown separated their shoulders: it must be imagination that he could feel the heat of her skin against his. She smelled of roses and Castile soap and warm woman and her tension vibrated between them like a plucked harp string.

‘It is important that no one can challenge this marriage,’ he explained, more to keep talking until she relaxed than anything else. ‘We have a licence from the Archbishop, we were married by the local vicar in the face of the largest congregation I could bring together and now both our houseguests and our servants will vouch for the fact that we spent the night in this room. If and when my aunt decides she is going to challenge your control of the estate, she will not be able to shake the legitimacy of this marriage or contest your position as my wife.’

‘I see. Yes, I understand why it is necessary.’

It sounded as though Julia was having difficulty controlling her breathing. She was not the only one, Will thought with an inward grimace. The spirit was very willing indeed as far as he was concerned—but the flesh was certainly too weak to do anything to upset the composure of the warm, fragrant, softly rounded and very desirable female so close to him. She was not a beauty, but she was, he was uncomfortably aware, an attractive, vibrant woman.

‘Go to sleep,’ he suggested and reached out to snuff the candles.

‘Goodnight,’ she murmured and burrowed down under the covers.

Will willed himself to stillness as gradually her breathing slowed and he waited for sleep to take her. Then a small hand crept into his. He froze. After a moment Julia shifted, murmured something and, before he could react, she snuggled right up to his side, her cheek on the thin cotton of his nightshirt over his heart.

‘Julia?’ His heart pounded in his chest until he felt dizzy. Or perhaps it was simply the scent and the feel of her. Somehow Will managed not to put his arms around her and drag her tight against him

‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘I should have known I would be quite safe with you, that you are a gentleman. I do not want you to think I was unwilling because you are ill.’ She wriggled and came up on her elbow. Before he realised what she was doing she bent her head. The kiss would have landed on his cheek—instead, as he turned his head, their lips met.

Soft warmth, the yielding curve of that lovely mouth he had been trying to ignore for days. The whisper of her breath between slightly parted lips, the hint of the taste of her—champagne, strawberries, woman.

Hell. The torture of this was going to kill him. He couldn’t breathe, his heart would surely give out. He wanted to touch her, caress her, because he was suddenly acutely aware that this trusting sensuality could overcome his body’s weakness.

But he had just given her his word. He pressed his lips lightly to hers and then murmured, ‘Goodnight, Julia. Better that you sleep on your side of the bed or you will find me a very hot companion with this fever.’

‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ she asked. He could almost feel her blushes as she lay down a safe distance from him.

Yes, kiss me, touch me, let me make love to you. ‘No, thank you.’ Will closed his eyes and made himself lie still. It would be a long night.

* * *

Julia woke in the dawn light. Exhausted by fears and emotion and the strain of the wedding, she had slept as though drugged and Will had let her. ‘Will?’ Silence. As she turned something crackled on the empty bed beside her. The note when she unfolded it said simply,

Goodbye. I will write when I can. All the information and addresses you need are in my desk in the study. I have taken Bess with me. Good luck. Will.

A key slid out of the folds and fell into the creased hollow where he had lain beside her all night. She was alone. A widow in all but name.

Her fingers closed around the key as they had around his hand last night. Will Hadfield had given her her life back, as his was ending. He had not realised what a gift he was making her, what he had saved her from, but he had shown trust and confidence in her and that was balm to her bruised soul. She had tried, in sheer self-preservation, to feel nothing for him but a polite, remote concern, but she was aware that somehow the essence of the man had touched her heart.

‘Oh, Will.’ Julia curled up on his side of the bed and buried her face in his pillow. Was it imagination, or did it still hold a faint warmth, a trace of the scent of his skin?

Chapter Six

Three years later, 21st June, 1817— Assembly Rooms, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire

‘Do try and look as if you are enjoying yourself, Julia!’ Mrs Hadfield scolded in a whisper. ‘Do you have a headache?’

‘A little. I really do not think I should have agreed to come to this dance, Aunt Delia.’ Julia eyed the noisy throng around them with misgiving as they made their way into the market town’s Assembly Rooms. She tried to avoid any kind of large public gathering where she did not know everyone present. Even after three years she had nightmares of someone pointing an accusing finger at her, shouting Murderess! Arrest her! She made herself breathe slowly, shallowly, and focused on negotiating the steps up to the front doors. Usually the panic could be kept under control by such tactics.

It was a long time since she had attended a dance of any kind, let alone a public assembly, and she should have known she would regret not standing up to Aunt Delia’s bossiness. She cast around for an explanation for her subdued spirits. ‘Under the circumstances—’

The older woman bridled. ‘The circumstances are that my nephew took off in a most ill-considered manner three years ago. The fact that you have not heard anything from him for almost eighteen months does not mean you should be behaving like a widow.’ The words not yet hung unspoken between them

On the surface Mrs Hadfield had mellowed since her first resentment over Will’s marriage, disappearance and the events that followed. After nine months, when she finally appeared to accept that Henry’s position was unassailable and that Julia was not doing anything to damage his inheritance, she unbent towards the younger woman, although her tendency to patronise and to attempt to organise her niece by marriage grated on Julia’s nerves.

But she suppressed her own forceful nature and worked hard to foster good relations between the households. She suspected that the other woman, foolish though she was in the way she indulged her son, was both a realist and also potentially a danger.

Julia knew that Delia had demanded that the vicar show her the licence and Nancy had confided indignantly that Mrs Hadfield had questioned her about where her mistress had slept on her wedding night.

‘And did you tell her?’ Julia asked.

‘I did that! She asked me about the sheets, would you believe? I put her straight, interfering old besom,’ the maid said darkly.

So, Julia reflected, the pain of jabbing a large sewing needle into her thumb and sacrificing a few drops of blood had been worthwhile.