From Ruin to Riches. Louise Allen

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.’