Marrying the Mistress. Juliet Landon

still only a babe. He needs only me.’

      ‘So let’s wait till we’ve heard what provisions Linas has made for you, then we shall know better what his needs are, shan’t we? You are exhausted, and so am I. It’s time you were home. Come. I have to get back to Abbots Mere before the snow gets deeper.’

      ‘What about the servants?’ I said, relieved to have been let off so lightly. ‘You came here to—’

      ‘Brierley can stay to deal with that. He lives on Petergate. You should trust him. He’s an honest man.’

      ‘I’m sure he is. He’ll have your interests at heart.’

      ‘And Jamie’s. Is that such a bad thing?’

      Still, I could not help myself. Perhaps I wanted to provoke him, to make him react, in spite of his courtesy to me. Perhaps I was a little mad that day. ‘If I was retaining him,’ I said, ‘it would not be such a bad thing. But I’m not, am I?’

      We had reached the door where his hand rested upon the large brass knob but, as my stupidly caustic remark stung him into action, he turned to me with characteristic speed, taking me by the shoulders with hands that bit through all my woollen layers. Holding me back against the deeply carved doorcase, he bent his head to look inside my hood and, whatever anger he saw on my face, it could have been nothing to the fury on his.

      ‘Stop it, woman!’ he snarled. ‘You think you’re the only loser in this damned business? You think you’ve had the thin end of the wedge, do you? Well, do you? Forget it. He was my brother. You had him for the best part of six years. I had him for thirty. We both…you and me…did what he wanted us to do, and if you had less choice in the matter than you’d have liked, well, I had just as little. I did it for him, and you believed I did it for you, didn’t you? That’s why you’re so angry. D’ye think I make a habit of creeping into my lady guests’ beds while they’re asleep?’

      Since he was being kind enough to ask my opinion on that, I’d like to have said that he must have had a fair bit of practice at it. But, no, I said nothing of the kind. Nothing at all, in fact. I simply shook my head, which made my hood fall off. I noticed two new hairline creases from his nose to his mouth. I noticed that his eyelids were puffy, as if he’d been weeping. I noticed a sprinkling of silver hairs in that luxurious dark mop, just above his ears.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered. ‘I’m overwrought. We both need to rest.’

      He sighed through his nose with lips compressed, and I thought he was going to say more because his eyes held mine, letting me read the sadness written there more eloquently than words. Then he released me, and I felt the tingling where his hands had been, and I stood still while he pulled up my hood and settled it round my face. I was under no illusions; he would do the same for any of his closer woman friends, I was sure. Perhaps their minds would empty too, just for those few seconds.

      ‘Calm down,’ he said, gruffly. ‘Go home and get warm. Come on.’

      Outside on the pavement, the lamplighter clambered down his ladder into the horizontal white blizzard, having cast a halo of light dancing across the ghostly snow-covered figures below. Lord Winterson’s groom emerged from the narrow alley that led to Linas’s courtyard and stables, riding one horse and leading the mighty grey hunter that blew clouds of white into the freezing air. ‘Follow on,’ Winterson called to him, taking my arm and linking it through his.

      ‘I can manage,’ I said, ready to pull away. ‘Really I can.’

      But he clamped my hand with his elbow and, bending his head into the snowstorm, began to escort me home, not far, but far enough for us both to struggle against the conditions. His only conversation was, ‘Mind…take care…hold on…you all right?’

      Standing under the porch before the door, I thanked him.

      ‘Stay at home till it clears,’ he said. ‘I’ll contact you as soon as I can get through. See Brierley if you need anything. He’ll help.’

      I nodded and watched his effortless leap into the saddle, wheeling away as if the snow was no more than a mild shower. Across on the other side of Blake Street, the lights in the workroom, more properly known as Follet and Sanders, Mantua-maker, Milliner and Fabric Emporium, had been extinguished earlier than usual to allow the girls to get home, though I knew that Prue Sanders would still be working at the back of the shop on the new year’s orders, the alterations on ballgowns, fur trims and muffs. The cold weather had swept in from the north-east with a vengeance that year, and I had ordered that the fire in the sewing room should be kept burning constantly to keep the place warm. It was an expensive luxury I had not budgeted for, and my recent assurances that I could manage were not nearly as certain as I’d made them sound. But not for any reason would I have accepted a penny from him. Prue and I would have to manage on what the business earned.

      That evening, however, my thoughts were in turmoil, for although my contacts with Lord Winterson had always been as brief as I could make them, this was the first time he and I had spoken about what had gone before, about his claim to Jamie, or about my feelings on the matter. As long as Linas lived, the subject had been studiously avoided, and now the impromptu unveiling had shaken me, if only because I had believed until then that he and Linas were alike in refusing to discuss things they found too uncomfortable. I had been proved wrong.

      Only a day after his brother’s funeral, Winterson had brought out our shameful secret for its first airing, along with the reason for it and the well-planned result of it. My Jamie. He was right: I was angry, not because I was mistaken about his motives—for those I knew by then—but because he had known how easily I would give myself to him that night, repeatedly, willingly, and with little conscience. He had known, and my pride was wounded to the quick that all our mutual antagonism had been so easily suspended in the face of a temptation like that. How shallow he must think me. How disloyal. How easy.

      What he would never know, though, was that I had fed off that experience since it happened, savouring it every night through each amazing phase, knowing that it would never be mine again. And since he had been unconvinced of my dislike of him before the event, I must of necessity try harder to convince him of it afterwards. His accusation about keeping Jamie at a distance from him was a part of my strategy but, with him now as Jamie’s guardian, I would find that more difficult, thanks to Linas.

      Chapter Two

      Thanks also to the weather, that part of my plan held up well when all the traffic in and out of the city was stopped for more than a week until men could shovel paths through the deep drifts, allowing access to the suburbs. We heard reports of farmers losing sheep, of snow burying hedges and cottages, trapping the mail-coach miles away with all its passengers, and the drowning of some young lads who had played upon frozen ponds. Fresh falls of snow added more depth to the fields each morning and broke branches off trees, the dropping temperatures killing everything that was too old, frail or poor to keep warm. The thermometer in Linas’s hall registered thirty degrees Fahrenheit, and a few days later we had twenty degrees of frost. I had never experienced such cold.

      All through the freeze, my daily visits to Stonegate continued, partly to check on the remaining servants and partly to mentally mop up what was left of the essence pervading each room. In one way I had to be thankful that his suffering had ended at last, for I had not found it easy to watch him die and know that there was no way of stopping it happening. Jamie’s birth had done more than anything to extend the reprieve, but Winterson had been right to suggest that, when his brother’s illness began to distress the little fellow, a move to Abbots Mere would be best.

      So I’d had a chance, at the end, to spend more time with Jamie, to begin some small rearrangements of our life in preparation for the future, to involve myself more with the thriving dressmaking business, to make another buying trip to Manchester and to pay an extended visit to my family without having to account for our absence.

      Even so, I felt the gaping hole in my life