The Regency Season: Shameful Secrets. Louise Allen

      Julia stopped by a pillar halfway down the room and fanned herself, amused by the chatter of a group of very young ladies who could only just have come out that Season.

      ‘I do not know who he is, I have never seen him before,’ one said as she peeped through the fronds of a palm. ‘But have you ever seen such wonderful shoulders?’

      ‘So manly,’ another agreed with a sigh. ‘And his hair—so romantic!’

      Julia looked to see the paragon who had attracted their wide-eyed admiration. Goodness. There was no mistaking which man it was as he stood surveying the room with his back to them. Silly chits they might be, but they could recognise a fine figure of a man when they saw one. That certainly is a magnificent pair of shoulders. And his glossy brown hair was indeed romantically long.

      The young ladies were far too bashful and shy to do more than giggle and swoon at a distance. Julia told herself that she was a matron and therefore perfectly at liberty to wander closer to inspect this threat to female susceptibilities.

      She was not given to admiring gentlemen. She was a respectable lady with a reputation to maintain and the loss of her virginity had taught her that yearning after a handsome face was one thing—the reality of amorous men, quite another. Her body might disagree sometimes, her dreams conjure up fantasies, but, waking, she knew better. A solitary bed at night was a positive benefit of life as a grass widow, as she frequently reminded herself.

      Even so, this man intrigued her for no reason she could put a finger on. She paused a few feet away from him, swept her fan languidly to and fro and studied him from the corner of her eye. This was easier when the heroine of a romantic tale did it, she realised, eyes watering. What she could tell, without blatantly staring, was that his valet and tailor had between them contrived to send him forth outfitted to constitute a menace to any woman who set eyes upon him.

      He was clad in a close-fitting swallowtail coat and skin-tight silk evening breeches that between them left very little of the gentleman’s well-muscled form to the imagination. Julia glanced casually around the room and managed to register, in profile, tanned skin, an arrogant nose, a very decided chin and long dark lashes which were presently lowered in either deep thought or terminal boredom.

      The knot of apprehension that had been lodged uncomfortably in the pit of her stomach all evening tightened. I know you. Which was impossible: she could not have forgotten this man. I know you from my dreams. He shifted, restless, as though he felt her scrutiny and then, before she had the chance to move away, he turned his head and stared right into her face. And he was not bored or thoughtful now for he was studying her with eyes that were the amber of a hunting cat’s, the deep peaty gold at the bottom of a brandy glass.

      They were the eyes she had last seen burning with scarce-suppressed frustration in the face of a dying man. The eyes of her husband.

      Julia had always imagined that fainting was a sudden and complete loss of consciousness: blackness falling like a curtain. But now the margins of her sight began to narrow down until all she could see was the face of the tanned man, those extraordinary eyes locked with hers. Will. Then the only noise was the buzzing in her head and the blackness came and on a sigh she escaped into it without a struggle.

      * * *

      He could hold one tall, curvaceous woman without trouble. Will registered the fact with the faint surprise that still struck him when his body obeyed without faltering, when his sinews and muscles flexed and responded with their old confidence and power.

      ‘The lady has fainted. There is nothing to be concerned about.’ The cluster of helpful matrons surrounding him were still thrusting smelling bottles forwards, waving fans, calling for sal volatile. ‘If someone could please direct me to a quiet retiring room with a couch?’

      Several led the way, bustling around and offering advice until he secured peace by the simple expedient of shouldering the door shut behind him and leaving them on the other side. Julia slid limply from his arms on to the rather battered leather chaise and he shot the bolt to give them privacy.

      They appeared to be in a storeroom, now doing service as a makeshift retiring room with a cheval glass propped against the wall, a few chairs and a screen. Not the place he would have chosen to be reunited with his wife, but it had the virtue of privacy at least.

      It was not the time of his choosing either, which should be a lesson to him not to yield to sudden impulses. He should have stayed in his bedchamber and ignored the lights and music from the Assembly Rooms opposite and then, as he had planned, arrived at King’s Acre in the morning. So close now to his dream, so close to coming home.

      He had been thinking of the morrow when something had made him look up, glance to the side. He had recognised her at once, although this was no longer the anxious, tired woman he had married, but a poised and elegant young matron. Her eyelids flickered as he watched her now.

      ‘Will?’ The whisper from the chaise was incredulous. He spun a chair round and sat beside her. No time for dreaming yet. This was not going to be easy for he had no idea of what his own feelings were, let alone hers. Julia lay still, her face white, but she was thinking, calculating, he could tell. She might have fainted, but she was not in a daze any longer. ‘I thought you were a ghost,’ she murmured.

      ‘That was my line when we first met, if I recall. I am perfectly real, Julia.’ He remembered the courage and the pallor and the height. He recalled his body’s surprising arousal and, looking at her now, he was no longer so amazed that Julia had sent tremors of desire through a dying man.

      ‘I am very glad. And you are perfectly well by the look of you, which is wonderful,’ she said slowly, as though she could still not believe in him. ‘But, Will, what happened? You were so ill, and there has been no letter from you for eighteen months at least. I am delighted to see you again, of course, but it is such a shock!’

      The colour was beginning to come back to her cheeks. Three years had indeed wrought changes in her. The clinging silks of her evening gown revealed lush curves, smooth skin. Her hair was fashionably dressed, glossy with health. Julia was not a fashionable beauty, but she was undeniably attractive. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, drawing his eyes to the fullness and sending a bolt of desire through him. This was his wife. The emotions that produced were confusing and not all welcome, not yet. She was real now and he was going to have to deal with that reality.

      ‘Yes, I am completely well.’ He might as well explain now and get it over with. ‘I was very ill in Seville and the doctor that Jervis found, quite by accident, was one who practised Jewish and Moorish medicine. He gave me some drugs, but mainly he made me rest, out in the sunshine. He took over my diet and gradually the coughing stopped and the night sweats got less frequent. I began to sleep and gain strength.

      ‘Then he sent me south to the coast and from there over to North Africa to a doctor he knew.’ Will shrugged. ‘There is more to it than that, of course. Exercise, massage, swimming to build up my muscles again, days when I feared I would never get back to how I was before.

      ‘But the miracle happened, although for months I could not believe I was really cured. Every time I picked up the pen to write I did not know what to say. If I said I was getting better and it was just a false hope... I have been fully well for over six months but it is hard to believe it sometimes.’

      It was no easier speaking of it than it had been to try to write. Eventually he would learn to accept that he was going to have a future. A life. ‘I thought it would be better simply to come home.’

      Julia sat up and swung her feet on to the ground. Pink satin slippers and a provocative amount of ankle showed beneath her hem. His wife had obviously decided it was far too early to go into mourning for him, or perhaps she had simply found it easier to forget him.

      She is still damnably self-possessed, he added mentally as she studied him, her face almost expressionless. And yet, there was something beneath that cool scrutiny. What is she thinking? He did not like secrets. Probably she was still recovering from the shock of seeing him and that was all it was.

      ‘Why are you here?’