The Regency Season Collection: Part One. Кэрол Мортимер

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?’

      ‘Yours,’ Julia said flatly. ‘In law. He was born nine months after I married and was bedded by my husband. By you. The law accepts any child born in wedlock as legitimate unless the husband refuses to acknowledge it. If you deny him, then you can only do it by revealing our marriage for the sham that it was.’

      It took him a moment to find his voice. ‘That little speech sounded rehearsed. Have you been lying awake all night fretting over how you were going to talk yourself out of this predicament? No wonder the door was locked. How long did you expect to keep me in ignorance?’

      Julia pushed herself away from the door, walked across to the table set in the window alcove and began to shift things around with jerky, nervous movements. ‘This is not how I meant to tell you. I could not find the words and now it has all gone wrong. But predicament? Is that what you call it? A child died. It was a tragedy.’

      She started to turn away, but Will caught her wrist, the narrow bones delicate in his grip. She went white, but pulled against him with surprising strength. He stopped himself from tightening his hold, but he did not let her go.

      ‘Whose child was he? Henry’s?’

      ‘Henry’s?’ Her expression was one of total shock. ‘Of course not! How could you think I would do such a thing? He was the child of Jo—of the man I eloped with.’

      ‘You eloped? You didn’t run away from home to avoid a forced marriage as you told me? So what you told me was a lie?’ What a fool he’d been. Respectable ladies did not run away from home like that. Of course there had been a man.

      Julia pressed her lips together and her gaze dropped from his. ‘Yes. I...I thought you would not help me if you knew what I...the truth.’ She was stumbling over the words, biting her lip. ‘I thought he loved me, would wed me, but it was all a plot between him and my cousins to get rid of me. I lay with him before I realised he never had any intention of marrying me.’

      ‘So you ran away from him soon after you had eloped?’

      ‘Yes, the very first evening. When I realised we were not heading north I confronted him. He admitted he was taking me to London. I waited until he was...asleep and then I ran away.’

      There was something wrong with the story, he could sense it. Not all lies, but not the whole truth either. ‘And after one bedding you were with child?’ To his own ears he sounded as sceptical as he felt. ‘I do not think so. You ran off when he refused to provide for a fallen woman with a brat in her belly. It explains why you were so anxious to secure a husband.’

      Julia flinched at his crudity and Will bit back the instinctive apology. ‘You think that was why I agreed to your scheme?’ She pulled back against his grip and this time he let her go, expecting her to retreat. Instead she stayed where she was, a puzzled frown on her face, as though she looked back to that night and was surprised at what she saw