The Regency Season Collection: Part One. Кэрол Мортимер

Julia braced herself.

      ‘I want you to be honest with me.’

      The cold grabbed her stomach as though she had swallowed a lump of ice. She had not expected that. ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘Don’t hide things and bottle them up because they are difficult to talk about.’

      ‘You think I do that? I cannot break Henry’s confidence, you know that.’ I cannot tell you about the weight on my conscience, the dreadful thing I have done. Julia got down from the mounting block, the urge to twine her arm into his and lay her head on his shoulder vanishing. ‘I am starving. Shall we have an early luncheon? You had no breakfast.’

      Will fell into step beside her as she walked towards the house. ‘Yes. I would like to eat and, yes, I do think you hide things from me. I don’t mean my cousin’s secrets. You were terrified of what I would do when I discovered where little Alexander was resting. You didn’t tell me that your lover was such a selfish lout. No wonder you were reluctant to come to my bed if your previous experience had been so bad.’ She must have gasped because he added, ‘You didn’t need to tell me about it, I could see that from your reactions. But I would rather have known so I could have been more...sensitive.’

      Julia found she was speechless. Will opened the front door for her. ‘Gatcombe, we’ll take an early luncheon if Cook can manage it.’ When they reached the landing Will drew her into his chamber and closed the door. ‘I am just a man and sometimes we need things holding up in front of our faces. Will you promise to tell me when you are unhappy, when things worry you? Don’t have secrets from me, Julia, not about the things that will hurt this marriage.’

      ‘Oh, Will.’ She stood on tiptoe and curled her arms around his neck. His honesty, his willingness to admit his own faults, touched her. As their lips met she whispered, without thinking, ‘No secrets, I promise.’

      Will reached out and turned the key in the door, then simply walked backwards, still kissing, so she followed him until they tipped back on to the bed. ‘At the risk of making Cook irritable, I think we should seal our new resolutions, don’t you?’

      ‘Oh, yes.’ Julia rolled on to her back and lay looking up at him. New resolutions, a new beginning. And then as he sat up to work out the complexities of the closures of her divided skirt, the cold realisation gripped her again. I promised, but—Jonathan. I cannot tell him about what I did to Jonathan. If she told Will, even if he could accept why she had done it, that it was an accident, it would make him an accessory after the fact. His choice would be to become as guilty in law as she was or to hand her over to the magistrates.

      And I have promised to be open with him. Yet there was nothing to be done but break that promise and keep her secret, or hand herself in or run away and disappear. Naked in Will’s arms, Julia acknowledged that she did not have the courage to confess and take the consequences and she could not bear to leave King’s Acre. Or Will.

      Her body rose to his, cradled him, her arms and legs curling around him as though they were one and she would not let him go. As he sank into her and she felt him inside, as she gripped him with those internal muscles that made him groan as he stroked, tormenting himself as much as her, she knew she did not have the strength to do anything but stay. And lie to him.

      * * *

      ‘Do you mind if we go to London in a couple of days?’ Will looked up from a large and imposing letter. It crackled expensively as he spread it out on the cloth amongst the breakfast things. ‘My lawyer wants me to sign papers and I need to discuss investments with my banker, Jervis tells me that my shirts are a disgrace and he is ashamed to be known as my valet and I need new boots.’

      ‘It sounds as though you hardly require me.’ Julia sorted through her own post. Household bills, a letter from a friend in the next village, a note from the vicarage about the Sunday School, an account from an Aylesbury milliner. ‘You will be far too busy on your own account.’ The county newspaper was at the bottom of the pile and she turned to the inside page and the local news.

      ‘You need a complete new wardrobe—stop putting it off,’ Will said. ‘I promised myself the fun of taking you shopping and you are not going to wriggle out of it, my lady.’

      ‘But it is August. Nothing will be happening.’

      ‘We can go back in the winter for parties and the theatre. But now it will be quiet and we can explore. You do not know London, do you?’

      ‘No. Not at all.’ Julia smiled at him. He was obviously set on going and looking forward to treating her. It was cowardly, and churlish, to refuse. ‘Of course I will come with you: I will enjoy it.’ She ran her eye down the columns of tightly packed type, skimming the stories. An unseasonable storm of hailstones had flattened just one field of hay at Thame. A small boy had been saved from drowning in a village pond. A calf with two heads had been born at a local farm and was being exhibited for a penny and a woman who had killed her husband had been hanged outside Aylesbury town hall and her body given to the surgeons to be dissected.

      The room seemed to be full of buzzing, as though a swarm of bees had filled it. The print blurred before her eyes and Julia realised she felt hot and then cold and sickeningly dizzy.

      She gripped the edge of the table as Will said, ‘Good. We’ll stay at Grillon’s in Albemarle Street and look for a house to hire for the Season while we’re up there. Is the day after tomorrow all right for you? I’ll send to the hotel today.’

      ‘Lovely,’ Julia managed as she closed the newspaper and folded it with trembling hands. A woman hanged. Was that where they would hang her if they caught her? In front of the town hall before a mob jeering and shouting and making a holiday of it?

      ‘Julia? Is anything wrong? You have gone quite pale.’ Will was half out of his seat. She waved him back to it and, from somewhere, found a smile.

      I killed a man. For one terrified moment she thought she had said it out loud. ‘Just the most alarming bill from a milliner! What a good thing we have not yet discussed allowances or I am sure I would be asking for an advance already.’

      Will chuckled and sat down again. The room stopped swaying. She made herself open her clenched hand. Her mouth was dry, she felt sick with dread and the temptation to tell him was almost overwhelming. But she could not put him in that terrible position. Julia forced herself to calm. It was just the shock of seeing that gruesome report and the way her conscience was troubling her for breaking her promise to Will. She was in no more, or less, danger than she had ever been.

      ‘I must spend the morning on my accounts,’ she managed.

      ‘Mmm?’ Will glanced up from his post. ‘Don’t forget to tell Nancy to start packing.’

      ‘No. Of course not.’ It will be all right. I have nothing to fear after all this time. Forget it and it will just become a bad dream.

      * * *

      ‘You are very pensive, Julia.’ Will took her hand as the chaise pulled up at the King’s Arms in Berkhamsted for the first change of horses.

      He had been as good as his word, those few days since their conversation in the stable yard. They had talked—or rather Will had talked and she had forced herself to respond. The housekeeping was agreed, her generous allowance settled. They discussed who would do what with the estate and what Will felt comfortable with letting out of his control.

      If she was only able to sleep without nightmares, Julia knew she would be happy. It was as if she had cursed herself with that resolution to make those dreadful memories only dreams. Now her nights were made hideous by images of blood. Never of Jonathan, but always of blood. On her hands, on her body, curling like seaweed into the water in the wash bowl.

      She leaned against Will’s wonderfully solid and reassuring shoulder. ‘I am just a little tired with all the preparations.’

      ‘And I have been keeping you awake at night,’ he teased.

      Julia felt herself blushing. Even with the fear gnawing at the back of her mind