LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘Have you heard this ridiculous rumour?’ Mrs Hadfield demanded before Julia could get into the room. She was pacing, the ribbons of her bonnet flapping. ‘It is all over the village! I had Mrs Armstrong on my doorstep before breakfast demanding to know if it true, of all the impertinence!’

      ‘And what rumour is that?’ Will enquired from the shadows behind Julia.

      ‘Why, that my nephew Dereham is alive and well and here—’ She broke off with a gasp as Will stepped into the room. ‘What is this? Who are you, sir?’

      ‘Oh, come, Aunt.’ Will strolled past Julia and stopped in front of Mrs Hadfield. Her jaw dropped unflatteringly as her face turned from pale to red in moments as she stared up at him. ‘Do you not recognise your own nephew? Is this going to be like those sensation novels where the lost heir returns only to be spurned by the family? Well, if you require physical proof, Mama always said you dandled me on your knee when I was an infant. I still have that birthmark shaped like a star.’

      He put one hand in the small of his back, where only Julia could see, and tapped his left buttock with his index finger. Mrs Hadfield was beginning to bluster and from behind his mother Henry was trying to say something and failing to get a word in edgeways. Julia decided it was time to support her husband.

      ‘You mean the birthmark on your, er, left posterior, my lord?’ she enquired. ‘This is hardly the conversation for a lady’s drawing room, but I can assure you, Aunt Delia, the birthmark is most assuredly where you will remember it.’

      ‘Mama,’ Henry managed finally. ‘Of course it is Will—look at his eyes!’

      ‘Oooh!’ With a wail Mrs Hadfield collapsed onto the sofa and buried her face in her handkerchief.

      ‘Aunt Delia, please do not weep, I realise what a shock it must be—we were going to send a note and then come and call on you later today.’ Julia sat down and put her arms around the older woman. The main thing, she thought rather desperately, was to stop Delia saying something that must cause an irrevocable rift and to prevent her leaving and creating a stir in the neighbourhood before she had time to consider the situation rationally.

      The men, as she might have expected, were absolutely no help whatsoever. They stood side by side, Henry looking hideously embarrassed, her husband, wooden. ‘Will.’ He looked at her, his dark brows raised. ‘You remember I was telling you how kind Aunt Delia has been to me and how helpful Cousin Henry has been with the estate.’

      Henry, who, to do him justice, was no hypocrite, blushed at the generous praise. ‘Dash it all, I only did what I could. You helped me far more with my lands than I could ever repay here, Cousin Julia.’

      ‘You were very supportive to me. But indeed, Will, Cousin Henry has been making improvements on his own estate. Why do you not both go to the study and talk about it—and have a glass of brandy or something?’

      Will looked from her to the clock, his brows rising still further. Admittedly half past nine in the morning did seem a little early for spirits, but she needed to be alone with Delia. Giving up on subtlety, Julia jerked her head towards the door and, to her relief, Will took his cousin by the arm and guided him out.

      ‘Now then, Aunt Delia, you must stop this or you will make yourself ill. Yes, I know it is a shock and you could quite reasonably have believed that Henry would inherit the title and King’s Acre. But Will is home, hale and hearty and quite cured by a very clever doctor in Spain, so you must accept it, for otherwise you will attract the most unwelcome and impertinent comments from the vulgarly curious. And you do not want our friends and neighbours to pity you, do you?’

      Will’s aunt emerged from her handkerchief, blotched and red eyed. ‘But Henry—’

      ‘Henry is a perfectly intelligent, personable young man who has started to retrieve the mistakes he made with his own inheritance, if you will forgive me for plain speaking,’ she added hastily as Delia bristled. ‘If he finds a sensible, well-dowered young lady to marry in a year or two all will be well.’

      ‘But the title,’ Delia muttered and then bit her lip.

      ‘If Will had married before he fell ill then he would probably have his own son by now and you and Henry would never have had your hopes raised,’ Julia said. There was no point beating about the bush. But Delia had been kind to her when she was pregnant, she reminded herself. She owed it to the older woman to help her through this and not condemn her for her ambitions for her son. ‘You do not truly wish Will dead, do you?’ she asked.

      ‘No.’ It was almost convincing. ‘Of course not.’ That was better. ‘It was just the unexpectedness of it.’

      ‘I know. I fainted dead away when I saw him. It is such a comfort to me to have a female friend at a time like this,’ Julia said, crossing her fingers in her skirts. ‘And, please, can I ask you and Henry to say nothing about the baby? I have got to break the news to Will and it will be a shock.’

      The other woman nodded. ‘Of course, you can rely on me.’

      Thank Heavens! If she could only do this right, then Delia would leave the house convinced she had supported Julia in her shock, had greeted Will with open-hearted warmth and was a paragon of selflessness. It might help quell the rumour-mongers.

      * * *

      An hour later the Hadfields left and Julia followed Will back to the study. There were, indeed, glasses and a decanter standing on the desk and she felt like pouring herself a stiff drink, despite the hour and her dislike of spirits.

      ‘He has improved,’ Will remarked. He stood beside the big chair, the one she always used, courteously waiting for her to sit. Julia took the chair opposite—she was going to have to find herself a desk, they could hardly share this one. ‘How much of that is due to your influence?’

      Julia found herself studying the long, elegant figure, thinking how right he looked in the ornate chair. He sat with his fingers curling instinctively around the great carved lion heads at the ends of the chair arms. Her own hands were too small to do that.

      ‘To me? The improvements in his character I can claim no credit for. I believe he is maturing as you had guessed he would once he began to escape from his mother’s apron strings. He does not enjoy being made to think hard, or to face unwelcome truths, but he is learning.’ She felt her mouth curving into a smile at the memory of some of their tussles. ‘I do believe I would make a good governess after the way I have had to cajole, lecture and bully poor Henry.’

      Will did not speak. A ploy to make her gabble on, no doubt. It was, unfortunately, working. The relief of having the dreaded encounter with Delia over with was having its effect. ‘If he can just find a nice girl to marry, I think it will be the making of him, although he is still very shy of girls.’

      ‘You think you can recommend marriage from your own experience, do you?’ Julia glanced up sharply to find Will doodling patterns up the margins of the sheet on which she had been calculating wheat yields.

      She would not let him fluster her. ‘Hardly,’ she said with a smile, making a joke of it. If he wanted plain speaking, he would get it. ‘A husband who vanishes less than twenty-four hours after the ceremony and returns three years later with no warning is hardly a model of ideal matrimony.’

      Will raised a quizzical eyebrow, prepared, it seemed to be amused. He steepled his fingers and regarded her over the top of them. ‘You dealt with Delia very effectively. I must thank you for your support. The tone in which you said left posterior was exactly right, although it was a miracle I kept my countenance.’

      ‘It was fortunate that it was you who raised the subject of birthmarks—if Mrs Hadfield had asked I would not have had the slightest idea what to say.’

      The left side of Will’s mouth quirked into a half-smile that produced, improbably in that strong face, a dimple. Julia stared at it, distracted by how it lightened his whole expression. ‘I wouldn’t worry about that kind of slip,’ he said. ‘She is perfectly well aware that for a couple married

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