The Regency Season: Shameful Secrets - Louise Allen Mills & Boon M&B

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insisting on staying.’

      ‘But the Grange is my home!’

      ‘Was your home,’ he corrected. ‘Since your father died it belongs to your cousin. You’re an expense and no one’s fool enough to marry a managing, gawky, blue-stocking female like you with no dowry. So...’

      ‘So Arthur thought a scandalous elopement with Jane’s black sheep of a third cousin would take me off his hands for good.’ Yes, it was very clear now. And I have slept with you.

      ‘Exactly. I always thought you intelligent, Julia. You were just a trifle slow on the uptake this time.’

      How could he look the same, sound the same, and yet be so utterly different from the man she had thought she loved? ‘And they made you seem a misunderstood outcast so that I felt nothing but sympathy for you.’ The scheme was as plain as if it was plotted out on paper in front of her. ‘I would never have credited Arthur with so much cunning.’ The chill congealed into ice, deep in her stomach. ‘And just what do you intend to do now?’

      ‘With you, my love?’ Yes, there it was, now she knew to look for it: just a glimpse of the wolf looking out from those blue eyes. Cruel, amused. ‘You can come with me, I’ve no objection. You’re not much good in bed, but I suppose I could teach you some tricks.’

      ‘Become your mistress?’ Over my dead body.

      ‘For a month or two if you’re good. We’re going to London—you’ll soon find something, or someone, there. Now come back to bed and show me you’re worth keeping.’ Jonathan stood up, reached for her hand and pulled her to her feet.

      ‘No!’ Julia dragged back. His fingers cut into her wrist, she could feel the thin bones bending.

      ‘You’re a slut now,’ he said, ‘so stop protesting. Come and make the best of it. You never know, you might learn to enjoy it.’

      ‘I said no.’ He was a liar, a deceiver, but surely he would not be violent?

      It seemed she was wrong about that, too. ‘You do what I say.’ The pain in her wrist was sickening as she resisted.

      Her feet skidded on the old polished boards, the hearth rug rucked up and she stumbled, off balance. There was an agonising jolt in her arm as she fell, then Jonathan’s grip opened and she was free. Sobbing with pain and fear and anger Julia landed with a crash in the grate. The fire irons clattered around her, striking elbow and hand in a landslide of hard little blows.

      ‘Get up, you clumsy bitch.’ Jonathan reached out to seize her, caught her hair, twisted and pulled. It was impossible to roll away. Julia hit out wildly to slap at him and connected with a blow that jarred her arm back. With a gasp Jonathan released her. Get up, run... She rolled free, hit the foot of the bed, dragged herself up on to shaking legs.

      Silence. Jonathan sprawled across the hearth, his head in a crimson pool. Her hand was wet. Julia looked down at her fingers, rigid around the poker. Blood stained her hand, dripped from the iron.

      Blood. So much blood. She dropped the poker and it rolled to come to rest against his bare foot. Not my dead body—his. Oh, God, what have I done?

       Chapter Two

      Midsummer’s Eve, 1814— King’s Acre Estate, Oxfordshire

      The nightingale stopped her. How long had she been running? Four days...five? She had lost count... Her feet took her up the curve of the ornamental bridge, beyond pain now, the blisters just part of the general misery, and, as she reached the top the liquid beauty poured itself into the moonlight.

      Peace. No people, no noise, no fear of pursuit. Simply the moon on the still water of the lake, the dark masses of woodland, the little brown bird creating magic on the warm night air.

      Julia pulled off her bonnet and turned slowly around. Where was she now? How far had she come? Too late now to regret not staying to face the music, to try to explain that it had been an accident, self-defence.

      How had she escaped? She still wasn’t sure. She remembered screaming, screaming as she backed away from the horror at her feet. When people burst into the room she’d retreated behind the screen to hide her near-nudity, hide from the blood. They didn’t seem to notice her as they gathered round the body.

      And there behind the screen were her clothes and water. She had washed her hands and dressed so that when she stepped out to face them she would be decent. Somehow, that had seemed important. She’d had no idea of trying to run away from what she had done so unwittingly.

      Jonathan’s pocketbook lay on top of his coat. It must have been blind instinct that made her stuff it into her reticule. Then, when she had made herself come out and face the inevitable, the room was packed and people were jostling in the doorway trying to see inside.

      No one paid any regard to the young woman in the plain grey cloak and straw bonnet. Had anyone even glimpsed her when they burst in? Perhaps she had reached the screen before the door opened. Now she must have appeared to be just another onlooker, a guest attracted by the noise, white-faced and trembling because of what she had seen.

      The instinct to flee, the cunning of the hunted animal, sent her down the back stairs, into the yard to hide amidst the sacks loaded on a farm cart. As dawn broke she had slipped unseen from the back of it into the midst of utterly unfamiliar countryside. And it felt as though she had been walking and hiding and stealing rides ever since.

      If she could just sit for a while and absorb this peace, this blissful lack of people to lie to, to hide from. If she could just forget the fear for a few moments until she found a little strength to carry on.

      * * *

      The tall column of grey shimmered, moon-lit, in the centre of the narrow stone bridge. Long dark hair lifted and stirred in the night breeze: a woman. Impossible. Now he was seeing things.

      Will strained every sense. Silence. And then the night was pierced again by the three long-held notes that signalled the start of the nightingale’s torrent of languid music, so beautiful, so painful, that he closed his eyes.

      When he opened them again he expected to find himself alone. But the figure was still there. A very persistent hallucination then. As he watched, it turned, its face a pale oval. A ghost? Ridiculous to feel that superstitious shudder when he was edging so close to the spirit world himself. I do not believe in ghosts. I refuse to. Things were bad enough without fearing that he would come back to haunt this place himself, forced to watch its disintegration in Henry’s careless, spendthrift hands.

      No, it was a real woman of course, a flesh-and-blood woman, the paleness of her face thrown into strong relief by the dark hair that crowned her uncovered head. Will moved into the deeper shadows that bordered the Lake Walk and eased closer. What was she doing, this trespasser far into the parkland that surrounded King’s Acre? She must be almost a mile from the back road that led to the turnpike between Thame and Aylesbury.

      Her long grey cloak swung back from her shoulders and he saw that she was tall. She leaned over the parapet of the bridge, staring down as though the dark waters beneath held some secret. Everything in the way she moved spoke of weariness, he thought, then stiffened as she shifted to hitch one hip on to the edge of the stonework.

      ‘No!’ Cursing his uncooperative, traitorous body, Will forced his legs to move, stumbled to the foot of the bridge and clutched the finial at the end of the balustrade. ‘No...don’t jump! Don’t give up...whatever it is...’ His legs gave way and he fell to his knees, coughing.

      For a moment he thought he had so startled her that she would jump, then the ghost-woman slid down from the parapet and ran to kneel at his side.

      ‘Sir, you are hurt!’

      Her arm went around his shoulders and she caught him against herself in a firm embrace. Will closed his eyes for a moment. The temptation to surrender to the simple comfort of a human touch was almost too much.

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