LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Seven

      Will rolled over on to his back and opened his eyes. Above him, lit by the early morning light, was the familiar dark blue of the bed canopy. He blinked the sleep out of his eyes and focused on the stars embroidered in silver thread by some long-ago ancestress. Home. He really was home.

      Without turning his head he stretched out a hand as he had every morning since he had finally accepted that he was not about to die. Beside him the bed was empty, the covers flat, the pillow smooth and cool. No one was there, of course.

      Julia had not been very communicative last night, not after the brief verbal tussle over where he was sleeping. Which she had won, he reflected. For one night, at any rate. He was hard, aroused, but then he was every morning since he had recovered.

      Will threw back the covers with an impatient hand and let the cool air of dawn flow over his naked, heated body. He had made his bed and now, he supposed, he must lie on it. Not that it would be such a hardship to lie with Julia. His mouth curved at the memory of her in that pink silk last night. He had thought about her these past years, but the memories had been of her spirit and her intelligence, not of her looks.

      But marrying Julia had been a brilliant piece of improvisation by a dying man. A marriage of convenience that he had expected to last mere months. For a man with the prospect of a long life ahead of him it was a sentence to a loveless but solid and respectable future.

      Or, given the hideous example of his own parents’ convenient marriage, loveless and cold, although, if he had anything to do with it, not spectacularly scandalous. He winced at the remembrance of the raised voices, the banging doors, the sniggers at school and the oh-so-careful reports in the scandal sheets—It is said that a certain Lady D—... It is the talk of the town that Lord D—’s latest companion...

      All those lies, all the pretence. His father pretending he was not unfaithful, his mother pretending her heart was not broken, both of them lying to him, fobbing him off, whenever he asked if anything was wrong, when Papa would be home, why Mama was weeping again. It had felt as though they simply did not care enough about him to talk to him, to explain, to comfort the confused small boy. Looking back, he saw no reason to modify that explanation.

      Thousands married without love and managed to live perfectly affectionate, civilised, faithful lives, he knew that. But, for a man who had once dreamed of something more for himself, it was a damnably unpleasant place to be. He had lived with a vision of bringing love back to Knight’s Acre and he had to accept that now he never would. He could sense that Julia would find it difficult to have him home and he could understand her feelings.

      The night before he had told Jervis to leave the curtain drawn back. Now the sun flooded in through the window and he gazed down the long avenue of oaks towards the glimmer of the lake in the distance while he found his equilibrium again. He had managed to survive a death sentence, the loss of his betrothed and exile from the place he loved with a bone-deep passion. He had taken a gamble to save King’s Acre and if he had not, and had stayed, he would be dead by now and Henry in his place.

      You’re an ungrateful devil, he told himself. He was alive, well and had an intelligent, attractive wife. King’s Acre had been in good hands, he felt confident of that. Of course Julia had been cool and had wanted to sleep alone last night. After all, she was a virgin and was probably shaken to the core to have her virtually unknown husband turn up without notice. That would change and he would be careful with her. And she would realise this morning that the master of the house had returned and she could place all the business affairs in his hands and, no doubt, be glad to shed the responsibility.

      But for now the house was quiet in the dawn light. Down in the kitchens a yawning scullery maid would be riddling the grate and making up the range to heat water for the other servants. Up here all would be undisturbed for at least an hour.

      King’s Acre lay open and waiting for him, like a mistress awaiting her lover’s return, and he would savour it, rediscover it and his hoarded, happy memories. Will pulled on a brocade robe and, without bothering to find his slippers, opened the door on to his dressing room.

      He wandered from room to room, looked out of windows, touched furniture, picked up trinkets. Under his fingers the house came to life again in a myriad of textures: polished wood and rough tapestry; smooth porcelain, cold metal; cut glass and ornate ormolu. His eyes lingered on favourite paintings, achingly remembered views, familiar spaces. In his nostrils was the smell of lavender and beeswax, wood smoke and, unsettlingly unfamiliar, a hint of the perfume he remembered from Julia’s skin as he had carried her into the retiring room the evening before.

      On this upper floor every door opened to him. At the other end of the main passageway lay the oak panels leading to the bedchamber Julia was using and he passed that by. Today she would move her things into the suite next to his and that would put an end to this nonsense of sleeping apart.

      The final door, the one beyond her dressing room, did not open. Will twisted the handle, pushed, expecting it to have stuck. But it stayed firm. Beyond, he recalled, was a small room with a pretty curve to the wall where it fitted into one of the old turrets. There was no reason for it to be locked. Thwarted, he frowned. It could wait, of course. He would get the key... But the rest of the rooms had opened to him as if welcoming him back, giving themselves up again to their master. It jarred that this one remained blankly inaccessible.

      Frustrated, Will hit the panels with his clenched fist. The sound echoed down the quiet

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