by Louise Allen
‘Not at the moment,’ Julia said, crumbling the biscuit Nell had pressed upon her.
‘His wounds, you mean? Yes, I suppose that would slow even Hal down. Marcus says they were severe.’
‘Hal has reformed.’ As Julia said it she realized how dreary that sounded. It was not a reformed rake she had fallen in love with, it was the real man with all his faults and foibles.
‘Congratulations! It must be true love if you have that much control over him.’
Julia winced. ‘I loved him as he was. He seems to feel he needed to change, for me. And he felt he had to marry me because I had compromised myself.’
‘And saved his life,’ Nell pro tested. ‘You mean he has not told you he loves you?’
Julia shook her head. ‘He said—Nell—may I call you Nell? He wanted me, he said, but then he told me why he could not marry me. And after the battle, when I found him, then he said he had to marry me. And now he doesn’t even seem to want me either, not like…not in…’
‘In bed?’ Nell swung her feet down off the foot stool and sat up, frowning. ‘What has come over the man?’
‘I think he believed that, because I was a virgin and he had lived a dissolute life, that he would shock me. He didn’t seem very confident about, um, making love to a virgin.’
‘But he has? You said you were a virgin.’ Nell seemed wonderfully un embarrassed about this.
‘Last night. It was a disaster,’ Julia said and then, to her own surprise and shock, burst into tears.
Another pot of tea and at least three pocket handkerchiefs later, Nell sat back and laughed. ‘Oh, I am sorry, I can see it is horrid for you. But to see the most outrageous flirt I know laid low by virtue really is poetic justice.’
‘But what can I do?’ Julia demanded. Somehow her spirits were rising, it did seem possible that there was some hope if Nell was so amused.
‘Why, seduce him, of course. And learn to flirt your self. But first we need to go shopping.’
Shopping under Nell’s tuition was a luxurious adventure. It seemed London was full of small shops where one could buy the most frivolous, expensive and delightful trifles if only one knew where to look—and provided one had no care for the resulting bill.
‘I haven’t discussed a dress allowance with Hal yet,’ Julia whispered urgently in Nell’s ear. Nell was sit ting at her ease, directing the assistant in a shop whose entire stock appeared to be either transparent, semi-transparent or made of lace. To Julia’s dismay, the prices were in inverse proportion to the modesty of the garment.
‘That is very remiss of him, but he should know he must pay for his pleasures. You do not think we are buying these things for your sake, do you? Men are very visual creatures, bless them, and we must give them something to look at. I think that sea-green gauze negligée with the matching slippers, the embroidered muslin camisoles and the Chinese silk night gowns will do for now.’
An hour later, they emerged from another of Nell’s favourite modistes, leaving an order for a delicious evening gown to be ready as soon as possible, and repaired to the nearest bookshop. ‘Racy poetry and novels, that’s the next thing,’ Nell announced. ‘And I am going to sit here and con the pages of The Repository for the latest bonnets.’
Julia obediently went to find the right sections, blinking a little at the choice of titles that her mama would condemn unopened as quite outrageous. They all looked wickedly tempting, and Nell had said they would put her in the mood for romance. Not that she needed putting in the mood…
‘Are you having to buy your own love poetry, Mrs Carlow?’
Julia jumped and almost dropped her pile of books. There was the gem dealer from Brussels, the man Hal spoke of with such bitterness and his brother with such hatred. Only now, he did not look like a polite business man; he looked dangerous. Predatory even. Or perhaps she was seeing him in the light of what the brothers had told her about him.
The shiver of sensual awareness he seemed able to produce just with a look from those bold dark eyes trembled through her. ‘Mr Hebden! Are you following me?’
‘What hot-blooded man would not?’ he enquired, leaning his shoulder against the book stacks and smiling at her. Julia stopped herself licking her lips nervously and lifted her chin instead. ‘You intrigue me, Julia. Such a very good wife for such a man as Hal Carlow.’ He was dressed like any of the gentlemen strolling past in Piccadilly, only perhaps they did not show the glint of gold in their earlobe or wear their dark waving hair quite so long.
And their voices would not have that intriguing lilt, even if their eyes held as much impertinent masculine appreciation. Julia felt her pulse stutter and not, she realized, entirely through apprehension.
‘What do you want, sir?’ she demanded. ‘If I call for help, the proprietor will have you apprehended.’
‘He could try,’ Hebden acknowledged without the slightest sign of alarm. ‘He would be sorry.’
‘So, not content with trying to murder my husband, you decide to harass me?’ Julia watched his face closely. If she had not, she would have missed the brief, betraying flicker in the dark eyes. He was surprised and Stephen Hebden did not like finding himself at a disadvantage.
‘Murder? I have not touched your husband.’
‘Through your agent then.’ But she believed him, believed the surprise and the denial.
‘I use no agents. The French had a good attempt at killing Carlow, they did not need my help.’
‘Someone gave it to them, Mr Hebden. You would seem to have an ally—or perhaps a rival—in your campaign of hatred.’
‘It is not hatred,’ he said, the intensity in his voice sending cold chills that were most definitely not sensual down her spine. ‘I am the agent of a foretelling—you would call it a curse, perhaps.’ He stared deep into her eyes, and it seemed to her, caught in their darkness, that another personality was within him, reaching out to touch her. His voice became lower, intense. ‘I call guilt to eat you alive and poison your hearts’ blood. That is what is promised for your father in law, for his children.’
‘No.’ Julia shook her head in denial. ‘I do not believe such superstitions.’ But she found—caught in the web of his voice, those eyes—that she did.
‘You do not have to believe something for it to be true,’ he said with an absolute certainty that shook her. But she would not run, if that was what he wanted, she would not give him the satisfaction of showing him fear. She was a soldier’s wife.
‘Tell me,’ he said, stepping forward and seizing her right wrist. Julia twisted in his grip, the cold silver cuff he wore chill against her pulse. Close-to the intensity and force of his personality took her breath away. ‘Tell me what happened to Hal Carlow.’
‘Let her go or I will run this hat pin through your ribs,’ Nell said, stepping round the end of the shelves behind him.
He winced and opened his hand. ‘Lady Stanegate, a pleasure to see you again.’
‘It is all yours, believe me,’ Nell said.
‘The memory of your lips warms me at night,’ he murmured, turning with wary grace to face Nell. ‘I will leave you ladies to your browsing. Do, I beg you, remember me to your husbands.’
‘Oh, Nell!’ Julia leaned back against a row of lurid romances and caught her breath. ‘He was demanding to know what happened to Hal and denying having any thing to do with it.’ She could not bring herself to repeat that curse. Not to a pregnant woman. ‘Nell, what did he mean about your lips? He never—’
‘He kissed me briefly when he kid napped me,’ Nell said, sticking her hatpin back with some force. ‘And that is all.’
‘What a relief.’ Julia patted her armful of books back into order. ‘He is a very attractive man, though,’ she added thought fully. ‘And he knows it.’
‘If you are thinking of trying to make Hal jealous, you are playing with fire,’ Nell warned, walking towards the counter. ‘If he thinks Hebden has so much as breathed on you, he will try and kill him.’
‘I
just thought I would tease him,’ Julia said, handing her books to the assistant. An idea was beginning to form, although whether she had the nerve to carry it through, she had no idea.
‘Do you require both copies of this, ma’am?’ The man held up Byron’s Corsair.
‘Why no. Have I picked up two in error?’
‘No, ma’am. But the gentleman has already paid for this one for you.’ The assistant held up a neat parcel.
‘Typical,’ Nell muttered. ‘That is all we need, a vengeful Romany who sees himself as a romantic hero!’
Hal seemed to be dealing with the previous night’s events by pretending that nothing had happened. He was polite, attentive and remote. Alert for every opportunity to carry out Nell’s suggestions, she became acutely aware that he was making great efforts not to touch her.
So she touched him. When he held a door or a chair for her, she paused and laid her fingertips on his hand for a fleeting moment. When they were close, she reached up and brushed imagined flecks from his lapels; and when she handed him his tea cup after dinner, she let her fingers tangle with his. Yet all the time, she kept her eyes modestly downcast.
The results were fascinating. She found she was physically aware of him as she had never been before and, out of the corner of her eye, she could tell that he was watching her, his gaze dark and intense.
At half-past ten she went up to her room, changed into the new rose-pink silk night gown, draped a pretty shawl around herself and went to lie on the chaise in the parlour with a book, making sure that not only was the door into Hal’s room ajar, but that a candle was left burning on a shelf close to it.
Time passed and she became so immersed in her book that the sound of the door opening wide made her look up in surprise. Hal stood in the doorway, fully dressed, staring at her.
‘What is the matter?’
‘Nothing. I was reading. Nell and I went to the bookshop today.’
‘What is it?’ He came into the room and stood at the foot of the chaise, his eyes on the thin silk that flowed about her body. With what seemed to be an effort, he turned his gaze on the book. ‘That is a nice binding.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, closing the volume and holding it out to him. ‘The Corsair, a present from Stephen Hebden.’
‘You are jesting.’ Hal did not take the book, and it seemed to Julia that he had become tensely alert, although nothing showed in either his face or voice.
‘No, I am not. He came up to me in the shop today. I accused him of trying to kill you, he denied it. Truth fully, I think. It surprised him.’
‘And you wait until now to tell me?’ Hal demanded.
‘I could hardly blurt it out in front of your parents and Verity: it would have alarmed them. And you did not come in until late afternoon. I was quite safe, in the middle of a book shop in Piccadilly.’
‘Quite safe! After I have told you the things that man is capable of, you think he is quite safe?’ Hal was furious. Julia realized that about a split second before she discovered how exciting she found it.
She shrugged, getting slowly to her feet, allowing Hal to study the effect of her new night gown as it moulded itself around her body. It did not seem to calm his anger. ‘The man is obviously capable of all you say, and more,’ she conceded. ‘But he is extremely attractive.’
Julia almost reached her bedroom door, before Hal caught her by the shoulders and spun her round to face him. ‘Do not even think of associating with Hebden.’ He sounded as though he was using all his will not to raise his voice to her. ‘Or I am going to have to kill him.’
She put up her own hands and caught his wrists. Hal freed her at the touch, but his eyes were fierce and dark and she could see the rise and fall of his chest as he con trolled his breathing. He was angry and dangerous, and she had aroused those feelings because he felt—what? Protective towards her? Possessive? Hope flickered that it might be more.
Slowly she walked back wards to her own door, watching him. ‘I said he was extremely attractive.’ She reached behind herself to turn the handle, her eyes locked on his. ‘I did not say he was more attractive than my husband.’ Julia slipped through the door and closed it behind herself.
She leant back against the door panels and heard his footsteps, half a dozen strides that brought him to the door. Then silence. He was just the other side; she sensed it as strongly as though her back was against his chest, not against solid oak. Would he try and come in? Had she intrigued him enough? Or angered him—or worse, disgusted him?
Then she heard his foot steps again, going away. With a sigh, she put the book down on the bedside table and tossed the shawl onto the chair. She would try again tomorrow: she would not give up.
Hal stared at the door as though he could penetrate it by sheer will alone. All evening Julia had not looked directly at him, yet she had always seemed to be close, her fingertips touching in the most fleeting way, her scent tantalising his nostrils, his awareness of her body and his new knowledge of its sweetness threatening to overturn his control and make him forget the guilt he felt about last night. And now…I did not say he was more attractive than my husband. Did Julia really mean that she wanted him? After the fiasco of that clumsy coupling? She had said to him that she wanted him to come to her bed, she had asked him to teach her. She wanted to feel married. But he could not risk hurting her again.
Hal turned away, back towards his own room, then stopped. He was not some in experienced youth, even if he had behaved like one last night. There were ways to make love to his wife, ways to show her that he cared for her. He turned back, making a bet with himself. If she still has the candle lit, I will go in, if not, I will leave her.
He blew out the candles in the branch she had been reading by, the single one placed, he realized, to lure him into the room, then stood in the darkness looking at Julia’s door. Yes, there was a thin line of light along one edge. I am a lucky gambler, he thought. But no bet had ever seemed quite so important as this.
Chapter Twenty
Hal tapped on the door and opened it without waiting for a response. His wife was sitting up in bed, her arms around her knees and her chin resting on them. She seemed deep in thought. As she heard him, she raised her gaze from the foot of the bed and stared at him, her eyes wide and dark and mysterious. Female.
‘May I come in?’
Julia nodded, watching him as he came to sit on the end of the bed. It seemed she was content to let him speak.
‘I thought I should treat you as though we were both in experienced,’ Hal said without preamble, thinking his way through this, explaining to himself as much as her. ‘I was ashamed of my experience—of my experiences. I wanted to come to you like a bride groom who had been virtuous all his life.’ She frowned, a line of puzzlement between her brows that he wanted to kiss away.
‘So, I tried to make love to you in the obvious, simple, way. The bread and butter way.’ The frown vanished, and her lips twitched, just a very little. Heartened, he pushed on. ‘The way such a virtuous man, relying on instinct not experience, would make love to his new bride. I did not stop to think that, with my leg as it is, it was a foolish thing to do and that there were many other ways to make you mine, ways that would pleasure you far more.’
‘Cake love, not bread and butter?’ Julia asked, her eyes alight with amusement and something he rather hoped was excitement.
‘Plum cake with cream,’ Hal promised, aware that he was becoming most definitely aroused. His experience in sin, he realized, was not something to discard, but a gift he could give to this woman he had married.
‘Perhaps I would want cream cake every time,’ she mused, making him wonder where his delusion had come from that, because she was innocent, she must also need teaching to desire.
‘Occasion ally, a little bread and butter is welcome,’ Hal informed her, getting off the bed. He picked up the single candle and walked round to touch it to the wicks of the other dozen or so others that were placed around the room.
‘All those lights?’ She was biting her lip now, un certain. Hal realized how much he wanted to see her naked.
‘Of course, otherwise the cream could go anywhere.’ Hal began to undress, watching her steadily to gauge her responses, trying to keep the mood light.
‘That might be quite fun,’ Julia said demurely, making him grin. She had courage—he knew that already—but the glimpses of a wicked sense of humour were a constant surprise.
‘Perhaps another day,’ he promised, down to shirt and silk evening knee breeches now. ‘Come and help with my buttons?’
Julia was tempted. She felt so restless, she wanted to touch Hal so badly, but instinct was telling her to tease and to prolong. ‘I want to watch,’ she decided, wondering if she would embarrass him.
No, of course not: this was the rake she had fallen in love with, not the respectable gentleman he had been trying to counterfeit. Hal raised one eyebrow, then began to undo his shirt. Very slowly. It dropped to the floor and then he undid the fastenings of his breeches. Even more slowly. It seemed two could play at teasing. Julia licked her lips.
When he stood there naked, almost arrogant in his arousal, she caught her breath. She had seen his wounded body, the honed muscles slashed, the golden skin scored and bruised. Now she saw that nearly all the bandages were gone, with only a strap ping round arm and thigh where the sabre cuts had been deepest. The new scars, still red, laced across older white ones, but to her they did not detract from his beauty, they were badges of honour. On his left breast, the bruised outline of her notebook was still faintly visible. Such a tiny chance, that she had thought to give it to him. And without that impulse they would not be here, in this room, tonight.
‘This seems rather unequal,’ he observed as she continued to stare at him.
‘Mmm,’ Julia agreed. Cream cakes, indeed. She wanted to…wanted to lick him. All over. And bite. Just there, and there…tiny, playful nips. ‘Oh my,’ she murmured.