Loving Julia

by Karen Robards

  She looked down at herself, saw the peaks and valleys of her own femininity and how his possession had branded them, and flushed a painful red. She looked across at him, got her first full-front, well lit look at a naked man, and averted her eyes. He was just as magnificent naked as he was dressed, she observed even in that brief glimpse, but as the thought registered she immediately banished it from her mind. Dragging the coverlet from the bed, she wrapped it around herself, and felt marginally safer. That is, until she saw that he was advancing on her with purposeful strides.

  “You stay away from me, you dishonest swine!” she shrieked. When he kept coming she darted to the far side of the room.

  “Me dishonest!” he growled, stopping to put his balled fists on his hips and glare at her. His total nakedness did not seem to bother him in the least. “What about you, my guttersnipe-turned-lady? Pretending to be so innocent! ‘I don’t like anyone to see me naked,’ ” he mimicked in a mincing falsetto, “while all the time you’d probably been whoring since you could walk. What’s the matter,” he added as she whitened, “didn’t you think I’d notice? I wasn’t that drunk that night, my dear.”

  “You think I …” Words failed her as she realized that the insult he had hurled at her in anger was in fact what he thought of her. She had struggled so hard against that fate almost all of her life that the accusation was the mental equivalent of waving a red flag before a bull. And that he should make it, who of all men should know better because she had given him incontrovertible proof. “You were blind drunk, you no good rotten filthy dirty earl! You were so drunk you passed out afterwards! You were so drunk you stank like a brewery and … and I had never, ever been with a man before, and you were so drunk you didn’t even notice! You didn’t even care, you bastard, you …” Words failed her. She was gibbering with fury, bouncing up and down with fury, and to drive her point home she looked wildly around for a weapon. Snatching up a delicately carved hand mirror in a silver frame, she hurled it at him. He yelped, ducking, and as he straightened she threw a brush, then a box of rice powder that sprayed its contents in a twisting arc as it flew.

  “Stop that, you little bitch!” He was roaring again, his handsome face dark with fury, his eyes bright with it.

  As she hurled yet another missile at him, he ducked with quick agility so that the small crystal perfume bottle bounced harmlessly off his shoulder, just splashing a little of its contents on him before dropping to roll away on the pink flowered rug beneath his feet.

  While her attention was momentarily deflected by watching the perfume bottle’s path, he dived for her. His arms wrapped around her waist and he tossed her over his shoulder before she was even aware he had moved, holding her like a sack of potatoes with her head dangling down his back and her legs kicking frantically for freedom while he carried her across the room. She shrieked with fury, and beat his back with the silver bud vase she had intended for her next missile. But he threw her on the bed and, as she tried to scramble away, dropped on top of her. She tried to hit him in the face with the vase, but he caught her hand and wrenched it away from her. Finally he caught both wrists in a vice, pinning them to the bed while he held her body and legs with his own. She could do nothing but glare at him and curse, which she did with fluent enjoyment and a complete absence of her hard earned ladylike accent.

  “Back to being the guttersnipe, are we?” he sneered, and she glared at him with hatred for a pregnant moment. Then, deliberately, she spat full in his mocking face.

  “You hell born vixen.” He drew the words out, transferring both her wrists to one of his hands and using the other to wipe the spittle from his face. His eyes were glittering with temper; at such close range they would have intimidated the devil himself.

  Julia was conscious of their threatening glint, but she was so angry and so hurt that she just didn’t care what he did to her. She was beyond feeling anything but the desperate need to wound him as he had wounded her.

  “Be yer goin’ ter beat me now , me lord?” The release of her spittle had served to defuse a little of her helpless fury; she was deliberately aping her own uneducated accents, wanting desperately to goad him into the same frenzy of anger she felt herself. “Ain’t that wot the fine gen’lmen do to whores when they be displeased?”

  Those blue eyes glinted down at her. He was close, so close that she could see every line and pore in the gorgeously masculine face. The candlelight glinted off his silver-gilt hair, turning the tousled waves into living gold. The broad naked shoulders loomed above her, leanly muscled and powerful. His mouth, even compressed with temper as it was at the moment, was elegantly carved beneath the perfectly straight line of his nose. His very beauty maddened her. It wasn’t fair that he should look like that. He was nasty and insulting, a lying, deceitful, tricky dog—and he looked like one of the Lord’s archangels.

  “You deserve to be beaten,” he said through his teeth, but as he looked down at her his expression softened slightly. “But I can think of better ways to tame the she-cat.”

  The hand that he had freed to wipe her spittle from his face slid between them to capture a breast.

  “Take your hand off me!” she shrieked, jerking furiously as she tried to dislodge his hand. His eyes narrowed.

  “Would you rather I beat you?” The question was silky. His hand on her breast continued to caress, and despite her anger and the insults he had flung at her she felt a sharp little frisson of pleasure.

  “Murder’s more your style, isn’t it?” she flung at him out of desperation and a desire to wound. He froze, staring down at her while his face iced over.

  “Sebastian, I’m sorry,” she whispered, frightened by the look on his face. Of all the weapons with which to wound him, she knew she had picked the deadliest. But he seemed not to hear her apology. Even as she uttered it, he released his hold on her wrists, got to his feet and pulled his breeches on with deliberate movements. “Are you deaf? I said I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it,” she cried.

  Why she should apologize to him when he thought such dreadful things about her, she didn’t know, but he looked so white and cold and distant suddenly that she couldn’t bear it. Scrambling into a sitting position, one hand clutching at the slipping coverlet, she stared at him helplessly.

  “I don’t really think you killed Elizabeth,” she said desperately. “I just said that to make you angry. I’m sorry.”

  He finished buttoning his shirt, then picked up his coat and boots and headed for the door.

  “Don’t bother to apologize,” he said, his voice as icy as his face as he turned to look at her with one hand on the knob. “After all, what could be a more felicitous combination? A murderer—and a whore.”

  Then, as a bright scarlet wash of color flooded her cheeks, he let himself out the door.

  XXII

  Three days later, when Julia had begun to think that she would never hear from Sebastian again, another of his terse notes arrived by special messenger.

  This one instructed her, in as few cold words as possible, to pack her belongings and remove herself to White Friars at once. There was no polite salutation, not even the “Dear Julia” that the merest acquaintance could expect, and at the end of the curt two sentence message he signed himself “Moorland.”

  After reading the note for a third time, Julia crumpled it in her hand. He was dismissing her, just like that. Like she was a thing, with no feelings to take into account. She was angry, furious really, when she thought of all he had done. But remembering the still remoteness of his face as he had left that night, she was also afraid.

  Some instinct told her that if she didn’t do something to rectify the situation soon, it would be beyond recall. She had wounded Sebastian, really hurt him, and unlike herself—who screamed and shouted when she was hurt—Sebastian pulled back inside himself to present an icy shell to the world. If she did not somehow manage to break through that shell before it had totally hardened against her, Julia was afraid that she would never he able t
o break through it again. Sebastian, the real man behind the unapproachable exterior, would be lost to her forever. And she knew with a sudden flash of insight that whatever he had done, whatever he thought of her, she wouldn’t be able to bear that.

  She received the note at mid-morning. After reading it, she stood staring at her reflection in the cheval glass in the front hall. It occurred to her as she regarded her somber figure that her year of mourning was over. She could wear colors again. And Julia Stratham, she realized, would be lovelier still clad in the bright hues she loved. As the truth of that hit her, she realized something else: if she wanted Sebastian, she could fight for him.

  She had the weapons of her beauty and her knowledge of him—and the way he wanted her. And he wanted her badly; the shaking passion in his mouth and hands and the hard driving urgency of his body had told her that. At present he thought he only wanted her for a little while. But she wanted him forever. She had known it for months really, but she had hidden from the knowledge because of the hurt he had dealt her. But now she was ready to admit it.

  She wanted to be his wife. That was the secret wish she had cherished during those dreamlike months when he had been her mentor, friend, and finally her lover. Of course, she should have known better than to expect him to offer marriage; to begin with, he apparently thought she had been with many men before himself. A man of his pride would never accept a shopworn bride. But she had the incontrovertible proof of her innocence—her blood-stained nightdress—hidden in her room at White Friars. That left another obstacle, one that was more difficult to overcome: the Earl of Moorland could not ally himself with one of her birth. Despite his desire for her, she doubted that he had ever considered her as a possible wife. In the world he came from, such a union was unthinkable.

  But what if she were to show him that she could fit into his world? What if she were to become Julia Stratham so thoroughly that even society’s highest sticklers welcomed her into their homes? Would it make a difference? She rather thought it might. After all, he was fond of her; he had valued her company at White Friars just as she had valued his. He desired her; there could be no mistake about that. Could she make him love her? As Julia Stratham, a lady amongst all the other of the ton’s ladies, she just might.

  Because she loved him. Despite everything, she loved him. That was why he could hurt her so badly, that was why he could raise her, who had never before so much as allowed a man to kiss her fingers, to such heights of passion. She loved him.

  “Not bad news, I hope, Mrs. Stratham?” Granville’s unctuous voice behind her ordinarily would have made her jump. With her new resolve to become Julia Stratham so thoroughly that not even she remembered her origins, Julia merely looked at him coolly and shook her head.

  “Not at all, Granville,” she said, knowing that since he had given her Sebastian’s message, he must have seen the crest with which it was sealed and be wondering what it contained. Jewel Combs would have enlightened him. The Julia that she had been earlier might have felt compelled to fob him off with some inanity. But the Julia she was now, the new Julia, would never feel obliged to tell a servant anything. She knew how to put an insinuating one such as Granville in his place.

  “Would you summon a carriage for me, Granville?” It was an order, not a request. Of course, her tone was polite, because that was how the lady her new Julia was would speak. She would be polite to the lowliest of creatures because she was so certain of herself and her position that she could afford to be.

  “A carriage, Mrs. Stratham?” Granville’s raised eyebrows

  and doubtful question were insubordinate, but she would ignore them as if they weren’t even there.

  “That’s right, a carriage,” she replied serenely, heading for the stairs to collect her pelisse and Emily. “I’m going shopping, you see.”

  And shop she did, with the single-mindedness she had once put to lifting fat purses from gentlemen’s pockets. By the end of the day she was the proud possessor of a complete wardrobe, courtesy of Madame de Tissaud, the most fashionable modiste in the city. She had discovered Madame courtesy of Mary, who upon being asked imparted the information that Miss Suzanne, who had used to occupy the house, was occasionally taken to shop for clothes there whenever she managed to wheedle his lordship into giving her a high treat.

  Julia had started out by buying only a single afternoon dress and accessories because the prices were so dear. But upon instructing the shop girl to bill the Earl of Moorland for her purchases, she was disconcerted to find herself confronted with Madame de Tissaud herself. Madame, a sprightly little lady in what was possibly her fiftieth year, had been voluble in her assurances that she was delighted to meet another member of the earl’s family. As the lady confided that both Mrs. Caroline Peyton, the earl’s sister-in-law, and the dowager countess had patronized her for years, Julia relaxed. Apparently Madame de Tissaud had no difficulty in taking her just as she presented herself: as Mrs. Julia Stratham, widow of the earl’s young cousin and ward.

  As Julia explained the sad fact that her wardrobe was almost nonexistent because she had been in mourning for her husband for a year, Madame de Tissaud was most sympathetic. She had then whisked Julia into a back room, and draped her with a bewildering variety of fabrics. Those selected by Madame Tissaud were mostly in the bright sapphires and emeralds that Julia had always loved. In addition, there was a dull gold tissue that Julia had looked at askance until she saw herself swathed in it and even Madame had declared her to be “ravissante,” which was to be made into a ball-gown for “la grande occasion.”

  By the end of the day Julia, with Madame’s voluble advice, had selected pattern-cards from which each dress was to be made. Madame had even managed to prepare one walking dress with a matching coat in emerald wool trimmed with black braid for Julia to carry home. (The walking dress Julia had originally planned to purchase was pronounced, with a sniff, as insufficient.) The other garments were to be sent to the earl’s residence in Grosvenor Square, two the next day without fail, and the others within the week. The reckoning also was to be sent to the earl. That it would be quite staggering Julia had no doubt, though after Madame de Tissaud had taken over nothing so vulgar as price had ever been discussed. But if Sebastian was upset about her expenditures, he could take the money out of that which she had inherited from Timothy, Julia told herself. She left the shop with Madame de Tissaud’s voluble adieus ringing in her ears, feeling extremely pleased with herself and her purchases.

  For Julia’s plan to work, she had to be presented to the ton. As a member of Sebastian’s family, she would have entree everywhere—provided that no one knew of her background. She was perfectly prepared to tell whatever fiction was necessary to assure her acceptance. The only difficulty was Sebastian himself, and his mother and sister-in-law, who of course were aware of the truth. But it was in none of their interests to unmask her. Sebastian himself might not care about scandal, but she would bet farthings to pounds his female relatives did.

  As a member of the earl’s family she had a perfect right to reside in Grosvenor Square with the rest of them, she told herself to quiet the nervous qualms that afflicted her as she climbed into a hired carriage the next morning resplendent in her new dress, with Emily at her side. If she and Sebastian had not become lovers, she rather thought that he would have introduced her to the ton at some point anyway. He had always said, with a chuckle, that he meant to. So she was not doing anything too coming by thrusting herself in. Besides, if she wanted Sebastian this was a necessary step. She had to be known as an accepted member of the earl’s family, and to do that she had to reside in the most logical place, the Peyton family’s London residence.

  All her reasoning was not enough to calm her nerves, however, and her palms were sweating as the carriage rocked to a halt in front of Grosvenor Square. But it was too late for second thoughts, and anyway she refused to have any.

  The gleaming lion’s head knocker caught her eye as she ascended the steps. Remembering h
ow it had once awed her made her smile despite her nervousness. And so she was smiling as Smathers, having apparently heard the carriage arrive, opened the door.

  “Good day, Smathers,” she said composedly, walking past him with Emily at her heels. He blinked at her, obviously not recognizing her as anything but a lady of quality.

  “Would you be so good as to have someone bring in my bags?” she asked, turning back to him.

  “You—you are visiting us, madame?” Smathers sounded all at sea. Obviously he was searching his mind to recall if any of the family had made mention of visitors, and drawing a blank.

  “Did his lordship forget to mention it?” she smiled sweetly. “Yes, I am come to visit. I am Mrs. Stratham.”

  For a moment the butler looked blank, and then his eyes widened and ran swiftly over her again. But before he could say anything, there was another step on the stairs. Julia turned to see Sebastian descending from the breakfast room with Caroline at his heels. It was an almost uncanny replay of her previous entry into this house. As Sebastian saw her, he stopped dead for a moment, and then continued his descent. His eyes were like frosty blue ice as they fixed on her unwaveringly. Behind him Caroline looked surprised, but not more so than she would have been by any unexpected visitor. It was obvious she did not recognize Julia—yet.

  “Good morning, my lord. Did you forget to tell Smathers that I would be staying with you for a while?” Julia essayed a gay tone while Emily, hovering discreetly behind her, looked as if her eyes would pop out of her head.

  There was a brief silence as Sebastian gained the bottom of the stairs and gave her a hard, measuring look. For a moment Julia’s heart pounded—would he send her packing with a flea in her ear?

  “Apparently I did,” he said in an icy drawl, and Julia breathed again. “You may have Mrs. Stratham’s bags taken up to the gold room,” he instructed Smathers. Turning to Caroline and offering his arm to assist her down the remaining two steps, he added, “Of course, you remember Mrs. Stratham, Caroline my dear.”