Morwennan House

by Morwennan House (retail) (epub)

  She snapped her head back, her eyes bright with hatred and the unshed tears.

  ‘Yes, I’m your wife, Francis – heaven preserve me.’

  He drew back a little, shocked by the venom in her tone.

  ‘Oh, Julia, I had hoped you were becoming used to the idea. These last weeks you have said nothing—’

  ‘Because there was nothing I could say. And if I had, what difference would it have made? You won me, Francis, in a game of cards. Between you, you and my father used me for a pot of chips. I had no choice in the matter at all.’

  ‘Julia, you are far more than a pot of chips to me,’ he cajoled. ‘I could have taken the roof from over your father’s head if I had wanted to – ruined him – and you too. But it could have gone the other way – if he had won he could have ruined me. The reason I played for such high stakes was because I wanted you so much. And I still do.’

  ‘And now you have me!’ she flashed angrily. ‘But don’t think the marriage vows and a blessing from the reverend gentleman will make any difference to the way I feel about it.’

  Francis’s eyes narrowed. Something about her spirited rejection of him was stirring the fire that was there in his belly whenever he looked at her. From the first moment he had set eyes on her he had never stopped wanting her; every waking moment he thought of her and at night she came to him in dreams so that he woke bathed in sweat with the need to have her in his arms. He wanted her with every fibre of his being, body and soul, and now she was his. Whether she liked it or not.

  He moved his hand up a little so that it brushed the swell of her breast beneath her cloak; he felt her stiffen, but beneath his fingers her breast was soft and yielding. He squeezed it gently and heard the sharp intake of her breath. He moved closer, the blood pounding in his ears, slid his hand upwards until it encountered bare flesh, then down again beneath the silk of her bodice, squeezing and stroking.

  She tried to pull away then.

  ‘Can’t you wait?’ Her voice was sharp; it only served to excite him more.

  ‘No,’ he grunted breathily. ‘I have waited long enough.’

  With one hasty movement he lifted her bodily, so that she was half lying on the seat of the rolling carriage, and bunched her skirts up to her thighs. Julia gasped, struggling briefly to sit up as he towered over her, pulling down his breeches, and then his weight came down on her, pinning her there as helpless as a speared butterfly. His hands were on her shoulders, his wet mouth stifling the scream that rose to her lips. And then his aroused manhood was between her legs, unerringly seeking the softest, most vulnerable part of her.

  Pain so sharp that she thought it would tear her in two brought another scream to Julia’s throat. She scrabbled at him with her hands, fighting him though she had promised herself she would not. Her nails drew blood from his cheek, his wig fell askew, revealing dark springy hair beneath the powdered white, and still Francis drove into her like a man possessed.

  Would it never end? The rocking carriage, the painful thrusting between her legs, his fingers biting into her shoulders, his breathing ragged against her throat, punctuated with guttural groans. Julia squeezed her eyes tight shut, her head thrown back into the corner of the carriage, her soundless sobs keeping time with the working of his body. Then, with a loud cry, he thrust himself still deeper into her and was still, and she knew that for now, at least, it was over.

  The carriage swayed around a bend in the road, Francis toppled on to his knees and looked up at her, his face soft with satiated lust.

  ‘So, my dear,’ he said, half laughing, ‘now we really are man and wife.’

  For a moment Julia remained motionless, then, as he pulled up his breeches and regained his seat, she moved slowly and painfully, raising her cricked neck and pulling her skirts down over her sticky thighs.

  ‘I hope you are satisfied,’ she whispered.

  He smiled. ‘For the moment.’ Then, as the triumph of passion satiated began to subside, a look of something like shame crossed his fleshy features. ‘I didn’t mean it to be like this,’ he said, almost apologetically. ‘You goaded me.’

  ‘I am sorry, I’m sure.’ Her voice was trembling yet defiant.

  ‘I meant to woo you – to show you how it can be between us. And I will show you, my dear.’

  ‘I have no doubt you will try,’ Julia replied bitterly.

  * * *

  As the coach reached the high road and gathered speed she sat ramrod straight, staring out of the window, and seeing the familiar countryside through eyes that sparkled with tears of pain and humiliation. If she had disliked Francis before, now she despised him, and the knowledge that she was trapped, tied to him for as long as they both lived, was like a physical weight around her heart.

  Yet a fierce determination was hardening inside her. She might be forced to live in Francis’s horrible dark house, share his bed and do his bidding. But her response to him was still her own. He could insist she sat opposite him at breakfast, luncheon and dinner, but he could not make her amuse him with her chatter. He could use her body as often as the fancy took him – and no doubt he would – but he could not take her heart.

  Her one weapon was to withhold from him the thing he wanted most – her love. And though she was his wife she would ensure that she never truly belonged to him.

  * * *

  Throughout the month-long honeymoon tour Julia clung to her resolve. She did not dare allow herself to think of the long years that lay ahead of her with this man but lived each day and night as it came, refusing to be impressed by the sights and sounds of the places they visited, submitting to his embraces but remaining coldly aloof. She drew satisfaction from Francis’s growing frustration and wept only when she was alone with no one to see.

  ‘For the love of God, Julia, this is no pleasure for either of us,’ he exploded one night as he rolled from her unresponsive body.

  And: ‘I am glad we agree about something,’ she replied coldly, though his efforts to arouse her had left her nauseous and so desperate to escape from him that she could feel the beginnings of panic.

  He sighed deeply.

  ‘Can we not at least try to begin again? I’m not such a bad man, and I am trying my best to please you and make you happy. Could you not make some effort to meet me halfway?’

  She said nothing, staring stonily into the shadows thrown by the candelabra while the tears pricked at her eyes.

  He threw aside the covers and got out of bed, padding across the floor in his nightshirt to find a cigar and light it from the candle with a taper.

  ‘Are we to live our lives like this? Is that what you want?’

  She gave a low, bitter laugh. ‘Does what I want matter?’

  ‘Goddam it, of course it matters!’ he grated. ‘I love you, Julia.’

  ‘But I don’t love you,’ she said. ‘You knew that my heart still belongs to the man I lost and I don’t even like you very much. Yet you insisted on marrying me. It’s scarcely a recipe for happiness.’

  He paced the floor.

  ‘Plenty of women go into marriage without love. They learn to make the best of it. In time, with a shared life, bonds are formed. They know how to be grateful for the comforts provided for them in a harsh world. Some even come to enjoy the physical pleasures that you seem to find so repellent.’

  ‘I will do my wifely duty by you, Francis,’ Julia said with the same chilly hauteur. ‘I’ve not refused you or fought with you since that first demeaning episode in the carriage. But please don’t expect anything more, for I am quite unable to give it.’

  He sank into a chair, burying his head in his hands. Had she not despised him so, Julia might have felt a modicum of pity. This was a man who had been so determined to have his way he had given no thought to the consequences. This was a man so obsessed that nothing in the world mattered beyond his hopeless, all-consuming love for a woman who would never love him.

  This, undoubtedly, was a man in torment.

  * * *

&nbs
p; By the time they returned from the honeymoon tour Julia had begun to suspect she was pregnant. A month later and she was sure. The absence of her usually regular courses, the constant vague nausea, the changes in her body, slight as yet but still unmistakable, all told her it was so.

  A new despair filled Julia. Bad enough to have to live with a man she despised, but to bear his child… The thought of his seed taking root and flourishing like a cancer within her was anathema to her. Worse still, it was yet another fetter, tying her to Francis for ever.

  Julia’s mind was made up. She would not give birth to this monstrosity. Like every country child, she knew there were ways and means and she began to employ them.

  To his credit, Francis still allowed her to visit her father and ride her beloved Rascal. He would drive her over to her father’s farm and sit yarning with him while she took the horse out alone, and her flushed cheeks and bright eyes when she returned pleased him.

  Now, however, it was not the freedom that riding afforded her that made Julia beg a visit to the farm. She was hoping desperately that a good hard gallop and even a jump or two would dislodge the weed that had taken root in her and shake it free.

  ‘Are you sure you are feeling well, my dear?’ Francis asked anxiously as he installed her in the curricle. ‘You are very pale this morning.’

  ‘I’m perfectly fine,’ Julia retorted, though she did indeed feel horribly queasy.

  ‘We could always delay the trip until another day…’

  ‘No, I’m fine I tell you!’ She couldn’t wait another hour to be in the saddle and losing this burden she carried, let alone another day.

  But though she rode Rascal like a madwoman, urging him to the wildest gallop and recklessly urging him over hedges and ditches she would normally have considered too dangerous, both she and Rascal came home unscathed. No welcome blood came to tell her the nightmare was ending. Francis’s child clung as tenaciously to her womb as she clung to Rascal’s sleek muscled back.

  In desperation Julia next paid a visit to an old woman in the village. She had heard tales of other unfortunates who had been helped out of their predicament by a concoction of herbs and poison.

  The old woman, more used to seeing frightened servant girls or the women of easy virtue who plied their trade on the harbour or in inns of ill repute, was startled to see Francis Trevelyan’s beautiful and well-dressed wife on her doorstep. Julia fed her the story she had decided upon – that she needed the potion for a friend in a delicate situation with a married man, but the old woman’s sharp eyes told her she did not believe her. At first, wary of inviting the wrath of a man who was not only gentry but also one of the ‘Gentlemen’, as the smugglers were known, she refused to help. But the silver coins Julia pressed on her changed her mind. Reluctantly she parted with a stone flagon containing the evil brew, telling Julia that ‘her friend’ must drink all of it if it was to do its work.

  Julia carried it home with her and that night, whilst Francis remained in the parlour talking with Selena, she poured the contents into her night flask and managed to swallow it, though the smell and the taste of it made her retch.

  The sickness started a few hours later and went on for another day and night, and the pain in her stomach was so bad Julia feared she was dying. But when at last it subsided, leaving her weak and ill, she still carried Francis’s child within her.

  Nothing, it seemed, would dislodge it. Not the scaldingly hot baths she subjected herself to, not Francis’s love-making, not even the terrible jarring of her body when she resorted to throwing herself down the stairs in a last desperate attempt to rid herself of the hated burden she carried.

  It was Selena who finally put an end to her vain attempts to miscarry.

  ‘Are you with child?’ she asked baldly one morning when Francis had left the house on business.

  Julia, who was attempting to force some breakfast down her protesting throat, looked up sharply, the truth written all over her face.

  ‘You are, are you not?’ Selena pressed her.

  There was little point in denying it. Already her breasts were fuller and her waist thicker; soon her belly would be rounding out too.

  ‘Yes, I am with child,’ she said steadily. ‘Given your brother’s ravenous appetite, that is hardly surprising.’

  She was startled by the look that crossed Selena’s face at her words. The slate-hard eyes narrowed, the thin lips worked for a moment, there was a hollowness suddenly about her cheeks. With a sense of shock Julia realised the truth.

  Selena was jealous. And somehow, instinctively, Julia knew it was not simply the jealousy of a middle-aged spinster who would now never bear children of her own. With a flash of insight she knew it was a jealousy of the act that had begotten the child, and also that it had to do with the fact that it was Francis who had impregnated her.

  From the very outset Julia had been aware of Selena’s coldness and animosity towards her. But until this moment it had never occurred to her that there might be something unnatural and unhealthy about the relationship between the two of them. She had thought Selena’s attention to her brother’s needs and whims was simply sisterly solicitude. Now, in a moment of clarity, she saw that it was more. Much more.

  And the knowledge exhilarated her. For the first time she was actually glad that she was carrying Francis’s child. In some strange way it empowered her. And she saw that it gave her power not only over Selena, but over Francis too.

  ‘Does Francis know?’ Selena asked. The look of jealousy had gone now, hidden by her usual hard-faced mask. But the tightness of her tone confirmed that she was seething inwardly.

  Julia set down her knife and fork and stood up. For the first time in weeks she held herself proudly, as if to display her swelling body rather than trying to conceal it.

  ‘Not yet,’ she said levelly. ‘But I intend to tell him this very evening. I hope you won’t spoil the surprise by mentioning it to him yourself first. I think he is going to be proud and pleased, don’t you?’

  Then, with a small satisfied smile, she left the room.

  * * *

  With her pregnancy an acknowledged fact, Julia’s life at Morwennan began to change for the better.

  Francis was delighted to learn he was to become a father and he redoubled his efforts to please Julia. She had only to express a desire for something and he ensured it was hers, and he treated her with gentleness and consideration, as if she were a delicate piece of porcelain.

  To Julia’s enormous relief he no longer forced her to perform her wifely duties, moving to a cot in his dressing room and leaving her to enjoy the luxury of their big feather bed free from the fear of being woken in the night to submit to his demands. The love and pride were there in his face whenever he looked at her, his touch was no longer lustful but tender.

  To her own surprise Julia found that her animosity towards him was lessening. She still recoiled inwardly when he touched her intimately, she still preferred him to kiss her on the cheek rather than the lips, but she found a certain comfort in the strength of his feelings for her now that she was no longer threatened by the physical bonding she found so distasteful and humiliating.

  Selena remained cold and aloof but on occasion Julia glimpsed the same look of jealousy Selena had been unable to hide when she had first learned of Julia’s pregnancy, and the knowledge that she could arouse such powerful emotion in the older woman was a secret satisfaction, whilst the evidence of Selena’s weakness made her seem less threatening.

  As for her feelings for her unborn child, Julia could scarcely believe the change they underwent. How could she ever have thought of the precious new life she carried as a cancer to be ripped out? With the first flutter high under her ribs Julia experienced a feeling of excitement and anticipation; she stood with her hands pressed to her waist, waiting for it to come again. When it did she laughed aloud with pleasure. As her body swelled so did her desire to protect her unborn child and she passed her hands lovingly over her bulging belly
trying to communicate the love and tenderness she felt. When she bathed she rubbed oils into the full breasts that would suckle her child and imagined how it would feel to have a small eager mouth fasten on to her nipples.

  It was now very much her child; it was as if Francis had nothing to do with it at all.

  And yet, she thought, he might well make a good father. His pride would only increase when he held his little son in his arms; the new tenderness he was showing her would extend to the child. And certainly the baby would want for nothing. Francis’s ‘business’ was thriving; though she asked no questions about it, that much was clear from the way no expense was spared about the house, in the preparation of the nursery, and in the presents he bought for her – a whole new wardrobe of new gowns to accommodate her changing shape, exotic perfumes, jewels that must have cost a king’s ransom.

  Julia had never cared over much for such fripperies but they gave her a feeling of being cherished nevertheless and added something extra to the feeling of contentment that pregnancy had brought with it and which never failed to surprise her.

  Another benefit came in the shape of the new staff Francis was able to employ at Morwennan – a married couple. Durbin, the husband, was coachman and groom, his wife maid to Julia. Julia had never before had a maid of her own and found the prospect a little daunting, but Francis was insistent. A maid would ensure Julia did not overtax herself and Mrs Durbin came with all the credentials to ensure she could help Julia through the last difficult months, attend with the doctor at her confinement, and oversee the nursing of the child. In any case, it was only right and proper for a lady of Julia’s standing to have her own personal maid.

  The moment Mrs Durbin was installed all Julia’s doubts fell away. The two women established an almost immediate rapport and before long Mrs Durbin was confessing to friends that she had come to look on Julia as the daughter she had never had. For her part, Julia at long last had a friend and confidante in the Trevelyan household and a replacement figure for the mother she had lost at nine years old.