"And a father?"
Juliet shrugged one shoulder. "I don't think he will be happy with the news. But he can't be any worse than my own father was, discarding myself and my sister like unwanted rubbish."
"He thought he had his reasons."
Juliet crossed her arms in front of her. "He was cruel all the same. I never want any child of mine to have to go through that," she said firmly. "At least my baby will have a loving mother even if Lawrence does prove a disappointment in that regard. In any event, I must go--"
"You will come back tomorrow and I shall examine you. Not eating or sleeping isn't good. I know you don't wish charity for yourself, but will you at least accept my assistance for the sake of the baby?"
She sighed and nodded. "All right. Only for the baby, mind."
Eswara provided a lifeline in the dark days that followed, making Juliet eat, giving her aids to sleep, and bestowing upon her little gifts such as herb cuttings and seeds.
Her son Ash was a marvelous companion, bright and witty, and her husband Martin solid and all Juliet wished her own husband could be, tender, devoted and an admirably attentive father to all his children.
Juliet learned a great deal from the whole family, most especially from Eswara, about her own body and what would be taking place in seven months, and about her own pleasure not being sinful. She was as knowledgable as any doctor she had ever met, but then Dr. Blake Sanderson would not just have anyone working for him as an assistant. He was a most exacting professional, so she knew she was in good hands with her new-found friend.
Ash taught her a bit of what he called martial arts. She knew it was from an unspoken assumption that her husband hit her.
"Really, he has never once raised his hand. Nor has he ever even hurt me, except by accident once when I nearly fell. He doesn't hurt me that way. He just gets angry and says things--"
"All the same. This will give you confidence and assurance," Ash said.
"No, really, I can't, um, touch you. I'm sorry."
She stopped her visits for a couple of days after her embarrassing meeting with Ash, but Eswara came in the window on the third day with all sorts of exotic foods for her to try.
"We're going to London for Holi, our Indian spring festival. These are the special dishes we make for the occasion. I'll miss you, but we'll see you as soon as we get back."
"Thank you. I'll miss you all too," Juliet said sincerely. "And if you do happen to run into Matthew, tell him I'm fine, not to worry."
"You want me to lie to him?" Eswara said softly.
"It's not a lie. I'll be fine. I'm better off than most women. Everything will be all right, you'll see."
Juliet's optimism was sadly misplaced. She threw herself into her work, but the larder was getting more and more empty. With no money and Eswara no longer there to help with food and other small comforts, things were getting bleak and nearly desperate.
Lawrence had promised he would be home by the end of the month, but as March turned to April and there was still no sign of him, nor any payment for her books and essays, which she had requested to be mailed to Eswara's address and called for every day, but to no avail, Juliet began to scour the garden and woods for anything she could find to eat.
She found some pistols, set some snares, and was able to bring in some food for herself and the two remaining servants, who also did what they could for the poor abandoned young wife.
Lawrence's idea of killing the fatted calf would have been a fine one but for the fact that Juliet had not much to offer except what they had gleaned from Millcote forest. And when days passed and there was still no sign of him coming home, she felt furious that he had discounted her so totally from his life. One single note in all these weeks....
She tried not to think about how a lusty man like her husband was spending his spare time. It made her ill to even contemplate him in the arms of another woman.
She gave the house the best spring-cleaning she could considering they were down to the last of their soap, and made up all the beds yet again. She prepared the nursery for the boys as best she could, and waited. Surely he had to be home by Easter.
They arrived on the Wednesday before the holiday, and Juliet had never been so relieved to see anyone in her life. She would have thrown herself into his arms and kissed her husband for all she was worth if he hadn't looked so grim and forbidding.
Lawrence frowned. He had never seen his wife looking so ill. Surely the new servants had not misused her as well. Did she have no more backbone than that? Or was she simply lazy and shiftless?
He was appalled to see that she had made no effort for the boys' homecoming, no cakes or biscuits, nothing but the plainest fare, and that she was also wearing the same gown he had last seen her in when they had arrived in Somerset so many weeks before.
He did not approve of womanly vanity, but thought his homecoming rated a bit of primping if she cared at all about him.
Truth to tell, he had taken special pains with his own clothes, though he had been more than a little irritated when he had first opened his valise on the road his first morning away and discovered his shirts unfinished. Was she so spoiled that even the basic housewifely skills were beyond her? Or did she think she was above them?
This thought led him to insist he speak with her in the drawing room. She told Sam the garden boy to take the lads up to the nursery, and followed him.
"I would like to know why there is nothing special in the house for Easter," he said without preamble.
"I ran out of money," she said simply. "Not that there was--"
"I can accept you being a whore, but I will not have a wife who is a spendthrift and slattern!"
She gritted her teeth, willing herself to remain silent. But when he demanded, "Well, what have you got to say for yourself?" she let fly.
"I know I have to be the world's most undesirable wife, but you don't have to keep rubbing my nose in it. I never expected to marry, never had a hope of it. Never even dreamt of it.
"Until I met you, I was convinced I was going to end up an old maid. Perhaps it would have been better to not have wed at all than to constantly have my unworthiness thrown back in my face. I'm very grateful to you for making me your wife, Lawrence, truly I am. I know the sacrifices you made, and how you did it to avoid scandal for both our sakes. But if you hate me so much you really ought to have said no to my brother.
"After all, what kind of coward are you that you would have just allowed Matthew to bully you into marrying me if you really loved another? Or if you really despised me and hated my family that much?"
"Hate you? Love another—"
"I know I'm the last woman in the world that any man would ever want to marry, but please refrain from telling me so every minute we're together, the rare time we are together, and we shall get along just fine."
Lawrence was completely confused. "An old maid? You?" he gasped, shaking his head. She was easily the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life.
"And I'll thank you to keep the fine to swive but not to wive remarks to yourself as well."
She stormed out into the garden and began to resume her digging, which she had left off when she had heard he was home. More fool her for having hoped he might be glad to see her as much as she had been looking forward to seeing him, she thought with a sniff as she rammed the blade with all her might into the hard-packed earth.
Juliet tried to tell herself to be fair, that Lawrence had had a lot on his plate with the boys, but still it was just too bad of him. It also hurt that he had said he did not want her to have anything to do with the children for fear of her contaminating them.
She didn't want to feel sorry for herself, but it would be awfully nice to have someone around to help alleviate the loneliness. She was never bored with her work, and her secret visits from Eswara when she had been home, but she needed human contact like everyone else.
As she continued laboring, her tumultuous emotions gave way to logical practicalit
ies once more as she tried to work through her marital problems rationally.
Perhaps she could win his heart by trying to be more of an asset to his business? She did not know much about tea, but how hard could it be to learn? She was a smart woman, and surely it could not be much different from learning how to trade wine.
She sighed and began to wonder if she couldn't perhaps use the information he had given her already about tea, jot down a little history. Lawrence might be able to use it as a novelty booklet to market his teas, and also just for anyone interested in such a thing. If she spent at least half of her time thinking about the wretched man anyway, this might help take her mind off his fascinating mind and body and the incredible things he did with it.
Juliet decided as soon as she had a quiet moment she would start noting down what she recalled, and continue learning as she went along. He certainly seemed most knowledgable about the subject, but she was fairly certain he was not the literary type. He was intelligent enough and certainly greatly eloquent when he wanted to be, but in terms of writing, she was not so sure. He most likely just didn't have the patience.
But then he would never believe she had written it, or think she was only trying to curry favour with him by flaunting her pretensions to being a bluestocking. Some men hated a bas bleu even more than a light-skirt.
Lawrence came up behind her as she continued working amongst the rows in the vegetable garden. He cleared his throat and said to her back, "I don't know why you were so upset before, but really, I did not intend to be so severe upon you. Is this part of the game, to make me as unhappy as possible in my own home?"
She whirled around to face him. "For pity's sake, Lawrence, there is no game! Or if there is, it's the one you've been playing all along. To make me wretched, humiliate me. Whore one minute, dowdy undesirable useless frump the next!"
He shook his head. "I really don't understand any of this. What you said before, especially. Why on earth would you ever class yourself as an old maid?"
"Well, look at me!" She spread her hands wide. "What do I have to offer a man? Apart from the obvious, which anyone of a hundred million other women could, and probably a lot better, if your sexual exploits are to be believed."
Lawrence's eyes widened. "Now wait a minute. I never said-"
"You didn't have to. You've no doubt been raking all over--"
"Oh for the love of the Lord, I've been working for weeks! And if I did rake in London, it was only because I had just traveled nine months on the high seas with only my hand for company! You can hardly blame me! I'm not the type of man who usually resorts to self-gratification. Nor did I constantly roger everything in sight in India. I know the consequences of having illegitimate children, especially between English men and Indian women. The children end up neither one thing nor another.
"I'm not racist, but there are plenty of other people in the world who are. They make so-called half-castes' lives very difficult. You can ask Ash Paignton and Eswara Jerome if you don't believe me."
"Eswara?"
"Yes, Nash saw you speaking to her one day through the window, and thought to mention it to me."
"Nash has been here perhaps twice since you left. I suppose I'm to be chastised for speaking to her as well?"
"No, not at all. Why would you think that?" he asked in confusion.
"You said I wasn't to have anything to do with any of the Rakehells."
"Well, perhaps I was too harsh," he conceded. "Besides, she is a wife, not an actual Rakehell, so it's all right. She's also a medical lady, is she not?"
Juliet nodded. "She is, she is indeed."
He hesitated to ask the question, and she offered no information. She was still looking at him like a kicked puppy.
Lawrence sighed, and shoved his hands into his pockets disconsolately. "I seem to be doing nothing but apologising to you all the time these days, Juliet. The truth is I really don't understand what's happening between us. All I know is that now that my nephews are here, I don't want this house to become a battleground in front of them.
"Things were very hard for them before they left for school, apparently. They were put there for their own well-being and left there when their parents died. It's been terrible for them to be orphaned thus, and treated so abominably."
"Why, what happened?" she gasped.
He took his hands out of his pockets and began to pace up and down, recounting all he had witnessed when he had gone to call unexpectedly.'
"Oh my, the poor children!" she sighed, near tears.
"Your sentiments do you credit, my dear. I would appreciate you doing what you can to put them at ease."
"You told me not to go near them because I would contaminate them with my er, perversions, I believe is the correct word."
He heaved a huge sigh. Yes, damn it, he had said that to her, hadn't he. "You, well, you mustn't take everything I say as Scriptural truth."
She stared at him and shook her head, trying to fight back the tears. "I'm sorry, Lawrence, but you say all these cruel and nasty things to me, and then you expect me to forget about them? How can I?"
"Are you saying you don't want to help with the boys?" he accused.
She rolled her eyes in exasperation. "I'm saying I'm more than happy to try to become a mother to them if that's what they need and that is your intention."
"I would be grateful." He bowed and left her.
Grateful. Such a cold little word. But it was better than nothing.
She went indoors and tested her other frock to see if it was dry yet, but it was still soaking. She now had dirt on this one.
Well, with any luck he wouldn't notice, and he would be off again on business soon. She doubted he even noticed anything about her. If he had, he wouldn't have abandoned her for weeks on end in an empty house without a penny to her name.
Lawrence paced up and down in the study, wondering at how altered Juliet was since the last time he had seen her. Oh, she looked as though she were eating, and she had made no mention of any sign of a baby.
But she was wearing the same gown as he had seen the last time he was there, and it was bemired with dirt. Yet he knew for a fact that she was most fastidious about washing herself. Well, some people did not hold with changing their clothes very often.
He could see her not having had any offers if she always looked so frumpy. Not that he cared--she would be divine in a burlap sack. But it brought to mind some unpleasant memories which he really did not want to contemplate...
He stewed in his study while she tried to put together something a bit nicer for the boys. She was almost tempted to see if Eswara were home yet. She could at least beg some flour, eggs, sugar and jam for a roly-poly and worry about how to pay her back later.
Her stiff-necked pride stopped her once more. She was not going to grovel, and she was not going to pretend all was well when it wasn't. Lawrence might not give a tinker's damn about her, but wife or no wife, she had the right to eat and have soap with which to wash and clean her clothes.
Juliet did not escape her husband's notice for the simple reason that he insisted she dine with them that evening. She tried to excuse herself, saying she could help put away all of the rest of the children's things.
However, he demanded they eat as a family. She did the best she could to sponge off her frock, but weeks and weeks of incessant wear of the one or the other had taken their toll.
He looked at her in surprise when she came into the room, and began to fear in earnest that she was in some melancholic state when she did not look at him, and replied to all of his remarks in monosyllables. With the boys she was far more forthcoming, asking them about their likes and dislikes and conversing with them on a level appropriate to their age.
As he watched her, Lawrence realised that never once since they had met had he ever seen her in an evening gown. He wondered why she had not made the effort tonight. It seemed rather rude to the boys, to them all considering they had all dressed in evening garb.
Or was she trying to make them feel more at home? His old family residence, which had become his brother's establishment, had not been so fine as this. Not so far as he could remember, anyway. He tried not to think of the gloomy old medieval pile any more than was strictly necessary.
During the meal Juliet offered to read the boy some stories before bedtime. "What kind do you like?"
"Anything to do with history."
"Really?" she said with a warm smile. "I think I can find a few tales to tell you."
He seethed with no small degree of resentment as they chatted. She had charmed them both, he could tell.
When the simple meal of rabbit stew with potatoes was over, the boys proposed going up to their room to look over their books, and he noted he was not included in the invitation.
The Rakehell Regency Romance Series Boxed Set 5 Page 20