‘One can understand the heir’s feelings,’ Giles observed.
‘Cousin Richard said I was a further drain on his pocket and that he had no intention of funding a Season for me the following year. An acquaintance was going out to India, so I could make myself useful by accompanying her as a companion and then I was sure to pick up a husband for myself. The problem was solved.’
She glanced up at his face when he said something sharp under his breath. He looked appalled. ‘You were sixteen, bereaved.’
‘I was also exceedingly pretty and his daughters are rather plain. I can say it now because my looks did not survive long. I was blonde and curvaceous and I had a beautiful roses-and-cream English complexion. Enchanting, though I say it myself. I arrived in Calcutta just as the cholera did. It killed thousands, amongst them many of the eligible young men who had come down to meet the Fishing Fleet. I caught it, too. They shaved my head because of the fever and when I recovered I was as thin as a rake, the roses had fled and my hair grew back straight and much darker. My travelling companion was dead, my looks gone, my pockets empty. I was desperate.
‘And so Sir Humphrey Chalcott won himself the daughter of an earl.’
Chapter Four
Giles tried to imagine what it would have been like for a girl scarcely out of the schoolroom to find herself in an alien land, weak, abandoned. Where had she found the strength to carry on?
Julia’s voice was quite steady as she told her tale, almost as though she spoke of someone else entirely. ‘Sir Humphrey thought he was acquiring status and influence. What he did not realise until too late was that the new earl had no intention of giving him anything, let alone the allowance he was hoping for.’
‘He was much older than you were.’
Julia nodded. ‘I suppose I hoped for a substitute father. I soon learned that he couldn’t even be a decent parent to his own daughter, let alone comprehend the fears and needs of a young bride.’
They came to a gap in the planting. Julia waved at Miri, who now had a line of five snow bodies in descending order of size. ‘I think Miri is building a snow family. She was the one bright spark at first. Her mother died when she was fifteen so she was shut away in the women’s quarters. She is four years younger than me, the sister I never had.’
‘And your husband was not a successful man?’
‘He was self-indulgent, indolent and had made himself ill by surrendering to all the temptations of the east. The food, the drugs, the women. He did not have to lift a finger to live a comfortable life, so he did not. He never saw it was his fault that he did not achieve the wealth of other merchants, who did apply themselves.’
They reached the corner of the shrubbery and Giles ducked under a snow-laden branch and into the shelter of the plantings. With the evergreens arching overhead the winding path was almost clear of snow.
‘It was not as bad as it might sound.’ His silence had left a space that she seemed compelled to fill. Giles wondered whether she had bottled all this up for so long that she was confiding things that she never had to anyone else. ‘You can live much better in India on little money than you can over here. I rapidly learned to be a housekeeper.’
‘It must have been hard, even so. A strange and alien land, marriage to a man like that.’ He felt caught up in her story. Here, for the first time in a long time, was a woman who told the truth without artifice, just as she had asked for his kiss with total simplicity.
‘I learned to fill my time.’ Julia made a business of adjusting her shawl. ‘So that is my story. Now you must tell me yours, Captain Markham.’
‘Is it not to be Giles, this morning?’ He snapped off a sprig of holly, laden with berries, and tucked it in her bonnet.
‘No. You know why not. I made an error of judgement last night.’ She put up her free hand, touched the holly as though to pluck it out again, then left it where it was.
‘The timing, perhaps, with us both tired, was not ideal.’ She had kissed like a virgin and he had reacted instinctively to distance himself, he realised. Giles tried a little cautious fishing. ‘You miss some aspects of marriage, no doubt.’
That provoked a sudden burst of laughter. He had never heard her laugh before and he grinned back, enjoying the way those blue eyes sparkled, the curve of that lush mouth. All the severity in her face vanished, just for a second. Then the laughter was gone.
‘By the time he married me my husband’s amorous days were long past. His health would not allow him to make a great deal of effort, especially as I think he found the whole exercise humiliating. I had none of the training of the Indian courtesans he was used to. They can pretend passion, feign an amorous attraction that it was completely beyond me to attempt.’ She shrugged. ‘These past four years I might as well have been a widow.’
‘There were no children?’ He regretted asking the moment he saw the way her face tightened and her shoulders braced.
‘No.’ Julia released his arm, reached out to pluck an ivy tendril and began to fashion it into a circle. ‘I cannot think how I can speak so frankly to a man about this.’
‘I am a stranger. You’ll never see me again.’ And we are met by chance on this snow-covered island of ours, bound together for a few days. He felt his body stir and harden as the temptation began to form into intention. If she is willing…
Giles picked more ivy and held the strands out one by one for her to add to her wreath, enjoying the concentration on her face as she wove the whippy lengths, struggling with the thickness of her gloves. Her brows were drawn together, her teeth were closed on the fullness of her lower lip and she looked sensual, intelligent and flustered, a heady combination. ‘I imagine you found no shortage of gentlemen willing to offer you diversion.’
He surprised a short, bitter laugh from her. ‘I had married the man and, whatever his faults, he gave me shelter when I was desperate. Besides, I made myself too busy to be tempted. There was a business to run.’
‘You managed your husband’s affairs?’ That he could well imagine.
‘Hardly. Humphrey would never have allowed a woman to make decisions. But I acted as his representative, travelled on his behalf, carried out his instructions. That gave me freedom, the chance to see more of India.’
Her face was vivid with remembered pleasure, the colour up in her cheeks. He had no idea how she could denigrate her appearance, mourn her lost beauty. Didn’t the woman have a looking glass? ‘You could travel safely?’
‘I had two huge wrestlers as bodyguards. No one would have dared rob or attack me when they were there, I assure you!’
Julia held up the wreath, head on one side as she studied it. ‘Not bad. It will make a base for some holly and fir cones and I will hang it on the door to greet our numerous callers.’ She looped it over her wrist, then took his arm again. ‘Now you tell me your story, Captain Giles Markham.’
What to tell her? The truth, he supposed. To a point. ‘Only son of a country clergyman, destined for the church and determined on the army. I don’t know where that came from, but I rode almost as soon as I could walk. I learned to shoot, enjoyed swordplay. Led my friends into trouble and, I suppose more helpfully, out of it. I knew I hadn’t the faith to be a clergyman, but the army seemed to offer excitement with honour.
‘My godfather bought me my first commission, saying I might