‘I do not behave like a widow,’ Julia protested now as they inched their way to the foot of the stairs, Henry protectively at their backs. ‘I do not wear mourning.’ She glanced down with some complacency at the skirt of her highly fashionable shell-pink evening gown with its daring glimpse of ankle and then the months when she had worn black, when her heart had seemed frozen with grief, came back to reproach her for her mild vanity.
She pushed away the memory of those months, of the child she had lost, and made herself focus on the present. ‘I will not give up on Will until I absolutely have to.’ And somehow that was true. A whimsical part of her mind had a fantasy of Will well and happy and living an exotic life as an eastern pasha although the letters, the straightforward letters sent via his lawyer saying where he was, had long since ceased. She had never written back for he made it quite plain he was constantly on the move and had nowhere to send the letters.
The fantasy Will was strong and handsome and responsible for some rather disturbing dreams about things that, in the cold light of day, she preferred not to contemplate.
‘I go to dinner parties and hold them,’ she went on, calmer now they were climbing the stairs and she had something to concentrate on. ‘I attend picnics and soirées and musical evenings. It is just that this seems rather...boisterous.’
And exposed. And full of people she did not know, people from outside the small, safe circle of friends and acquaintances around King’s Acre. Improbable though it was after three years that anyone would recognise a half-naked, distraught murderess in the fashionably gowned, utterly respectable, Lady Dereham.
‘Boisterous? The young people may romp. I shall not regard it,’ Mrs Hadfield observed. ‘For myself I am just thankful to be out of the house now that wretched summer cold has left me. I confess I am starved of gossip and fashions, even provincial ones.’
A faint headache, irrational fears and a growing, inexplicable, sense of foreboding were no excuse to be churlish, Julia told herself. And the Assembly Room, when they finally managed to enter it, was certainly a fine sight with the chandeliers blazing and the ladies’ gowns and jewels like a field of flowers in sunlight. She relaxed a trifle as Henry, on his best behaviour, found seats for the ladies and melted away into the crowd to find them lemonade.
‘He wants me to agree to him going off to the Wilshires’ house party next week,’ his doting mama said. ‘Which probably means there is a young lady he has his eye upon amongst the other guests.’
More likely some congenial company his own age and a tempting array of sporting pursuits, Julia thought cynically as one of Mrs Hadfield’s bosom friends greeted her with delighted cries and bore down upon their alcove. Henry was maturing, but he was still not much in the petticoat line and far more likely to flee than flirt if confronted by a pretty girl.
‘I will take a turn around the room, if you will excuse me, Aunt.’ Mrs Hadfield, already embarked upon some prime character assassination, merely nodded.
Everyone was having a very good time. So why could she not simply settle down and enjoy watching? Or even dance, if anyone asked her? The familiar crowd-induced panic was gone, but there was still this odd feeling of apprehension, of tension. Perhaps she was coming down with something. Not Aunt Delia’s cold, she sincerely hoped.
Julia stopped by a pillar halfway down the room and fanned herself, amused by the chatter of a group of very young ladies who could only just have come out that Season.
‘I do not know who he is, I have never seen him before,’ one said as she peeped through the fronds of a palm. ‘But have you ever seen such wonderful shoulders?’
‘So manly,’ another agreed with a sigh. ‘And his hair—so romantic!’
Julia looked to see the paragon who had attracted their wide-eyed admiration. Goodness. There was no mistaking which man it was as he stood surveying the room with his back to them. Silly chits they might be, but they could recognise a fine figure of a man when they saw one. That certainly is a magnificent pair of shoulders. And his glossy brown hair was indeed romantically long.
The young ladies were far too bashful and shy to do more than giggle and swoon at a distance. Julia told herself that she was a matron and therefore perfectly at liberty to wander closer to inspect this threat to female susceptibilities.
She was not given to admiring gentlemen. She was a respectable lady with a reputation to maintain and the loss of her virginity had taught her that yearning after a handsome face was one thing—the reality of amorous men, quite another. Her body might disagree sometimes, her dreams conjure up fantasies, but, waking, she knew better. A solitary bed at night was a positive benefit of life as a grass widow, as she frequently reminded herself.
Even so, this man intrigued her for no reason she could put a finger on. She paused a few feet away from him, swept her fan languidly to and fro and studied him from the corner of her eye. This was easier when the heroine of a romantic tale did it, she realised, eyes watering. What she could tell, without blatantly staring, was that his valet and tailor had between them contrived to send him forth outfitted to constitute a menace to any woman who set eyes upon him.
He was clad in a close-fitting swallowtail coat and skin-tight silk evening breeches that between them left very little of the gentleman’s well-muscled form to the imagination. Julia glanced casually around the room and managed to register, in profile, tanned skin, an arrogant nose, a very decided chin and long dark lashes which were presently lowered in either deep thought or terminal boredom.
The knot of apprehension that had been lodged uncomfortably in the pit of her stomach all evening tightened. I know you. Which was impossible: she could not have forgotten this man. I know you from my dreams. He shifted, restless, as though he felt her scrutiny and then, before she had the chance to move away, he turned his head and stared right into her face. And he was not bored or thoughtful now for he was studying her with eyes that were the amber of a hunting cat’s, the deep peaty gold at the bottom of a brandy glass.
They were the eyes she had last seen burning with scarce-suppressed frustration in the face of a dying man. The eyes of her husband.
Julia had always imagined that fainting was a sudden and complete loss of consciousness: blackness falling like a curtain. But now the margins of her sight began to narrow down until all she could see was the face of the tanned man, those extraordinary eyes locked with hers. Will. Then the only noise was the buzzing in her head and the blackness came and on a sigh she escaped into it without a struggle.
* * *
He could hold one tall, curvaceous woman without trouble. Will registered the fact with the faint surprise that still struck him when his body obeyed without faltering, when his sinews and muscles flexed and responded with their old confidence and power.
‘The lady has fainted. There is nothing to be concerned about.’ The cluster of helpful matrons surrounding him were still thrusting smelling bottles forwards, waving fans, calling for sal volatile. ‘If someone could please direct me to a quiet retiring room with a couch?’
Several led the way, bustling around and offering advice until he secured peace by the simple expedient of shouldering the door shut behind him and leaving them on the other side. Julia slid limply from his arms on to the rather battered leather chaise and he shot the bolt to give them privacy.
They appeared to be in a storeroom, now doing service as a makeshift retiring room with a cheval glass propped against the wall, a few chairs and a screen. Not the place he would have chosen to be reunited with his wife, but it had the virtue of privacy at least.
It was not the time of his choosing either, which should be a lesson to him not to yield to sudden impulses. He should have stayed in his bedchamber and ignored the lights and music from the Assembly Rooms opposite and then, as he had planned, arrived at King’s Acre in the morning. So close now to his dream, so close to coming home.
He had been thinking of the morrow when something had made him look up, glance to the side. He had recognised her at once, although this was no longer the anxious,