‘He is here, then?’
She should not have risked it, coming to the chapel while there was the slightest chance Will would find out. He would be furious that this was something else she had kept from him. He would insist that the interloper was removed...
‘I know it is wrong.’ She found she was on her feet, standing on the slab as though she could somehow stop this. Will stood with his hat in his hands, his face serious. ‘I know he isn’t yours and he has no right here. But he wasn’t baptised, so they would have buried him outside the churchyard wall in that horrid patch under the yew trees and Mr Pendleton understood when I was distressed, so we put him here...’
‘Does he have a name, even though he was never baptised?’ Will said gently.
It was the last question she expected. ‘Alexander, after my father,’ she stammered.
‘Alexander is very welcome here,’ Will said and came to her side. ‘Do you know who he is lying there with?’
‘No.’ He was not going to insist the tiny coffin was taken and buried in that dark, dank patch with the suicides and the other tiny tragedies?
‘My brother and two sisters,’ Will said and she saw his fingers were curled tight over the edge of Sir Ralph’s tomb. ‘The loss of two children after I was born shattered my parents’ marriage.’ His mouth twisted in a wry smile. ‘Not that it was well founded in the first place. Afterwards things went from bad to worse. They hardly communicated other than by shouting and the third child, a daughter, was not my father’s—or so he always maintained. You may imagine the atmosphere.’
‘Oh, the poor things!’ Julia cried.
‘The babies?’
‘Well, of course. But for your mother to lose so many and for your father... He lost two children himself and then they were obviously not able to reach out and comfort each other or things would not have gone so wrong between them.’
‘You are an expert on marriage now?’ Will asked harshly. Was he recalling that she had taken a lover before she had come to him? Might he fear she would do what his own mother had done if she was unhappy?
‘No.’ Then she saw the pain in his eyes. How hard it must have been to grow up in a household full of grief and anger. ‘No, but I can understand a little of what your mother felt. If she had no one to talk to, the loss of the children would have been so much worse.’ She hoped she had kept her voice steady and not revealed how much this cost her to speak of.
Will half-turned away and stood staring down at his long-ago ancestor, then he looked back at her as though he had been translating her words in his head and had just deciphered the meaning. ‘And you had no one, had you? Even if Delia behaved decently, you would have known that in her heart she was relieved that Henry had not been displaced.’
‘That is true.’ She fought to find a smile. ‘I managed.’ Somehow. ‘There was not much choice.’
‘You should not have had to,’ Will said roughly and the anger in his voice undid her in a way that gentleness would never have done. ‘Damn it, I didn’t mean to make you cry. Julia—’ He pulled her into his arms and for the first time since he had returned there was nothing in his touch but the need to give comfort. He cupped her head with one big hand and held her against his shoulder. ‘Perhaps it is not a bad thing if you weep now. Were you even able to cry properly after it happened?’
She shook her head, afraid to speak and lose control.
‘Then do it now. Mourn for the first child of this marriage.’ Julia gave a sob and then simply let the tears flow while Will stroked her hair and held her tightly and murmured comfort.
How long they stood there she had no idea. Eventually the tears ran their course and Julia lifted her head and looked up into Will’s face. ‘Thank you.’ She became aware that her lashes were sticking together and she wanted to sniff and her nose was probably red. The breast of his coat was dark with moisture. ‘Have you got a handkerchief?’
‘Of course.’ Will eased her down on to the pew, produced a large linen square from his pocket and moved away to study the memorials on the walls.
Julia put herself to rights as best she could and found she could express the anxiety that she had thought she could never speak of to him. ‘Will, what if it happens again? What if I am not able to give you an heir?’
He came back and sat beside her, his hands clasped between his knees. He seemed to be engrossed in the design of a hassock. After a moment he said, ‘I hope that is not the case, because I would hate to see you suffer such a thing. But if it did, then Henry, or his son, inherits. It is not the end of the world and besides, do not anticipate troubles. Now come back into the sunshine or you will get chilled. It is like an ice house in here and it is a lovely day outside.’
Julia took the hand he held out to her and went out, arm in arm with him as fragile hope began to unfurl inside her. Will understood how she had grieved and her need to weep and be comforted. He had been kind about letting her place Alexander in the vault and she had seen, with piercing clarity, just how wounded he must have been as a child by his parents’ unhappy marriage.
Perhaps one day he might even come to trust her, even though she knew she would never be able to burden him with her secret. Perhaps, Julia thought optimistically as the sunshine and the relief of the tears did their work, this was the real beginning of their marriage.
‘Will, how much did you understand of what was happening? When your brothers and sisters died?’
‘Understand? Nothing. They told me nothing other than that I was now the only son because my brother was dead so I must grow up to be the perfect Baron Dereham because there was no other option. They didn’t tell me at all about the little girl my father said was not his. I only found out about that when I overheard two maids talking about it afterwards. I would have liked to have had a brother,’ he added after a moment, his voice utterly expressionless. ‘And little sisters. I asked my tutor what it meant when the maids said one of them was a bastard. So he told me and then I was beaten for eavesdropping.’
‘That is outrageous!’ Julia forgot her own melancholy in a burst of anger for the unhappy, confused small boy. ‘They should have told you the truth, all of it, but kindly so a child could understand.’
He shrugged. ‘Water under the bridge now.’
They walked on in silence, but it seemed to Julia that some of the tension between them had lifted a little. The roofs of the Home Farm came into sight to their right and Julia recalled that the workmen had finished building the foundations for the extension to the stables and were beginning on the walls. With the new horses arriving so soon Will had decided on a single-storied wooden building to save time and he had ordered the work without, of course, any reference to her.
Now, as they strolled back from the church, it seemed the time to build on the intimacy of the moment by showing an interest rather than offering suggestions. ‘I would like it if you would show me the new stables. They seem to be coming along very well.’
Will changed direction and took the path to the farm. ‘You have not been to look at them yet?’
‘You made it clear that you did not require my interference.’ She tried to say it lightly, but his arm stiffened under her hand.
‘I am sorry you see it like that,’ Will said.
