Her fingers closed around the key as they had around his hand last night. Will Hadfield had given her her life back, as his was ending. He had not realised what a gift he was making her, what he had saved her from, but he had shown trust and confidence in her and that was balm to her bruised soul. She had tried, in sheer self-preservation, to feel nothing for him but a polite, remote concern, but she was aware that somehow the essence of the man had touched her heart.
‘Oh, Will.’ Julia curled up on his side of the bed and buried her face in his pillow. Was it imagination, or did it still hold a faint warmth, a trace of the scent of his skin?
Three years later, 21st June, 1817— Assembly Rooms, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire
‘Do try and look as if you are enjoying yourself, Julia!’ Mrs Hadfield scolded in a whisper. ‘Do you have a headache?’
‘A little. I really do not think I should have agreed to come to this dance, Aunt Delia.’ Julia eyed the noisy throng around them with misgiving as they made their way into the market town’s Assembly Rooms. She tried to avoid any kind of large public gathering where she did not know everyone present. Even after three years she had nightmares of someone pointing an accusing finger at her, shouting Murderess! Arrest her! She made herself breathe slowly, shallowly, and focused on negotiating the steps up to the front doors. Usually the panic could be kept under control by such tactics.
It was a long time since she had attended a dance of any kind, let alone a public assembly, and she should have known she would regret not standing up to Aunt Delia’s bossiness. She cast around for an explanation for her subdued spirits. ‘Under the circumstances—’
The older woman bridled. ‘The circumstances are that my nephew took off in a most ill-considered manner three years ago. The fact that you have not heard anything from him for almost eighteen months does not mean you should be behaving like a widow.’ The words not yet hung unspoken between them
On the surface Mrs Hadfield had mellowed since her first resentment over Will’s marriage, disappearance and the events that followed. After nine months, when she finally appeared to accept that Henry’s position was unassailable and that Julia was not doing anything to damage his inheritance, she unbent towards the younger woman, although her tendency to patronise and to attempt to organise her niece by marriage grated on Julia’s nerves.
But she suppressed her own forceful nature and worked hard to foster good relations between the households. She suspected that the other woman, foolish though she was in the way she indulged her son, was both a realist and also potentially a danger.
Julia knew that Delia had demanded that the vicar show her the licence and Nancy had confided indignantly that Mrs Hadfield had questioned her about where her mistress had slept on her wedding night.
‘And did you tell her?’ Julia asked.
‘I did that! She asked me about the sheets, would you believe? I put her straight, interfering old besom,’ the maid said darkly.
So, Julia reflected, the pain of jabbing a large sewing needle into her thumb and sacrificing a few drops of blood had been worthwhile.
Mrs Hadfield might have accepted the marriage, but she had a clear eye on the calendar, and had no doubt consulted her lawyer over the necessary action to take in 1821 in the absence of proof of Will’s fate. She was intelligent enough to know that they must wait, even if she was probably crossing off the days in her almanac, and the fact that Julia made a point of consulting Henry upon every decision relating to the estate at least appeared to mollify her.
‘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
