His Michaelmas Mistress (2 page)

He quietly left the room and suddenly—she was a bride without her bridegroom.

After about five minutes, she heard tentative knocking on the door. It quietly opened and her mother, her Aunt Alice, and two of her cousins, Rose and Iris, crept into the room. From the sounds of it, the singing had stopped. Everyone was probably as stunned as she.

“He has left me, Mama,” she whispered. She wasn’t one to flinch and yet, right now, her world crumbled around her, and she didn’t know how to keep going. How would she survive this latest blow?

“Aye, I know, my little lambkin.”

Her mother hadn’t used that endearment for a long time. She probably hadn’t called her that since she was a child.

“Is there anything we can do, Julia?” Alice asked softly.

“Yes, Mama, is right. Do you want us to fetch your anything, dear?” Rose asked.

“I am ever so sorry, Julia,” Iris said. “You deserved all of the joy this world could bring you.”

They surrounded her, and instead of feeling smothered, she appreciated their outpouring of love. 

“What shall I do?” Julia asked hoarsely.

“You shall do what all of the women in our family have always done. You shall keep a stiff upper lip. We can’t have you going to pieces out there where so many can see you,” her mother said. “Now, here, dear, dry your tears, and we shall march out there whilst keeping our heads high, and then, we shall go back to Castleton Court.”

Beatrice handed her a handkerchief, and Julia took it with a grateful smile.

“This room is awfully cluttered,” Beatrice said disdainfully, “and it could do with a good dusting. Come now, Julia. Let us go home,” she said, helping her to stand up.

She didn’t want to go home.

She wanted Freddie.

She allowed them to lead her out of the vestry, and once her eyes clapped upon Charles again, she felt a swell of panic rushing through her. She couldn’t stay here, and she didn’t want to go back to Castleton Court, and she didn’t feel like being surrounded by all of her cousins back at Lark Hall. Lark Hall was usually her sanctuary, but not today.

There was only one thing to be done.

She dashed down the aisle, and out the church doors. She heard them calling to her, as she climbed into the barouche that was meant to whisk her and Freddie away to Wilton Park.

“Drive,” she told the astonished coachman.

Freddie must have left on Felix or Gilbert’s horse, for she couldn’t decide how else he’d departed. Surely, he hadn’t decided to walk?

“Yes, my lady,” the coachman said.

The barouche rumbled away from the church, and she looked back at her family. Her mother looked deeply worried, her brother actually looked concerned as well, and they all called to her anxiously, imploring her to stop and come back. She couldn’t stop now. She couldn’t go back. The only way she could secure her happiness was to keep going forward. In this case, she had to march to her own tune—no one else’s.  

The tongues of Castleton would be wagging now, and she could do nothing to stop the gossipmongers, so she might as well feed their fire.

“Where to, my lady?” the coachman asked.

“Wilton Park,” she said softly.

Tonight was supposed to be her wedding night, and now…now that was all bloody well shot to hell.

If she couldn’t be his wife—mayhap, she could be his mistress.

Freddie was in high dudgeon.

He felt like getting ape-drunk and possibly going out and shooting something, and then, retiring to bed. He trudged through the grand manor house that he’d bought and painfully decorated with Julia’s assistance.

This wasn’t his house, this was their house. It was a love nest, and now…it meant little to him.

Julia was lost to him.

The pretty furniture Julia had selected mocked him. She had called it Chippendale. And they had some Adam style stuff as well, and if the ruddy things hadn’t cost him such a pretty penny, he would have been tempted to have a bloody bonfire tonight.

Maids and footmen ducked out of his way, running for sanctuary back where they were allowed to live in the grand house. If Tiny was here, he’d be with them, most likely. And, sometimes he felt as if he should go with the servants and retire from the stuffiness that Julia’s world sometimes held.

He was a pretender. He was a fool. This wasn’t his world, and he hadn’t been more aware of that than today.

Seeing that toff Lord Charles objecting to his marriage to Julia had rung that home. He was just a lowborn bastard. He was a gutter rat, and he shouldn’t attempt to be anything else. He expected that his mates would retire to Maidstone Manor tonight, or they would go to stay with Iris and Lewis at the Estate they had recently purchased Wylye Hall. It had been built in the time of King George II, and it was a beautiful palatial house.

Damnation.

He wanted something to bloody well hit. He needed something to bash, and nothing around him fit that bill. Lord Charles was who he really wanted to bash. H wanted to draw his cork, and get into a mill with him, but that was out of the question. He was supposed to be a gentleman now, and gentlemen didn’t behave in that manner. Oh, no, they minded their manners. He was supposed to be the better man. After all, Julia had loved Lord Charles first.

He, on the other hand, was the man she’d settled for. He wasn’t her first love, and he wasn’t even her last love. He was the man she’d pretended to love, while trying to forget the man who haunted her every waking and dreaming hour.

And really, what else should he expect?

He’d been a bloody fool. He’d fallen for her slum, and let her give him Spanish coin. He should have known it was all fustian nonsense. He should have known she never could love a man such as him. He wasn’t from her world…and he could never fit in, no matter how hard he tried—he would always be an outsider looking in.

“Someone get me some bloody beer. I shall be in the Billiards Room playing Devil Amongst the Tailors,” he bellowed, his voice echoed throughout the large house.

“Yes, my lord,” a footman said, running to do as he bid.

He didn’t know why he had such an extensive staff. Probably because Julia had insisted. She was used to having an army of servants around her, and when she married, he knew that she wanted to keep that kind of life. Fortunately, he could well afford it. He didn’t think he’d ever have to worry about money again. He’d come a long way from his days as a grubby little bastard, where he’d lived in squalid conditions that would have horrified Julia’s delicate sensibilities.

If she knew what kind of a bastard she’d agreed to marry—if she’d seen what he had come from…how he had raised himself out of the gutter…what a little street rat he’d been, he felt quite certain she wouldn’t have agreed to marry him, let alone, fallen in love with him.

The Army had made a gentleman out of him, and his contacts from those days had eventually led to him being ennobled as a baron. And, he counted his time in the Army as the best time in his life. It had given him so many blessings. It had given him The Angels of Death. A group of men from high society and lowborn guttersnipes like him who had to learn how to get along, or else die.

They’d crossed many social barriers during their time in that specialized group, and enlisted men and officers had found that they had to rely on each other—count on each other, or else, they were as good as dead.

He’d come into a fair bit of money in August. One of the mines he’d invested in along with Doc, Tiny, Mole and Lucky had started to produce at a mind boggling rate. They would all be swimming in lard for the rest of their lives. Never again would he have to worry about going hungry.

Never again.

He went into the Billiards Room and instead of playing like he thought he would, he sank into a chair. His beer was brought to him, and he sat drinking it, while he tried to shove thoughts of Julia out of his mind. He reached for his stiff cravat with his left hand, and started to take the ruddy thing off. Once he had it loosened, he gave up, and drank some more of his beer. The footman had been wise enough to give him two pints. He’d probably need a third, at the rate he drank it.

Today was supposed to be a day of merriment. They should have been having their Wedding Feast now, where they would drink, dance and be merry, and yet, here he was, without his lovely bride smiling up at him.

Julia was by far the most beautiful woman he’d ever set eyes upon. He didn’t know what a diamond of the first water was, but it had to be something good because that was what Lord Charles called Julia, and she was a jewel amongst women.

Images of her smiling at him, and telling him that she loved him, swept through his mind. He groaned, and shook his head. They’d had a whirlwind courtship, and he believed it was because she’d fallen hard and fast for him, and now he wondered if it was really because she just wanted to marry so that her mother would stop haranguing her.

Had he just been a means to an end?

He took another large swig of the beer, and sighed heavily.

He had to get out of the restrictive clothing he wore. He looked like a bloody dandy, and he was definitely no fop. He was no swell of the first stare. Lord Charles looked like a bloody toff, and he usually hated his sort. He felt a bit of pity for the poor bastard, as he couldn’t imagine losing all that he was, to live amongst the French for over ten years. The thought almost terrified him. Still, Lord Charles looked like a right and proper snob, and he didn’t know if Julia could live with such a man, after all that she’d been through in the years since Lord Charles went away.

Depression clawed at him. He quickly drank down the rest of his beer and stood up. He wasn’t even slightly drunk. He’d have to drink a whole lot more to get as foxed as he wanted to be. They’d have to bring him some gin, whisky or brandy to do the trick.

“So this is what you left me to do?”

Julia’s softly feminine voice broke him away from feeling sorry for himself. Maybe he’d drank too much after all. He took his finger to his ear and tried to clear it. He had to be hearing things. He’d left her at the church with her lost love.

Her first love.

Surely, they’d be arranging for a special license so they could live in wedded bliss together?

“You do not exist. You are the stuff of dreams,” he said succinctly. He needed more.

“Looking for another tipple, are you, sir?”

His mind was running away with him. She sounded genuine. He didn’t think it was a figment of his imagination and yet…what else could she possibly be?

“Mayhap, I should call for a footmen and tell him to bring you a whole decanter of whisky—or possibly brandy. No…you prefer whisky, don’t you, Freddie?”

“Aye,” he whispered.

He heard soft footsteps padding across the floor. Thinking a maid had entered the room, he looked up and found the room empty, save for him.

The beer was having a most strange effect on him. “Bloody hell,” he muttered. “I’ve gone straight to Bedlam.”

“Not yet, you haven’t.”

There she was back again, needling at him. Was she his conscience? If so, why would his conscience be speaking to him? He had nothing to feel guilty about.

That was a lie.

He recalled her look of devastation as he’d left her alone in that little room in the church. She’d looked so Friday faced. She’d looked as if she’d had her entire world destroyed.

He heaved out a shattering sigh. He did have reason to feel wretched. He’d left her when she’d all but begged him to stay. He’d run out on her. He’d abandoned her. That wasn’t his way.

His way was to stay and fight, and yet, he’d given her up without a fuss. He was an idiot—he was the village idiot. He should stand right back up and charge back to the church and tell that Lord Charles to hightail it out of Castleton because he wasn’t bloody wanted! He should tell him to go straight back to where he came from, and offer to throw him back into the English Channel himself!

“Here you are,” Julia said, placing a decanter of whisky and a glass on the table that boasted his empty pints.

Her fragrance tickled his nose. It was her. She wasn’t a dream…she wasn’t a figment of his imagination. He reached out for her, and pulled her to him. She let out a delighted sigh, and collapsed against him. Her sigh almost undid him. There was heaven in that sound.

“You are real,” he marvelled, reaching up to cup his large hand against the side of her face. He drank her in greedily with his eyes. She’d changed her frock. She no longer wore her wedding dress. Instead, she’d opted for a dress of the scarlet hued variety. That meant she’d been to their bedchamber. She’d had most of her wardrobe delivered here yesterday in anticipation of coming to live with him as his wife.

They had planned to away to Devonshire for their honeymoon.

Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be happening now. He would not be able to enjoy her tonight, the way a husband could enjoy his wife. He’d made a mull of it all. Why hadn’t he agreed to marry her back at the church to horrify and spite Lord Charles?

He was a sodding bloody idiot.

“Well, I should say so.”

“Why are you here, Julia?” he asked gruffly.

He held her so close he could smell the lavender in her hair. Her glorious dark brown tresses with just a hint of red, and her eyes wide and blue like the sky, stared unwaveringly at him.

“I am here because you are here, you silly goose. My place is by your side, isn’t it? You left me without a by your leave, and I came here to tell you that you shan’t ever do that again.”

She kissed him lightly on the lips, and he didn’t reciprocate. Frowning, she took his cravat off, and unbuttoned his shirt, and pushed his shirt down so she could run her hands over his bare shoulders, and his chest. “Oh, you are so handsome,” she sighed deliciously. “And so brawny. I shan’t ever get enough of doing this,” she said, stroking his chest. She frowned, as she ran her hand over a scar on his upper shoulder.

“I was shot there. My body has many scars, courtesy of my time in the Wars. I’ve been shot and stabbed, and I’ve been flogged for an offense I didn’t commit. I thought I was going to die that day, and if Colonel Elliot hadn’t come along and told the Lieutenant who had ordered my flogging off, and then gave the order to have me untied, I might have met my maker that day. That little sodding bastard of a Lieutenant wanted me dead, as he hated me with a bloody passion, for reasons I could never determine.

“The Colonel earned my undying loyalty that day. He never had to worry about bearing the brunt that the rigid class lines could serve. He was the nephew of a duke and everyone that knew him, knew that. The other officers treated him with respect, and his men, after seeing what a good man he was, worshiped him. The Colonel wasn’t a snob, and he made it quite clear to everyone in The Angels of Death that things would work a little differently.

“Harsh punishments weren’t meted out in our group, and everyone treated everyone with respect no matter if they were the scum of the earth or of aristocratic birth. I still remember the look on Lewis’s face when he first saw my wounds that were having a devil of time healing. When he first saw me and Tiny, he looked at us like we’d come out of the pigsty, but when he saw my back…after Colonel Elliot asked him to attend to it, I saw rage in his eyes. The man might have been a snob back then, and maybe he still is, but he always had scads of compassion in his heart. His attending to my wounds was a godsend. He had me back in fighting condition quite quickly, and the salve he had for it helped with the pain, indeed, his touch when he applied it, helped with that. I do believe he has a healing touch, Julia.”

“Well, now I know why Iris loves him so. He doesn’t always show what a good man he is to those who barely know him, does he?”

“Aye,” Freddie said. “He puts up his guard, even though he can be a pugnacious bastard at times, he’s come to be like a brother to me, and if you ever have need of a doctor, I pray he will be there for you.”

While he talked, she continued to stroke him, and lavish him with kisses…she was kissing him everywhere, but on the mouth. Her light feathery kisses were making him mad with desire. 

Freddie needed to stop her. Her touch was setting his world on fire. He should release her. He should tell her to go. He should tell her to run, or he’d gobble her bloody well up, and finish what she was awkwardly trying to start.

Her breasts were heaving, and his eyes lowered to her décolletage. He wanted to kiss her there. He wanted to kiss her mouth, and her cheeks, and the tip of her nose, and her ears, and he wanted to strip her out of her frock, and kiss her from the top of her head right down to her beautiful feet. He wanted to kiss every bloody inch of her, and keep her in bed for days. That had been his plan when he’d awoken that morning. He’d planned to give her such a jolly honeymoon, and now…now, they were not married, and what he contemplated was sinful.