Loving Julia (11 page)

“May I help you, Miss Julia?” One of the footmen—or underfootmen, she could never tell—materialized out of the shadows beneath the stairs as she stepped down into the grand hall.

“I be lookin’ for ’is lordship,” she announced, staring right into his eyes as if daring him to put a rub in her way.

“His lordship is in the library, I believe, Miss Julia.”

“And where’d that be?”

“On the first floor of the north wing. But, Miss Julia, he gave specific orders that he is not to be disturbed.”

“Well, bully for ’im,” Jewel muttered as she marched in the direction of the north wing. Her earlier exploration of the house paid off, as she easily found her way through the labyrinthian corridors to the one door on the first floor that was always closed. Hardly pausing to draw a deep breath, she rapped her knuckles sharply on the polished oak door.

“Who is it?” the earl answered, irritation plain in his voice.

“It be me, Jewel—uh, Julia, yer lordship,” Jewel answered. After a slight pause she heard a distinct, “Go away.” Her temper heated. Just because he was an all-powerful earl didn’t mean he could dismiss her as if she were nothing! The light of battle flared in her eyes as she turned the knob and opened the door.

He was sprawled in a big wing chair before the fire, one booted foot resting on a footstool while the other was planted solidly on the rug. A glass holding an amber liquid was in one hand while a bottle containing more rested on a table at his elbow. A long thin cigar lay in a gold dish on the same table, a white drift of smoke rising lazily from it. On the footstool an open book lay face down. He was in shirtsleeves, without coat or cravat, and wore buckskin trousers instead of the breeches she had expected. The fire gleamed brightly off the silver-gilt of his hair, but left his face in shadow. Jewel could only see the gleam of his eyes as they ran over her slowly from head to toe.

“Do you know, I had almost forgotten about you? If you were to take yourself off again, I might succeed completely.” His voice was slightly slurred, and if not actively hostile was certainly not welcoming. Jewel’s chin came up, and she took a couple of steps into the room.

“Do come in,” he said ironically.

She ignored that, too, advancing determinedly until she stood beside the stool where that one booted foot still rested. He sat without moving, looking up at her through narrowed eyes that Jewel could see now were more than a little bloodshot.

“You be holed up in ’ere drinkin’!” The discovery that he was at least a trifle bosky surprised her, or she would never have said it out loud.

“What the bloody hell business is it of yours?” he growled. As she watched he deliberately lifted the glass to his lips and drained the contents, then poured himself another.

His tone more than his words angered her.

“It ain’t me bizness a-tall, if ya wan’ ter get soused,” she

agreed cordially, and his eyes glinted at her for an instant before shifting to his glass.

“Damned right, it isn’t,” he muttered, and took another long swallow.

Watching him, Jewel thought that he didn’t look much like the complete to a shade lord whose acquaintance she had made in London. This man was just as handsome, but it was a surly, mussed handsomeness instead of the sartorial perfection she had thought characteristic of him. His hair was disordered, his cheeks showed a trace of stubble, and his white shirt was faintly crumpled. All in all, Jewel thought that she could like this man better than the other—if looks were everything. In this state he was not nearly so intimidating; at least, accustomed as she was to loud, abusive, imbibing males, she didn’t find him so.

“Did you want something?” He was looking at her again. In the shock of finding him like this, she had nearly forgotten her errand.

“Them new dresses ya got me, they be all black!” she accused, her grievance resurfacing with a vengeance.

“So, what of it?” It was clear from his tone that he had lost what tiny vestige of interest he might once have felt in her reason for barging in on his privacy.

Jewel glared at him. “If ya ’ad asked me afore ya went ter orderin’ ’em, I’d ’ave tole ya that I don’ like black. I wan’ ter tell Miss Soames to make ’em over again, in colors.”

He made a negative gesture with his head. “Impossible. In case you have forgotten, you’re a widow now. You’re in mourning.”

“So are ya if Timothy be yer cousin, but I don’ see ya goin’ aroun’ all in black,” Jewel flared.

“What I choose to do and what I choose for you to do are two different things,” he said, looking up at her with hooded eyes. “The correct period of mourning for a young widow is one year. During that time you will observe all outward conventions of respect for your deceased husband, including dressing exclusively in black. Do I make myself clear?”

Jewel stared at him, her lips tightening. His eyes met hers just as she was about to explode. Their expression checked her outburst as effectively as a splash of cold water. She scowled at him as he continued to regard her with cold blue eyes and faintly lifted brows. Finally, she nodded reluctantly.

“Yes, my lord,” he prompted, speaking to his glass.

“Yes, my lord,” she repeated, hands clenching as she turned to go. She would like to tell him what he could do with his “my lords,” but she didn’t quite dare.

“Wait,” he said, and she turned back to look at him.

“I had really almost forgotten your existence,” he said, sounding as if the words were meant more for himself than her. He looked up at her, his eyes sharpening. “But now that you’ve reminded me, something really must be done about your atrocious accent. And your manners. I will have Johnson engage a governess for you as soon as possible, certainly no later than the end of the week. Then you may begin to learn to speak and behave like a civilized human being.”

Jewel bristled. Maybe she didn’t talk as fancy as he did, but at least she didn’t insult him with every breath she uttered.

“Ya got ter be the rudest man I’ve ever met,” she said through her teeth, and turned to leave him again. This time he stopped her with a snap of his fingers. Thoroughly affronted—she was not a dog!—Jewel turned to glare at him.

“My lord,” he corrected softly. Jewel ground her teeth.

“My lord,” she managed, seething, and was turning to go for the third time when the portrait over the mantel caught her eye. It was a beautiful thing done in pastels, showing a slender young woman with soft fair hair seated in a chair, her white skirts billowing around her. Leaning against her knee was a small girl of perhaps three years with long, silver-gilt curls and sky blue eyes. The child was beautiful while the woman was merely pretty.

But there was such love in the woman’s quiet face as she gazed at the child that Jewel was touched by it.

“My daughter, Chloe, and my wife Elizabeth,” the earl said tonelessly, following her gaze. “It was completed about a year before her death.”

“I ’ad ’eard yer wife ’ad passed over.” After seeing the portrait Jewel felt genuine pity for him. “I’m sorry fer yer loss.”

The earl laughed, the sound surprisingly harsh. “The servants have been talking, have they?” He took a long swallow from his glass. “And did they tell you that I killed her?”

Jewel froze, staring at him. Then her eyes lifted to the portrait again. That sweet lady….

He surged abruptly to his feet, hurling the glass from him so that it shattered against the stones of the fireplace. Jewel jumped back, unnerved by the unexpected violence of his action. He glowered at her.

“Get out of here,” he growled, and when Jewel could only stand staring at him, his eyes flamed at her like blue fires from the depths of hell.

“Go on, get out of my sight!” He took a step toward her, his fists clenched, his eyes threatening more violence. The spell broken, Jewel turned and fled.

X

The next morning Jewel could stand it no longer. She had to know the truth behind the earl’s words. Had he killed his wife? Perhaps she had died in childbirth, and he felt responsible? It was useless to speculate. Undoubtedly the servants knew; she already was beginning to realize that servants knew everything that went on in a household. Something she couldn’t quite put into words niggled over gossiping about the earl with those who were paid to serve him, but she couldn’t help it. She had to know.

“Emily,” Jewel began tentatively the next morning when the girl entered her bedroom carrying a breakfast tray of steaming chocolate and crusty rolls. (Surprising how easy it had been to get used to such luxuries as three delicious meals a day and more if she wanted them without having to lift a finger.)

“Yes, Miss Julia?” Emily set the tray down on the round table near the window. Jewel, clad in a white silk wrapper, seated herself in a wing chair pulled up to the table and prepared to eat. Emily shook the napkin out into her lap and poured the chocolate while Jewel buttered a warm roll and bit into it with relish.

“I ’eard somethin’ the other day that made me wonder,” Jewel began mendaciously around a mouthful of roll. Looking up at Emily, who stood motionless as she waited to hear what her mistress would say, she shook her head impatiently. “Oh, sit, won’t ya? This is bloomin’ ridiculous.”

Emily’s round spaniel eyes grew even rounder. “Oh, no, Miss Julia, I couldn’t! ’Twouldn’t be proper!”

Jewel sighed. Servants had stringent notions of what was proper and what was not. For instance, Emily considered it proper for a lady to bathe every evening before she retired for the night—a full bath, stark naked, immersed in steaming water to her neck. After a week or so of useless protest Jewel was almost resigned to it now. She was even getting used to the girl’s silent comings and goings while she dressed or undressed. And she knew that Emily thought it was proper for a lady’s maid to actually assist the lady into and out of her clothing. Jewel hadn’t yet come to that, but with Emily’s silent persistence she guessed it was just a matter of time before she did.

“At least ’ave a bit ter eat,” Jewel murmured, defeated, but Emily declined again.

“Thank you kindly, Miss Julia, but if Mrs. Johnson ever found out I was eatin’ with the family I could lose my place.”

Jewel gave up and got on with the matter at hand. “Do ya know ’ow the earl’s wife died?”

Emily’s eyes widened again, and she looked nervously to the right and left as though afraid someone might be listening.

“She—she fell.” The answer was whispered. Jewel took a healthy bite of a butter-encrusted roll and eyed her maid speculatively as she chewed.

“I know there be more to it than that. I wan’ ya ter tell me.”

Emily moistened her lips. “She, Lady Moorland, went for a walk one morning. Usually she took Miss Chloe with her, but it was nippy out that day. Nearly two years ago it was, in the early spring, like now. Miss Chloe had a bit of a sniffle so she left her in. Miss Caroline was here—she was Lady Moorland’s cousin, you know. It was real funny because Miss Caroline was married into the family first, to his lordship’s older brother, and she would have been Lady Moorland if Master Edward had lived, but he died and so Miss Elizabeth became milady. Anyway, Miss Caroline usually walked with milady when Miss Chloe stayed in, but on that particular morning the Dowager Countess, who was visiting to try to wheedle some more money out of his lordship, sent her in to the village on an errand. So milady went out alone for her walk, and she never came back. Not alive, that is.”

Emily stopped. “So ’ow’d she die?” Jewel demanded impatiently, a roll suspended in her hand as she forgot to take a bite of it.

“There’s an old monastery over by the Wash, a ruin really, and milady used to like to walk there. The day she died, they said she climbed up into the tower where the bell used to be. Somehow she … fell.” Emily stopped again, looking frightened. The girl’s very fear told Jewel that there was more to the story than this.

“Tell me ever’thin’, Emily, please. If she died in a fall, why would the—would anyone say ’is lordship killed ’er?”

Emily looked absolutely wretched. “Oh, Miss Julia, I really shouldn’t be talkin’ about this. We’ve been told never to talk about it.”

“Who told you that?”

“Mrs. Johnson. She said that she wasn’t havin’ no gossip about the master in this house.”

“What gossip, Emily?” demanded Jewel, maddened.

“Some said—some said his lordship threw milady off that tower.”

Jewel stared at Emily for a long moment. “Why would anyone

say that? Was ’e with ’er when she fell?”

Emily shook her head. “No, miss. At least he wasn’t with her when milady left the house. But when they were courtin’ they used to meet in that old ruin, milady bein’ from the neighborhood. And his lordship … well, he and milady had their problems.”

“That don’t mean ’e killed ’er.” Jewel was strangely indignant to think that the earl’s obvious pain was based on so flimsy a premise.

“No.” Emily was beginning to warm to her subject. “But there were other things. The doctor said milady hadn’t landed as she would have if she’d just fallen. She was too far out, like she’d been pushed. And she was on her back, not her stomach. And one of the tenant’s boys said that he’d seen somebody—he thought it was his lordship because he’d seen that blond hair real plain—go into the monastery with milady that day. And everyone knew that his lordship and milady had problems. They had a way of lookin’ at each other that’d give you the shivers. Like they hated each other. I once heard milady say to him that he weren’t no kind of a father, and his lordship said back that that made them a good pair because she weren’t no kind of a wife. They didn’t talk to each other for weeks and weeks, and his lordship went up to London. He came back just a week or so before milady died, and they must have had a real bad row because milady wouldn’t even stay in the same room with his lordship. Don’t none of us know what all the trouble was about, and I don’t guess anyone but his lordship ever will. And I wish anyone good luck gettin’ anything out of
him
.”

Emily shook her head for emphasis. Jewel stared at her, forgetting even to eat in her fascination with what she had heard. Had the earl killed his wife? Of course not! Like a lot of other people apparently had, she was letting her imagination take threads of gossip and rumors and weave them into whole cloth. The evidence she had heard against the earl was flimsy in the extreme.