Rebels and Traitors (100 page)

Gideon watched unexpected feelings rush upon Juliana. She had only ever discussed this with Mr Impey — a lawyer, with whom it had been neutral and professional. Otherwise, her deduction that Orlando must be lost had been borne in private, as she had always borne her troubles. Suddenly here was Gideon Jukes right at her dining table, agreeing: Lovell was gone. She was a widow. There would be no farewells, no explanations, nothing. Her married life was over.

Juliana had shed tears before, but her surging emotions now startled her. Gideon saw her face, just before she jumped up and swiftly left the room. She was trying to conceal the emergency, but her expression tore his heart.

He waited, uncertainly, then he followed and found her, in the little parlour next door, weeping uncontrollably. Gideon suppressed a curse, thinking he had made a bad mistake. He hardly dared approach, and Juliana held up a hand to stop him. He wanted to hold her, to console her, to let her cry at will onto his shoulder. Instead he could only stand silent in the doorway, offering at least his presence for comfort.
This grief is all for the malignant Lovell…
Yet he could not hate the man. Gradually he realised that he was witnessing more than straightforward torrents of grief. As Juliana wept herself into exhaustion, it was not just for love of her husband, for his suffering as he drowned, nor even for her sons’ loss of their father. This was her release from years of introversion, struggle, loneliness and anxiety. It was necessary. It marked an end to that phase of her life.

When her sobs stopped, neither was embarrassed. Juliana turned away further, to begin the ghastly business of drying tears and nose-blowing.

‘I am much to blame,’ Gideon apologised, all humility. ‘I bungled that. I did not know what to say for the best.’

Juliana still could not speak.

‘Mistress Lovell, I will take my leave — do not disturb yourself; I will let myself out of the shop. Do not wait too long before you lock up properly.’

He went — not so hurriedly that he seemed to be afraid of a woman weeping, but more swiftly than she wanted. Feeling doubly bereft, Juliana slowly completed her mopping and snuffling, then she washed her hands and face. It had grown dark, so when she made her way downstairs to secure the premises she took a candle.

The shop door remained wide open. With his back to her, Gideon Jukes was leaning against the frame, disconsolately, gazing out. The street was dark and gusty. It was absolutely sheeting down with rain.

He had heard her, so Juliana went and stood in the doorway beside him. She stayed in the dry but let the weather cool her hot face. ‘Come back in. You cannot go in that.’ She knew she was glad. She hungered for more time with him.

Gideon did not stir. He seemed to be reminiscing. ‘I was drenched often enough in the army — day after day, week after week, many a night lying out in the fields in filthy rain like this … You close yourself down, waiting for the misery to end — while you form dreams to take your mind away from it.’ He half turned his head. His voice sharpened: ‘Did you miss me?’

Convention got the better of Juliana. She fluttered uncharacteristically, ‘Oh Captain Jukes, I hardly know you!’

‘I believe you do.’ Gideon was quieter than ever, yet no longer subdued. He had the air of a man who had reached a decision. ‘I know you too,’ he went on purposefully. ‘Though not so well, because you hunch up in yourself. I shall have to winkle you out, when you allow me to do it. That could be good — it leaves more to discover at leisure … I missed you, I admit it. I carried your memory fast within me.’

He had lost the thin tone and careful formality he had used before. This was his normal voice, resonating as it had done in her reveries. Juliana luxuriated in its return. She asked him with her usual candour, ‘What happened to the light lad who flirted?’

‘Held in restraint.’

‘I liked him!’

Gideon laughed quietly. ‘I know you did.’ They seemed able to speak together with astonishing honesty.

’And you liked
being
him.’

‘Oh yes.’ To himself, Gideon was confessing that he had never behaved before or since as he did the day of Anne Jukes’s birthday and for that short time afterwards. He was not even behaving like that now; well, not yet. He could be working up to it. ‘How did you like such an odd bubble of air?’

‘Well, I thought him a sly-tongued rogue.’ Now Juliana felt she was flirting. She had lost all her modesty, and did not care.

‘Ever astute, madam! But you can trust him. Gideon Jukes: age thirty-three, height inconvenient, hair tow-coloured, eyes blue, journeyman printer, ten years fighting for liberty, some wounds but no loss of capacity’ — soldiers always wanted to make
that
clear — ‘clean and neat around the house. Favourite cake: gingerbread. Favourite pie: veal on a base of bacon. Favourite celebration dish: a salmagundi. True unto death.’

‘True to what?’

‘God, my cause, my city and family — the woman of my choice.’

Juliana let herself accept that the salmagundi in his manifesto was a heavy clue who
that
was.

The rain continued to pour incessantly. Anyone who walked outside would be soaked through at once.

‘Move from the door and let me close it, Captain.’

Gideon stepped back, though he put up his hand on the edge of the door, preventing her from moving it. A gust of motion blew the candle out. It made little difference. The loss of its small light barely affected eyes that had grown used to the murk. All their senses were heightened and fixed on each other. ‘Do you want me to leave you?’

‘Do you want to go?’

‘You know I do not.’

‘Do
I?’

There was a small, tense silence.

‘You know my heart,’ he said. Quiet people, Juliana thought, could be most single-minded. With this one, there was no vapid etiquette. Gideon Jukes came right out and declared himself, without prevarication or preamble. He shrugged. ‘Let us be open with each other. You do not keep a strangers’ lodging house; you never bid mere passers-by to shelter from the rain — nor do I linger on other women’s doorsteps, hoping for an invitation.’ He dropped his hand from the door, folding his arms tight across his chest. ‘Here is the thing; I have to confess it — either I go now, and at once, or —’
Or I shall beg to stay with you.

‘Or?’
I will plead with you to do it.

‘We both know what will happen.’ There was just enough light for Gideon to see Juliana gazing at him, questioning. Questioning not his motives, but his willingness to have those motives. She glimpsed a shadow of a smile from him that she might still doubt this. He spoke a little dryly, spelling out the situation much as he had earlier explained how drawings were printed: ‘There will be kissing, and various matters that lead from it…’

‘I am glad that you say so.’ Juliana laid a hand on the door handle. ‘Indeed, sir, I hope you will not think me forward — but I shall insist upon it.’

She felt extremely calm. She closed the door and turned the key in its lock. Gideon reached up and pushed a bolt home for her.

His arm dropped and came straight around Juliana, gathering her to him. She had thought she might have to stand on tiptoe, but they fitted together naturally. Gideon kissed her, gently and deferentially, though for a long time. She kissed him, making no bones about it. These were as honest and sweet as any kisses Juliana ever gave.

Soon, she took his hand to guide Gideon safely through the darkness of the haberdashery, where she knew her way around obstacles even without a candle. They came upstairs; she led him to her room. With children and a servant in the house, there was no place for turmoil, uncontrollable passion in stairwells or festoons of discarded clothes and cast-off shoes. That was not their way in any case. They had waited a long while for one another. They walked up through the house, closing doors and dousing lights almost as if it was their long-time nightly ritual. By one dim rush-light, they undressed as neatly as if they already had behind them a companionship of decades, each folding their clothes upon a chair. Only once naked, they did clasp one another, gazing together a little in wonder at their situation. Yet they were smiling and already bonded in trust and friendship, until suddenly they kissed again, this time harder and with greater urgency, no longer at all deferential though full of tenderness.

So, without any more words spoken, they came gladly to bed.

For Gideon Jukes, life under the Protectorate truly began on the morning he woke in the arms of his lover, drugged with spent passion, as he smiled into her smiling eyes. They lay together in silence, braving the risk that the door would burst open and they would be discovered. They heard the sounds of young boys scrambling for breakfast, petulant shouts, thrown shoes, mild scolding from Catherine Keevil. Either Catherine knew what had happened and shielded the couple from disturbance, or in the scramble to get ready for school there was no time for the boys even to think of plaguing their mother. They clattered downstairs. Catherine took the boys to school; on her return she would open the shop and remain there.

The house grew quiet. Juliana and Gideon were alone.

With some trepidation Juliana surveyed the man she had taken to her bed. Well, that’s done!’ he quipped callously. ‘Time to be up and off!’

For a split second he deceived her.

Juliana responded with a languid stretch, tucking her hair behind her ears. She fought back: ‘Bolt then. Always so convenient for everyone … So, Captain Jukes, you are a loose seducer who lies with a woman once, then thinks his wager over, and moves on, never to be seen again? No, I do not believe it — you
actor
!’

Gideon exploded into giggles. He kept laughing, lost in a helpless joke of his own, while Juliana gazed at him in amazement.

When he settled, she asked, ’What was that about?’

‘A dotterel.’

’A
what?’

‘Oh I shall tell you one day, sweetheart… Now I must take you in hand. Milady Formal, let us dispense with this
Captain Jukes
of yours. I shall have to compose a book of etiquette and print it for you. It will go thus: When a Lady hath lain the whole night with a Gentleman, making love together until they can no longer
move,
it is expected that the said Lady shall call the said Gentleman by his
name!’

‘Gideon.’

‘Better.’

‘Gideon …’ Juliana rolled on her side — with a groan for he was right about movement being difficult. She kissed him on the forehead. ‘Gideon …’ She kissed him again, on the eyes, the nose, the chin, the lips, each time saying his name over. ‘Gideon.’

‘All this is good!’

‘I believe I had called you so before.’ She had indeed, while so desperate in passion that even the memory of it made her face colour up.

‘Oh so you did!’ chortled Gideon, lasciviously reminding her. Seriousness overcame him, however. His voice dropped into tenderness. So much had been left unspoken last night that delicate negotiation seemed required. ‘Now shall I take myself off? Must I?’ They were entwined like ancient ropes of bindweed and Gideon made no move to unravel himself. ‘Then if I leave you, may I come again?’

‘I hope you will.’

‘When shall I come? When, dear heart?’

’Whenever you like,’ Juliana answered, being completely honest. She had nothing to lose by it, she thought — and everything to gain. ‘My house is yours,’ she told Gideon then, more than ever full of gratitude to Mr Gadd that he had given her this gift, a house that was all hers, with no obligation to respect the feelings of anybody but herself. She could not have said it if this had ever been her family home with Lovell.

Gideon, too, had his moment of absolute truth: ‘If you give me this freedom, I shall never leave. I love you and long for your company.’

‘Death and disaster wait around every corner,’ Juliana said. ‘Let us not waste any of our lives.’

Gideon gave her a slow but cheeky London grin. ‘I could court you,’ he offered.

‘You have done that.’

‘Yes, it seems I have.’

‘If formalities are needed,
I
could seduce
you
!
’

‘That too,’ answered Gideon dryly, ‘would appear to be superfluous.’