Beauty in Breeches(35)

‘Yes, God bless her. Without her—without that money—I could not have done it.’

Beatrice smiled. ‘Oh, I’m sure you would have found a way. Is your grandmother still alive?’

He hesitated, and for a moment Beatrice thought he wasn’t going to say more. When he did, his deep voice was strangely hesitant, almost as if he was testing his ability to talk about it. ‘She died shortly before…’

‘Before what?’ Pain slashed his features once more. She touched his cheek. ‘Julius, please tell me.’

He turned his head to one side and quietly said, ‘Before my mother.’

‘There—was a fire—at Highfield. Your parents…’

He turned and looked at her once more, a fierce light having entered his eyes. It was so hard to say these things, even harder than he had thought it would be, each word an ocean of pain, and he felt as if he were a youth all over again.

Beatrice did not say anything, but simply listened as the words carried on pouring out of him.

‘Both my parents perished. Only days before, Father had suffered badly on the stock market and it went from bad to worse when he tried to recoup his losses at the tables. On the night of the fire, finally realising his dreams of greatness were shattered, he returned to Highfield. Arriving late at night, he thought he was alone in the house. My mother was supposed to be visiting a friend. Unbeknown to my father, she was feeling unwell and decided to put off her visit. She was asleep when he returned.’

Beatrice’s heart quaked and her soul was beginning to hurt at the forlorn air around him. ‘Julius, what are you saying? Surely you don’t think he set fire to the house deliberately—that he—’

‘What? Committed suicide? That he killed my mother?’ He spoke with glacial calm. ‘How would I know? How would anyone know that? Some say it was started accidentally. Some say it wasn’t. The fact that he dismissed all the servants before the fire started speaks for itself,’ he finished grimly.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Beatrice whispered through a blur of tears, and all the sympathy and warmth in her heart was mirrored in her eyes. Once she had foolishly thought she knew what a broken heart was like. How wrong she had been, for it was only now breaking for this man who had to live with the knowledge that his father might have killed his mother. ‘You must have been out of your mind with shock and grief. I can understand why you didn’t want to talk about it.’

‘All their married life my father crushed my mother. I loved her down to the depths of my soul and could not forgive him for the hurt he dealt her by his actions. I was appalled by the enormity of his debts and that, along with what he might have done to my mother, was the moment when I truly think I began to hate him. Can you imagine what it is like to do that, Beatrice? That was also the moment when I began to hate myself for harbouring such feelings.’

He fell silent and after a moment he looked at his wife, as if remembering she was there. He saw some of the horror in her eyes, and said, ‘Now you know my deepest secret. You are right. You are entitled to know all this, but God help me, Beatrice, until this moment I could not tell another living soul how I felt.’

Beatrice didn’t know what to say. How could any words suffice? ‘Thank you for telling me, for sharing that with me.’

‘Thankfully I was then in a position to pay off my father’s debts and lost no time in having the part of the house damaged by the fire rebuilt. As far as I was concerned, that was the end of it.’

He said that, Beatrice noted, with deadly finality. It was as if he’d resolved matters to his complete satisfaction in his own mind, and nothing and no one could ever intrude on the place where he had put his parents to rest.

‘After that I threw myself into my work, travelling east and west to try to forget.’

‘And—Larkhill?’ she whispered tentatively. ‘You haven’t mentioned how my father came to lose it to you.’

Apart from a tensing of his body, Julius’s face remained expressionless. ‘I would prefer not to go into details of that night, Beatrice. Suffice to know that after paying off the mortgage I placed the estate in the hands of an agent to run in my absence. The first time I saw Larkhill was when I went to assess it for myself. In all honesty I had no idea you existed. I didn’t know your father had a daughter. If I had known it would bring me face to face with you and the pain of your loss, not for the world would I have gone down there.’ He met her gaze. ‘How do you feel now you know the whole sorry story?’ he asked, gently smoothing the tousled curls with his hand. ‘Are you wishing you’d never laid eyes on me? I wouldn’t blame you.’

‘Please don’t think that. I’m glad you’ve told me. I cannot imagine what would have become of our marriage if you had not shared this with me. It’s too big, too important to have let it stand between us for the rest of our lives.’

‘And there will be no more talk of divorce? In for a penny, in for a pound?’ he murmured, encouraged that she didn’t pull away.

Beatrice swallowed the lump that had risen in her throat and, lifting her head, she gave him a wobbly smile. ‘Yes, something like that.’

‘And you have no concerns about the position of being my wife—about what that entails?’

‘Tell me what it is you expect your wife to do.’

He upturned her face to his, gazing deep into her eyes. ‘Always remain by the side of the marquess and desire him as you do now with all the passion you are capable of—all the days of your life.’

Beatrice tilted her head to one side, her heart pounding so hard she believed he must hear it. ‘I already do that, but will the marquess continue to desire his marchioness with the same amount of passion he asks of her?’

He cupped her cheek in his hand, loving all the subtle nuances of feeling conveyed in her expression. ‘I believe I could manage that—in fact, I believe the marquess already does.’ He wiped a tear away with his thumb. Only then did she realise she was crying.

‘Oh, Julius! I pray God you are sincere, for I could not bear it if you weren’t. I—I love you, you see…’

His face hardened and he pressed his finger to her lips, silencing her. ‘Don’t say it, Beatrice,’ he said with quiet, implacable firmness and a caution he had always maintained when it came to affairs of the heart. ‘Already you have given me far more than I could ever expect. Do not give more than that.’

Beatrice lowered her eyes and said no more about it, but his rejection of her love hurt more than she imagined possible. She accepted that she loved him, that he gave her great joy, and it broke her heart to think he might never reciprocate her love. Looking at him once more, she put her face close to his, studying it intently, looking to see if there were any more secrets. As though he suspected that she was trying to see into his mind, there was a darkening to his eyes which after a moment seemed to disappear like a cloud blown away by the wind. There was nothing to see, but she could not explain the tiny frisson of doubt that would not leave her.

‘Please don’t lie to me or hold anything back, Julius. We must both agree to set a pattern of honesty and frankness for the future. You married me because I made it difficult for you to refuse—and I married you because I wanted to bring Larkhill back into my life.’

‘What are you saying?’

Raising her head, she met his gaze. ‘That things change in the most peculiar way. Not for one moment did I think I would end up feeling like this when I challenged you to that race. When I first realised I had feelings for you I told myself I was deceiving myself and continued to do so. I do not know when those feelings began, but what I do know is that they are feelings so much stronger and deeper than anything I have ever felt before.’

‘You are right,’ he murmured. ‘Things do have a way of changing. But I’m beginning to like the result of your scheming. I would like you to know that from the moment when I first laid eyes on you I wanted you—badly, my love.’

Beatrice jerked her head back and gave him an indignant look. ‘You did? You should have told me.’

Julius chuckled and rolled her on to her back. ‘What? And spoil the fun? Not in a million years,’ he said, kissing the tip of her nose.

Beatrice laughed at his unprincipled determination to get what he wanted and his complete lack of contrition for it. ‘Shame on you, Julius Chadwick. Have you no principles at all?’ she demanded.

He pulled her further down the bed and covered her body with his own. ‘None whatsoever,’ he told her before taking her lips in a kiss that she was unable to resist, and their bodies joined once more in a dizzying union of delight.



After their loving, with a feeling of well-serviced bliss lingering in his body, Julius was enjoying looking at his wife seated at her dressing table. She had slipped into her robe, which was nothing more than a wisp of satin and lace and ribbons in a delicate shade of peach. His eyes lingered on the thrust of her breasts as she raised her arms and attempted to bring her tousled hair into some kind of order. He admired the long graceful line of her back and the fall of her golden hair. As he watched her his throat went dry. Dear Lord, she had been beautiful before, but now she was glorious. Before they had married she had seemed wholesome and innocent, but now she seemed different, like a young woman who had come into her own. She glowed and bloomed and seemed softer somehow. In the mirror her eyes were drifting, dreaming, and she looked like a woman whose senses were fulfilled, physically and emotionally.