Chapter 1
Chapter
The parlor fire snapped and hissed, releasing the warmth that Julianna and Thomas had not been able to find at Farrow Cottage.
She stood near the hearth, hands held toward the heat, knowing she should be grateful for it.
She was grateful for it. But gratitude didn’t help the war playing out in her heart and her head.
Thomas had pushed her into this marriage.
Had claimed it was his dying wish and told her himself that perhaps they’d misjudged Fred all these years.
So why in heavens, now that she was beginning to think he’d been right and Frederick Sedgewick was not the man she’d always believed him to be, was it Thomas who was acting the arse?
Because he’s dying. And while fighting that he’s fighting everything else too. Even me.
Thomas was the one who woke each morning knowing the clock on his life was ticking down, and there was nothing anyone—not she, not the doctor, nor the nurse, nor even Fred with all his resources—could do to stop it. The thought was too terrible to countenance.
Her brother had always been steady, so Julianna couldn’t begrudge him a little wavering now.
All she could do was brace herself enough for them both.
Even if that meant swallowing feelings she could no longer deny that she was developing for Fred.
That she enjoyed his company. That he increasingly meant something to her, even if she wasn’t ready yet to specify what.
And even if she knew that whatever he meant, whatever her feelings, it was best they go unacknowledged for now, given their history.
And yet, for the first time in as long as she could remember she was thinking past the present moment.
She’d never allowed herself to consider what her life would be like after Thomas passed.
When she remained here, alone. But she could now—she could conceive of that future because Fred would be here too.
The thought felt like a betrayal even as it soothed something inside her.
“Are you all right?”
She looked up to find the man himself standing before her. Fred’s face—that unspeakably handsome face—was creased in consternation as he peered at her from the doorway. She felt herself flush, as if he could know the direction of her thoughts.
And then he was stalking toward her, but he did not join her at the hearth. At the last moment he swerved and occupied the arm of the sofa instead, his long legs sprawled out before him.
He had magnificent legs. Truly. Thighs as large and strong as granite boulders. She flushed again as she examined them.
No more, she had to remind herself. Although there was a tiny voice inside her that said: Surely there’s nothing wrong with noticing? Noticing is just human nature. And he is your husband.
“Jules? Are you alright?” Fred asked again and she realized she hadn’t answered him.
She met his gaze for a long heartbeat before looking back at the fire. “Yes. All is well.”
Her voice sounded thin even to her own ears though. And he wasn’t buying her assertion. She could tell by the way he studied her in silence, his eyes narrowed and his mouth turned down into a frown. All was not well and they both knew it.
“Would you stop that?” she finally said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Stop what?”
“Staring at me.”
“Why should I do that? You’re beautiful, Jules.” He braced the heel of one boot against the edge of the rug and turned his body toward her, his blue eyes piercing. “And you’re lying. I’m trying to understand why.”
“I am not.”
He only shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
He was sitting too close, but his nearness bore little resemblance to the ease they had shared that afternoon. This felt more like a return to form from before their marriage. As if he were inviting a quarrel.
And then she understood. She wasn’t the only one who had been discomfitted by their time together today.
“This is Chester, isn’t it?” she said. The cold, aristocratic Earl who eats servants for breakfast and wears a sneer as if he were born with it. “I don’t like him. Put him back where you keep him and bring me Fred.”
He flinched from her and not for the first time today. She’d seen how hard her words had landed earlier when she’d all but accused him of still acting like the spoiled Darling of Dorset.
Now though, his entire demeanor changed before her eyes. The archly raised eyebrow lowered itself to its normal position and his shoulders softened. “I’ve always been here,” he said.
“Have you, though? And I do not mean the decade when we didn’t speak. I mean these last weeks. Have you been here with me or have you been using Chester as some kind of deflection? Don’t lie to me, Fred. Please.”
She kept her eyes on him, waiting for the gentleman who had been her companion in saving the thrush—her companion for the entirety of her childhood—to show his face again. She knew he was in there and she knew he wasn’t Chester.
When he reached for her hand, his fingers hesitated just shy of hers and she swore she saw them tremble for a moment. But when his palm finally enveloped hers, his skin was warm. And the air between them felt different now; he felt different.
“What I said…it wasn’t a lie. You are beautiful. I’d look at you all day long if you’d let me.”
“I can’t.” She felt her heart pound against the walls of her chest. “I can’t let you.”
“I know that. I’m not a man you can care for. But you asked me for the truth.”
She closed her eyes. If he was truth-telling she ought to do the same.
“Chester is not a man I could care for.” She couldn’t believe the words that were about to leave her mouth but she said them anyway.
“But the man who would make broth or hem a gown…the one who was so kind to that thrush, or the one who brought Thomas here through a snowstorm. If things were different, I believe I could care for that man.”
The admission felt monumentally dangerous. Like skating out onto ice that had not been depth tested.
A faint smile ghosted over his lips. “Those were me. Every one of them. But things are not different.”
“No, they aren’t.”
She’d hoped that saying the words aloud would dissipate some of the tension she could feel between them. It didn’t. And when she opened her eyes again to look at him, she saw the same war of indecision on his face that must be playing out on her own.
There was something else there too though. “What is it?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I can’t tell you, Jules. I can’t.”
She almost told him to keep his secrets, that it was best if she didn’t know them.
There had been so much clarity in her anger, so much purity in her wrath.
And now nothing felt clear. She was no longer twelve; she could admit that the world was not made in black and white, not populated by only villains and heroes.
That there were shades of gray in all of us.
Because there were too many moments lately when she could forget about what had happened…
when she was simply walking or cooking or laughing with Fred…
and she felt light. A kind of fizzy, bubbling lightness she hadn’t experienced in ages.
And the world didn’t feel too muddy and hard.
It felt crystal clear and bright in a way that nothing else did.
It was only afterwards when she was alone again that the brightness dissipated. When she recalled her wits and her memory, or when she caught Thomas’s expression. And then she remembered who Fred was and what he had done.
And yet, here he was, so close and yet so impossibly far from the Disgraced Darling of Dorset. When she thought too much of the discrepancy, she felt the ground beneath her feet tilt.
He said nothing but his face was twisting away from the soft, honest features that had been there a moment ago. And she couldn’t—she couldn’t let it happen. She couldn’t let that other man go. Not for the snide Earl of Chester.
“Fred,” she finally said, her voice breaking a little because she knew if she did not ask now, she never would. “Please don’t do this to me. Please tell me the truth. I just can’t…I just don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand, Jules?”
“How you are this man and that one? How you could have…” Her shoulders hunched again.
The last thing she wanted was more tears or for him to run as he had last time she’d brought up the subject of the carriage accident, but she wasn’t sure she could stop either of those things from happening.
And she felt like now was the moment—if she didn’t ask, outright, she might never have another chance.
“What happened that night? You’ve never spoken of it. ”
“I—” he began but his voice cracked.
She took a step toward him and this time, she took his hand in hers. “Tell me. I know there’s more to it than the story. I know it. There’s too much to you for that stupid story to be all of it.”
“Don’t ask me to tell you this, Jules. You aren’t going to like what you hear.”
She could feel his pulse throbbing in the skin of his wrists. She could see the rapid rise and fall of his chest, his heart beating too hard. “I have already asked you. And I won’t take the words back now that I’ve gotten them out.”
He inhaled. And then he looked at her, his expression pained before it settled into decision. “I was at Hawthorne Hall that night,” he said finally and took in another sharp inhalation. “I was with the Baroness Van Austerleigh.”
Julianna felt those words like a jab to her stomach. She’d hoped that rumor might have been a fabrication. Understanding it wasn’t was more unsettling than she’d like it to be. “I see.”
“But I came home alone. I left when the storm began in earnest and…I…I came across the accident. I didn’t cause it. Your carriage was overturned. And so was another. Eva’s carriage. She was driving, not me.”
“Your stepmother? Fred! Why would you say it was you?”
She was thinking of Fred hemming her gowns because Eva couldn’t stand strangers. Of making her meals. Of the secret she knew he’d been keeping from her.
So it wasn’t as much of a surprise as it might have been when he said, “She was so sick, Jules. Her memory was gone. But I didn’t realize it. I was a stupid, stupid boy and I wasn’t paying attention when I should have been the man of the house. I should have known.”
“Fred—” She thought carefully about what she wanted to say then.
He hadn’t been a child, true, but he’d only been ten and eight.
Not quite an adult either. And she thought of Thomas when he’d come home from Crimea, how he’d tried to hide the cough at first. And then the shaking of his hands. “She may have been hiding it from you.”
The look on his face broke her heart. The way his features caved in on themselves and he looked stark and raw—stricken even—and his hand was clutching at his chest again as if he couldn’t breathe.
“She may have been. Jules, she couldn’t remember anything by that time. How could I not have known? How could I have not seen it for what it was?”
It wasn’t your fault, she nearly said but didn’t. She remembered how his clarity around Thomas’s death had been more comforting than any platitudes could be. And so she asked instead, “What is it exactly, that you’re blaming yourself for?”
“I wasn’t paying attention when I should have been and I left her alone.
” He wiped his palm down his face and closed his eyes.
“Even though I knew something wasn’t right.
She misplaced things and she couldn’t remember words but I thought she was just getting older.
I didn’t know, truly, the extent of it, but I should have.
If I hadn’t let the Baroness—” He shook his head.
“If I hadn’t had my own head stuck firmly up my arse, I would have understood more.
I would have stayed home. She took the carriage because I was out and there was no one to stop her. ”
“So you lied?”
There was that sharp inhalation of breath again. “Yes.”
“And you took her to the Continent to protect her?”
“She could never have withstood a trial. Or questioning by the magistrate. So, yes.”
Julianna knew what she wanted to say now. “Fred, you made the best decision you could with the information you had.”
“I made bad choices.”
“You may have only had bad choices to make.”
He looked as if he were about to say more, then shook his head.
“You have to understand—I was awful to her after my father died and I felt so guilty about it. It wasn’t her fault.
She hadn’t done anything but try to love me but I blamed her.
You wouldn’t remember, you were too young, but I was such an angry child. Lonely and scared.”
She had known that though, hadn’t she? She’d thought it herself just a few days ago. He must have been so lonely to have spent every day with the Farrow siblings.
She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close. He’d been a child when his father died. Of course he’d blamed the only parent he had. Of course he’d tried to protect Eva.
Of course.
It explained everything. It did not, however, make any of it simple.
“You must tell Thomas,” she said.
Her brother needed to know the truth. Although not even Julianna, who knew him so well, could say how he’d react. He’d been so strange these last few days.
“Not yet,” Fred said. “I don’t like to think of that night, let alone speak of it. Give me a little more time.”
Julianna nodded. Because in truth, she needed time to think and consider what Fred had told her too.
He’d lied about the cause of her parents’ death for a decade, for ten entire years, and the truth now didn’t just wash that away, no matter how much either of them might want it to.
After Robert there was nothing she hated so much as she hated a liar and now she was married to one.