Chapter 1 #2
“Shall I kill him for you, Jules?” Fred asked.
Which made her laugh of all things. And once she began she couldn’t stop. She laughed until tears came down her face and she felt slightly hysterical.
“No need,” she finally managed when she’d caught her breath again. “He’s already dead. But Fred, I did mean it when I asked you to only ever be honest with me. I don’t think I could take being lied to again. Not by you.”
The footman removed their plates and brought roast chicken with mashed turnips and leeks dressed in butter. Plain again, as requested. She wished she could take some comfort in the food but she couldn’t. She could hardly eat a bite, although she tried anyway.
“What did Thomas say to you?” she eventually asked. “Before he left.”
“That if I hurt you again he would crawl back out of his grave and make me regret it. I meant what I said, Jules. He does love you.”
“I know.”
She did know. She loved him too, that was never the question.
Who she was outside of her brother and his illness, that was a question. As was: Who might she be when the men who surrounded her weren’t forcing her hand in one manner or another? And: What would life be like now if they’d trusted each other with the truth from the very start?
She looked at Fred then—properly looked.
At the fatigue still etched around his intensely blue eyes.
The grief he was trying to hold still inside himself.
The control he wore so rigidly it had become almost indistinguishable from the rest of him.
She didn’t think it was innate, that bizarre sense of rigidity he had now. Because it hadn’t been there before.
“Fred, are you unhappy coming back here?”
He blinked, as if the question were in some foreign tongue and he required a moment to translate it. But he finally said, “Yes.”
Her heart sank a little at that. Dorset was the place she loved most. And one her husband loathed. “You truly hate it so much?”
He took a sip of his wine. She knew he was stalling and she let him do it. She wanted him to be certain of what he said next.
“That’s a difficult question. I have good memories here.
And I would like, I think, to make more.
But as it stands Dorset is where the very worst moments of my life have been made into fodder for public consumption and I—” He shuddered.
“Do you know the Hawthornes are throwing a ball to honor those afflicted by the war in Crimea?”
Julianna shook her head. “I had no idea. But why would I? We certainly would never make the invitation list. Thomas and I were much too lowly for them to take notice of after Mother and Father died. But it is kindly of them, I suppose, to help those in need.”
He scoffed and she was surprised at the anger she heard there. “It is anything but kind. And you have been invited, Jules. You are the Countess of Chester now. Not that you’ll have occasion to go. I asked Gilbert to burn the damned invitation.”
“What?” Irritation spiked within her. He’d decided on a course of action without a word to her, again. “They are honoring men like Thomas. Of course we must go.”
He laughed once but it was a sound entirely without mirth. “Jules, why do you think they’re holding such a thing now? Four years after the war?”
“Because the war isn’t over for men like Tom. Nor for their families. Suffering doesn’t end, Fred, just because a General says so. Or because the papers are no longer printing dispatches.”
“They will cut you to shreds. It’s not charity, it’s—hell and damnation—it’s theatre. No. I won’t do it.”
“Are you afraid of scandal, Fred? You?”
“Jules—” His voice had a warning tone in it she did not care for. “You know what the papers will say. Christ, The Poisoned Quill says far too much already and I’ve no idea how they manage to know half of what they know. But this…absolutely not.”
“Then I’ll go without you.”
“Julianna, do not make this more difficult than it needs to be.”
“Fred, there is not a single thing about this situation in which we find ourselves that is not difficult.”
The candle flames on the table danced between them. Fred sliced into his chicken and ate it. The silence between them dragged on and on until she whipped her head up to look at him. “Wait a moment—are you ashamed of me? Is that why you don’t want to go?”
She’d never considered it before but now that she had, the thought tore through her exposing a vulnerability she had been unaware of until that very moment. She cared now what Fred thought of her and it was painful to think that he might not want her on his arm.
“Never. Don’t even think such a thing. I have no idea why you would.”
Her eyes fell down to the navy gown she was wearing. It was plain, certainly. Practical.
“Jules.” He watched her face as the storm of irritation melted into embarrassment.
“You’re a Countess now. You can have whatever dress or jewelry you want.
But—” He paused to gather his words. “But trust me when I say those are not the adornments you need. You’ll outshine any other person in that room even in a charwoman’s apron. ”
“No, you were right. We probably ought not to go.”
He narrowed his gaze at her then. “We will go. But first we’ll visit London because I won’t have you acting small now. Not you. And certainly not in the face of Isobel Hawthorne.”
And then she smiled. She couldn’t help herself, even though she knew it wasn’t the right reaction. Because Fred was still making their decisions, was still being overbearing. But—it felt different, she supposed, when he was being overbearing for her.
And honestly, Isobel Hawthorne was now and had always been a wretched woman.
“She is awful,” Julianna said, before another thought occurred to her.
One she couldn’t believe she hadn’t considered before.
“Will it be alright for you to go to the Hawthornes again?” She reached for his hand before she knew what she was doing.
“I’m sorry, I should have thought to ask before. ”
He looked down at their hands, clasped across the table, and he smiled. A genuine, dimple-filled smile that overtook his entire face and made her stomach swoop with desire. “I believe,” he said finally, “that it will be bearable if I was there with you.”
Something unfurled low in her stomach at those words, something more perilous and with a great deal more gravitas than just desire. She could feel the weight of it in his gaze, hanging heavy in the air between them.
Even hours later, long after she had climbed into bed, and long after the house had settled around her, she could still feel it, as if she’d carried it up the stairs and tucked it beneath the covers with her.