Chapter 2
Chapter
Julianna’s fingers tightened on The Poisoned Quill until it creased. She’d read it quickly while Fred showed the Inspector to the study and now her lungs felt too small. Bile rose from her stomach to her throat.
She could not quite believe the audacity of it. Nor the viciousness. How they had managed to insinuate that she was both a whore and a collaborator and an innocent victim all at once.
But The Quill wasn’t the only reason she was upset. She had a sinking feeling that she’d just been as terrible to her husband as this stupid scandal rag had been to her. Disregarding what he wanted to keep private. Trying to force his hand, by calling him a coward of all things.
As soon as the Inspector left she sat across from him and caught his gaze.
“Jules—” he began but she held up her hand for him to stop.
“No, Fred. Let me speak first, please. I’d like to say I am sorry. I should not have called you a coward. It was wrong of me. There is something bothering you, obviously, and I hope you’ll tell me when you’re ready. But I won’t force you.”
The image of Fred’s face as he’d said the word sacrosanct was replaying over and over in her mind. It made him look like…well, it made him look like a man in love. With her.
She wasn’t ready to say those words aloud. She was hardly ready to think them. But she knew they were there nonetheless, hovering around the edges of her consciousness. A flower almost ready to bloom.
Fred inhaled sharply and then let that breath out. She saw his shoulders relax and his jaw unclench. The movement made his dimples disappear but it was a loss she could bear for the time being. She preferred the ones that showed themselves when he smiled anyway.
“Thank you, Jules,” he said and she heard the emotion in his voice. It made her want to do ridiculous things like wrap him in some kind of protective cloth to keep him safe. Because he was…sacrosanct…to her too.
She nodded, thinking of Robert Rothchild again and how she’d felt, standing there on the Weymouth road, watching him and his wife. She knew they were different men, he and Fred, but— “Just promise me, please, that whatever it is can’t harm us now.”
“I promise,” he said.
“And that you will tell me, one day, if you can. I truly don’t want to force your words before you are ready but I hate secrets, Fred. Truly.”
“I promise, Jules.”
She exhaled. “Wonderful. Now then, what are we to do about this?” she said briskly, holding up the paper and looking around, as if The Quill employed a caravan of spies they’d stashed in the corner of the sitting room.
“Leave it to the Inspector.”
“He did tell us to do something out of character,” she reminded him.
Fred was studying her. “I feel as if the look on your face ought to have me worried.”
“No need. But I do think we ought to begin throwing stones at foxes. Metaphorically.”
“I beg your pardon?”
His eyebrows shot up to his hairline and she squelched her smile.
“I am going to protect what is mine, Fred. They might try to make me small by attacking my love for my brother and my marriage, but I am not going to let them. I am going to change into one of my new gowns and then you and I are going for a walk. In the most public place we can find. I am going to show them what you mean to me. That you are mine. That you are sacrosanct to me too.”
Fred’s brow furrowed in confusion. “How do you mean to do that?”
“We are going to visit Rotten Row, with our heads held high. Don’t you see? They want us to be afraid and quiet. They want us to hide so they can take shots at us at their leisure, but that is not going to happen.”
“Jules, no. You think it will be easy to thumb your nose at the presses, but trust me it is not. I have lived with sneers and rumors and degradations for a decade and they will wear you down. They will hurt you. And I cannot allow that.”
She reached for him then. “I hate seeing you hurt, too. You understand that, don’t you? I hate being watched and attacked. And I hate more than anything that they attack you through me. I won’t just stand idly by and let them. There will always be a fox in the henhouse if we do.”
“We aren’t standing idly by. We have hired the Inspector.”
“Who I’m certain will get to the bottom of this. But, Fred, do you not wish to stop running? Is it not time?”
“Jules—no.”
She lifted the paper again. “I think we must. Or, I must. If they want spectacle I will give them one. But it will be on my terms and no one else’s.
I’d like to show them who and what we are.
Which is happy, Fred. Together.” Her confidence faltered for a moment when she saw his eyes widen in alarm.
“I, at least, am happy when I am with you. I couldn’t speak for you—”
“I am.” He cut her off, his voice gone raspy. “I am happy with you, Jules.”
She placed her hand on his chest, able to breathe again at his admission. “Then let’s face this together. You are the feared Earl of Chester, surely you won’t let a little bit of ink on paper quell you?”
Fred closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, she could see he’d made up his mind.
“Alright,” he said.
“Alright to which part?”
“We’ll go and promenade if you’d like. And then we’ll return to Dorset and attend this ball while the Inspector does his work.
But, Jules, if they have sharpened their knives for you, I will not hesitate to make them pay when we know who is behind this.
I’ve long believed the best option was to burn The Poisoned Quill down to the ground and I see no reason now to set that notion aside. ”
Julianna swallowed hard, suppressing her smile. “Good. I’ll stand beside you and light the match. And as for this”—she held the paper up as if it were some disgusting thing—“this you certainly can burn.”
Fred’s eyes flicked to The Quill and a smile spread across his face. “With pleasure, my lady.”
Rotten Row was already thick with company when they arrived, just as planned. Fred was nervous, although he wished he wasn’t. He swallowed back his fears as he and Julianna alighted from their carriage and stepped foot on the path.
The pale spring sun struck the ribbon of churned sand in front of them, the impressions of boots and hoofprints everywhere he looked.
It was typical to ride of course, and Fred would have preferred it.
He loved to ride and he’d have felt a great deal less exposed if he’d been mounted.
He couldn’t help but think of his matched Cleveland bays that would have been beautiful on a day like today, their warm, red-brown bodies brilliant in the light.
But they weren’t here to be covered by a carriage.
They were here to be seen. So they walked.
He felt eyes on them the moment they stepped onto the edge of the path. This was the portion of Rotten Row reserved for those on foot—a narrow strip of ground where London Society made and ruined reputations. He breathed in deeply and tightened his grip on Julianna’s arm.
He’d worn one of his best day suits for the occasion, a dark charcoal wool, immaculately pressed, the cut severe and perfect for his frame. The coat fit him so well it was almost uncomfortable, certainly not loose enough for an easy gait. And he was sweating beneath it, despite the mild day.
But this outing wasn’t about ease, it was about, as his wife had said, casting stones at foxes. So he’d outfitted himself to do exactly that—a deliberate announcement of his wealth and power—and the unassailability that came along with them. He could only hope it worked.
Beside him, Julianna wore a gown of a deep, clear blue.
Like his, it was exactingly cut with a bodice that was fitted cleanly to her figure before widening into a modest hoop skirt.
It was a simple, elegant gown with unbroken folds that moved beautifully when she walked.
It was, he thought, perfect. Like his wife.
She looked every inch a Countess. And not one who wore the title as some heavy ornamentation, but rather one of those rare creatures who could carry a coronet so lightly it held all the more weight in the eyes of the spectators. And spectators were everywhere.
It was subtle at first, how heads turned to watch them pass.
A barouche slowed just enough that its occupants might look without appearing to stare.
A groom tightened his hold on a restless gray whose sidestep forced Fred and Julianna closer to the walkers’ edge.
Two young men broke off their conversation mid-laugh as they passed, only to resume it in lowered tones behind gloved hands.
Fred felt the weight of all those eyes on him. He’d known this sensation before—that prickling certainty of being the most interesting scandal within a quarter mile—but he had never experienced it with Julianna at his side. The old instinct rose in him at once: to withdraw, deflect, disappear.
But she’d asked him to be here with her, so he swallowed and kept on, pressing her a little bit more closely to his side as they walked.
“Are you feeling steady, Jules?” he whispered to her, squinting slightly in the sun.
“Never steadier,” she answered and grinned. That smile was probably made up of at least half bravado, but he loved it on her all the same.
Until the first pair of ladies they passed tilted their parasols just enough to permit their inspection. One of them smiled, quick and cruel, and he held his breath at whatever was coming next.
“Well,” the first murmured to her companion, not quite softly enough, “I suppose silk does wonders for anything.”
Fred heard the words clearly, just as he was meant to.
As did Julianna. And then he felt as if he could hear every sound in London in excruciating detail: A dog barking somewhere nearby.
The clatter of horse’s hooves. The splash of someone or something tipping into the Serpentine. And whispers, whispers everywhere.