Chapter Three
She should have been in the classroom with the other girls and their French tutor, but Julia found herself instead acting like the hoyden she used to be, crouching beneath the window she’d opened in Merritt’s office. It was ridiculous. Beneath her age and dignity.
It was also the perfect spot to both avoid Sax and hear everything that had brought him here.
Something was wrong, she was sure of it. She knew him. Down to his bones. She’d noticed the stiff way he held his shoulders, the tightness around his eyes that came and went as he spoke. She’d seen his sisters tense when his wife was mentioned.
She had to know.
The door opened in Merritt’s office. Julia crouched lower.
“What an incredible find this place was,” Sax said as he entered.
“We were lucky, in so many ways, when we came to Shoring,” Merritt said.
Sax didn’t reply at once. “Brilliant beginnings,” he said softly, after a moment.
Julia knew he was referring to the sign that Belmont had gifted Merritt on their wedding day. Her school might have been officially named for their mother, but Belmont’s unofficial moniker had stuck.
The Duchess of Belmont’s School for Brilliant Beginnings.
“I hope, with your help, that’s what I can give Edie and Hilde,” Sax was saying.
Merritt cleared her throat. “What is it, Saxon?”
He sighed. “Is it so obvious?”
Only to those that know you, Julia thought, even as her sister said nearly the same thing.
“Tell me first,” Sax said, quietly pleading. “Julia. Is she happy? Is she going to have a brilliant beginning?”
Julia held her breath, waiting for her sister’s answer.
“Hardly a beginning, as she’s already been through so much. But it will be as brilliant as I can make it,” Merritt vowed. “And yes, she is happy.” A pause. “Or she will be, once she allows it.”
Julia closed her eyes.
“Now, Sax,” Merritt said firmly. “You are going to have to tell me what the trouble is, if you want me to consider taking the girls.”
“I need a safe space for them, Merritt. Somewhere quiet. Amongst friends. Sheltered from Society. Sequestered from the scandals in the papers.”
“The first two I can confidently offer. But the latter two? I’m not sure anywhere in England is completely cut off from London gossip, and Shoring is courting the fashionable set.”
“They don’t seem to have attracted them yet,” Sax said bluntly. “Present company excepted, of course. But you know who I mean—the cruel, sharp-witted sect of the ton who will enjoy sharpening their claws on my innocent young sisters.”
“Then the trouble does not lie with the girls?”
“Oh, no. It lies entirely with me. My marriage is not what it should be, and scandal is about to break.”
“Not divorce?” whispered Meritt.
“Nearly as bad. The gossip will be harsh and rampant. I want the girls as far removed as possible.” He paused. “The marriage is to be annulled.”
For the second day in a row, Julia gasped out loud—and based on the sudden silence in the office, she’d been heard once more.
Bracing a hand on the wall, she crept away from the window, stood, and ran.
*
Rueful, Sax looked at Merritt and gestured toward the slightly open window. “It’s an old trick. One we used more than once, back in the day.”
Merritt grinned. “I don’t know which of you is worse.”
“I should go after her.” Only worry over his sisters kept him from dashing straight after Julia.
“We will take the girls,” Merritt said gently. “I won’t hide the truth from them, but I will help them face it.”
“Thank you.” Watching her with relief and gratitude, he stood. “Where?”
“She’s likely gone down to the theatre. Leave the house, follow the path to the left, and you’ll find the stairs.”
Another grateful look, and he hurried out. In moments, he was heading down a steep set of stairs, marveling at the theatre below and the vista beyond.
He slowed as he reached the stage. How ingeniously it had all been done. Carved out of the stone itself, someone had created a small, fully functioning theatre. How at home Julia must have felt here, how inspired she must have been.
“Julia? Are you here?” He wandered through the side areas and the interior work and storage rooms that burrowed into the cliff but could find no sign of her. Striding across the stage, he leaned on a stone balustrade and looked out.
There. Below stretched a narrow, rocky beach and a series of natural stone promontories that stretched out from the shore. Julia stood at the edge of the water, staring out to sea.
Sax found the second set of stairs that led down there. He was still several feet away when she heard his tread in the rocks and turned to face him, her expression stern.
“Annulled?” she asked harshly. “You said it was to be a real marriage. That, having made the choice, you would devote yourself to it.”
“I tried.” But what a na?ve fool he had been. “I meant to make the best of it. I didn’t want to punish her for not being who I really wanted. Who I truly loved. I couldn’t enter the marriage blaming her for not being you.”
The wind tugged at her hair, pulling a strand loose here, a lock there. “We made the decision together. I know that.”
“That doesn’t mean it didn’t tear me asunder,” he whispered.
“Your father was never going to relent.”
“No. Having the dukedom thrust upon him so suddenly, he was determined to prove his detractors wrong and make a good showing. He wanted Charles Montford’s money to help, even if it did come from chalk mines and lime kilns.”
“No, he wanted Eva Montford for a daughter-in-law, though she’d already had a failed Season. Even a scorned miner’s daughter was preferable to the local hoyden who had led you astray. The spitfire daughter of the neighbor he despised.”
“It was the only decision we could make.” Once his father had held Hilde’s recovery, her very health, over Sax’s head, there had been no other way.
The gold specks in her eyes caught the sun. “I was a wreck, Sax. I couldn’t sleep, eat, or even think. I was naught but a raw, walking wound.”
“I tried not to be.” He’d thought he’d done a decent job at hiding his pain, but he’d been wrong.
“I thought it might kill me, when you left. Then my father sold Merritt to Beving. Traded her for a racehorse, like she was a sack of goods.”
“But she found Belmont, eventually. They seem truly happy.”
Shivering, she turned away to stare at the sea again. “Yes. Things are good now. But she suffered for a long while, and I… I was left alone. So alone. I’d never felt so useless. Helpless. Hopeless. And then…”
Then she had become embroiled in her own scandal. Sax waited, unsure she would speak of it, absolutely sure he would never ask. He had no right. She would tell him, or she would not.
“Everything was so bleak. So dark.” She glanced askance at him.
“Perhaps you won’t believe me, but I prayed your marriage would work.
In the depths of my misery, I held on to the thought that you were at least content, and perhaps growing into a comfortable relationship.
” She turned and he saw both her curiosity and her anguish. “What happened?”
He lifted a shoulder. “I may have vowed not to resent her, but she did not make the same promise.”
He saw comprehension dawn.
“She had someone else, too?”
Sax nodded. “I suspect she spiked her own Season, hoping to be allowed to return to him.”
“Even so, that will be unlikely to get you an annulment. They are near impossible to obtain.”
She spoke flatly, without emotion. Sax hoped like hell it meant she was trying to keep herself from hoping.
He shook his head. “It was never going to work. She didn’t want marriage, she wanted adoration.
Worship.” He paused. “Actually, I am not sure if she truly wanted so much of my attention, or if it was just an excuse, but she declared herself unhappy often enough, no matter what I did. Our relations became cool.”
“The bishops are always biased toward keeping a marriage intact,” she said. “Unhappy or not.”
“There’s more. It wasn’t until my father passed and we moved to Riverton House that the real trouble began.”
“Real trouble?”
“She let several of the servants go when we moved in and hired others, including a new butler. But one of the dismissed maids approached me. She told me there were things I should know. Things she knew and had been sacked for.”
Julia frowned. “Did she ask for money?”
“No, but she asked for a reference. She said she’d been let go because she came from Bury St. Edward, the same town as Eva.
She said Pickett was not our new butler’s true name.
He was Martyn Deegan, the mayor’s ne’er-do-well son who had been chased off by Mr. Montford for courting his daughter.
The maid said everyone knew the mine owner wanted a title for Eva.
But Deegan bragged about town, telling his mates that he’d married the girl in secret.
” Sax sighed. “Like you, my first thought was perhaps the maid was after money. I thought Eva might have fired her because she tried to blackmail her. I told the girl I would look into it. I went in search of my wife—and found her and Pickett together in his room.”
“Together?”
“Yes.”
Julia closed her eyes. “It’s still not enough for an annulment.”
“I had him locked in the guardhouse. I sent Eva to her father, then I started looking into it. The maid was right. Somehow Deegan managed to obtain a special license. Montford tried to bury the evidence, but I have the witnesses to the ceremony. Their marriage was legal—which means that my marriage was not.”
Julia’s knees nearly gave way. Sax caught her as she staggered.
He gathered her close, but moved gently.
Held her tight without restricting her in any way.
Because she’d been through enough. Because he’d never once done anything to her that they hadn’t entered into together.
Because he’d always been her refuge—it was one of the foremost building blocks of his very being.
Because he loved her, so dearly, so deeply, and all he wanted was another chance to ignite all the sparks between them into a conflagration.
“You’re not married?” she whispered.
She stared up at him, more wary than a fox cornered by hounds. The gold flecks in her eyes sparkled through unshed tears.
They were his undoing. They always had been.
His good intentions shattered. His plans disintegrated. He pulled her in tight, and when she went pliant against him, all of his control shook, then snapped. He kissed her—hard, sensual, and demanding. So many months of missing her.
She made a sound, a low moan of surrender and need. It filled the hollow ache inside him. She tasted of summer, of laughter and play, of whispers, tears, confessions—every moment in a string of hundreds, spent together.
How had he given this up? Julia, pressed against him while he went wild at the taste of her, the feel and scent of her? Both of them clinging tight while the world fell away, leaving only the two of them—utterly complete.
She pressed closer, her hands rising to rake into his hair—before they abruptly dropped away. Before she pushed against him and stepped back.
Her chest heaved. Her hair lifted, tossed by the wind. But her eyes—they gleamed wild. “I cannot—We cannot—”
“Julia.” He said it softly. Soothingly. “I suppose I must consider myself still married, at least until the annulment becomes official. But you must know why I’ve come. How I’ve hoped—”
“Stop! Don’t you know how dangerous that is? Hope?” She clutched a hand to her chest.
“Are you… Julia, is something wrong?”
“Yes! Saints,” she gasped. “Damn! Oh—bollocks!”
He couldn’t help it. He laughed. God, he loved this woman.
“Laugh if you will! This is not amusing. You don’t know how hard it was for me to find a measure of calm.
To banish the whirlwind, find a place of peace and contentment inside so that I could even begin to contemplate moving on.
I’d finally achieved it! Convinced myself that I could start anew.
And now, here you are, stirring it all up again?
Thinking we can go back? We cannot go back. We are not the same. We’ve changed.”
“My feelings for you have not changed.”
“Of course they have!” She stopped to breathe deep.
“We are not young and innocent any longer.” She shook her head.
“My God, aren’t you angry? I am furious!
What we had was so beautiful, so lovely and pure.
Real love. The kind they write plays and operas and stories about.
And we gave it up! I want to rage against your father and mine.
Against the world that allowed us to be bullied and blackmailed.
And yes—I rage against you and even myself, even though we did what was right, for Hilde’s sake. ”
His shoulders slumped.
“More than that—I’m afraid,” she said, so low he almost missed it.
His head snapped up. “Don’t be afraid.”
“I cannot help it.” She looked suddenly haunted. “What if they were right? What if we were just two young, besotted fools?”
He reached for her again. “Courage. That’s all we need. Just a little while longer…”
“I don’t know if I have any left,” she said. “It would be so easy for you to destroy me.”
Her breathtaking honesty pierced him. “I won’t,” he said fiercely. Almost frantic, he turned away to pace along the water’s edge. He had to find a way to convince her, to find the right words.
Abruptly, he stopped, came back, and dropped to one knee before her. “A knight’s pledge, then. I make it to you. For all we once were to each other. For all that we will be to each other again. Somehow, we’ve been given another chance.” He scowled. “And this time, the world can go hang.”
“I want to believe you.” She’d begun to droop. “But the weight of it… the hope might kill me.”
“It won’t.” He snorted. “It cannot. There is not a woman alive today who has more strength and tenacity.”
It was the right thing to say. She straightened. Her shoulders went back.
“I won’t force myself on you, push you to decide, now or later. Take your time. Think about it. Come to me when you are ready.”
She nodded.
“I don’t ask you for promises. I don’t ask for anything but the chance to prove it to you—that this time we will get it right and be together, at last.”
She didn’t answer, only nodded again. He gripped her hands and kissed them both, then leaned in to press a soft kiss—a promise in itself—to her lips. “I will see you again before I depart for London.”