The Secret Life of Lady Julia (6 page)

Dorothea sniffed. “His Grace could not have chosen a woman more shockingly indiscreet! And what of his poor duchess? Kitty is a lovely person, even if she isn’t as flamboyant as her husband.”

Stephen smiled fondly at his sister. “Kitty is your friend, but I believe she is more accepting of her husband’s behavior than you are, Doe. Best to leave it be.” He got to his feet. “If you’ll excuse me, I have work to see to. Miss Leighton, try to convince her to come to the opera tonight. You used to love the opera, Doe—”

Dorothea shrugged and picked at the edge of her napkin. “That was before,” she murmured. “I loved it because Matthew enjoyed it so very much. It would be unbearable now.”

Julia’s heart went out to her. “We shall go shopping,” she said cheerfully, “or have pattern books brought in to us, so we’ll know exactly what to order to take to Vienna.”

Stephen sent her a grateful smile as he left the room.

J
ulia read to Dorothea while the rest of their party went out that evening, Lord Stephen to see to his official duties at the opera, and the servants who could be spared to the taverns and the parties on the streets.

“Is there any laudanum?” Dorothea asked, lying on the bed with a cool cloth on her forehead. “It’s so hot and my headache is unbearable.”

“None,” Julia said firmly. “But we have chamomile tea or some feverfew for your head.”

Dorothea regarded her fiercely. “That’s not medicine! I will never be able to rest. We must find a doctor, get some laudanum at once, I say.”

Julia ignored the order and crossed the room to dip a cloth in cool water. She bathed Dorothea’s temples, but Dorothea snatched the kerchief and flung it aside peevishly. “It doesn’t help!” she said.

Julia felt the pain of Dorothea’s endless grief, but she could not give in. Dorothea was dependent on the drug, and Stephen feared it was making it impossible for his sister to recover from her loss. He had instructed Julia that Dorothea was forbidden to have any more laudanum.

Julia herself knew the harm it could do. Her own mother had slipped into the drug’s dangerous embrace for weeks after James died. Laudanum dragged its victims into a sleepy twilight, where they lived without pain or emotion of any kind, only half alive. She knew that Stephen hoped good company and new places would replace Dorothea’s craving for the drug and improve her spirits, but her longing for laudanum continued.

She remembered Dorothea as a young bride, vibrant and witty, her eyes bright, the life of every party she attended. Now she lay in the dark, dull, listless, and afraid. She rubbed Dorothea’s wrists, anointed her temples with attar of roses, and wondered if she might resort to laudanum too, if she lost Jamie, or a beloved husband.

She would probably never marry now, or be any man’s beloved. That was a pain and a pleasure that she would never know.

“I cannot rest!” Dorothea sobbed, clutching Julia’s hand on a fierce grip.

“I’ll open the window, let the cool air in,” Julia said. “Try to sleep.”

“No! Leave it closed. The air smells of sweat and garlic and piss, and the street is too noisy. I won’t have the window open, d’you hear?” Dorothea said sharply, moving restively on the sheets.

“Then I shall read to you,” Julia said calmly.

Gradually, as Julia read, Dorothea drifted off. She moaned in her sleep, her brow furrowed as her ghosts haunted her.

At last the clock struck eleven, and the door opened with a soft creak. Dorothea’s maid tiptoed in, back from her night out. “I’ll keep an eye on her now. You get some sleep,” she said kindly, and Julia went to her own rooms, and opened the door of the small antechamber where her son slept in a cot near his nurse.

He opened his eyes and smiled at her, waving his arms to be lifted, and she picked him up and crossed to open the window, letting the cool night air flow over them both. There were fireworks bursting in the sky above they city, great blossoms of red and yellow, and she watched the colors reflecting in the baby’s wide eyes and against his soft flesh. He reached out a chubby hand, and she smiled and kissed the soft curls on his head.

Jamie was her whole world. She had lost everything but gained her son, and he was enough.

She hugged him tightly, and he made a soft exclamation, his fingers coiling in her hair. She kissed him again, breathed him in. She would devote herself to him, be father, mother, and friend, protect him with her life if she had to. On days when she wanted to break down and cry for all she’d lost, she had Jamie to console her, the miracle—never the mistake.

She gazed up at the fireworks. Where was Thomas Merritt now? Far from here, no doubt, unaware that he had a son. He’d probably forgotten
her
altogether. Jamie cooed as a new burst of scarlet petals filled the sky, and Julia smiled down at him.

He was her son, and no one else’s.

T
he coach came to a stop on a hill just outside Paris as the fireworks began.

Donovan whistled as he looked out the window. “Look at that!” he said, staring at the colored lights bursting over the dark city. “We should have stayed an extra day or two, had some fun.”

Thomas barely glanced at the sky. He wasn’t interested. He wanted to be gone from the city, on the way to somewhere new, someplace that might offer him—well, whatever it was his restless soul was looking for. Even he didn’t know. He was beginning to fear he’d spend his life wandering aimlessly from place to place, never finding a home. It made him angry, irritable.

“We have work to do,” he said to Donovan. “And if we want a decent place to stay in Vienna, we’d best get there before everyone else.”

“I know, I know,” Donovan sighed. “The longer we wait, the more a place to stay will cost, if you can’t find a landlady to charm into letting us stay for free.”

Thomas knocked on the ceiling of the coach. But the coach didn’t move. The coachman was probably watching the fireworks, couldn’t hear over the booms and whistles. “We will need to appear to be entirely respectable and start forming social connections as soon as we arrive, make friends, earn the trust of people who count, and they’ll provide us invitations to the best parties, the finest balls.”

“And access to the best jewels,” Donovan added eagerly. “To be delicately plucked from the prettiest necks, wrists, and earlobes.”

Thomas glanced at the grinning face of his valet, glowing devilish red for a moment in the light of the fireworks. Donovan was starting to enjoy this life. He liked stealing from the rich who had been his masters all his life. For Thomas, it was a matter of survival and nothing more, but Donovan was in danger.

“Once we are done in Vienna, we’ll both find a quieter life,” Thomas said firmly. He would take just enough to send Donovan home, then he’d gather the last shreds of his honor and dignity and face what was left of the ruins of his own life, make some decisions.

Vienna was simply one last, great chance to make his fortune by stealing it. He tried to see it as revenge—since that’s what made it necessary for him to stoop to stealing in the first place—revenge on his brother, his duplicitous sister-in-law, the society that shunned him without bothering to ask for his side of the tale. But revenge didn’t make this life any more palatable. Of course, if his brother were here at this very moment, with their father’s gold watch in hand, the familiar ruby pin in his cravat, his signet ring on his finger, and his duplicitous wife with him, draped in his mother’s jewels, Thomas knew he wouldn’t blink, wouldn’t hesitate. He’d take it all, leave them naked and bleeding, the way they’d left him.

He knocked again, more forcefully this time, and the coach lurched grudgingly on, the driver’s gaze torn from the fireworks as the last one fizzled over the silver ribbon of the Seine.

“Then are we to have no fun at all?” Donovan grumbled.

“Later,” Thomas replied. “First, we make our fortune.”

Chapter 7

Vienna, September 14, 1814

“L
ook, Dorothea, it’s Vienna at last,” Julia cried, struggling with the latch on the coach’s dust-dimmed window.

But Dorothea was asleep, worn out by hours—weeks—of jolting over rough roads. She was pale and sweat had pasted her hair to her forehead. The dust kicked up by the horses had folded itself into creases in her skin, left a coating on her skirt and bonnet. Julia knew she looked every bit as travel-worn herself, and wished for a moment she had a mirror.

“Almost there,” she murmured, and turned to stick her head out the window. They had been through five countries in a month, including France, Switzerland, Germany, Bavaria, and Austria. As much as Dorothea had hated the long hours of travel and the hardships of the road, Julia had loved them. She didn’t miss England at all, while Dorothea constantly bemoaned the lack of English comforts, manners, and food. Julia had hidden her enthusiasm for Dorothea’s sake, but she adored the dark forests of Germany, the glorious peaks of the Swiss Alps, and the ripe golden fields of France. The signs of twenty years of war had been visible too—deep scars across the landscape, burned villages, ruined manors. The people they passed on the road and met at the inns showed the ravages of war as well, their gazes narrow and suspicious as they watched the strangers pass.

The wayside inns had been rough places, the food coarse and unfamiliar, but the British ambassador, Lord Castlereagh, had been in a hurry to reach Geneva, where his wife Emily was waiting to join the delegation. Then, he wished to get to Vienna as quickly as possible, to set up his embassy and take the measure of the place before the conference officially began.

Dorothea had been terrified by the rumors of bandits on the roads, and insisted that Stephen give her a pistol, which he refused to do. He gave it to Julia instead, discreetly and out of Dorothea’s sight, and she kept it in her reticule under the seat.

He showed her how to use the weapon while Dorothea napped one afternoon. “Not that we aren’t as safe as could be, with a detachment of troops riding with us,” he said. “I just don’t want Doe to get so frightened she shoots a farmer, or Lord Castlereagh’s valet.”

“Aren’t you worried that I might shoot someone by accident?” she’d asked.

“You hardly strike me as the nervous sort, Miss Leighton. Still, handle it with care, won’t you?”

Since then she had only considered using the weapon once. Lord Castlereagh’s infamous half brother, Lord Charles Stewart, joined the party with Lady Castlereagh at Geneva. He was a brash soldier who had fought bravely on the Peninsula with Wellington and was now officially in charge of the delegation’s security, and other matters, which weren’t discussed. Stephen introduced Lord Stewart to Dorothea, but Julia had noted that he was much more interested in
her
. She read the knowing look in Stewart’s dark eyes, the way he smirked when he caught her eye. He’d been in London during her scandal, and of course he knew the gossip.

From that moment, she’d felt his eyes following her, had read speculation and obscene invitations in his gaze. She was careful to avoid him, kept her door locked and stayed away from Stewart as much as possible.

One morning as she was supervising the provisioning of Dorothea’s coach, he caught her unawares. She turned a corner and nearly walked into his broad chest.

“Lord Stewart, I didn’t see you there!” She’d gasped, her stomach rising into her throat as he caught her arms. Instinctively, she stepped back, and retreated right into the side of the coach, trapped.

“I’ve been wanting a word, my dear Julia,” he said. He reached out a hand, drew his finger over her cheek. She turned away, felt sickness and fear rise in her throat. “I think we should become better acquainted, don’t you?”

If she had still been an earl’s daughter, he would not have dared to touch her, or to stand so close, or to make such a suggestion, but she no longer had the protection of a title, or even respectability. She fixed him with her best lady-of-the-manor glare, which once would have left him cowering. It had no effect at all now.

“I have duties to see to, my lord. I have very little free time to converse with—”

He laughed. “Oh, I’m not interested in conversation. I’m interested in visiting your room tonight—or you could come to mine if you prefer,” he said boldly.

Fear turned to fury. She raised her chin, met his eyes. “Please excuse me at once,” she said coldly.

“Of course, forgive me—you like to be seduced, don’t you? You like a crowd nearby, the thrill of getting caught adds spice for you, doesn’t it?”

She tried to push past him, but he blocked her way, put one hand on the side of the coach, gripped her jaw in the other, pushing his mouth against hers. She turned her head away from the obscene kiss, shoving at him, but he was like a rock, unmovable. He pressed against her, grinding his erection into her hip.

“No!” she said, shoving harder, using her fists to pound on his chest, swinging at his head. He laughed as he ducked the blow, caught her fist in his.

“There’s no need to be like that. We both know you like it. Come now, lift your skirts for me.” He pawed her breasts, thrust his hand between her legs. Panic seized her. She felt the pistol in her pocket and jammed it into his belly.

He looked down in surprise, then met her eyes, his lust extinguished. “What’s that?” he asked, but she could see he knew exactly what it was.

She jabbed harder, and he grunted, then stepped back at last. “If you ever come near me again, I shall not hesitate to shoot you.”

He forced a smile. “So you prefer it rough, do you? If you like games, I’m willing to play—”

“Julia?” Stephen came around the coach, his gaze swiveling between Julia and Lord Stewart. He took in the man’s heavy breathing and her disheveled hair. “Doe is looking for you,
Miss Leighton
,” he said sharply, his eyes hard, his suspicions about her clear.

Julia felt her skin heat. He hadn’t seen the gun, had simply imagined that she would— Her anger flared again.

“If she is ready to go, the coach is prepared for her,” she said drawing herself up. She felt the little pistol in her hand. She should shoot both of them for the insult, first Stewart, then Stephen bloody Ives. If she were a man—like James, for example—she could draw off her glove, call them both out with a slap, and defend her honor.

But she was only a woman, and a ruined woman at that, forever to be regarded with suspicion. She’d seen it in Lady Castlereagh’s eyes, and even in the eyes of her ladyship’s servants. She put the weapon back into her pocket and turned away, moving woodenly toward the inn to find Dorothea.

“Is there a problem, my lord?” she heard Stephen ask, his tone brittle.

She heard Lord Stewart laugh again. “Not at all. I was telling
Miss
Leighton how nice it is to have a pretty face on the journey,” he drawled. “As I’m sure you’ve noticed yourself by now.”

Julia pressed a hand to her hot cheek at the innuendo and kept walking.

After that she’d kept the pistol loaded and made certain she was never without a maid close by when she was not with Dorothea. She did not even glance at Lord Stewart when she was in his presence, but she felt his gaze crawling over her.

But now they were here, in Vienna, and Stewart was riding far ahead with his half brother, the ambassador.

She held her bonnet against the sluggish breeze and stared at the city, still distant, but close enough that the church spires were visible, floating above the golden cloud of dust. The channels of the River Danube wove through the landscape like dark ribbons. It was early afternoon and the sky was a clear and cloudless blue against the dusty earth. It was impossible not to feel joy.

She took a deep breath, trying to catch the perfume of the city itself, the signature scent of the place, but it was still too far away, and all she could smell was dust.

Stephen rode up alongside. “Vienna at last,” he said, his eyes on the city. He had been cool and correct and distant since the incident at the inn, nearly silent during meals.

“How marvelous it looks,” Julia replied.

“But the Danube isn’t blue,” he said. The wind blew a lock of fair hair over his forehead, making him look young and wistful as well as handsome on his tall black horse.

“No, it’s more purple, perhaps, or even—” She bit her lip.

Indigo, like his eyes, as he shaded them against the sun.
Like Thomas Merritt’s eyes had been by starlight, though they were gray in candlelight. She turned away to look at the river again.

“At least it isn’t the greenish brown of the Thames,” he finished for her, studying her face. Her cheeks were hot and she was sure she was blushing.

“A real bath,” he murmured.

“Pardon?” She looked up at him in surprise, and wondered if she had dust on her cheeks. She resisted the urge to wipe her hand over her skin, but he smiled, the first genuine smile he’d given her in days. The thrill of arrival was contagious, it seemed.

“I mean that’s what I’m looking forward to when this journey finally comes to an end.”

She drew a breath. “Oh, yes. Dorothea will also be pleased to arrive. She has heard that Lady Castlereagh has insisted on bringing an English cook.”

“She has indeed. What would you have him make for you?” Stephen asked.

Julia rolled her eyes. “Scones with clotted cream—though I hear that Vienna is famous for apple strudel and chocolate confections.”

“So they say,” he laughed. “Are you game to try the local delicacies, then?”

“I have heard the way to know a city best is to taste it.” Once you knew it by sight and scent, of course.

“I think you may be right. Who could understand Paris without tasting the bread, or the chicken cooked with apples and garlic?”

“Or the snails,” she teased, and wondered if she were being too forward. “And the cheese, and the butter,” she continued quickly, aware that she was babbling. “Though English strawberries are much sweeter than the French ones.”

He smiled at her as if they were meeting at tea, conversing as equals, and she was still an earl’s daughter, a lady of consequence. She lowered her eyes. It was his training as a diplomat, she thought, to give the speaker his attention, encourage them to talk, while he remained cool and charming. She ran a hand over her cheek after all, felt the grit on her skin. Yes, a bath would be very nice indeed.

“I know Dorothea is looking forward to a good English breakfast,” she said, “and a proper cup of tea made in a china pot.”

“We shall do our best to give her all the comforts of London, but we’ll have to encourage her to ‘taste the city,’ as you put it, to try new things while she’s here. I wish she’d see this as you do, as an adventure. She has not enjoyed the journey.”

“Not at all,” Julia agreed. “But we’re here at last, and no doubt she’ll find things more pleasant when she is settled. I shall do all that I can to make her comfortable.”

His smile faded and he nodded crisply, the moment of connection passed, and she was merely a servant once again, with responsibilities to see to. She drew her head in, focusing on Dorothea, who had yet to wake, and he rode on, spurring his horse to a gallop and disappearing in a cloud of dust.

Julia could not resist one more look at the distant city, which was coming closer by the minute. Her toes curled inside her half boots. Even if she must tread the careful path of a servant, she would savor every moment of her time in Vienna.