Loving Julia Read online

  “Yer the one t’will be the worse for, ya slimy fat slug,” Jewel spat.

  The door was closing in her face again. Bloody insufferable idiot! She had a right to her say just like anyone else! Furious, she threw herself against the swirls of intricately carved oak.

  The personage, obviously not expecting a direct attack, was caught by surprise. The door swung open, Jewel stumbled into a great hall ablaze with candles, her feet slipping and sliding on the highly polished marble floor before coming to rest on a creamy carpet patterned with peach flowers. Her wet feet made dirty marks on the pristine wool and she quickly stepped back onto the marble, her eyes wide as she looked around her at the soaring entryway.

  “Here now, you little slut, get out of here! George, lend a hand here!” The personage came up behind her, grabbing her by her upper arm.

  “Ya take yer damned hands offa me, ya bloody old fart!” Jewel screeched, scrambling to regain her balance as the man swung her around. He thrust her toward the door, which another, younger man in an equally magnificent suit held open. Jewel felt herself being propelled over the slippery floor, then drew back her foot and kicked the personage in the shin with all her might.

  “Bitch!” he yelled, dropping his hold on her arm and dancing on one leg. “You’ll pay for this, you little … Henry, Thomas!”

  He was obviously summoning reinforcements. He snatched at Jewel, but caught only her shawl, which he regarded with horror and immediately dropped to lie in a soggy puddle on the floor. Meanwhile, Jewel darted away, her wet feet sliding on the marble so that she had to save herself from falling by catching the curved arm of an elegant gilt chair. She took refuge behind it as two other finely dressed men ran into the hall from different directions.

  “Get her!” the personage directed, and the four men converged on the chair. Shifting from foot to foot so as to be ready for whatever mayhem ensued, she glared at them over the chair’s striped silk back. The personage was limping slightly as he closed in on her, arms outstretched like a wrestler coming at his opponent. Jewel smiled grimly at the sight; she had always been one to enjoy a good mill.

  “Come on then, buckos, and I’ll ’ave meself a piece of each of ya!” The cockiness of her words matched the gleam in her eyes. Not for nothing had she grown up in the slums of Whitechapel. She would give them a fight they’d not soon forget …

  “I assume that you can explain this, uh, comedy, Smathers?”

  The drawled words dropped like icicles from above. Their effect on the four men was galvanizing. They snapped instantaneously to attention, eyes wide with apprehension as they turned collectively to look up at a lean blond gentleman clad in impeccable black evening clothes.

  He stood near the top of the elegant staircase that curved down into the hall, one hand on the highly polished balustrade as he surveyed the scene below with cold detachment. But his apparent disinterest was not shared by the equally blonde beauty standing one step above him.

  “Really, Sebastian, just look at the hall! There’s water everywhere! Smathers…. Oh, lud, Sebastian, he has a-a-a trollop in here!”

  “I ain’t no trull!” Jewel interjected, belligerence flashing in her eyes as she glared at the pair on the stairs.

  “Sebastian, she spoke to me! A female of that stamp! Oh, lud, I fear I am going to faint!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Caroline. Even you could not faint merely because a common wench spoke to you.”

  The words, uttered in the iciest voice Jewel had ever heard, were withering. The blonde woman’s eyes flickered once, and then she folded her lips together and was silent. But as twin flags of color rose in her cheeks, she glared at all those in the hall who had witnessed her discomfiture and Jewel knew who would pay for her embarrassment.

  “Well, Smathers?” The blond gentleman regarded the little group below with cold distaste. The only apparent change in his expression was a slight lifting of his eyebrows. Jewel was surprised to see that the small gesture caused Smathers, the magnificent personage, to sweat.

  “I’m very sorry for the commotion, your lordship. This … female,” his eyes flamed for a second on Jewel, “forced her way in. I was just going to have the footmen throw her out.”

  “That seems to be the proper course of action,” the gentleman said. Apparently losing interest now that all was on its way to being resolved, he turned back to Caroline and offered her the support of his arm. “Continue with it.”

  “Yes, your lordship.” There was relief and grim satisfaction in Smathers’ voice, and vengeance in the look he turned on Jewel. He and the three footmen moved toward her purposefully.

  Jewel waited until they were close before shoving the chair toward them with all her might. Its carved feet screeched over the marble floor, caught on the edge of the carpet, and overturned with a crash. Smathers swore and grabbed for Jewel, but she had already darted between the two footmen, and was dodging behind a small table decorated with a ridiculously large blue and white vase filled with cream-colored roses.

  “Oh, lud, have a care for the vase! It’s a Meissen!” The screech came from Caroline, who had only managed to descend one stair on the gentleman’s arm. Her blue eyes, large with horror, were on the vase, which tottered dangerously on its stand. Jewel, seized by an inspiration, snatched up the vase and held it high over her head.

  “C’mon, then,” she said to her pursuers with relish. “An’ I’ll smash this thing to smithereens.”

  Smathers and the footmen stopped in their tracks, their eyes darting fearfully from the uplifted vase to Jewel’s determined face to the horrified one of the lady above.

  “Really, Sebastian, can’t you do something? This is dreadful! Suppose our guests arrive early, and chance to see this—this disgraceful display?”

  “Your guests, my dear—not ours. Nevertheless, you have a point. Gossip is so wearying, is it not?” The gentleness of his words in no way robbed them of their bite. Caroline colored furiously.

  “You would know far more about that than I, my lord,” she flared, then immediately looked frightened. “I didn’t mean…”

  “I know precisely what you meant, Caroline.” The boredom was back in his voice. He turned his attention to the tableau in the hallway. “Smathers, I had not noticed how you had aged. How remiss of me! Removing a scrawny brat who should not have been allowed to enter in the first place would at one time not have been beyond your capabilities. If you wish to retire, you have only to tell me. I will arrange for a pension to be paid you.”

  “No, no, my lord,” Smathers gasped, his eyes slits of fury as they darted toward Jewel. “I …”

  “And who ya be callin’ a scrawny brat?” Jewel interrupted furiously, her eyes flashing up at the gentleman on the stairs. “I be just as good as you, you … you man-milliner!”

  In tune to the concerted gasp of the assemblage, the gentleman’s eyes focused on Jewel. His eyebrows rose again as he surveyed her from head to toe with slow deliberation. Despite her seething indignation, she had to fight an urge to squirm beneath that dispassionate regard.

  “Shut your mouth, you little twit! That be the Earl of Moorland you’re addressing!” This horrified hiss came from a footman. Jewel lowered the vase fractionally, her eyes widening with interest as she stared at the gentleman on the stairs. The Earl of Moorland, was he? He didn’t look like no earl. He should have been bigger, older, with a leonine head and rugged features. This man was blond, lean and blindingly beautiful, with the flawlessly molded face of one of the Lord’s archangels. He was far too beautiful to be a man, let alone an earl. Jewel glared at him just to reinforce her own immunity to his attraction.

  “If ya be the earl, then ya be the very gent I’ve got business with,” she declared, moving from behind the table. Just in case, she kept a hold on the vase and a wary eye out for any sudden movement by Smathers or the others.

  “You have business with me?” the earl asked ever so gently. “Somehow I doubt it.”

  “Oh, do ya? Well, I
got somethin’ to be delivered with Mr. Timothy Stratham’s compliments to the Earl o’ Moorland, if that’s really who ya be. I must say, ya don’t look much like no earl.” Jewel regarded the outrageously handsome man on the stairs with stark suspicion.

  “Really, Sebastian, can’t you make her leave? The guests will be arriving….”

  “Why don’t you go back upstairs and have Hanks pin up your hair again, Caroline? The left side is falling a bit, I fancy.” He didn’t even look at her as he said it, but something in his tone caused the lady to whiten.

  “You are cruel, Sebastian,” she whispered, and with that breathy murmur she turned and disappeared into the upstairs hallway.

  When she was gone, the earl turned his attention to the scene below him. “Smathers, I am very disappointed in the way you have handled this. I will not require your further assistance, I believe. And the rest of you may resume your usual duties as well.”

  Smathers’ face became an impassive mask. He bowed, muttered, “Yes, my lord,” and shooing two of the footmen before him, vanished into the nether regions of the house. The third footman assumed a statue-like position at the foot of the stairs. From the expression on his face, he was now deaf and blind to all proceedings.

  “So you have something for the Earl of Moorland from Timothy Stratham, do you?” the earl said slowly as he descended the stairs. “You may accompany me. George, something to wrap around this creature, if you please. She seems to be dripping all over the floor.”

  “I ain’t no creature, and there be no need to turn up yer fancy nose jest because a body’s wet,” Jewel said resentfully as the footman vanished to do his master’s bidding. “It be rainin’ outside, in case ya ain’t stuck yer nose out all day. Anybody’d be wet if they’d stood out in it, includin’ your bleedin’ lordship.”

  “How colorfully you express yourself,” the earl murmured, and Jewel had to squash an urge to hurl the vase right at that too beautiful face.

  Then the footman came back carrying a towel and a blanket, and at the earl’s nod offered them to Jewel. Figuring it was now safe to put down the vase, she did so, and accepted the articles with poor grace. The earl was already walking away from her down a hall that led toward the back of the house. She trailed him until he stopped outside a closed door, while the expressionless footman followed her.

  “Kindly wrap the towel around your hair and the blanket around your body, if you please. I object to having puddles of water formed in my office.”

  That cool, disinterested voice aroused the most violent emotions in Jewel’s breast. She wanted to do something outrageous, to shriek and claw and scream. But she didn’t. Something about the elegant, upright carriage, the lean, powerful body in its immaculate black evening clothes, the icy blue eyes and perfectly carved features discouraged her.

  “At once, if you please.”

  Jewel glared at him. He looked back at her out of eyes as blue as the sky on a cloudless summer day. His hair, a silvery gold that most women would have killed for, gleamed angelically in the candlelight. His brow was high and broad beneath the shining crown of hair; his nose was straight and elegant, his mouth finely chiseled with the lower lip slightly fuller than the upper. His cheekbones were high, his jaw square, and his skin tone was a fair golden bronze. Without a doubt, he was the most handsome man Jewel had ever seen in her life. Far too handsome to inspire fear—and yet there was something about his stance, about the expression in those celestial eyes, that discouraged her from arguing further. In a sort of compromise with the urgings of her more belligerent side, Jewel sniffed expressively before wrapping the blanket around her body. Its warmth was comforting, although she knew her comfort had been the last thing on his mind.

  “George will take your, er, hat.”

  Jewel looked up sharply, glaring at him again. But discretion triumphed, and she removed the sodden hat and handed it to the footman who, in response to a dismissive signal from the earl, bore it away.

  With as much dignity as she could muster, she wrapped the towel around her head like a turban and walked through the door the earl held for her into a book-lined study. A fire had been lit in the hearth, and a lamp glowed on a massive wood desk. A wine-colored leather chair had been pulled up behind the desk, and a matching chair faced it. Against the far wall rested a wine and gold striped velvet settee. Mounted firearms decorated the walls, and over the fireplace was a huge painting depicting a hunting scene in greens and golds and scarlets.

  All this Jewel saw in the instant before she sat in the chair facing the desk. And it dazzled her into momentary speechlessness. So much care and warmth and comfort for one man. It was almost a crime.

  “Now, please state your business.”

  Jewel found herself uncharacteristically at a loss for words. She fumbled in the beaded reticule at her wrist and produced her marriage lines, which she handed to him. He accepted the document as silently as she passed it over. Only the faintest wrinkling of his brow betrayed his feelings as he scanned the few lines that made her legally Mrs. Timothy Stratham. Then he looked up, his blue eyes colder than ever as they ran over her as if he were just now seeing her for the first time.

  “If you will forgive me for saying so, you’re remarkably poorly dressed for an adventuress.”

  Jewel blinked. Whatever reaction she had been expecting, it was not this. “Wot?”

  “My God, you even butcher the Queen’s English. And you are trying to convince me that my lately deceased cousin—who was many unpleasant things, but one hopes, not quite run mad!—married you?”

  “If Timothy Stratham be yer cousin, then that’s right, ’e did.”

  The earl was silent for a moment, the coldness deepening in his eyes. When finally he spoke, his voice was as chilling as his expression. “Tell me, what type of background breeds a vulture such as you, who would prey on the family of a young man not a week in his grave? You look rather young for that kind of game, so it stands to reason that someone has hired you. Come, admit it, and let’s have done with this farce. You might as well because you won’t get so much as a farthing out of me.”

  “Timothy did ’ave a proper funeral, then?” Jewel’s voice was subdued. The idea of that sweet-faced young man lying in a cold dark grave was sobering, even in the light of the earl’s insults.

  The earl’s eyes narrowed again. “I suggest again that you admit the lie and have done. Do you know that what you are attempting is called fraud, and is punished by many years’ imprisonment in Newgate?”

  Jewel swallowed, her eyes widening as the threat went home. Newgate was more frightening than hellfire to London’s street people.

  “But it be true! Timothy Stratham did marry me, and tol’ me ter bring me marriage lines to the Earl o’ Moorland, who ya claim to be! ’e said, ‘It’ll be one in the eye for ole Seb,’ and ’e laughed.”

  The earl’s beautiful face tightened as if he were struggling to deny some unwanted emotion. Then just as suddenly, it emptied of everything save cool detachment. He leaned back in his chair, his eyes never leaving Jewel. “You begin to interest me. Suppose you tell me this remarkable tale from beginning to end—the truth, mind!”

  Jewel straightened indignantly. “I’m not no liar!”

  “We’ll see, won’t we?” The earl regarded her affronted face without any apparent contrition. “Now tell me your tale if you please. Unless you want to be thrown out on your ear, of course.”

  “By ya and wot army?” Jewel muttered to herself. But when the earl looked at her in that daunting way of his, she launched hastily into a somewhat censored account of how she came to be married to Timothy Stratham. In her version of events, she was merely a passerby who happened to see the poor injured man on the street and rendered him assistance. As she finished her account with Father Simon’s name and direction, she saw that the earl’s eyebrows were once again lifted slightly, and bit her lip. Had she somehow let slip something she shouldn’t?

  “So you cared for him as he lay dying,
” the earl mused when she had finished. He still leaned slightly back in his chair, but his eyes as they met hers were keen. “And you took advantage of my cousin’s weakness on his death bed to persuade him to marry you. Is that not how it happened?”

  “N-No!” Jewel stuttered with relief that this was the area of her tale he was choosing to question. In this part of what had happened, she was completely innocent. “Timothy said ’e wanted ter give me a reward for takin’ care of ’im, but the robbers ’ad took all ’is money and ’e said ’e would marry me instead. ’e said that that way I’d be took care of fer the rest of me life.”

  “Oh, he did, did he?” The earl’s eyes narrowed. He was just about to go on when the study door opened with scarcely more than a ceremonial knock.

  “Sebastian, Caroline tells me that you refuse to join our guests. That is quite in keeping with your usual churlish behavior, but this time I must insist. Lord Portmouth is among them and he is your godfather, you know. You cannot be so rude as to slight him.”

  “Oh, but I can, mama. You of all people should know that.” The earl smiled at the slight, imperious woman who stood in the doorway regarding him coldly. Her manner was so like his that Jewel would have known who she was even if he had not addressed her as “mama.” She had the same build as he, the same porcelain-perfect features, even the same coloring—although age had turned her hair a distinguished shade of silver and fine lines marred the flawless surface of her skin. Dressed in a high-necked, long-sleeved black silk dress that was ornamented only by a gleaming onyx brooch at the base of her throat, she was still as arrestingly attractive as her son. Only her voice, with its edge of petulant dissatisfaction, differed markedly from his.

  “Really, Sebastian, just because you are the subject of some unsavory gossip over Elizabeth’s death is no reason to make a social outcast of yourself. Or are you worried that someone might ask about that backward child of yours? You should be used to that by now—My heavens, what in the world is that?”