Loving Julia Read online

“My daughter, Chloe, and my wife Elizabeth,” the earl said tonelessly, following her gaze. “It was completed about a year before her death.”

  “I ’ad ’eard yer wife ’ad passed over.” After seeing the portrait Jewel felt genuine pity for him. “I’m sorry fer yer loss.”

  The earl laughed, the sound surprisingly harsh. “The servants have been talking, have they?” He took a long swallow from his glass. “And did they tell you that I killed her?”

  Jewel froze, staring at him. Then her eyes lifted to the portrait again. That sweet lady….

  He surged abruptly to his feet, hurling the glass from him so that it shattered against the stones of the fireplace. Jewel jumped back, unnerved by the unexpected violence of his action. He glowered at her.

  “Get out of here,” he growled, and when Jewel could only stand staring at him, his eyes flamed at her like blue fires from the depths of hell.

  “Go on, get out of my sight!” He took a step toward her, his fists clenched, his eyes threatening more violence. The spell broken, Jewel turned and fled.

  X

  The next morning Jewel could stand it no longer. She had to know the truth behind the earl’s words. Had he killed his wife? Perhaps she had died in childbirth, and he felt responsible? It was useless to speculate. Undoubtedly the servants knew; she already was beginning to realize that servants knew everything that went on in a household. Something she couldn’t quite put into words niggled over gossiping about the earl with those who were paid to serve him, but she couldn’t help it. She had to know.

  “Emily,” Jewel began tentatively the next morning when the girl entered her bedroom carrying a breakfast tray of steaming chocolate and crusty rolls. (Surprising how easy it had been to get used to such luxuries as three delicious meals a day and more if she wanted them without having to lift a finger.)

  “Yes, Miss Julia?” Emily set the tray down on the round table near the window. Jewel, clad in a white silk wrapper, seated herself in a wing chair pulled up to the table and prepared to eat. Emily shook the napkin out into her lap and poured the chocolate while Jewel buttered a warm roll and bit into it with relish.

  “I ’eard somethin’ the other day that made me wonder,” Jewel began mendaciously around a mouthful of roll. Looking up at Emily, who stood motionless as she waited to hear what her mistress would say, she shook her head impatiently. “Oh, sit, won’t ya? This is bloomin’ ridiculous.”

  Emily’s round spaniel eyes grew even rounder. “Oh, no, Miss Julia, I couldn’t! ’Twouldn’t be proper!”

  Jewel sighed. Servants had stringent notions of what was proper and what was not. For instance, Emily considered it proper for a lady to bathe every evening before she retired for the night—a full bath, stark naked, immersed in steaming water to her neck. After a week or so of useless protest Jewel was almost resigned to it now. She was even getting used to the girl’s silent comings and goings while she dressed or undressed. And she knew that Emily thought it was proper for a lady’s maid to actually assist the lady into and out of her clothing. Jewel hadn’t yet come to that, but with Emily’s silent persistence she guessed it was just a matter of time before she did.

  “At least ’ave a bit ter eat,” Jewel murmured, defeated, but Emily declined again.

  “Thank you kindly, Miss Julia, but if Mrs. Johnson ever found out I was eatin’ with the family I could lose my place.”

  Jewel gave up and got on with the matter at hand. “Do ya know ’ow the earl’s wife died?”

  Emily’s eyes widened again, and she looked nervously to the right and left as though afraid someone might be listening.

  “She—she fell.” The answer was whispered. Jewel took a healthy bite of a butter-encrusted roll and eyed her maid speculatively as she chewed.

  “I know there be more to it than that. I wan’ ya ter tell me.”

  Emily moistened her lips. “She, Lady Moorland, went for a walk one morning. Usually she took Miss Chloe with her, but it was nippy out that day. Nearly two years ago it was, in the early spring, like now. Miss Chloe had a bit of a sniffle so she left her in. Miss Caroline was here—she was Lady Moorland’s cousin, you know. It was real funny because Miss Caroline was married into the family first, to his lordship’s older brother, and she would have been Lady Moorland if Master Edward had lived, but he died and so Miss Elizabeth became milady. Anyway, Miss Caroline usually walked with milady when Miss Chloe stayed in, but on that particular morning the Dowager Countess, who was visiting to try to wheedle some more money out of his lordship, sent her in to the village on an errand. So milady went out alone for her walk, and she never came back. Not alive, that is.”

  Emily stopped. “So ’ow’d she die?” Jewel demanded impatiently, a roll suspended in her hand as she forgot to take a bite of it.

  “There’s an old monastery over by the Wash, a ruin really, and milady used to like to walk there. The day she died, they said she climbed up into the tower where the bell used to be. Somehow she … fell.” Emily stopped again, looking frightened. The girl’s very fear told Jewel that there was more to the story than this.

  “Tell me ever’thin’, Emily, please. If she died in a fall, why would the—would anyone say ’is lordship killed ’er?”

  Emily looked absolutely wretched. “Oh, Miss Julia, I really shouldn’t be talkin’ about this. We’ve been told never to talk about it.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Mrs. Johnson. She said that she wasn’t havin’ no gossip about the master in this house.”

  “What gossip, Emily?” demanded Jewel, maddened.

  “Some said—some said his lordship threw milady off that tower.”

  Jewel stared at Emily for a long moment. “Why would anyone

  say that? Was ’e with ’er when she fell?”

  Emily shook her head. “No, miss. At least he wasn’t with her when milady left the house. But when they were courtin’ they used to meet in that old ruin, milady bein’ from the neighborhood. And his lordship … well, he and milady had their problems.”

  “That don’t mean ’e killed ’er.” Jewel was strangely indignant to think that the earl’s obvious pain was based on so flimsy a premise.

  “No.” Emily was beginning to warm to her subject. “But there were other things. The doctor said milady hadn’t landed as she would have if she’d just fallen. She was too far out, like she’d been pushed. And she was on her back, not her stomach. And one of the tenant’s boys said that he’d seen somebody—he thought it was his lordship because he’d seen that blond hair real plain—go into the monastery with milady that day. And everyone knew that his lordship and milady had problems. They had a way of lookin’ at each other that’d give you the shivers. Like they hated each other. I once heard milady say to him that he weren’t no kind of a father, and his lordship said back that that made them a good pair because she weren’t no kind of a wife. They didn’t talk to each other for weeks and weeks, and his lordship went up to London. He came back just a week or so before milady died, and they must have had a real bad row because milady wouldn’t even stay in the same room with his lordship. Don’t none of us know what all the trouble was about, and I don’t guess anyone but his lordship ever will. And I wish anyone good luck gettin’ anything out of him.”

  Emily shook her head for emphasis. Jewel stared at her, forgetting even to eat in her fascination with what she had heard. Had the earl killed his wife? Of course not! Like a lot of other people apparently had, she was letting her imagination take threads of gossip and rumors and weave them into whole cloth. The evidence she had heard against the earl was flimsy in the extreme.

  “Was ’is lordship charged with murder?” Jewel’s mind boggled at the image of the aristocratic earl brought up before Old Bailey. Emily shook her head.

  “There wasn’t enough evidence to bring a formal charge, they said. First, the boy who claimed he saw his lordship go into the church with milady was only eight years old. The magistrate at the inquest said that no ju
ry would convict a man based on the testimony of a boy that age. And he said, just because a man and his wife had problems doesn’t make the man guilty of murder. And then there was the friar.” Emily paused importantly.

  “What friar?” Jewel demanded as Emily had clearly intended she should.

  “That’s just it. There wasn’t no friar. No real friar, that is. People say he’s the ghost of Friar Benedict, one of the white friars who lived in the old monastery more than three hundred years ago. He’s supposed to have been mortal enemies with the first earl, who was awarded all the land that used to belong to the monastery by Queen Elizabeth. Friar Benedict refused to leave the monastery when the first earl ordered them all out, and the earl ended up having him hung. And this house was built on the very spot where it happened. From that time on, the white friar has appeared to the people hereabouts whenever one of the Peyton family is about to die. They say that he comes to take his enemies with him into death. It’s been going on for almost three hundred years now without fail. Some people saw the white friar out at the old monastery before Master Edward was killed in that hunting accident, and some saw him before the old lord died. And some, including Martin, the first footman, saw him before milady died. Right here in this house, Miss Julia.” Emily paused, wide-eyed, obviously pleasurably frightened by her own story.

  “So what do the so-called white friar ’ave to do with ’is lordship not killin’ ’is wife?”

  Emily, who had leaned closer and rested her hands on the small table during her telling of the legend, straightened. “The magistrate, he said he didn’t believe in no ghost friar. He said if so many people saw him, then it was because somebody was dressing up like him. And until somebody could prove who was dressing up in a white robe and flitting around the old ruins and this house—his lordship could account for his whereabouts almost every time the friar appeared, though he said he was out riding alone when milady died—then he was danged if he was going to charge anybody with murder. So he said milady’s death was a misadventure. It made milady’s dad real mad, and he would never speak to his lordship after that. A lot of people think he’s the one who started saying that his lordship murdered milady. But old Mr. Tynesdale died last year, and a lot of the talk died with him. Though everybody remembers, of course.”

  Jewel bit into the long spared roll, a frown fixed between her brows as she absorbed all she had been told. The part about the ghost of the white friar gave her the willies, but she could not by any stretch of the imagination picture the earl dressed up in a white monk’s robe and running around the neighborhood in it. It was such a ridiculous notion that she immediately felt better. Of course he had not done such a thing, nor had he thrown his wife off a tower. It was too silly to even contemplate. “Shall I help you dress, Miss Julia?” While Jewel had been thinking, Emily had put out her clothes for the day. The question was asked in a hopeful tone, but Jewel had no hesitation about shaking her head.

  “I c’n manage, t’anks.” Then as Emily, looking disappointed, started to leave the room, Jewel called her back. “Which way is that monastery, Emily?” “You don’t want to go there, Miss Julia! It’s …” “I jest wan’ ter look at it. Admire the ruin, so to speak.” Emily looked skeptical, but she gave Jewel directions. Jewel dismissed her with another word of thanks, and got dressed. In less than half an hour she was walking over the heath toward the Wash.

  The heath was still damp with dew, releasing a sweet, spicy fragrance every time her skirt brushed against a sturdy green bush. Thick clumps of rhododendron in colors ranging from deepest crimson to pink to white grew wild alongside the path that had been worn smooth by generations of wandering feet. Pine plantations rose against the horizon to the west, while to the east the ground dropped away to form the rocky cliffs that looked out over the Wash.

  Jewel walked along the path at the cliffs’ edge, marveling at the fresh salt scent of the sea and the spectacular beauty of the waves breaking over the jagged rocks below. Gulls and terns wheeled in the bright blue sky overhead, adding their shrill cries to the roar of the sea. To a girl who had never before been outside of London, the magnificence of so much open space and natural beauty was dazzling.

  After perhaps twenty minutes of brisk walking, Jewel saw the old monastery. The two-story stone structure was blackened with age and covered with vines and moss. Obviously the Wash had moved inland considerably since it had been built because the monastery was perched right on the edge of the cliffs, its far wall long since tumbled down into the sea. Only the three-story bell tower remained intact on that far side, owing its survival no doubt to the fact that it rested on a small jut of rock.

  Jewel felt a cold little finger trace its way down her spine as she reflected that the arched opening that must once have housed a large bell was the one from which Elizabeth fell to her death. Jewel shivered as she walked around the side of the ruin, stepping over the jagged piles of stones that had fallen from the relatively intact inland wall. There was an aura of cold about the place that had nothing to do with the temperature.

  Behind the monastery, close again to the encroaching cliffs, was a tiny cemetery. There were only a few stones left to mark the graves, but Jewel guessed that many more must have been lost to time. The shadow of the bell tower slanted across the graves, and Jewel shivered again. The place both repelled and fascinated her.

  Jewel had meant only to look at the ruin, but when she saw a small arched opening in the wall, she could not resist the impulse to go inside. Clambering over a pile of moss covered stones, she stood in the doorway looking around. Clearly this room had once been a chapel. The remains of arched windows opened both inland and toward the sea, and in the top of one remained a few shards of ruby glass. The sun slanting down through the glass cast a bright red beam toward an arched recess cut in the rough stone of an interior wall. From its location behind where the altar must once have been, she guessed it had once held a statue, probably of Jesus or Mother Mary.

  The thought of centuries-dead monks kneeling in prayer in this chapel was faintly eerie, but worse was the realization that Elizabeth must have passed through this very room many times during her short life as a girl to explore, as a young lady to meet Sebastian, and as a woman to meet her death. It was a chilling thought, and Jewel was about to withdraw to the beckoning warmth of the sun when she heard the sound of someone crying. She stiffened, listening intently. The sound was muffled, barely audible, but it was unmistakable nevertheless: someone—or something—was sobbing its heart out.

  Jewel felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. The sound came from somewhere above, and for an awful moment she had a vision of Elizabeth’s shade weeping in the bell tower from whence she had fallen to her death. But she dismissed the thought as ridiculous, of course, there was definitely someone up there, and whoever was up there was crying.

  Drawn irresistibly forward, Jewel walked through a little door beside the arched recess and found herself inside the tower itself. Steps carved into the stone wound upwards. Jewel hesitated, her every instinct urging her to run outside into the sunlight, but the sound of the crying pulled her. It came unmistakably from the embrasure where the bell had once been, and it was as heartrending as before. Whoever was up there was hurt to the depths of her soul.

  Jewel couldn’t help it. She had to know if it was Elizabeth’s ghost she heard, or a live, distressed lady. Because the sounds were unmistakably female. As she wound her way up, careful not to slip on the worn, moss covered steps, she felt her nerves creep into a hard knot in her belly.

  A warm golden glow seemed to emanate from the bell room above. Jewel stared up wide-eyed at the bright light that spilled through what had once been a trap-door and was now merely a hole in the stone floor, wondering with a kind of fascinated horror if this was some kind of ghostly manifestation. Even as her heart began to climb into her throat, she realized that the glow was caused by sunlight streaming through the open embrasures through which the bell had once swung.

  T
he crying was louder, more distinct. Jewel once again got the impression of heartrending grief. Then she cautiously thrust her head through the opening to see the sunlight glinting brightly off a small gilded head.

  Chloe. It was Chloe who was huddled on the floor, curled into a fetal position with her head buried against her knees. The claret velvet cloak was wrapped around her like a blanket, and her small body shook with the force of her sobs.

  Jewel felt her heart clench. The sight of the little girl crying in this place where her mother had died wrenched her soul. Quietly she pulled herself through the opening, then moved to crouch beside the sobbing child.

  “Chloe,” she said softly, her hand moving to touch the little girl’s bright hair.

  The child’s head whipped up, her eyes huge and teary, dazzled by the sun for a moment as she blinked at Jewel. There was an expression of such wild joy on her small face that Jewel immediately realized that for a brief moment Chloe thought that it was her mother kneeling down beside her. Then the child’s eyes narrowed against the sun, and her mouth contorted. She leapt to her feet, letting out an infuriated cry. When Jewel tried to catch her, to hold her and comfort her, she shoved her with such force that Jewel sat down hard on her behind.

  “Chloe, wait!”

  But it was too late. Before Jewel could even get to her feet, the little girl had vanished through the trap-door. Jewel could hear the quick patter of her slippered feet on the stairs as she ran away.

  XI

  As the earl had threatened, a governess was engaged within the week. Mrs. Thomas was a middle-aged widow with a straight back and a long nose, and in no time at all she was looking down it at Jewel.

  She had just been dismissed as governess to the daughters of a prosperous landowner in the neighboring county, not because of any fault of hers, Johnson said, but because the girls were now old enough to make a governess unnecessary. According to the registry office that had recommended her, Mrs. Thomas was all that could be desired: she was an impoverished gentlewoman, daughter of a country parson, with a wealth of experience in schooling young ladies. In addition, she had a reputation for not putting up with any nonsense from her charges. She seemed, Johnson told the earl, like the ideal person to have charge of Jewel’s education.