Fallen (23 page)

"Certainly. Oh, and, before you ask, tell Timothy to take off the day, as well. Since I'll be staying in all day." She smiled kindly at the girl.

Blushing, Betty dipped her head. "I thank you, miss." She left the room quickly, casting another odd look at Izzy before she left.

When Julian appeared later that afternoon, Izzy was surprised. When he introduced the gentleman accompanying him as a clergyman, she became uneasy. However, when he coldly informed her that he had obtained a special license and they were to marry in the parish church—
now
—she leapt to her feet, thunderstruck.

Celia found her voice before Izzy could even find her breath. "Now? Julian, whatever are you thinking?"

Izzy made no sound. She was stunned breathless. A gray mist began to creep over the edges of her vision. The room seemed to draw away from her and its occupants grow distant. She could hear dimming voices, but held no understanding of them. Warm hands enveloped her shoulders and a deep voice called to her, but she could not respond.

A sudden sharp odor invaded her senses, bringing her abruptly out of her faint. She found herself seated, leaning against a stone-hard chest, a small vial of smelling salts before her face. Her support shifted, lowering her to a pillow. Julian appeared over her. Then there were three concerned faces gazing down on her. She blinked. Shaking her head at the residual buzzing inside of it, she attempted to sit up. Six hands unceremoniously pushed her back down.

"Stay," Julian ordered roughly. She could see the worry in his eyes. With dismay, she watched it change to frost.

"I'm fine," she protested. "Really, I am quite well."

"Oh, dear. This is my fault," mourned a stricken Celia. "I have been leaning on you so. You are exhausted. I have made you ill!"

"No," Julian stated grimly. "She is not ill. She is increasing."

"What?" both Izzy and Celia responded.

"I have it on reliable authority that you are behaving in the way of a woman with child. Sleeping a great deal. Refusing breakfast.
Apt to faint
. And, by the look of you, other symptoms are occurring." He gave a pointed glance to her bodice, which had become noticeably tight lately.

She blushed furiously. This was a trick. It must be. Julian had discovered her intention to leave and was trying to force her into marriage. Hurt and anger warred within her.

He knew how much her independence meant to her, yet he would go to such lengths and toss her wishes aside for his own enrichment? Well, it was not going to work. She was twenty-six years old and mistress of her own fate. To stop him, she need only say no. She stood, ignoring the last wispy sensation of dizziness.

"I never thought you would stoop so low, Julian. Is your inheritance truly worth humiliating me like this?" She turned away from his narrowed gaze to Celia's worried one.

"Izzy, dear, is this… possible?"

"If you are asking if I stepped outside the boundaries of propriety, I must confess that it is possible." She shot a mortified look at the minister, relaxing somewhat when she saw nothing in his gaze but gentle understanding. Straightening her shoulders, she faced Julian again.

"I suppose you believe this confrontation will embarrass me into marriage, but I must disappoint you. Your father demanded that I break our betrothal and leave the country. Since that is what I have ever wanted, I agreed. I never consented to wed you, my lord, and I never will." She studied his hard features for a moment and when he did not respond, she turned to the clergyman.

"I'm sorry for the inconvenience, sir, and that you have been subjected to such melodrama, but I will not be getting married today." She turned stiffly and left the room, not running until she reached the stairs.

Three steps up, she was swept from her feet by a rock-hard arm about her waist and swung back to the floor. Julian cornered her in the flaring arc of the curved bannister. Pinning her in place with his arms braced on either side, he glared coldly down at her wide eyes.

"You would take my child, Izzy? Take it and raise it a bastard somewhere far from me?" His face tightened further at her jolt of shock. "Yes, I knew of your plan to leave, though you obviously had no intention of informing me yourself. Do you hate me so that you would condemn my son to an ignominious life of illegitimacy?"

Izzy stared up at him. She saw the ice in his gaze, and she saw the hurt. She also saw total conviction. Why, he really believes there is a child, she marveled.

The first tendril of doubt twined through her anger. Could it be? She tried to think of why it could not, but in her innocence she had never learned the way of such things, and the realization of that ignorance cut the last thread of her confidence. She gazed up at him, dazed by the possibility of it.

"Can it truly be? Are you certain?" she whispered.

The plaintive question shattered the ice within Julian like a hammer. Of course Izzy would be unhappy about the life they had created, the babe made in the ruins of his honor and of her innocence.

The look of pain she gave him made him more aware than ever that his only recourse was to force this marriage, to protect and provide for her. He might be as dishonorable as his father claimed, but even he had his limit. He knew she wanted freedom, but he had no choice but to force her hand. He must betray her, for he could not let her go.

"You truly did not know, did you?" He closed his eyes in anguish at her heartbroken sob. When he opened them, she had turned from him to face the railing, clinging weakly to it. She was well and truly trapped, now, and he felt the worst sort of poacher.

It was all his doing, every bit of it. From his first drunken mistake to this last humiliation of her in his misdirected anger, he had done nothing but systematically ruin her life and steal away her dreams.

He wanted to comfort her, but he felt helpless against her tears. He turned, releasing her from his physical trap, if not from his metaphorical one.

"Go upstairs and prepare, if you wish. We will wed in one hour. Whether my father wishes it or not." He cast the words over his shoulder, leaving her shaking and clinging to the stair spindles as if to the bars of a cage.

Izzy stayed, pressing her forehead against the smoothly turned wood as if it could soothe her raging soul. She bore Julian's babe. She carried a piece of him inside her, a child who tied her to him even more firmly than her love ever had.

Oh, yes, she was quite thoroughly bound, bound by her own sense of fairness and honor. For she could never damn her child to the social hell of illegitimacy. All her posturing about being fallen was now exposed to her as just that, an act, a play with which she had amused herself, knowing it would come to naught in the end.

But to bring forth a babe, a child that should be entitled to all the finest of privilege and wealth, and deny it all of that because of her own weak spirit, even though that spirit would wither in the face of indifference where there should be love, was a deed even
she
could not commit. Knowing she condemned herself to the very fate she had fought against, she quietly rose and went to her room to prepare for her wedding.

Dry-eyed and composed, Izzy calmly went through the motions demanded by the marriage ritual. She moved soberly to the march the cleric's assistant played on the church's elegant organ. She stepped to the altar, made lovely by a hurried raid of Celia's garden. She knelt gracefully in the beautiful ivory gown Ellie and Betty had dressed her in. She spoke her vows in a calm, low voice with no tremble of uncertainty.

And from the time Izzy stepped into Julian's carriage after the ceremony to the moment they alighted at his townhouse, she uttered not a word.

«
^
»

Julian watched Izzy move through his home,
their
home, like a tiny ghost. He knew she had wanted to flee him. He winced inwardly as he recalled her earlier accusation that he had tricked her to ensure his inheritance.

He could not deny that the thought had crossed his mind as he had gone through the bureaucratic hoops to obtain the special license from the archbishop. He'd had to explain his bride's impure state, and pay the exorbitant "fee" to circumvent the reading of the banns. He had been furious with her at the time, and had relished the idea that, at the very least, the marriage would mollify his father. But according to Izzy, his father no longer wished them to marry.

Still, he would have married her even if he had known of his father's objection. To leave a woman, a lady, to wander the Earth with his child was too low even for him. And to abandon the sweet, generous Izzy to that fate was beyond contemplation.

He showed her to the elegant bedchamber adjoining his own and left her to refresh herself alone, for he could not bear her eyes. He fled from her and his overpowering need to take her in his arms and comfort her. Flinging open the door to his darkened study, he went to the decanter on the desk and methodically began to drink himself into a stupor.

Izzy curled up in the velvet chair in her room, heedless of crushing her beautiful satin gown. With heavy heart but dry eyes, she tried to give thought to her future. No thoughts would come, no plans, no design that would mend the great mess that was her life.

Exhausted by the passions of the day, she leaned her head into the wing of the chair, longing for the oblivion of sleep. But the bones of her corset pressed painfully into her skin, and she could only squirm uncomfortably. The undergarment had been the only way to fit her into the gown sewn for her months ago. She spared a weary moment of hatred toward it, thinking dimly that it could not possibly be good for her babe to be compressed in such a way.

The babe
. For the first time, it truly struck her that she was with child. Awe swept away the fatigue she had been feeling as she placed a reverent hand on her midriff.

Growing beneath her hand was a life that was part of her and part of the man she loved. Such a gift she had never believed would be hers. Instead of an empty life of solitude with only a fruitless love to look back upon, she would have a child, a magical creature made from the one and only expression of her passion for Julian.

The future, which had looked so pointless only moments before, now showed a slight gleam of hope.

Pressing gently on her stomach, she tried to discern if anything were different there. All she could feel was the stiffness of the corset confining her torso. Suddenly she was convinced that it was very bad for her child.

Standing, she reached behind her to fumble at the tiny buttons of the satin gown she had used for a wedding dress. She was unable to undo more than a few that way and, shrugging down the brief sleeves of the evening frock, she struggled with the myriad tiny buttons behind her. Frustrated, in the end she was forced to twist the beautiful fabric around her, bringing the back to front.

At length, the last closure was undone and the heavy ivory satin pooled at her feet. She draped it over a richly upholstered chair and strode to the large standing mirror in one corner of the luxurious room.

Turning her attention to the tiny clasps at the front of her corset, she pulled in her breath until spots trembled before her eyes, trying to loosen the garment enough to undo the seed-sized hooks.

Finally clad only in her chemise, which covered her no more than to mid-thigh, she studied herself in the mirror. Turning sideways, she smoothed the fine batiste over her belly, wondering at the tiny being inside her. Only the slightest bulge showed as yet, and that was only discernible because she had been so thin before. Still, she was surprised that she could be ignorant of such a miracle for so long.

A child. Her child. Theirs. As angry as Julian was with her, he could not deny their child. And though he may not love Izzy herself, he would surely love her child. This babe, more than anything the marquess had threatened him with, had been the impetus for Julian.

Would he be a good father, or would he be like his own father? Made pensive by such distressing thoughts, Izzy climbed wearily into the large bed in her chamber and curled protectively around the innocent bystander they'd brought into her tumultuous life.

Waves rose above her head, slamming down on the sea-washed deck. Rain streamed over her open mouth, choking her. Thunder drowned out her feeble cries while the world flashed between dark and light.

An instant of brilliance showed people, men and women, clinging desperately to the rail of the ship. One woman and one man reached out to her, their calls lost in the storm. A moment of darkness, as black as death, then another flash. Her parents were gone and only a single dark figure stood alone against the tossing waves.

He turned and she caught a glimpse of dark saturnine features in the next lightning flare. She cried out and reached for him, only to discover she carried a small burden in her arms. Her babe looked up at her with Julian's eyes. She turned her desperate gaze back to the rail.

There was no longer anyone there.

Almost before she woke, she was on her feet, moving to the adjoining chamber on cold, frightened feet. As much as she had wanted to escape Julian before, fearful in the dark now, she needed to know he was near.

The room was empty. Logically, she knew it meant nothing, but that was of no use in the state of terror left by her dream. She had to find him, had to know he was still here, still well.

Life was brief, a mere flicker of the eyelids and it could be gone. She had learned that forcibly in her youth. And now, she needed to see Julian herself before she could convince herself he was not gone forever.

Heedless of anything but the suffocating sense of dread left by her dream, Izzy fled down the hall in search of her husband.

When Julian set his mind on serious drinking, he did not mess about. Well into his second bottle, he sprawled limply in the giant leather-covered chair in his study. With nothing to distract him but the flicker of the fire, he was well on his way to blissful unconsciousness when Izzy found him.