Swept Away (26 page)

“I am well aware of your feelings toward me,” Deverel said stiffly. “I do not presume to think that we would have any sort of real marriage, or that you would feel toward me as a wife usually feels toward her husband. It would be a marriage entirely of duty.”

“Duty,” Julia repeated, aware of a heavy sickness in the region of her stomach. “Then there would be no—” Her throat stuck on the word
love.

“We would have separate bedrooms, if that is what you are asking,” Deverel replied, his eyes glittering with a fierce, cold light. “I have no evil designs on your virginal body. Nor do I delude myself that your past pretense of desire was anything but that—a pretense.”

Julia was not sure why his words filled her with such cold. “Then you are speaking of a marriage in appearance only?”

“Certainly. What else would be possible between us?”

“Nothing, of course,” she answered through numb lips. “Is that what you want—to tie yourself to a loveless marriage?”

“It is not a question of what I want. Or of what you want. It is a question of what we have to do. Or do you not believe that you have a certain duty to your family?”

“Of course I believe I have a duty to them.”

Julia thought of Phoebe's horror-stricken face last night, as Julia had recounted the story of their meeting Pamela St. Leger. It had been obvious that Phoebe believed Julia's reputation to be ruined. Julia thought that she was willing to live ostracized by Society, even though she knew that it would be worse than the way she and Phoebe had been cut after Selby's scandal. This time, even good people such as the vicar's wife would avoid her. Still, even that seemed better than a cold and loveless marriage with a man who hated her and whom she suspected of having ruined her brother. But the burden that would fall on Phoebe and Gilbert, through no fault of their own, was too awful. They would be tainted by her scandal, just as they had been by Selby's, except worse. Two successive scandals would ruin them.

She was miserably aware that her own headstrong behavior had led to the scandal that would swamp the Armiger family. She had thought up the plan to trick Deverel, and Phoebe had never even known the full extent of it. It seemed horribly unfair that Phoebe and Gilbert should have to pay for her stubborn insistence on doing something dangerous.

Julia looked over at Deverel. She had sworn she could not marry the man who had ruined her brother, but had he really been responsible for that? Her faith in Stonehaven's guilt had been shaken the past few days. Deverel obviously did not need the money. He had not shown that damning suicide note to anyone—and while perhaps it might have been Varian who decided they shouldn't show it, Julia was certain that if Deverel wanted it known, it would not have been hard to let the news leak out. And, most of all, having been around him for some time now, Julia was finding it harder and harder to believe that he was capable of theft or of setting out to ruin Selby—and once she had realized that whoever had stolen the money must have actually murdered Selby, her doubts had mushroomed. Much as she wanted to, she could not believe that Deverel could cold-bloodedly murder anyone.

She was beginning to be afraid that the awful truth was that she had foolishly, pigheadedly ruined both their lives. She knew that the ultimate responsibility for everything that had happened was hers. She had been headstrong and rash, and the result had been disastrous. How could she balk at doing the one thing that would save her family from being ruined by her actions? Deverel obviously hated her, but he was willing to make the sacrifice for his family's name. How could she refuse to do the same?

Everything inside her quailed at the idea of facing a lifetime of a loveless, even antagonistic, marriage. Yet she knew that to refuse to do it would be the act of a coward.

Julia straightened her shoulders and looked Deverel squarely in the eyes. “All right,” she said. “I will marry you.”

 

The rector married them that evening in the privacy of the small drawing room, with only Lady Stonehaven, Phoebe and Geoffrey in attendance. Deverel was stony-faced throughout the proceeding, and Julia grew colder and colder with each passing moment. Lady Stonehaven and Phoebe did their best to put a cheerful face on it, but Julia could tell that the rector found them a decidedly odd bride and groom. Lady Stonehaven had refreshments laid out afterward, but they made a very subdued little party. More than once, Julia saw Phoebe cast a concerned look at her.

After the rector left, the others tactfully disappeared, leaving Julia and Deverel alone together. The situation did not improve.

“Well, it's done,” Deverel said grimly, and Julia nodded her head.

He looked at her for a long moment, then went on in a brusque voice. “It would be customary for you to move into the room adjoining mine, now that you are Lady Stonehaven.”

The title sounded foreign to her. Julia wanted to protest that she was not Lady Stonehaven, not at all. But she said only, “I see. Then I, uh, suppose that I should do that.”

“I will tell the servants to move your things.” He paused, then added, “It does not mean anything more, of course. I won't touch you.”

His words inexplicably added to the heavy weight growing in the region of Julia's heart. She looked away. “Of course.”

“Fine.” He hesitated, then turned and left the room.

Julia sank down into the nearest chair, tears filling her eyes. She should be relieved, she knew, that Deverel did not intend to demand his marital rights. It was bad enough that her husband despised her, that her impulsive actions had forced him to marry her. It would be even worse if she had to face the idea of going to bed with him. But somehow his words had only lowered her already gloomy spirits. She put her head in her hands and gave way to a bout of tears.

It was some time later that she went upstairs to bed. No one else seemed to be around, and she wondered if they had all retired early in an effort to give the newlyweds some privacy.
That showed how little they knew about the marriage.
She felt odd, climbing the stairs and walking down the hall by herself. This was her home now, but she still felt like a guest. The enormity of what she had done struck her, and she wanted to cry all over again, but she refused to give in to the weakness.

The door to the room beside Deverel's stood open, and she went to it and looked in. It was clear that this was her new room. Her box of mementos lay on the mahogany dresser, along with her silver brush and mirror. She opened one of the drawers to find her under-clothes and nightgowns carefully folded inside. The wardrobe held the dresses that Phoebe had brought to her.

She turned and surveyed the room. It was a larger one than the guest chamber where she had been put before, and the furnishings were perhaps a trifle more elegant. However, she did not like it as well. It was too dark, she thought, and gloomy. The very richness of it weighed down her spirits.

The maid came in to help Julia undress and put on her nightgown. The girl pulled Julia's nicest nightgown from the dresser, presuming that Julia would wish to look her best on her wedding night. Then she brushed Julia's hair to a burnished gleam and left it hanging down her back. Julia closed the door into the hall and went to bed.

It occurred to her at that moment that she was not the slightest bit sleepy.

She looked over at the door connecting with Deverel's room. She wondered if she ought to lock it, but she rejected the idea. He had, after all, made it clear that he would not seek her out. She wondered if he was in his bedchamber. She had heard nothing from that room since she came in, and she did not know whether he had already gone to bed or was not there at all. Telling herself that it didn't matter where Deverel was or what he was doing, she turned over on her side, facing away from the door, and closed her eyes.

She realized after a moment that she was lying stiffly, her whole body tense, listening for a sound from the room next door. With an exasperated sigh, she pushed off her bedcovers and got up and lit a candle. If she could not go to sleep, she thought, she would read. However, a quick search of the room established that there were no books here. She thought of the large selection of books in Deverel's study. Surely he would not mind if she chose a book to read. After all, she reminded herself, she was his wife now, and this was her house, too, however much she might feel like a stranger.

Opening the door softly, she slipped out into the hall and down the stairs, her candle casting a small, wavering light in the dark hallway. She had some qualms, thinking that Deverel might be in the study himself, but she saw with relief that the door was open and the room dark. She lit an oil lamp to relieve the darkness of the room and set about searching for a book. Nothing caught her interest, but finally she pulled out a slender tome that was a history of Stonehaven and its family.

Julia curled up in a chair and began to peruse the book. It was there that Deverel found her an hour later, sound asleep, clad only in her nightgown, her flaming hair tumbling down, and the wide scoop neck of the gown slipped down on one side to reveal a rounded white shoulder.

D
everel, too, had been unable to sleep. He had retired to his study shortly after the brief ceremony, leaving his mother to deal with the rector, who, no doubt, had found it the most curious wedding he had ever performed.

He had sat there for an hour or more, unable to read or work or do much of anything except think about Julia. He had gotten what he wanted, but never had a victory been so hollow. Julia hated him. She thought him responsible for her brother's disgrace and death. She had married him only to save her family from disgrace, and no doubt she despised Deverel for bullying her into doing it, too.

Deverel had thought of spending the rest of his life with Julia, unable to touch her or kiss her, barred eternally from her bed. It was not a pleasant picture. He had promised her a marriage in name only because he had been certain that she would not marry him any other way, but he was honest enough to know that such a marriage was not what
he
wanted. He had told himself, as well as her, that he did not want her, but Deverel knew it wasn't true. Not a day had gone by since he met Julia that he had not thought about making love to her.

It wasn't that he loved her, of course. She was a scheming, heartless hussy—when she wasn't being amusing or witty or fired with righteous indignation. It was just that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever met, and his body longed for her with a mindless intensity.

His thoughts had driven him to a restless pacing, and finally he had gone upstairs to his bedroom. It had been even worse there, for he had heard the maid in the room next door, arranging Julia's things, and he could not keep his mind off the fact that he would be sleeping next door to Julia every night…having sworn not to touch her.

He had left his bedroom, cursing, and gone for a long walk. On his return to the house, he saw the light in his study, so he went to investigate.

There was Julia, sound asleep in one of the chairs, her legs curled up under her like a little girl, a book open on her lap. He approached her softly and stood for a moment looking down on her. Her nightdress was white and tied enticingly beneath her breasts. The dark circles of her nipples were visible through the light material. The bodice of the nightgown closed with three pearl buttons down the front, and the wide scoop neck revealed a great deal of her white chest. In her sleep, the gown had slipped off one shoulder, revealing even more.

The room was suddenly hot.

Deverel reached down and eased the book from Julia's lap. His eyebrows rose in amusement as he saw that she had been reading his grandfather's history of the Grey family and Stonehaven estate.
No wonder she had fallen asleep!
He closed the book and set it aside on his desk, then bent down and slid his arms beneath Julia's legs and back. He picked her up carefully, and she did not awaken. Instead, with a sigh, she snuggled against his chest, and heat flooded him.

He bent to blow out the lamp and her candle, then made his way through the dim hall and up the stairs with the surefootedness of one who had lived there all his life, aided only by the pale light of the moon streaming in through the windows. Julia was soft and warm in his arms. Just the feel of her set up a throbbing in his loins. Deverel wondered whether any of the passion she had shown when he kissed her had been real. How could she have imitated it so well? He would have laid odds that she had never known a man, had probably never even kissed another man passionately, for her responses had seemed untutored, even naive at times. But if that were true, how had she known how to pretend desire so well…unless it was not pretense, and she had actually felt it?

His heart was pounding in his chest, and he knew it was not just from exertion. It had been a grave mistake, he told himself, to have picked her up and carried her to bed. He should have awakened her and let her walk. He had not, he knew, precisely because he had wanted to feel her in his arms again. The thought irritated him immensely. He was used to having better control over himself than this.

He let out an exasperated noise, and Julia's eyes opened. She blinked, looking up at him sleepily, and smiled. It was a warm, welcoming smile that made his heart turn in his chest, but in the next instant, she recalled who and where she was, and she scowled.

“What are you doing?” she snapped. “You swore that you would not—”

“Believe me, my lady, I have no evil intentions toward you,” he retorted. He had reached her room by now, and he crossed it in a few quick strides. “I found you asleep in my study, so in an attempt to be thoughtful, I carried you up here.” He reached her bed and let her drop down upon it with rather more carelessness than he would normally have used. “Obviously a mistake on my part.”

Julia bounced a little as she hit the soft mattress. Sputtering with outrage, she put her hands down on the bed and pushed herself up into a sitting position. She caught her gown beneath her hand, however, and the force of her surge upward caused the top two buttons of the gown to pop. The nightdress sagged on one side, exposing a round, creamy breast.

They both froze, Deverel's gaze riveted to her naked breast and her eyes on his face. Without thinking, Deverel reached out toward the soft, pale orb. Julia gasped and flinched away, flooded with embarrassment. Deverel snatched his hand back as if it had been burned. With a curse, he turned and strode rapidly out of the room.

Julia sat for a long moment, staring at the closed door through which he had gone. The moment had passed so quickly that she had scarcely realized what had happened until it was over. When Deverel had stared at her in that hot, hungry way, her loins had melted. She had ached for him to touch her, and she had jerked away out of embarrassment and intense self-loathing. How could she be so filled with desire for him? He hated her!

Deverel had told her that he had no desire for a real marriage. In fact, he had said flatly both today and at the inn that he felt no passion for her after the trick she had played on him. If he had touched her, she knew, it would have been only because he had been seized with a brief, impersonal lust. She did not want him that way. The thought surprised her. She did not want him in
any
way, did she?

Julia pulled her nightgown around her and slid under the covers. She wished she could hide under them forever and never have to see Deverel again. She wanted to lose herself in a storm of tears, but this time they would not come.

 

The next morning, after breakfast, Julia sat down to study Selby's suicide note. She opened the box of mementos which Phoebe had brought and took out one of Selby's letters. Laying the two letters down beside each other, she went through them word by word. Gradually she began to see a pattern. Just to make sure, she took out another letter he had written to her from London several years ago and compared it to the note.

With a smile of triumph, she jumped up and ran lightly down the stairs, the three letters clutched in her hand. Earlier she had wondered how she would face Deverel again after the embarrassing episode last night, but her discovery had chased away all such thoughts, and she headed straight for his study.

“Deverel!” she said breathlessly, rushing inside right after she knocked on the door, not waiting to be told to enter.

“What is it?” He stood up and came toward her, his expression softening at the obvious excitement on her face.

“I have found something!” In her eagerness, Julia reached out and took his hand to pull him over to his desk, and for an instant everything seemed perfectly natural and right between them.

She laid the three letters down on the desk, the “suicide note” in the middle. Deverel saw what the pages were, and his pleasant expression changed to a frown. He should have known, he thought, that she was not hurrying in to see him, but to argue a point about Selby.

“Julia…” he began wearily.

“Wait. Don't reject this before you see it. I have been going over this note, and I am certain that it isn't really Selby's writing. Look.” She pointed to a letter
y
in the suicide note. “Do you see how this loop on the end of the
y
comes up into the line above? Here is a letter Selby wrote to me when he was at the university. Do you see the
y?
It stops right at the bottom of the other letters.”

“It is a little different,” Deverel admitted.

“There's more. This note is too regular.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you see how, when Selby writes, his capital letters are usually large, just as they are in the note. But some of them are a little larger, some smaller. The ones in the suicide note are uniform. They are all exactly the same size. You see how in Selby's letter to me he leaves more space between some sentences than he does between others? In the suicide note, the spaces are almost exactly the same.”

“True. But these are very slight differences. Look at the whole letters.” He pointed from one page to the next. “Don't you see how similar they are?”

“Of course. It is an excellent forgery. But it's not real. Don't you see? There are other things. The way he connects
d
s to the other letters, for instance. And the dots of the small
i
s are all right over the letter. Half of Selby's are off to the side.”

Deverel looked at each example she showed him, his frown deepening. He felt a twinge of unease. “But those letters of Selby's were written a long time ago,” he argued. “His writing probably changed over the years.”

“A little, perhaps.”

“You have to remember that a suicide note would have been written under great stress. No doubt his thoughts were all a jumble. He was probably writing quickly, under the force of great emotion.”

“Yes, but don't you see?” Julia smiled up at him victoriously, and the glow on her face was enough to take his breath away. “The writing in the suicide note is not at all agitated! It is the one that is so uniform, so regular—all the spaces the same, the letters the same. Look at it. Does it make any sense that a suicide note would be so neat and precise? The writing so perfect?”

“No…I suppose it doesn't.”

Seeing that she was making headway, Julia pressed her point. “The other letters he wrote flowed from his thoughts. He didn't think about his handwriting or worry about whether the letters looked right. But in this suicide note, when he should have been in great agitation, he was very careful to get each letter exactly the same size and the spaces perfectly uniform. Why would he do that? I'll tell you why,” she went on without giving him a chance to answer. “He did it because he wasn't distressed. He wasn't even Selby. He was not writing from the heart but carefully copying something. His main concern was to make the writing look exactly right.”

Julia gazed at him expectantly. Deverel sighed.

“It is a little odd,” he admitted.

“A little! I should say it is very odd indeed.”

“But these are such small things,” he protested. “It hardly seems enough to prove that Selby—”

“Oh!” Julia cried out in frustration. “You are determined that it should be Selby! You will not consider anything else. Whatever I say, you have some sort of argument against it. You even discount what is right before your eyes.”

“I have no desire for Selby to have committed suicide,” Deverel replied stiffly. “It seems to me that it is you who is determined to make me the villain of this piece. I never wished Selby any harm. God help me, I didn't
want
to believe that he was guilty. He was my friend. I tried my damnedest to find some way to prove that he did not do anything wrong.” He broke off and turned away. He stood still for a long moment, then sighed and turned back to her. “Look. I promised you that we would investigate the embezzlement all over again, and we will. The letters that were written about the money are in London, at the office of the fund's agent. I suggest that we go there and look at them. You can compare them to these letters of yours. We can talk to Varian and Fitz again. We'll see if there is anyone who knew Selby's mysterious mistress.”

“There won't be, because she didn't exist,” Julia said firmly. Her eyes were shining again with eagerness. “Oh, Deverel! I know we'll find out the truth. You will see that Selby didn't do it.”

“I thought you were firmly convinced that I already knew Selby didn't do it—because I was the one who did.” He looked at her a little quizzically.

“Oh.” Julia felt herself blushing. She could not meet his eyes. “I—I am not so sure anymore.”

“I am very glad to hear that.” Deverel's first instinct was to reach out and pull her into his arms, but he resisted the impulse. Just because Julia was beginning to have doubts about his guilt did not mean that she wanted him to touch her.

They stood for a moment awkwardly. Then Julia turned and gathered up her letters, starting toward the door. She stopped and looked back at him.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

Deverel raised his brows. “For what?”

“For helping me. For going to London and making the agent let me look at the letters. I have tried, you see, and he would not allow me.”