The Regency Season: Shameful Secrets: From Ruin to Riches / Scandal's Virgin

Will did not leave her alone in the salon for long. Julia had hardly picked up her embroidery, sorted her wools and begun on one of the roses that formed a garland on the chair seat she was working when he walked in, still carrying his wine glass, Charles on his heels with the decanter.

‘What are you making?’ He sank into the wing chair opposite her, stretched out long legs and sipped his port. Charles put the decanter down and took himself off. They were alone at last, with no servants present to keep the conversation on neutral lines.

‘A new set of seat covers for the breakfast room.’ She tilted the frame to show him. ‘The existing ones are sadly worn and the moth has got into them.’

‘My paternal grandmother made those.’

‘I was not going to throw them away,’ Julia hastened to reassure him. ‘I will try to save as much of her embroidery as I can and perhaps incorporate it into window seat covers or something of the sort.’

‘It is a lot of work for you.’ Will was twisting the stem of the glass between his fingers, watching the red wine swirl in the glass.

‘I do not mind. I dislike being idle.’

‘Hmm.’ It seemed her husband did not wish to make conversation. Perhaps he wanted her to retire. Well, my lord, I have no intention of going to bed at half past nine so you can exercise your conjugal rights! Nor was she looking forward to the conversation that she knew she must have with him first. She could not talk about it down here and risk being interrupted.

Julia executed a complex area of shading and worked on in silence attempting, with what success she had no idea, to exude an air of placid domesticity. At nine forty-five she rang for tea and contemplated her husband over the rim of her cup.

If she did not know better she would think him not nervous, exactly, but certainly edgy. Which was nonsensical—women were the ones supposed to be anxious about this sort of situation, not adult males with, she had no doubt, years of sexual experience behind them.

Now she had made herself nervous. Julia set down her cup with a rattle. ‘I shall retire, if you will excuse me.’

Will stood up with punctilious courtesy and went to open the door for her. She had thought that she had got used to his presence, but the sense that he was too big and too male swept over her again and it was an effort not to scuttle into the hall like a nervous mouse. Calm, seductive, she reminded herself. Make him want you, not just any wife. But perhaps, when she had told him as much as she dare about Jonathan, he would not want her at all.

* * *

Nancy was waiting to help her undress when she made her way to her new suite. ‘I’ve moved all your things, my lady. Such a nice spacious dressing room: there’s plenty of room for your new gowns. And Mr Gatcombe brought all the jewellery boxes up and has put them in the safe. Shall we check the inventory tomorrow, my lady? I don’t like to be responsible when we haven’t got a list of what’s there.’

‘Yes,’ Julia agreed, studying the room as if she had not seen it before. It was large with a deep Venetian window, a marble fireplace and a handsome bed in the classical style with pale-green curtains. The pictures were dull, she thought, attempting to divert her thoughts from the bed. There were others in the house that would look better here—that was something to do tomorrow. And there was the jewellery to look at. And she must think about new gowns for the entertaining Will was sure to want to do.

If she was not careful her day would become filled with all the trivial domestic duties her husband thought she should be engaging in.

‘Such a pity we didn’t know his lordship was coming home,’ Nancy said as she picked up the hairbrush and began to take down Julia’s hair. ‘You could have bought some pretty new nightgowns, my lady.’

Now the butterflies really were churning in her stomach. She was about to sleep with a man for only the second time in her life. No, third, she supposed, although sharing a bed with Will on their wedding night had been sleeping only in the literal sense.

She was not in love with him and he was certainly not in love with her. She did not have a pretty new nightgown, and, rather more importantly to her confidence, she had carried a child to term, which doubtless would make her body less desirable to him.

When he learned that she was not a virgin perhaps he would expect considerably more sensual expertise than she could possibly muster. She was not at all sure what sexual expertise consisted of for a woman. Her resolve to make him desire her just as much as she desired him was beginning to look much like wishful thinking.

But sitting up in bed ten minutes later she did feel rather more seductive. If, that is, one could feel seductive and terrified simultaneously. Her nightgown might not be new, but the lace trim was pretty, her hair was brushed out smoothly about her shoulders and she could smell the scent of rosewater rising from a number of places that Nancy assured her were strategic pulse points.

All she needed now, Julia thought as Nancy left the room with a cheerful, ‘Goodnight, my lady’, was a gentleman to seduce. She kept her eyes on the door panels and tried to conjure up the image of Will to practise on. Smiling was too obvious. She tried to achieve a sultry smoulder. The nightgown was too prim. She unlaced the ribbon at the neck and pushed it down over her shoulders a little. Even without the help of stays her bosom, she decided, was acceptably firm and high. Men liked bosoms, she knew that much.