With Anna and Chelsea, Julian had traveled down to Gordon Hall to take his place as the true, rightful Lord Ridley. Ruby took up residence in the dower house, while Jim continued to come and go as he pleased. Graham’s wife, Barbara, was generously provided for by Julian and took up residence in London, where it was assumed she hoped to assuage the grief of her widowhood by speedily taking a second husband.
Anna’s injuries had been minor and, except for her skin, had healed in a matter of a week or so. Her skin, severely burned, had swollen and blistered, then flaked and peeled, until she had despaired of ever looking like herself again. But finally, about halfway through the voyage home to England, her skin had regained enough of its normal appearance to make her feel able to appear in public without self-consciousness.
It was then that she had wed Julian, in a shipboard ceremony conducted by the captain. Jim had given her away, and Ruby and Chelsea had been her attendants. The wedding had been attended by nearly every passenger and crew member on the ship.
“Miss Anna—I mean, my lady—here’s someone who wants to see you.”
Anna turned and smiled at Mrs. Mullins, who emerged through the French windows behind them with a blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms. The newly hired nursemaid trailed jealously behind, but Mrs. Mullins had claimed little Christopher Scott Traverne as her own when the infant was not in his mother’s arms. In consequence, the nursemaid had little to do, and resented the housekeeper according.
“Thank you, Mrs. Mullins. Hello, sweetheart.” Anna held out her arms for her son, but Julian took the baby, holding him gingerly as befitted the new father of a child less than a month old. His grin was warm as he looked down at the tiny form, with a shock of black hair and deep blue eyes so much like his own. As the baby stared boldly back, Julian reached down to tickle his chin. Little Christopher promptly grasped his father’s finger and attempted to put it in his mouth.
“I think he’s hungry.” Julian quickly handed the baby over. Anna was smiling as she took her son into her arms. Julian as a father was absurd—and absurdly lovable.
When she had told Julian that he was going to be a father, he had been delighted. Then, when the realization that she was actually going to give birth, in pain and suffering, had burst upon him, he had been terrified. But had held up surprisingly well, although to get him through the night of the delivery Jim had had to pour pints of whiskey into him. Still, by the following morning, both father and son had been doing well.
“If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go feed him.”
As Anna took the baby back into the house, Julian ran down the steps to play with Chelsea and her friend. Anna, smiling, was content to let him go. Chelsea had come to adore Julian, and she was fascinated with her tiny brother. She had ceased to grieve for Paul at last and even spoke of him sometimes, as someone she fondly remembered.
Anna’s world, like Chelsea’s, was whole again. Her heart was full of Julian and her children. Her life pleased her well, and she was happier as Julian’s wife than she had ever dreamed she could be.
When the baby had finished eating—he was a greedy little thing, nursing quickly and eagerly—she passed him over to the nursemaid to be put down for his nap. The girl bore him off with a triumphant sniff at Mrs. Mullins, who harrumphed in her turn. Anna, ignoring these signs of incipient warfare, buttoned up her bodice and went back outside in search of Julian.
She found him down by the lily pond, engaged with Chelsea in an earnest attempt to catch a bullfrog. As Anna appeared, Chelsea’s friend proposed building a frog trap, although exactly what he envisioned Anna was afraid to inquire. Still, Chelsea was enthused about the idea, and Julian was grinning as he climbed the bank to join his wife.
“They’ll probably both fall in and get soaked to the gills,” Julian predicted comfortably as the children ran off in search of the necessary materials.
“Or else they’ll catch the hideous thing, and Chelsea will beg to keep it as a pet.” The nursery at Gordon Hall was already home to an odd assortment of such creatures.
“How’s my son?” There was such pride in Julian’s voice that Anna had to smile at him.
“Your son is just fine, although Mrs. Mullins and Lisette my come to blows.”
“Do you think that girl is experienced enough? We could get someone else.…”
“She’s fine,” Anna said firmly, having learned already that Julian was subject to a new father’s anxiety more than most. He worried about everything from the length of the baby’s naps (should he be sleeping this much?) to the amount of spitting up little Christopher did (he’ll starve to death at this rate!). Anna, though she occasionally rolled her eyes, did what she could to soothe his concerns, and hoped fervently that the terrors of fatherhood would soon wear off.
“You’re looking beautiful, as usual.” Julian, distracted from his concern for Christopher, leaned forward to give his wife a kiss. Anna settled against him, letting her arms slip around his neck as her lips parted in response. It had been so long since they’d made love that his slightest touch could arouse her to a fever pitch. There’d been that whole month before the baby’s birth, and then the four weeks after, Julian was afraid of hurting her, she knew, but she was healed now, and her body throbbed for him whenever he was near. Perhaps this afternoon.…
Julian put her away from him and was regarding her strangely.
“What is it?” Anna asked, perplexed by his expression.
“It just came back to me,” he answered, which told her nothing at all, “when the sunlight hit your hair.”
“What just came back to you?”
“When I first met you, I thought that I had seen you before. I suddenly remembered where.”
“Well where?”
“Right here, by the pond. You must have been about six years old. It was when I came down here to confront my father, and he had me thrown out and beaten. I finally picked myself up from the road and started walking. I ended up in that copse of trees over there.” He pointed to a nearby orchard. “I was lying there—I wasn’t up to walking any farther—and you ran into the trees after your ball. You saw me and came up to me and asked me if I was all right. I looked up at you, and the sun was glinting off your hair. I can remember those big green eyes staring at me so gravely.… Then Paul ran up and took your hand. I hated Paul, who had everything I ever dreamed of having, including a little fairy girl for a playmate. I felt like a beggar child with his nose pressed to the window of a candy shop, always on the outside looking in. And I told you two to get the hell away from me, and you did.”
The story touched her to the heart. Catching his hand, Anna rose on tiptoe to press a kiss to the hard lips that at the moment wore a rueful, self-mocking smile.
“You’re not on the outside any more, my darling,” she told him softly as her fingers entwined with his. “And you never will be again.”
And then, his misgivings be damned, she half coaxed and half led him back to the house.
About the Author
Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve loved to write. My first book was a ten-page effort written at age five for my grandmother. Throughout grade school, high school and college I wrote for various school publications. When I was eighteen, my first professionally published piece—a humorous anecdote—appeared in
Reader’s Digest
. Still, it never occurred to me that I might become a professional writer. I aimed for a career as a lawyer and was actually in law school when I sold my first book. When that happened, the world lost a would-be lawyer and gained a writer. That book, which is still in print, is
Island Flame
, and it was published when I was twenty-four. Since then, I’ve written over forty books, which regularly appear on the
New York Times
,
USA Today
, and
Publisher’s Weekly
bestseller lists, among others. The mother of three sons, I read, I write, and I chauffeur children. That’s my life.
Connect with Karen Robards Online
Website:
http://www.karenrobards.com/
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/TheKarenRobards
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/AuthorKarenRobards
Sample Chapter from
Loving Julia
I
“You, Jool, get yer arse movin’ and do as yer bid! Now! Or, by God, I’ll. …”
A swipe with a brutishly thick forearm finished the threat. Jewel Combs ducked the blow with the agility of long practice. The rush of air as it just missed her head blew long tendrils of her inky black hair upward in its wake. She was not one whit bothered by the violence. Getting hit was nothing new to her; if a day had passed since her birth some sixteen years before when someone had not hit her for something, she could not remember it. Dodging blows—or taking them if she wasn’t fast enough on her feet—was a fact of life for her and all those like her the ragged, dirty urchins who had no home but London’s filthy back streets.
In fact, she was luckier than most, and she knew it. She had a family, of a sort. Jem Meeks was meaner than a gutter rat and almost as ugly with his thin, cadaverous face and long beak of a nose, but if you did as you were bid he saw to it that you had a place to lay your head nights and a crust of bread with a bit of meat to sup on. And he kept you safe. No one bothered you if you were one of Jem Meeks’ band of pickpockets, hawkers, and petty thieves.
“I’m goin’ I’m goin’, ya ol’ cod’s head!” Jewel muttered tartly. Reaching behind her, she yanked tight and tied the laces of her most prized possession—a new dress salvaged from the castoffs of some down and out theater company.
At that time of night the loft was nearly deserted; the assorted characters who resided there practiced their vocations after dark. Besides her and Jem, there was only Ol’ Bates (whose lay was pretending to be blind drunk until some cove bent over him to rifle his pockets, and then robbing the surprised cove instead), and Nat the Tinker (so called because he would carry the finest of the watches and gewgaws he lifted under his coat, and offer them for sale to passersby on the street when the need for drink was in him). Ol’ Bates was sick, as he had been often lately what with the damp all around, and Nat was sleeping off a drunk.
Jewel stepped carefully over Nat’s snoring form, which lay sprawled across one of the half dozen or so beds made of old sacks that covered one section of the floor of the huge, drafty loft. Reaching the exit, she ducked her head to get through the low door. The stairs twisting downward were broken and rickety, blackened by the fire that had left the warehouse unusable and prey to squatters like themselves. But Jewel took them with the surefootedness of a young goat, carefully holding her skirts clear of her feet to keep her precious dress safe. A large rat skittered down ahead of her, staying close to the wall. Its long naked tail left a trail in the heavy layer of soot and dirt. Jewel barely noticed it. Like blows, rats were a part of her life.
Behind her, Jem clumped more cautiously. The thud, thud of his heavy boots echoed the gradually accelerating thumping of her heart. She wasn’t afraid, not Jewel, but she didn’t much care for this new lay he’d come up with. But, as Jem said, times were hard in this year of our Lord 1841, what with them so-called Corn Laws doing in the gentry so that they weren’t near as plump in the pocket as they used to be. And with the winter as bad as it had been, and the nobs just now starting to trickle back to town, why, things were in a sad way.
Jewel was an expert ticker hunter (tickers being watches and hunting them being, in a manner of speaking, what she did), trained by the best pickpocket around, as Jem claimed he had been before he had gotten hit with the rheumatiz. But when there was nothing in the purses of those she robbed even artistry such as hers was of little value. None of them had been having much luck lately, not even Corey the Chaser. His lay was jumping out in front of gentlemen’s rigs and then rolling away at the last possible moment, screaming so that the victim would think him injured and offer him something—generally a pound note—to keep him from raising too much fuss about being run down. As Jem said, “Ya gotta do wot ya gotta do,” and to eat they had had to come up with some new lays. If Jewel didn’t like the one he had chosen for her, well, she could do it or get out.
Her one consolation was that the new game had required the acquisition of the fine looking dress she now wore. Jewel clutched the crimson silk skirt and jumped down the remaining four steps so as not to have to wade through the pile of offal that someone had dumped on them. Landing lightly, she tugged at her tight bodice and tucked in between her breasts a torn edge of the black lace that adorned it, trying not to notice the pumping of blood in the veins of her neck, or the sweat that dampened her palms. She had loathed this lay from the first, when Jem had assured her it was a one time thing. But that first time had netted them a tidy sum, and Jem was never one to pass by a source of easy money. If her stomach wasn’t strong enough to stand the sight of a little blood, well, then, her stomach shouldn’t be so damned weak livered. Or so Jem said.
The worst part was that they needed Mick for this lay.
She hated Mick, really hated him. He liked the new lay, liked the violence and the blood, she could tell he did. Mick was short and stocky with oily dark hair, a broad pockmarked face and little gleaming black eyes that glistened like cockroaches whenever they rested on Jewel. And he had thick, meaty hands—about a dozen pair of them, which he could never keep to himself. So far, she had managed to fend off anything more than the occasional grab, but she knew that she had Jem more than her own physical prowess to thank for that. Of course, if ever the day came when she refused to do what Jem asked, well, she would have to make damned sure that day never came. For a chit with no one to look after her, London’s slums were a dangerous place. Jewel figured she would last about one day before she fell victim to one of the area’s many predators. Then she would be lucky to end up, alive, in a whorehouse.