Joan Wolf (14 page)

The very tall, broad-shouldered figure of Lord Denham appeared in the doorway. The maid’s eyes widened in alarm as she perceived he was indeed coming into the bedroom. “It’s a damn good thing for you George just went into his room,” he said, looking at Julianne’s dressing gown and loose hair.

“Never mind about that. I want to see your hand,” she repeated.

“It is all right, Julianne.”

“Get me a scissors. Nancy,” she said to her maid, ignoring his words.

“Here, miss.” The maid gave Julianne scissors and stared with disapproval at John Champernoun
.

Julianne took his hand in a firm competent grasp. “Thank you. Now you may go get me some more bandage,” she ordered calmly over her shoulder.

The maid’s mouth opened. “And leave you
alone,
Miss Julianne?” she squeaked.

John looked at her sardonically. “If you hurry I won’t have time to do anything too violently passionate before you return,” he said.

Julianne flashed him a brief repressive look as the maid scurried out, then turned her full attention to his hand. The bandage came off and she looked carefully at the healing wound in the palm. “Does that hurt?” she asked, pressing gently around the injured area.

“No.”

She nodded with satisfaction and looked up at him. “It seems to be healing well. There’s no sign of infection.”

His eyes were partially veiled by his lowered lashes as he looked back at her. “It was the bulk of the bandage I thought might affect my accuracy today, not any discomfort.”

She was suddenly aware of him in a way she had not been before due to her preoccupation with his injury. She bent her head and looked again at the hand she was holding. It was long-fingered, beautifully articulated, and hard as iron. “One can’t be too careful with puncture wounds,” she said a trifle breathlessly. “I have a salve which I’ll put on it for you.”

He let her move away to rummage in a drawer, but when she turned it was to find he had followed her. He put his uninjured hand up and lightly touched her hair. It slipped through his fingers like heavy silk. “This was the first thing I noticed about you that day at the auction,” he said, his hand buried now in the shining honey-gold length of it.

The conversation had taken a very dangerous turn and Julianne knew she ought to put a halt to it immediately. She looked up into his eyes and felt as if she could drown in the sea-blue of them. “What else did you notice about me?” she whispered, very unwisely.

“Your skin.” His voice was very soft, very dangerous. His hand had left her hair and was now on her jaw, moving caressingly down the line of it. Julianne stood perfectly still under his touch, her face turned up to him, the salve held, forgotten, in one partially raised hand. “It is like touching satin,” he murmured and his hand continued to move on down her throat. It slipped easily under the silk of her robe and came to rest on the bare curve of her breast. He left it there— light, undemanding, a gesture of absolute possession. She stared up at him with dilated eyes, her instinct being, as always with him, to yield. The tip of her tongue showed for an instant between her lips and his eyes darkened. In an instant she would be in his arms. Then the door opened.

“Here are the bandages, Miss Julianne,” said the maid and John removed his hand.

“Thank you. Nancy,” said Julianne after a minute in a suspiciously husky voice. “Bring them here.”

She bent her head, hiding behind the screen of her hair, and applied salve to John’s hand. She wanted to kiss it and the desire frightened her. Her hands were not quite steady as they wound the bandage around his palm, but then, she noticed, neither was his. When she was finished she stepped back and looked at the cleft in his chin. She wanted to kiss that too. “That should do for a while,” she said with determined steadiness.

There was a long interval of silence and finally she was forced to look up into his eyes. They were narrow and intent, and Julianne was suddenly frightened by what she saw there, by what she knew she herself had provoked. “I will see you shortly, at dinner,” she forced herself to say.

“Yes.” His mouth was taut, angry-looking. “I will see you later.”

The gentlemen lingered for an unusually long time over their port that evening and when they joined the ladies in the drawing room they were still in animated conversation. The chief participants were John, Lord Minton, and Lord Henry Melburne. They were talking about Egypt. Julianne was immediately joined by Lord Rutherford, who was feeling a little guilty about his bad temper of the afternoon. He exerted himself to please and to charm her. He was an extremely nice young man and could be very charming indeed. Unfortunately, Julianne was more interested in the conversation going on by the fireplace and his efforts were wasted. She smiled at him absently, but her attention was elsewhere. She could just hear what the men were talking about.

“You sound as if you admire Mohammed Ali, Denham,” Lord Minton was saying. “But isn’t he rather a barbarian?”

“It depends on what you mean by a barbarian,” John replied evenly. “The fellahin of Egypt would infinitely prefer to be ruled by a barbarian like the pasha than by that mob of greedy bastard Mamelukes. I won’t say the pasha is an enlightened ruler. The number of bad characters he has dispensed with without benefit of trial is enormous. But most of them badly needed dispensing with. And he has given stability to the government—something Egypt has lacked for centuries.”

“He is not likely to be overthrown, then?” asked Sir Henry.

John quirked a black brow. “The pasha has a very effective way of dealing with any threats to his power. When he first took charge there were reports of discontent in the Arab quarter of Cairo. In response, Mohammed Ali promulgated a decree that anyone proved to have spoken disloyally of the government would be hanged on the spot. The next day I rode by the Ezbekiah Gardens and there were forty corpses hanging in rows by the roadside. There was also a sign announcing that the victims had all spoken evil of the government.”

“That was quick work. How did he have so many agitators discovered, convicted, and punished so swiftly?” The questioner was Lord Minton.

John’s eyes gleamed with amusement. “Very simple. The pasha sent word to the chief of police that he must hang forty persons by daybreak. His orders were to pick out two score of the biggest scoundrels he could think of in the slums of Cairo.”

“Good God!” Lord Minton looked appalled. “Then they were not guilty?”

John shrugged. “I daresay they had spoken, or would have spoken, disrespectfully of the government. At any rate, they were good riddance. And the pasha has had no more talk of popular discontent.”

“He dealt quite as ruthlessly with the Mamelukes,” said Lord Henry dryly.

“True. But then Egypt is not a civilized country,” said John blandly. “It does not have Corn Laws, game laws, rotten boroughs. Acts of Suppression, and so forth.”

Lord Henry, who was a member of Lord Liverpool’s government, looked angry. Lord Minton, who was a Whig and did not approve of any of the measures just mentioned, looked scarcely less so. “All of those measures are most unfortunate, Lord Denham,” he said a little stiffly. “However, there are those of us who are bound to try to change them. And certainly there can be no comparison between Britain, however troubled we may be at present, and Egypt. In England at least we are all free men.”

“Ah, yes. Well, if we are going to discuss slavery we had better get Julianne over here.
She is
the expert on that subject.” John raised his voice a little and called her name.

Julianne, who had been listening to every word he said, turned her head. “Yes?” she asked composedly.

“Lord Minton would like your opinion on slavery.”

She smiled at William, took his hand in hers, and drew him over to the group of men by the fireplace. It was where she had wanted to be all evening.

Chapter Eighteen

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind ...

—Sir Thomas Wyatt

It was a stormy night and the weather matched the mood of at least three persons who retired to bed in the beautiful old house of Minton that evening. Lord Rutherford was feeling distinctly uneasy about the changes he had seen in Julianne since the coming of the Earl of Denham. His fiancée had always seemed to him the sweetest, gentlest, softest of girls. She had stirred his blood with her luminous beauty, her lovely, yielding disposition. She had made him feel both protective and possessive. He had thought he knew her quite well.

It was a conviction he was beginning to doubt. There was a core of independence and self-sufficiency in Julianne that he had never suspected existed. She had told him once that she was well able to take care of herself, and the events of the day certainly seemed to prove that she had spoken the truth. She had made a shot that he could not have made. When all of the other women were trembling with fear she had been perfectly composed. And in conversation this evening she had spoken with authority about the brutality of the slave trade in Africa. He had been shocked by the things she had seen and experienced firsthand.

He had always known, of course, that Julianne had spent five years in Africa with her father. But he had never realized what those years had entailed. It had been impossible to imagine the beautiful fashionably dressed young lady he loved in any other setting than the one she now occupied.

It was impossible no longer. There had been something in her eyes tonight, and in her voice, that he had not seen before. And there had been an unspoken understanding between her and Denham that he resented and feared. It was as if they two inhabited the same world, as if their frame of reference, their system of values were unique to themselves. They were the initiated, and he, his father, and his uncle were not.

Lord Rutherford was not regretting his engagement. Julianne was still the most beautiful and desirable girl he had ever known. He still wanted to make her his wife. It was Lord Denham he wished to see disappear from Minton. It was Denham, he decided, who was having this unfortunate effect on Julianne. He wished heartily that the man would go back to Egypt.

Julianne was wishing the same thing. She felt completely turned upside down, completely upset. Her life had been clearly laid out before her and she had been happy in her choice of a future. Then John had come back, and all her peace, all her security, was lost. She could not write or read. She had lost contact with the Mintons, with William. Nobody interested her anymore but this one man.

It terrified her, her reaction to him. It was almost elemental in its power, its feel of inevitability. But it could lead to nothing but heartache. He didn’t touch her life anywhere, not anymore. There was no future with him. He wanted her, but he would not marry her. He had told her once that he would never marry, and she believed him. He prized his freedom too highly.

She must find the strength to stay away from him. It was the only conclusion she could come to. It had been a mistake to call him into her room this evening. She must take care never, under any circumstances, to be alone with him again. He had been prudent once before, when she had been under his protection, but he would be prudent no longer. She had seen that in his eyes this evening. She must guard against him. Because if he ever got near her again she would melt like butter in his hands. It was a humiliating admission to have to make, but it was true. If only, she thought, he would go back to Egypt.

* * * *

John Champernoun stood by his bedroom window staring bleakly out into the darkness, and his thoughts too were on Egypt. He should be returning east; the pasha would be looking for him. His business here was settled.

He knew why he was staying and the knowledge was not pleasant to him. It was Julianne who held him. In this moment of painful honesty, he recognized also that it was Julianne who had drawn him back, not his cousin’s death. That had been only an excuse. He had known that this afternoon, the moment he had touched her.

She haunted him. Part of her power did indeed lie in her beauty; the first time he had seen her she had reminded him of a princess out of a fairy tale. But it was more than that. He had known and desired beautiful women; some he had possessed and some he had not. But never had any woman obsessed him as Julianne did.

She was, he thought, more like a queen than a fairy princess: proud, strong, sufficient unto herself. The relentless, dedicated example of her father, the stoic creed of her mother, the strength bred of a lonely, difficult childhood and of the years of solitary struggle in Africa — all had bred a spirit that attracted him more fiercely than even her .beauty. It was an attraction that had drawn him back to England and was keeping him here—the one place in the world where he had sworn he would never live.

What was he to do? He wanted her. He wanted her with an extreme desire, a desire that would only be assuaged by an act of possession. If the maid had not come back this afternoon, he knew he would have taken her. He could not have stopped himself. Nor would she have tried to stop him either.

He attracted her almost as strongly as she did him—he knew that. He knew also that she would not give up Minton and marry him; she had deluded herself into thinking that Minton and all that it represented was what she wanted out of life. She saw so many things so clearly—the quality of her mind had been revealed in almost every line of her journal—but she could not see herself. If she insisted on marrying Rutherford she would find out the truth about her own nature too late.

She must be kept from marrying Lord Rutherford, What happened after that... Well, he would cross that bridge when he came to it.

##

Julianne spent the following morning riding out with Lord Rutherford and she promised to devote the afternoon to rehearsing their scenes together. George was going to have the cast go through the final acts in the evening after dinner.