The Secret Life of Lady Julia Read Online Free PDF Page A

see her again, returning what he’d stolen. Well, half of what he’d stolen. “It must have gotten tangled in my clothing when we—” She shot him a wide-eyed look of horror, and he fell silent. “Are you—well, my lady?” he asked stiffly, resisting the urge to touch her flaming cheek.
    She glanced at the earring and closed her hand on it. “You’ve rescued me yet again.”
    There were a million things he wanted to say—apologies, offers of marriage, confessions of feelings he had no right to, everything from concern to—affection. He’d call it that.
    “Someday I shall have to return the favor,” she said.
    “I came to see if—” But she tilted her head, and even if her blush betrayed her embarrassment at what had passed between them in the darkness of her father’s library, she schooled her expression into the same polite look of interest she’d given Fiona Barry in the park. She did not need him, after all. She was stronger than she looked. He felt admiration for her. She would make a magnificent duchess.
    He took her arm and escorted her the few steps to her coach. “So when is the wedding to be?” he asked.
    “January. At Temberlay Castle.”
    They reached the vehicle, and he let her go and bowed. “Then I shall wish you well,” he said. “And happy.”
    She lowered her gaze. “I am . . .” She paused, and he watched her throat bob as she swallowed the lie. “Thank you,” she managed.
    He kissed her hand, felt her fingers tighten on his for an instant. He let her go and walked away, resisting the urge to look back. Whatever the future held for him, it did not include Julia Leighton.

 
    Chapter 3

    August 1814, London to Brussels
    I t wasn’t home anymore—merely England now, Julia told herself as she stood at the ship’s rail, watching the chalk cliffs disappearing behind the fog that blanketed the coast, white on white, a body disappearing into a shroud.
    Appropriate, she thought, since a ruined lady was indeed dead to almost everyone who had known her in better times. Her father had told friends she was dead after he’d discovered her sin, and disowned her on the spot. He had insisted she leave the country, not just his house, since it wouldn’t do for “decent” folk to see her ghost walking the streets of Mayfair, and feel the need to ask awkward questions.
    No, it was better this way, a fresh start, a new life all her own.
    In her arms, Jamie squirmed, waved chubby arms at the seabirds that wheeled overhead. She kissed her infant son and passed him to his nurse, and watched as they hurried belowdecks out of the wind. It would be hours before they reached Antwerp, and Julia knew she should go below too, but she stayed where she was and let the salt wind buffet her, wanting one last glimpse of the coast.
    Her parents had never even asked about the child, named after her brother James, the family hero. In better circumstances, Jamie would have been his grandfather’s heir, the next Earl of Carrindale, but he faced an unknowable future, like she did.
    It could be far worse, Julia thought, tightening her hands on the rail. Her fate was not so terrible as David’s. He’d died in a duel, scant days after she broke their engagement and confessed she was with child by another man. She did not fully understand the circumstances of the duel. The details had been buried along with David, yet another family secret. It wasn’t Thomas Merritt who killed him. She had refused to name her lover, and besides, Mr. Merritt had taken ship and gone from England soon after her encounter with him, mere days after she’d seen him on Bond Street, and long before she knew she was pregnant. She’d made discreet inquiries about him. It had turned out his name was well known, and he was a most popular topic for gossip. He was a rogue, a charmer, disowned by his family too, for his own ruinous behavior. Not at all the kind of man who rescued ladies in distress. Yet she could not entirely blame him.