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The cobbles were rough, disgustingly dirty and wet. Her hands hurt. Almost winded, Julia lay where she was, felt the blood oozing through the split in her glove and wondered if her heart was going to burst.
‘Julia! Sweetheart, it is all right. I’m here. Are you hurt?’
And, miraculously, there Will was, gathering her up in his arms. Julia turned her face to his shoulder and clung on as he lifted her, then carried her to a hackney carriage where Nancy waited, white-faced.
‘My lady—oh, your poor hands.’
‘Just grazed. I am not hurt otherwise,’ she managed to reassure them as Will gently opened her fingers and wrapped them in his handkerchief, still holding her hard against himself. ‘Are you all right, Nancy?’ Concern for someone else helped, she realised. The panic was ebbing, her breath was calming.
‘I am fine, my lady, just all shaken up. I didn’t know what to do, I couldn’t reach you, or see you, so I ran back to the lawyers and made them get my lord. What was it, my lady? A riot?’
‘No, a hanging.’ She would not be sick, not if she closed her eyes and thought of nothing but Will’s arms around her, keeping her safe.
‘It is Newgate Prison,’ he said, his voice grim. ‘I should have warned you not to go that way, it isn’t very salubrious at the best of times, but when there’s an execution it is a glimpse into hell.’
‘People were watching from the windows, as if it were a play,’ she managed. Jane and Arthur. It couldn’t be. It was my imagination, my fear, a couple who looked a little like them. I haven’t seen them for almost four years, she comforted herself. They will have changed, I wouldn’t recognise them now if I really saw them. I am safe with Will, I don’t imagine things when he is here.
‘It is disgusting,’ Will muttered, his voice rough with anger. ‘They moved the hangings from Tyburn because it was supposed to be more civilised to do it outside the prison instead of parading the condemned through the streets to the place of execution. It is not my definition of civilised. Just try to relax, sweetheart. I’ve got you safe.’
‘I know,’ Julia murmured and closed her eyes so that her entire world became just Will. She inhaled slowly and there was the familiar smell of his skin, of clean linen and the sharp male edge of fresh sweat. He had run, and run hard, to reach her. The feel of him was familiar too, the strength that made her feel so safe, the warmth of that big, desirable body under fine linen and smooth broadcloth. She listened to the sound of his heartbeat against her ear, a little ragged still. Home. I am home when I am with him.
Will cared for her, he was angry for her. He shifted a little to hold her more securely and she felt his cheek press against her hair and something happened in her chest as if a bell had tolled silently, reverberating through her whole body.
I love him. She felt herself go still as though to move would shatter the moment, break the spell. This was nothing like her emotions for Jonathan, this was a deeply complex, rich emotion like velvet swirling around her feelings. It was not about desire or liking or respect, although those were all in there somewhere. It was inexplicable and unexplainable and that, she supposed, was how she knew it was love.
She would tell him this evening when they were alone, when they were in bed together: it would be the naked truth, after all. He did not love her, she knew that, but that was all right. Well, no, perhaps not all right exactly. But she could not hope for the moon and the stars. She would explain to him that she did not expect him to feel the same way, that she was not asking him to pretend and to lie to her.
‘Better, sweetheart?’ Will murmured in her ear.
‘Much, thank you, Will. You keep me safe.’
‘Always,’ he said and his arms tightened around her.
*
‘I will sleep in the dressing room,’ Will said from the open door of the bedroom as the clocks in their suite struck nine. ‘You should be asleep.’ Julia was pale against the heaped pillows. He wished he had her home again where she would feel safer as she recovered from her ordeal and not here, in a strange place.
‘I have slept, for hours,’ Julia protested. And she did look better, despite the pallor. ‘That hot bath was like taking laudanum! Come to bed, Will.’
‘You are still nervous? Then of course I will sleep with you.’ He closed the door behind him and watched her carefully as he shed coat and waistcoat. No wonder she was so reluctant to go into the neighbouring towns for anything but the most essential shopping if crowds made her so frightened. Some people had a fear of them, he knew. It was like the fear of heights, or spiders—not something that seemed to be rational to anyone else, but very real to the sufferer. And a public hanging was probably, short of a riot, the most frightening mob to find oneself in.
‘I wish you had told me how you felt about crowds,’ he said as he pulled off his neck cloth.
‘It was so irrational, I thought you would think me foolish,’ she said, not meeting his eyes. ‘I pride myself on common sense and keeping calm and then to experience such panic when no one means me any harm…’
Her voice trailed away and he bit his tongue on the reproach that she had kept this a secret from him. It was not a rational fear, he reminded himself, so perhaps she found it harder to confide about it.
‘We all fear something,’
Will said and sat on the edge of the bed to pull off his boots.
‘What do you fear?’ Julia curled round on the pillows and watched him as he tossed his stockings aside. ‘I did not think you were afraid of anything.’
‘Lies and powerlessness,’ he said instantly, then stopped undressing to think about what he had said. ‘Not seeing the whole picture when there is something to confront, so all the time you think there is something worse lying in wait. I think that was what was so dreadful with my parents when I was growing up: I did not know what was wrong, no one would tell me the truth and admit that the marriage was a sham. I was expected to act as though we were a happy family and nothing was amiss, yet I sensed the world as I knew it was all falling apart.
‘And then at first when I was ill, no one would tell me the truth—or what they thought was the truth. In my heart I believed I was dying and yet I could not face it, deal with it, because the doctors insisted I would be cured in the end. I have no idea why they wouldn’t tell me. Perhaps they thought I couldn’t cope with it, or perhaps they thought I was a better source of income if I was hoping for a cure! It took three months before they would admit the truth, that they were certain there was no hope.’
‘Was it any easier after that?’ Julia asked. She reached out a hand and laid it over his on the bedspread. She did nothing except press lightly, but it was curiously comforting. Will curled his fingers into hers and dug deeper into his feelings than he had for a long time.
