The Wedding Night Affair--An Historical Mystery L.C. Sharp (i read books .TXT) 📖

So did a woman want Uppingham dead? One of the women he’d abused, perhaps? Smythe’s mysterious lady?

Despite Mr. Fielding’s refusal to give him more than a couple of weeks, Ash left the magistrate’s office in a better frame of mind than he’d entered it. Juliana would not die. He had a solid argument to make.

Now to clear her name completely. He was a believer, although the evidence of the laudanum was only the final piece. Listening and talking with her had convinced him long before they’d discovered the laudanum bottle.

The day was hot, the women inside gazing outside wistfully. At least Juliana was. Eventually she could take no more. She got to her feet, the familiar sound of rustling silk caressing her senses.

Wood was working at the clothes, as if she could make amends for her sins that way. Freeman stood at the other side of the room, constantly present as Wood’s gaoler.

“Are you going outside?” Amelia asked her, looking up from her sewing.

Juliana nodded. “We’ve been inside all day. At least we can use the garden. We should walk outside for half an hour. Look, the day is waiting for us.” She gestured to the broad window.

The rain had stopped, and the sun washed the garden in shades of gold. The roses were in full bloom, pinks, reds and creamy whites lavishly punctuating the greenery.

“We’ll take Wood with us. She’s been sewing like a madwoman, as if she can atone for what she did that way.” Juliana felt no rancor. She was past that. The woman would suffer for what she’d done, even if no case was brought against her. At any rate, Wood needed some fresh air. The woman looked up, her eyes red rimmed. Her face was a picture of misery, but Juliana refused to sympathize with her. Instead, she said, briskly, “Get your hat and meet us downstairs. We’re walking for an hour in the garden.”

The maid laid aside the gown she was working on, a peach-colored satin, draping it carefully over the bed, before turning, hands folded and bobbed a curtsey.

Juliana collected her own hat and allowed Wood to do her job, tying the ribbons at a becoming angle just under her mistress’s ear. The action felt strangely comfortable, as if Wood was tempting her back to the way she used to be.

Even in such a short time Juliana had become someone else. She smiled at Freeman, who had entered the hall in their wake, something she would never have done before she came here. Acknowledging a servant was just not done in the houses her parents occupied.

They met Amelia in the back hall, and the small procession went into the garden.

Tipping back her head, Juliana took a deep breath of the fragrant air. The scent of roses was heady and luxurious, and she reveled in it, allowing herself to enjoy the sheer perfection of being alive. And staying that way.

She was not a murderess. She would not die next month.

“You’re right,” Amelia said. “We needed this. What will you do?”

Juliana raised a brow. “In what way?”

“After this? It’s looking increasingly likely that you will be released after the trial.”

“My parents won’t allow me to starve. Society would not approve, and my indigence would be a weakness in the family. Even if I don’t get my widow’s portion, I’ll probably receive a small income, probably from the Funds, or an annuity, and a small residence well out of the way of anyone who might recognize me.”

“Don’t you think they will try to marry you to someone else?”

Juliana was glad Amelia felt free to ask her. Their friendship had quietly developed into a solid alliance. And she was right. If their daughter was still breathing, her father would want his heir. She would fight his claims of possession every inch of the way, but to do that she needed friends.

“Yes, they will, but this time I’ll go into it with my eyes wide open, and I will ensure I know the person well. At the time I didn’t know just how brutal Godfrey was. Plenty of people knew, but they didn’t tell me. And I believed I had to obey my parents. I had no friends, no alternatives. No money of my own. It’s hard to imagine, even now, that I couldn’t think of any other way.”

“No it’s not,” Amelia said. “When you know nothing else, you believe this is the way life is for everyone. Especially if you are kept isolated.”

Exactly. How did she know that? What had happened to Amelia to make her understand so instinctively?

Since she’d been here, Juliana had found a way of life that suited her a thousand times better than the one she had left behind. She no longer spent hours every day dressing and changing her clothes. She didn’t have to sit with her head buried in a paper cone while her maid powdered her hair, and then leave traces of the stuff everywhere she went. She didn’t have her face painted so thickly she did not look like herself anymore.

She had learned how to be stronger, and resist the decisions made for her, instead of acceding to them as the way matters were because they had always been that way. She would always owe him and his family more than just her life. She cared about the Ashendons. But from what Amelia had just said, and other hints, including what Ash had told her about his past, she sensed a darkness. The fact that their sister was running away from a disastrous marriage told a story of its own.

The gardener, a man Juliana did not know smiled at her, and she smiled back. No head bowing, no quickly moving away, nothing of that nature. She loved it. For the first time in—probably ever, she was at peace.

“I will ask Ash to help me fight for my portion. With that, I’ll have enough to live discreetly somewhere—”

Something whistling past her ear made her start back.