For a moment Mrs. Florence's eyes were filled with sadness. “I haven't always made the right choices, child. I've had to live with the consequences for a very long time.”
“Do you mean…” Julia stared at her, perplexed. “Is it that you regret not having married?”
“I only wanted to marry one man in particular,” the elderly woman informed her, with a wry twitch of her lips. “Unfortunately he didn't mix with the theater. He wanted me to leave it entirely, and so…” She spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I let him go. How I envied other women who didn't have to make such a choice!” She stared at Julia in a faintly pitying way, as if it were a certainty that Julia would someday face the same painful dilemma. Julia wished she could tell Mrs. Florence the truth…that she would never need to choose between Jove and her profession…that she was in fact already married, and her husband was no obstacle at all.
Quietly Julia made her way to her mother's bedroom, located in the darkened east wing of Hargate Hall. The luxurious gothic estate was dark and stalwart, with tall chimneys and long, narrow windows. Set in the midst of the chalky Buckinghamshire hills, it was connected to the market town a mile away by old, sunken paths that hadn't changed for decades. Hargate Hall was dim and quiet, with heavy mahogany furniture and ceilings covered with webbed fan vaulting.
Being inside the home she had left two years ago gave Julia an uncomfortable, closed-in feeling. Resolutely she climbed one of the long flanks of stairs leading from the first floor to the second, half-fearing that at any moment she would hear her father's knifelike voice commanding her to get out.
Aside from several discreet greetings from a few servants she had known since childhood, no one dared speak to her. It was known to everyone at Hargate Hall that she was not a welcome visitor—her father had forbidden her to set foot on the property—yet no one would stop her from visiting her ailing mother, Eva.
Wrinkling her nose at the stale air in Eva's bedroom, Julia went to the curtains, drew them apart, and opened a window to admit a breeze from outside. There was a stirring beneath the covers on the bed, and Eva's weak voice.
“Who is that?”
“Your prodigal daughter,” Julia replied lightly, and went to the bed, bending over to kiss her mother's pale brow.
Eva blinked rapidly and tried to sit up, her face stiff with consternation. She was a small, slim woman, with ash-blond hair streaked with silver, and large brown eyes. She seemed to have aged a great deal in the past two years, her colorless skin etched with tiny lines and the bones of her face more prominent than ever. “Julia, you shouldn't be here. It's dangerous!”
“It's all right,” Julia said quietly. “You wrote to me and said that Father would be gone today. Don't you remember?”
“Oh, yes,” Fretfully her mother rubbed her forehead. “Things slip from my mind so easily of late.” She sighed and let her shoulders press back into the pillow. “I've been ill, Julia…”
“Yes, I know.” Julia was tight-lipped as she stared down at her mother, who had always been slender. Now she appeared birdlike in her frailty. “You shouldn't be closed in this dark room, Mama. You need light and fresh air, and a walk outside—”
“You mustn't stay long,” her mother said weakly. “If your father comes home unexpectedly…”
“He would throw me out,” Julia finished for her, her mouth curling sarcastically. “Don't worry, Mama. I'm not afraid of him. There's nothing he could say or do that matters to me now.” Her face softened as she saw her mother's distress, and she sat carefully on the edge of the mattress. Taking one of Eva's thin, cool hands in her own, she pressed it carefully.
“I've made a new life for myself. I'm an actress now, a fairly good one.” She couldn't help smiling as she saw her mother's expression. “Actress, not prostitute…though I'll admit most people don't seem to understand the difference. This season I'll be working at the Capital Theatre, training under Logan Scott himself. I'll have a handsome salary, my own carriage, a house…and I've chosen a new name for myself. Jessica Wentworth. Do you like it?”
Eva shook her head. “It's not what you were born for,” she said through dry lips. “It's not who you are.”
“Who am I, Mama?” Julia asked softly, although she knew the answer. Her chest tightened with sudden unhappiness.
“You're the Marchioness of Savage.”
Julia shot off the bed, unable to bear the sound of the name. “Only because I had no choice in the matter. I'm married to a man I don't know, all to satisfy Father's social ambitions. It's an absurd situation. I don't know Lord Savage by sight, I've never even corresponded with him. Sometimes I wonder if he exists at all!”
“It appears that Lord Savage has no more desire than you to acknowledge the marriage,” her mother admitted. “Neither your father nor the Duke of Leeds could have expected that both children would resent the marriage so greatly.”
“Not resent having our futures stolen?” Julia strode around the room as she continued heatedly. “I was sold for the price of a name, and Lord Savage for a fortune. Father secured a title for his daughter, and the Savages were saved from financial ruin. And all they had to do was sacrifice their firstborn children.”
“Why must you bear such ill will against your father?” her mother asked sadly. “What he did was no different than what other parents of our position do. Marriages are arranged all the time.”
“It was different. I was only four years old, and my so-called husband wasn't much older.” Julia went to the window and stared through the parted drapes, filtering the silk-fringed velvet through her fingers. “That first time I found out, I was twelve and fancied myself in love with a village boy …until Father took me aside and said I would never have the right to love any man because I was already married.” She shook her head and laughed without humor. “I couldn't believe it. I still can't. For years I've been haunted by thoughts of my ‘husband,’ wondering if he's grown up to be a half-wit, a bore, a skirt-chaser—”
“From what we have heard of him, Lord Savage's reputation is that of a quiet and responsible man.”
“I don't care what he's like,” Julia said, knowing that her mother would think this pure stubbornness on her part—and perhaps that was partly true. But it was also because of the awareness that if she accepted the life her father had chosen for her, she would fade into the same kind of docile, unhappy creature that her mother had become. “It doesn't matter if Lord Savage is a saint. I never intend to become the Duchess of Leeds. I won't agree to the plans Father made for me. He controlled every day, hour, and minute of my life until I finally gathered the courage to run away.”
“He wanted to shelter and protect you—”
“Father kept me cloistered on this estate, never allowing me to go anywhere or meet anyone. From the day I was born, he was determined that I should marry a man with a great title. I wonder, did it ever occur to him that I might someday have landed a duke or an earl without his interference? Or did he even once consider that I might not have wished that for myself? I suppose it was too much to expect that he might have wanted me to be happy—”
Julia broke off, realizing that her fingers were clutched in the folds of velvet. She loosened her grip and took a calming breath. It pained her to know that even though she had escaped her father's domination, Eva was still under his control. Her mother's only recourse was to take refuge in illness, gradually turning herself into an invalid. It was Eva's only defense against an autocratic husband who manipulated the lives of everyone around him.
Edward, Lord Hargate despised illness of any kind. He was actually rather afraid of it, for it was so completely alien to his robust nature. He was a strong man whose relentless drive led him to dismiss anyone's feelings but his own. He could be cruel at times, denying people the things they wanted most in order to demonstrate his wealth and power. The rest of the Hargate family—cousins, brothers, uncles, and aunts—all avoided him as much as possible. Yet even when he was at his worst,
his wife defended and supported him, as was her duty.
“There must be something else you can do,” Eva murmured, “other than turn to a life in the theater. The idea of my daughter living among those people, working on the stage…It sounds very sordid.”
“I'll be quite safe at the Capital,” Julia said firmly. “It's a reputable company. And acting is the perfect occupation for me. After being secluded so much of the time when I was a child, I developed quite an imagination.”
“I remember how I worried,” Eva murmured. “You seemed to live in a fantasy world most of the time, always pretending to be someone else.”
Julia returned to the bedside and smiled down at her. “Now I'm being paid a very good salary for it.”
“And what about Lord Savage?”
Julia shrugged. “For the time being, he doesn't seem to want to acknowledge the marriage. I can't see any other choice except to lead my own life.” She grimaced uncomfortably. “How odd it is, knowing that I belong to a stranger…that legally he has more rights over me than I do over myself. The thought of it makes me want to run to the ends of the earth. I'll admit that I'm afraid to find out what kind of man he really is. I'm not ready for that—I may never be.”
“You won't be able to hide the truth forever,” Eva murmured. “Someday Lord Savage will find out that his wife has been working on the stage. How do you think he'll feel?”
“No doubt he'll want an annulment.” Suddenly an impish grin crossed Julia's face. “And I'll be glad to oblige him. I'm certain to make a far better actress than a duchess.”
Chapter 2
1827
As soon as the hired detective left the room, Damon abandoned all pretense of calm. Although he never allowed himself to lose his self-control, this was too much frustration to bear. The urge to shout, hit someone, break something, was unbearable. He wasn't aware that he had been holding a glass until he heard it shatter in the library fireplace with explosive force. “Dammit, where is she?”
A few moments later, the door opened and his brother Lord William peered gingerly around the edge. “Apparently the detective had no luck in finding our mystery marchioness.”
Damon was silent, but the uncharacteristic flush on his face betrayed his emotions. While the two brothers were strikingly similar in appearance, in temperament they couldn't be more different. They both had the black hair and the striking, sharp-hewn features common to the Savage clan. But Damon's gray eyes, the shade of smoke and shadows, rarely revealed his thoughts, whereas William's gaze was usually filled with mischief. William possessed a charm and happy-go-lucky air that Damon, the elder, had never had the time nor the inclination to cultivate.
So far in his short life of twenty years, William had managed to land himself in a large number of scrapes and predicaments. He had sailed through them all with the youthful conviction that nothing bad would ever happen to him. Yet Damon seldom rebuked him, knowing that at heart William was a good lad. What did it matter if he indulged his high spirits for a while? Damon intended for his younger brother to have all the freedom and advantages that he'd never been allowed—and he would protect Will from the harsh realities that he himself had not been spared.
“What did he say?” William prompted.
“I don't want to talk now.”
William sauntered into the room, heading to the mahogany pedestal side cabinet that held rows of opulent cut-glass decanters. “You know,” he remarked casually, “it's not necessary that you find Julia Hargate in order to get rid of her. You've been searching for three years, and there's no sign of her here or abroad. It's clear that the Hargates don't want her to be found. Her relatives and friends are either unwilling or unable to divulge any information. You could obtain an annulment, I daresay.”
“I won't without Julia's knowledge.”
“But why? God knows you don't owe her anything.”
“I owe her a fortune,” Damon said grimly. “Or rather, the family does.”
William shook his head as he handed a fresh glass of brandy to his brother. “You and your damned sense of responsibility. Any other man in your position would cast off Julia Hargate like unwanted ballast. You don't even know her!”
Taking a deep swallow of brandy, Damon stood from his desk and wandered around the room. “I need to find her. She was a victim in this as much as I. The agreement was made without our consent, but at least we can dissolve it together. Besides, I don't want to take any steps without making some kind of settlement on her.”
“With her family's fortune behind her, she has no need of a settlement.”
“There's a possibility she has broken with the Hargates. I won't know until I find her.”
“I hardly think Julia is destitute, brother. More likely she's amusing herself at some French or Italian seashore and living quite well off her papa's money.”
“If that were true, I'd have located her by now.”
William watched as his brother went to stand at the window. The view was spectacular, as it was from nearly every room in the modified medieval castle. It was built on a lake, with great stone arches that rose from the water and supported the ancient building as it reached toward the sky. Many of the once impenetrable honey-colored walls had been replaced by spectacular windows filled with diamond-shaped panes of glass. Behind the castle stretched the endless green countryside of Warwickshire, lush with pastures and gardens. Long ago the castle had served as a staunch defense against invaders of England, but it had now settled into a mellow and gracious old age.
The Savage family had nearly lost possession of their ancestral home—and everything else they owned—because of the present duke's bad investments, not to mention his taste for gambling. Only Damon's marriage to Julia Hargate, and the dowry her father had provided, had saved the family from ruin. And now they owed her the title of duchess, which wouldn't be long in coming, judging by their father Frederick's failing health.
“Thank God I wasn't the firstborn child,” William said in a heartfelt tone. “It was a damned strange bargain Father struck, marrying off his son at age seven in order to secure money for his gambling debts. And it's stranger still that you've never met her since.”
“I never wanted to see Julia. It was easier to pretend she didn't exist. I couldn't acknowledge that she was—is—part of my life.” Damon's fingers clenched tight around the glass.
“Is the marriage legal?” William asked.
“No—but that's not the point. Father made a promise all those years ago, one involving me. It's my responsibility to honor it, or at least reimburse the Hargates for the money we accepted from them.”
“Honor…responsibility…” William shivered and grimaced playfully. “My two least favorite words.”
Damon swirled his drink and stared moodily into the glass. Although it wasn't Julia's fault, each letter of her name was a link in the invisible chain that bound him. He would never be at peace until the matter was resolved.
“I've imagined Julia a hundred different ways,” Damon said. “I can't stop wondering about her, and what drove her to disappear like this. God, I'd like to be free of her!”
“When you do locate her, Julia may want to hold you to your obligation. Have you considered that? You've tripled the family's wealth since you've taken charge of the Savage finances.” There was a teasing glint in William's dark blue eyes as he added, “And women seem to find you attractive, in spite of your gloomy character. Why would Julia be different? She wants what every woman desires—a titled husband and a fortune to go with him.”
“I don't know what she wants from me.” A bitter laugh escaped Damon. “Nothing yet, apparently, or she wouldn't still be in hiding.”
“Well, you'd better do something about the blasted situation soon, or Pauline will make a bigamist of you.”
“I'm not going to marry Pauline.”
“She's told everyone in London that you are. Good God, Damon, don't you think you should tell Pauline the rumors are true, that you are
in fact married?”
The subject of Pauline, Lady Ashton caused Damon's scowl to deepen. The sultry young widow had pursued him ardently for a year, invading his privacy and cornering him at every social event he attended. Pauline was the kind of woman who knew exactly how to please a man. She was beautiful and dark-haired, completely uninhibited in bed, and possessed a dry sense of humor that appealed to Damon.
In spite of his better judgment, he had begun an affair with Pauline about six months ago. After all, he was a man with the same needs as any other, and he had little taste for prostitutes. Neither did he have an interest in the flocks of marriage-minded virgins being brought out each season. They were forbidden to him, though the fact of his marriage was not known for certain by the public.
Recently, however, Pauline had begun a campaign to become the next Marchioness of Savage. So far she had been wise enough not to pressure him or make demands. In fact, she hadn't yet dared to ask him if the gossip was true, if he already had a wife.
“I've told Pauline many times not to hope for a future with me,” Damon said gruffly. “Don't pity her—she's been well-compensated for the time she's spent with me.”
“Oh, I don't pity Pauline,” William assured him. “I have a fair idea of the jewels, gowns, and credit accounts you've given her.” A sly grin curved his mouth. “She must be damned entertaining in bed to deserve all that.”
“She's good at many things. Beautiful, charming, and intelligent. All things considered, she wouldn't make a bad wife.”
“You're not seriously considering…” William frowned and stared at him in surprise. “Talk like that alarms me, Damon! Pauline may like you, may even be fond of you, but in my opinion she's not capable of love.”
“Perhaps I'm not either,” Damon murmured, his face inscrutable.
A quizzical silence passed, and William appeared nonplussed. Then he gave a short laugh. “Well, I can't say that I've ever seen you fall madly in love—but having a wife since age seven is something of a handicap. You haven't let yourself feel anything for a woman because of some obligation to a girl you've never known. My advice is, dispose of Julia…and you may be surprised at how quickly your heart thaws.”