“Tell me what happened,” he said, waving to a chair.
Juliana sat, and obediently told him. “They never intended to take me to the villa. Lord Mandrell had bought a manor house for me, they said. We would be married there. Presumably he would visit me in an effort to make me pregnant, but I wouldn’t be allowed near his family. He has four daughters and no son.”
Ash held up a hand and she stopped. “Lord Mandrell? Isn’t he...doesn’t he...”
“Old and pox ridden, yes,” she said, taking pity on him and supplying the word. How odd that a man used to dealing with the dregs of humanity should falter.
Restlessly, she took a pace to the window, and then turned back to him, sure of what she would say. “They told me that whether I agreed or not, I would be married to him by the end of the day. They had witnesses who would perjure themselves, and my mother said she would forge my signature. With my reputation, how could I gainsay that? Who would believe me?”
“I would,” he pointed out.
She smiled at that. “Thank you. But you wouldn’t be there, and by the time you’d seen me again, I’d already be his wife. The manor, which I never got to see, was in the middle of nowhere. No village, no help, nothing. I had the strong feeling that they planned to lock me up there. They could claim I was insane. That way, you know, I wouldn’t have to stand trial. I’d be condemned in my absence.” She shuddered. Ruined for life.
Families of her type dealt with their more unfortunate members that way. Disgraced women who bore children out of wedlock, adulterous women, children born with weak minds, hysterics, even people deformed or too hideous to be seen were locked away, kept in genteel comfort. Juliana had no doubt she’d have been destined to become one of those shadowy people, if she’d fallen in with her parents’ plans.
“I know I said what I did, but that was only to get away from them. I didn’t mean anything by it, I swear. I won’t trouble you after the trial.”
“Oh, I think you will,” he said softly. “And for a long time to come, if you should decide you wish to share my life.”
He drank his tea. It must have been scalding hot; she had only been able to sip at hers. But he swallowed the liquid in one gulp. After replacing the dish in the saucer, he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands together. “Let me tell you about my family.”
“My mother said—”
He interrupted her, something he rarely did. “That is the short version. I want you to know the whole. It’s a sad story, and my Achilles’ heel. Your mother knew that, and used it as leverage to persuade me to let you go. I planned to work for you, to get you the life you wanted. I should never have given in to them, and after you left, I seriously considered going after you. But I thought I would get your widow’s portion for you and then come for you. You might even get some rest at the villa.” He paused. “May I tell you about my family?”
She nodded. What could be so terrible?
“Very well. We were brought up as rational dissenters. Do you know what that is?”
“Puritans?” she ventured. Although Ash and his sisters did not appear the least like them.
He nodded. “Gentler versions, if you like. Not as radical. We believe in natural equality, of freedom of conscience. Because of his position as a lawyer, my father converted to Anglicanism. Our mother objected violently, and made his work impossible, so they separated. She took us to the house in the country and reared us. She used her name of Hoskins, not his.”
He kept her gaze, but she could read nothing in his eyes. Telling her this was paining him, so Juliana did him the honor of listening without interruption.
“She was extreme in her beliefs.” He shook his head slightly. “Cruel, even. Beatings when we made the least transgression, like not sitting upright during meals, or using the wrong words. She showed us no love, and were it not for the affection we gave one another when she was not with us, we wouldn’t know what it was at all.
“Despite their disagreements, my father visited regularly, and must have continued his conjugal relations with her. He never strayed, and she did her marital duty. That was how she put it. The last child was Gregory. She died two years after his birth, but she never fully recovered from it.” He frowned. “I left home at sixteen, to go to Oxford and obtain my law degree, then I came to London to work with my father, and study for the bar. After I left, she got worse.”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, although she wasn’t sure she was.
“I’m not,” he said shortly. “She treated us badly, and that’s putting things mildly. We had no toys, we were punished for the smallest transgression, some of which we weren’t aware of committing. Before I left, the punishments were meted out according to a book she had, done coolly. If we committed one of the sins in her book, we received the due punishment. Amelia told me that after I left she became more irrational, would invent crimes and announce arbitrary punishments. She wrote to me, but our mother read all the letters going out of the house, so I had no idea until Silence left.” He breathed deep.
“Do you want to stop?” she asked him. She had heard enough to satisfy her. Her opinion of Ash had not changed, although obviously he blamed himself for his family’s calamities.
“I have never told anyone these things before. Never given an
