She'd seen it happen once, outside Winchester jail. Mistress Goadsby had been convicted of killing her husband when he'd fallen down the stairs. She'd said he'd been drunk and had been beating her and he'd tripped and fallen. She'd stood in the dock with the bruises still on her face. But they'd tied her to the stake, hanged her, and set fire to her.
Juliana had been little more than a child at the time, but the image had haunted her over the years… the smell of burning flesh embedded in her nostrils. Nausea swamped her, and she ran back to the bed, dragging the chamber pot from beneath, vomiting violently
Perhaps the magistrates would believe that John had died of natural causes in the midst of his exertions… but there was that mark on his back. He couldn't have put that there himself.
And George would see it. A stepmother convicted of murdering her husband couldn't inherit. The marriage settlements would be nullified, and George would have what he wanted.
Juliana didn't know how long she sat on the floor, hunched over the chamber pot, but gradually the sweat dried on her forehead and her mind cleared.
She had to leave. There was no one there to speak for her… to speak against the facts before their eyes. Her guardian had negotiated the marriage settlements, ensuring, of course, that he, too, benefited from the arrangements. He had then thankfully washed his hands of one who had been nothing but a troublesome charge from the first moment his orphaned infant niece had been delivered into his arms. There was no one else remotely interested in her.
She stood up, thrust the chamber pot back beneath the bed with her foot, and took stock. The stagecoach for London stopped at the Rose and Crown in Winchester at four o'clock in the morning. She could walk the ten miles to Winchester across the fields and be there in plenty of time. By the time the household awoke, or George emerged from his stupor, she would be far away.
They would pursue her, but she could lose herself easily in London. She just had to ensure she wouldn’t draw attention to herself at the Rose and Crown.
Averting her eyes from the bed, Julia went to the armoire, newly filled with her trousseau. But she’d secreted a pair of holland britches and a linen shirt. In this costume, she'd escaped Forsett Towers on the frequent occasions when life had become more than usually unpleasant under the rule of her guardian's wife. No one had had ever discovered the disguise, or the various places where she’d roamed. Of course, she'd paid the price on her return, but Lady Forsett's hazel switch had seemed but a small price to pay for those precious hours of freedom.
She dressed rapidly, pulling on stockings and boots, twisting her name-red hair into a knot on top of her head, tucking telltale strands under a woolen cap pulled down low over her ears.
She needed money. Enough for her coach fare and a few nights lodging until she could find work. But she wouldn't take anything that would be missed. Nothing that would brand her as a thief as well as a murderess.
Why she should concern herself about such a hair-splitting issue Juliana couldn't imagine, but her mind seemed to working on its own, making decisions, discarding possibilities with all the efficiency of an automaton.
She took four sovereigns from the cache in the dresser drawer. She had watched John empty his pockets… hours ago, it seemed-after the revelers had finally left the bedroom door and taken their jovial obscenities out of the house, leaving the newlyweds to themselves.
John had been almost too drunk to stand upright. She could see him now, swaying as he poured the contents of his pocket into the drawer-his bloodshot blue eyes gleaming with excitement, his habitually red face now a deep crimson.
Tears suddenly clogged her throat as she slipped the still-unfamiliar wedding ring from her finger. John had always been kind to her in an avuncular way. She'd been more than willing to accept marriage to him as a way of escaping her guardian's house. More than willing until she realized she'd have to contend with George… malicious, jealous, lusting George. But it had been too late to back away then. She dropped the ring into the drawer with the remaining sovereigns. The gold circlet winked at her, its glow diffused through her tears.
Resolutely, Juliana closed the drawer and turned back to the cheval glass to check her reflection. Her disguise had never been intended to fool people close at hand, and as she examined herself, she realized that the linen shin did nothing to disguise the rich swell of her bosom: and the curve of her hips was emphasized by the britches.
She took a heavy winter cloak from the armoire and swathed herself. It hid the bumps and the curves, but it was still far from satisfactory. However, the light would be bad at that hour of the morning, and with luck there'd be other passengers on the waybill, so she could make herself inconspicuous.
She tiptoed to the bedroom door, glancing at the closed bed curtains. She felt as if she should make some acknowledgment of the dead man. It seemed wrong to be running from his deathbed. And yet she could think of nothing else to do. For a minute she thought hard about the man whom she'd known for a bare three months. She remembered his kindnesses. And then she put him from her. John Ridge had been sixty-five years old. He'd had three wives. And he'd died quickly, painlessly… a death for which she had been responsible.
Juliana let herself out of the bedchamber and crept along the pitch-dark corridor, her fingers brushing the walls to guide her. At the head of the stairs she paused. The hall below was dark, but not as black as the corridor behind her. Faint moonlight filtered through the diamond panes of the mullioned windows.
Her eyes darted to the library door. It was firmly closed. She sped down the stairs, tiptoed to the door, and placed her ear against the oak. Her heart hammered in her chest, and she wondered why she was lingering, listening to the rumbling, drunken snores from within. But hearing them made her feel safer.
She turned to leave, and her foot caught in the fringe of the worn Elizabethan carpet. She went flying, grabbed at a table leg to save herself, and fell to her knees: a copper jug of hollyhocks overbalanced as the table rocked, and crashed to the stone-flagged floor.
She remained where she was on her knees, listening to the echo resound to the beamed ceding and then slowly fade into the night. It had been a sound to wake the dead.
But nothing happened. No shouts, no running feet…and most miraculously of all, no change in the stertorous breathing from the library.
Juliana picked herself up, swearing under her breath. It was her feet again. They were the bane of her life, too big and with a mind of their own.
She crept with exaggerated care toward the back regions of the house and let herself out of the kitchen door. Outside all was quiet. The house behind her slept. The house that should have been her home-her refuge from the erratic twists and turns of a life that had brought her little happiness thus far.
Juliana shrugged. Like a stray cat who had long ago learned to walk alone, she faced the haphazard future with uncomplaining resignation. As she crossed the kitchen yard, making for the orchard and the fields beyond, the church clock struck midnight.
Her seventeenth birthday was over. A day she'd begun as a bride and ended as a widow and a murderess.
******************************************************************
"I give you good day, cousin," a voice slurred from the depths of an armchair as the Duke of Redmayne entered the library of his house on Albermarle Street.
"To what do I owe this pleasure, Lucien?" the duke inquired in bland tones, although a flicker of disgust crossed his face. "Escaping your creditors? Or are you simply paying me a courtesy visit?"
"Lud, such sarcasm, cousin." Lucien Courtney rose to his feet and surveyed with a mocking insouciance his cousin and the man who'd entered close behind him. "Well, well, and if it isn't our dear Reverend Courtney as well. What an embarrassment of relatives. How d'ye do, dear boy."