The Wedding Night Affair--An Historical Mystery by L.C. Sharp (books to read as a couple TXT) 📕

regarded her, a smile playing about his mouth. “You are eminently respectable, and you must remain so.”

Anger swept through her like a cleansing tide. She got to her feet. “What good is respectability going to do for me on the scaffold? If we don’t discover something to ameliorate the charge, that is where I will be, perhaps as soon as next month.” She shook with emotion, the sweep of it taking her unaware.

He held up a hand, but she ignored his unspoken request for her to stop. “I have spent my life as a spectator. I have watched and listened, and nothing—nothing else. I want to be a part of this.”

“If you are discovered at a courtesan’s masquerade, that will not help your case.”

She appreciated his understatement. “I am aware of that. But what are the chances that someone will recognize me? As you said at my father’s house that day, nobody would know me without the paint and powder. Nobody apart from my maid knows what I look like.”

He raised a brow. “Your height?”

She gave an ugly laugh, and met his gaze directly, firming her chin as she always did when she faced her fear. “I’m not the only tall woman in town, and without my heels, I’m merely a shade over average height.”

He scanned her, his gaze sweeping over her. Juliana stood completely still, settling herself inside her body, finding her equilibrium. Without her paint she felt vulnerable.

Ash touched her shoulders, turning her, but Juliana leaped back with a cry. “No!” Her senses cringed, her body shrank. Immediately she felt foolish.

“If you cannot bear to be touched,” he said steadily, “then you have no place in a masquerade like this. You will be touched.”

“I know.” How could she tell him the essential difference? How could she explain something she didn’t properly understand herself? “I will control my responses. You have my word.” If it killed her, she’d force herself not to flinch.

How to explain the shot of undefinable emotion that hit her when he touched her? She didn’t understand it herself.

She tried something else. “You touched my bruises.”

A muscle in his jaw twitched, a tiny, inconsiderable movement. “I’m sorry.”

“You can hardly avoid them. I’m covered in them.” She spoke without rancor. The man who had inflicted them was dead. When she sat, when she stood, when she turned, every movement carried pain and stiffness with it. But that would pass. That was easy to endure. What was not was the shrinking of her soul, the way she withdrew instinctively when anyone touched her.

His eyes narrowed as he studied her. “He left all the parts of you that are on public display untouched.”

“He did. His mother slapped my face, but he did not. He said he would not leave a mark where anyone could see it.”

Her legs, trunk and upper arms were a mass of bruises and scratches, but she could walk, and she could appear as normal without resorting to cosmetics.

He walked around her, not touching her, rounding her as if she were a statue. “So what he did to you was calculated. Not done in excess of passion.”

She couldn’t see him, which was probably by design, but she heard the anger in his voice. His words might be dispassionate, but that was not how he felt.

Although talking about her ordeal brought her agony back in aching detail, she could not avoid it. Memories flashed through her head, the look of triumph when she reacted to Godfrey’s treatment, his renewed efforts when she screamed.

She answered Ash as coolly as his comment deserved. “He enjoyed it. But yes, he knew what he was doing.”

Ash came back around to face her. His expression turned cold. “I have come across that kind of person before. If we can show that he has done it to others, then your case becomes stronger. You could have struck out blindly in self-defense.”

She read him better today. No longer as deeply distressed, as shaken, she saw how he covered his anger, smothered it in cold calculation.

She shook her head. “I don’t think you believe me at all. I-did-not-kill-my-husband.” She articulated each word carefully, as if talking to someone who found understanding difficult.

He met her gaze, that warmth of anger still in his eyes. “I believe you. But a jury might use the argument of self-defense.”

She knew that. “Prove you believe me. Prove my innocence.”

He swallowed. “I will promise to do everything in my power to prove your innocence.”

“I can manage myself at a ball. God knows I’ve been to enough.”

He said nothing but, “We’ll see.”

She saw the shift in his eyes from anger to something else. Something softer. An expression she’d seen only a few times in her life.

He cared about her.

Chapter Fifteen

Ash would say no more about the masquerade, but the next day, the maid brought up a gown to the room Juliana shared with Amelia.

And such a gown!

Azure blue silk, with large silver flowers woven into the taffeta, covered with spangles so that when the wearer moved, she shimmered. A robe à la francaise, with deep pleats flowing from the neck to the floor at the back. The stomacher was covered with silver lace, which also covered the robings. The lace was slightly tarnished and not of the best quality, the gown not perfectly pressed, but still, it was spectacular.

He was taking her to the masquerade? For all her defiance, she’d known the decision had to be his. To go on her own would mean breaking the terms of her agreement with the Fieldings, and a promise was a promise.

Juliana caught her breath. “My mother would never allow me to wear a French-style gown.”

Amelia laughed. “It is lovely. But I see what Ash is doing. He’s putting you in something Lady Uppingham would never wear, and something you would not see in society.”

She touched the silk, felt the roughness of the silver lace. “Yes. It’s theatrical, displays well at a distance. But it’s not best quality. If that taffeta was not severely