married into her title, and he don’t consider her to be one of them.”
Julian’s obsession with noble bloodlines meant nothing to Eleisha on that first night. She only sensed that he was a creature of few or deeply hidden feelings—someone to be avoided.
His dim shadow passed when he left a week later, and Eleisha was offered a real position with a moderate wage as Marion’s assistant. She and her mother were assigned a small, whitewashed room in the east wing. For the first time in Eleisha’s memory, they had a space of their own.
Time passed. Eleisha began taking a strange satisfaction in her work, quite different from before. The prospect of setting out lovely breakfast trays for Lord William (especially when somebody else had to do the washing up) evoked a nurturing instinct. If he had been anyone else, her feelings might have been different. But on her second morning of service, she forgot her place briefly and smiled at him when he walked in for tea. Instead of having her chastised or dismissed, he smiled back.
Their surface relationship never developed beyond small things—her extra care in setting his place, the occasional newspaper next to his plate, preparing his tea with the right amount of milk—but he made it clear she was to stay in the dining room until he had finished, and two weeks later her wages doubled. She grew to like his hunting jackets, his quiet manner, and the thin structure of his aging face. Something sad drifted behind his gray eyes, distant and lonely.
Lady Katherine never came down to breakfast or luncheon.
As with that first animated dinner party, dark spots in Eleisha’s life occurred only with Julian’s infrequent visits. One night in 1836, he burst unannounced through the great front doors, two guests in tow.
“Father! Come look,” he called as though drunk. “You’ll never guess whom I’ve brought.”
Both Lord William and his wife were in the study, sipping brandy after supper. Eleisha followed them out to see Julian and the guests.
Julian stood laughing in the entryway, his cape covered in mud, his mouth smeared with streaks of blood. On one side of him stood a handsome, similarly mud-covered man. But all eyes turned to his other side. Even the eerie laughter, even the red smears on his lips, could not hold attention in light of his second guest.
Rather than pale, her skin glowed a soft ivory. Perfect features, framed by a mass of chocolate-black hair, almost detracted from the low-cut, red velvet gown she wore.
Eleisha decided later that it was not mere beauty, but something more, something exotic that drew such stunned and wordless stares.
“You all remember Miss Margaritte Latour? Maggie?” Julian bowed low in mock chivalry. “Philip’s whore fiancée? You must ask her to tea sometime, Mother.”
Lady Katherine’s eyes clouded in anger. Perhaps she was the source of her son’s belief in dominant nobility. Perhaps she was simply jealous of Maggie’s overwhelming attraction. Perhaps both.
“Philip, my boy,” Lord William said, walking over to clasp Julian’s other guest in a quick embrace. “Good to see you. How are the vineyards?”
“Julian, wash your face,” Lady Katherine hissed while the others fell into speaking French. “Eleisha, go fetch a washbasin and pitcher.”
Only too happy to leave this macabre scene, Eleisha hurried down the hallway. Were they all half blind? Julian had blood all over his mouth and openly insulted one of his companions. Why did no one react? Why did no one ask him where he’d been?
She quickly returned with the water basin, and then fled the study before anyone noticed her. There was something else, something terrible in the room. Fear. It had been slight in the entryway, but grew stronger each moment he was home. A sickening, uncontrollable fear flowed from Julian and filled her with a panic she’d never experienced.
Locking her bedroom door for the first time, she crawled under the covers with her sleeping mother and passed a restless night. The previous evening’s events felt like a bad dream the next morning while she set out trays of breakfast choices for Lord William.
“Will Master Julian be joining you for lunch?” she asked timidly.
“No.” His gaze drifted into space. “He’s gone back to Yorkshire.”
Relief like tart water flooded into her mouth. Good. Let him stay there.
The following year, Eleisha turned fifteen, her mother passed away quietly, and Lord William began to forget things. Small things at first, like where he’d left his hunting jacket—while he was wearing it—and the names of books he’d just read. As