Free All Things Beautiful by Cathy Maxwell Page B

games? Why don’t you tell me why you want Kimberwood enough to marry me? How noble are your reasons?” When she still didn’t receive his attention, she added, “And I’m not leaving. No matter what you want, I will not leave! ”
    For the briefest second he paused, and then continued walking without looking back.
    Julia wanted to grind her teeth and stamp her feet in the most unladylike way imaginable. Why was he so unreasonable?
    Suddenly, weariness swept her temper aside.
    What was the sense in fighting him? Her shoulders slumped. She closed her eyes and lowered her head. No hope, no hope for any of her dreams…and then Nan’s soft voice came from behind her.
    “My dear, I believe you are exactly what Brader needs in his life. Come and talk to me.”
     
    Julia’s afternoon with Nan reinforced her determination to make her marriage work. They’d spent an enjoyable hour getting to know each other. Nan hadn’t spoken of her son directly, but Julia’s spirits were helped to know his mother didnot feel the situation was as hopeless as Julia feared.
    Nan’s companion, a Mrs. Elliott, who had been one of the two ladies accompanying Nan to their wedding, came for her mistress, announcing it was time for her to rest. Nan promised to meet with Julia the next afternoon in the sunroom, saying, with a conspiratorial wink of an unseeing blue eye, she would not join them for dinner that night. Nan never dined with her son, as she enjoyed an earlier supper and bedtime than he did.
    Fisher escorted Julia to what had been Grandmère’s room. Although the workmen hadn’t started on the second floor, the furniture already shone with fresh polish and the bedclothes and drapes were clean and fresh. The master’s bedroom, the largest in Kimberwood, was across the hall. Julia did not have to ask where Brader slept. Nothing would do for the ego of her husband except the largest room!
    Refreshed by a nap, Julia descended the stairs for dinner, ready for another round with her husband, determined to have him eating out of the palm of her hand in no time. Her ball gown had made him notice her as a woman. The dress she wore tonight was designed to do the same. The sooner they created her baby, the sooner she could wash her hands of him and his rude manner.
    Before she’d left London, she’d spent several hundred pounds on a new wardrobe. Brader had enough black marks chalked up by her name thatshe wasn’t going to let dowdiness continue to be one of them.
    And he’d never think her dowdy in this dress. The satin smoothness of heavy blue silk swayed and molded to her body with every step. The color brought out the sapphire of her eyes and, against the glossy darkness of her hair, gave her skin the smooth whiteness of alabaster. She looked sophisticated, fashionable, and, she hoped, enticing…at least enough to spur her husband to cross the hall from his room to hers tonight.
    The house was in amazing order for the uproar she’d discovered upon her arrival earlier in the day. Not a trace of plaster dust could be found, and Fisher had even seen to a bouquet of hothouse flowers on a table in the foyer.
    Stepping off the last step, she had the fleeting impression she’d caught the butler off guard, as if he hadn’t expected her to appear this evening. However, he bowed deeply, his manner unruffled and polite.
    “Master Wolf is in the drawing room—”
    “I’ll announce myself.” Again, she effectively cut off anything else Fisher might say. The scent of the apricot and rose-oil perfume she favored swirling around her, Julia dramatically threw open the door to the drawing room for a grand entrance.
    She stopped dead in her tracks.
    Brader, standing by the fire, a wineglass in his hand, looked up from the guests he was entertaining. Julia found herself with a roomful of men—and a hostile husband.
    A flash of hindsight told her she should have waited for Fisher to finish his sentence.
    All the men jumped to their feet,