Page 32 of A Brush With Love at Brookview Hall (Noble Hearts)

Twenty-Six

JULIA

H ow was she to keep the grin from splitting her face? How to stop her whole being from shining like a beacon with undamped happiness? Cornelius loved her and wanted to marry her.

Julia’s heart sang.

They made their way downstairs, slowly and with due care for Cornelius’ injured knee, and were sitting demurely at the kitchen table, nibbling at some vegetable pasties and sipping tea, when Mrs Armstrong returned to the house from wherever she had been.

“Ah, I see you are much recovered,” the housekeeper began, before taking another look at the two unexpected visitors.

“Ah. Should I have been here to maintain appearances?” the woman asked, her face stern for a moment before breaking into a warm smile.

“You both look far too pleased with yourselves. Are congratulations in order?”

“They are, indeed,” Cornelius replied, and Mrs Armstrong wished them great joy with all sincerity and delight.

They passed the rest of the day quietly.

Cornelius, while much recovered from the beating he had received some days before and the subsequent injuries delivered by the smugglers when he had been captured, tired easily and professed himself satisfied to sit in the large chair in the parlour, where he slipped in and out of a gentle doze.

Julia set about writing various notes and letters.

The first was to her employer at Brookview Hall, explaining ambiguously if not untruthfully, that she had taken an injury while out on a walk and was being cared for by the woman in a nearby farmhouse.

Cornelius had recommended that she obscure the truth, and still unsettled by the previous night’s events, she had been happy to agree.

The second letter was to her old friend Dorothea.

How many letters had she written over the last six years, to be folded up and slid into a drawer, with no hope of them ever being sent and less of them ever being read? But this one, she prayed, would reach its intended destination.

Mr Rainham was well connected in London, so Cornelius informed her, and would find her old friend’s direction.

Whether still single or married, he would seek her out and ensure that this letter made its way into Dorothea’s own hands.

There would be no more shame, no more direct cuts or upturned noses.

She would be respectable, the wife of an admired artist. If there were still whispers that accompanied her name, well, a colourful history was to be expected amongst the artistic set, and would likely only improve her husband’s appeal.

My Dear Friend Dorothea , she began,

You will be surprised to receive a letter from me after so very long, but I beg your indulgence. I have such a tale to relate, it might be something from one of those novels we enjoyed as girls.

She did not write to her cousin George, although she did pen a note to her uncle, who had done what he could for her. She hoped he would agree to renew their relationship once she presented herself as Mrs Robertson.

She felt happier and more at peace than she had since before her beloved father had died. She felt, once more, like herself.

Mr Rainham returned very early the following morning, accompanied by a rather rag-tag assortment of filthy men.

Julia was awake, having risen with the sun after an early night, and Cornelius limped downstairs at the first sound of their entrance.

The grim but satisfied smiles on their faces suggested that their task had been accomplished, but not without trouble.

“What news?” Cornelius asked, and Mr Rainham answered as he and his men devoured the vast amounts of food Mrs Armstrong now placed before them.

Julia listened with wide eyes as the story came out.

With the information she and Cornelius had given, Rainham and his crew had discovered both the cave and the cottage, and were in place to capture the smugglers when they returned in the darkest hours of the night.

One of Rainham’s men had been shot in the ensuing struggle, and was under the care of the town doctor, but the whole band had been taken and was now in the custody of the admiralty.

“We got the ship as well,” Mr Rainham continued.

“Your account of the signal from the lamp was perfect and one of our navy ships used it to approach and take the smugglers’ craft before they knew what had happened.

With the exception of poor Pethick, who the doctor says should recover, it was a successful operation.

We owe you both all due thanks, for we would never have discovered the information without you. ”

His men, their plates now empty and their coffee cups refilled with the steaming bitter brew, sounded their agreement.

“What, then, is wrong?” Cornelius asked. “You look as if not all is well.”

Mr Rainham rocked back in the sturdy wooden kitchen chair and clucked his tongue.

“It was nothing more than we suspected, although the confirmation of it pleased nobody. The outbuilding you discovered, Miss Lyddon, is on Mr Derricott’s land.”

“That it is,” she agreed. “I believed the smugglers had discovered it, for it is not often used.”

“They did not discover it. It was offered to them. Your employer, I regret to tell you, is one of the band—their leader, in fact.”

Julia gasped.

“I had wondered,” Cornelius exclaimed with a grimace.

“He was far too wealthy for a man of his station, with an estate of middling size in unexceptional farmland. Oh, I did not expect him to be poverty-stricken, but to have the funds for his antiquities and books, for the newly constructed pond with its statues, and the paintings he commissioned, well, that all spoke of an income far beyond what his estate could be expected to provide.”

“Might there have been a misunderstanding?” Julia asked. It seemed scarcely credible that her employer of the last several years was involved in such terrible matters.

“I am sorry.” Rainham shook his head. “He was one of the people we captured at the cottage, along with one of the leading merchants from the area, whose activities we have been watching for some time.”

‘That must be the man I heard, then,” Julia muttered, to herself as much as to Rainham. She told him what she had overheard, and he nodded before speaking on.

“Our men were hidden behind crates in the darkness and heard Derriscott discuss with this man the plans to ship the ill-gotten supplies along with his personal belongings in his coaches to help avoid discovery. There is no question.”

Julia’s thoughts flew at once to her young charges. “A sad state of affairs, then. The poor children…”

“Very much so. Derriscott’s fate is in the hands of the courts, and Hugh, his oldest son, will inherit, for all that the lad is only thirteen years old. The children will be well looked after, but it will not be easy for them, being the offspring of an acknowledged criminal.”

Julia’s heart broke a bit. Poor little Charlie, his life all but destroyed by an avaricious parent. She sent up a quick prayer that he and his older brothers and sisters would find a more welcoming world than she had found.

“Still,” Cornelius declared, “a most excellent outcome for all of us. Now let us celebrate. My contribution will be portraits of you all… as soon as my hands are healed enough to hold a pencil again!”

It was late afternoon by the time Mr Rainham had completed all his tasks in the aftermath of their victory.

His men had drifted off during the course of the day as their obligations were discharged, until only he and one other officer remained in the house.

Cornelius had been involved in many of the discussions, and Julia had spent more time alone than in the company of the one man she cherished above all others in the world.

Eventually, Rainham and the major rode off to meet and dine with the captain of the vessel that had taken the smugglers’ ship, and Mrs Armstrong excused herself to visit her daughter and new grandson who lived across the field, promising to be back in time to serve them dinner.

Julia and Cornelius were, at last, alone.

“My reputation would be irrevocably ruined if this were to become known,” Julia chuckled. “Alone in a house with a man not my husband…”

“Not yet your husband, you mean,” came the reply.

“Those ghastly creatures in Town might start to believe the tales to be true.”

“Does it bother you still?” he asked.

Julia thought for a moment.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Not at all, not now. At first, I was horrified to be shamed like that by people who knew nothing at all of the circumstances, but who blamed me for everything, regardless. It was vicious and cruel, and that hurt almost as much as being sent off with not a penny.”

As she spoke, she led him by the hand to the farmhouse’s heavy front door, and then through it to the garden beyond.

It was a pretty space, surrounded by a low stone wall and bordered with fruit trees and late autumn herbage.

In the springtime, when the flowers were in full bloom, it would be lovelier still.

“At first?” Cornelius asked. “Did that change?”

“Mmmmm,” she sighed in response. “How beautiful this place is. Yes, it changed. I came to realise that if their opinions could be formed so quickly, they were meaningless. If they were the sort of people to bring down judgement upon someone without any question, they were not the sort I wished to know. I prefer integrity and honesty, not pettiness. If they wish to think ill of me still, they may do so, for I know the truth, and I will have a husband who believes in me, and that is of so much greater value than the approbation of strangers.”

“You will not be friendless, my Julia. Not only me, but others as well. I move in excellent circles. Not, perhaps, the first circles where you might once have been welcomed, but among good and interesting people, who will welcome you. My friends are artists and poets and musicians, scholars and bluestockings, and we love life. They all, I know, will love you.”

He slid his arm around her shoulder, pulling her to his side. His hand, still bandaged, brushed her upper arm, and he leaned more heavily on her than he would when his knee healed. It felt wonderful.

Above them, the sky was just beginning to fade from full daylight to that soft golden light that precedes sunset.

“We will return here one day, my love,” Cornelius said.

“When my hands are recovered, when the roses are bursting from their bushes and the garden is redolent with the scents of summer, we will come back. I will sit you down on that pretty bench, and I will capture your magnificence once again on canvas. That piece I have done of you, that will be part of my exhibition, for the world to see. But this one, that I most long to paint, that will be for me alone.”

“I can think of nothing I would like more,” Julia whispered. “To be yours and yours alone. Happy forever.”

“Forever.”