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"The title fits this book perfectly. These are four terrific stories of erotic love and fantasy where sex and sexual attraction kick off some wonderful, hot, steamy relationships."
--Romantic Times
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POSSESSING JULIA
in Burning Up
July 2003
ISBN 0-312-31108-7
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From four of today's hottest romance authors comes a collection of sexy novellas that no fan of erotic romance will want to miss.
Nina Bangs, Cheryl Holt, Kimberly Raye, and Patricia Ryan are all well-known for writing the sexiest, most creative romances around. And in Burning Up, they showcase their talents and ratchet up the heat. From 1867 New York City to Regency England; from modern-day Texas to sometime in the future, these four stories will take readers on an erotic tour through time-and true love.
"Patricia Ryan proves once again what an excellent author she is with her novella 'Possessing Julia' in St. Martin's erotic anthology BURNING UP (August 2003). In 1867 New York City, destitute war widow Julia Hughes agrees to a marriage of convenience with elderly millionaire Emmett Van Lew in order to support her five-year-old son Tommy and elderly Aunt Eunice. Van Lew believes Julia is the perfect candidate to give him a child and heir since she has already proven herself fertile. Since Tommy is adopted, Julia must quickly lose her virginity before the wedding ceremony. Luckily, Clay Redmond, her deceased husband's cousin, pays her a visit and is extremely agreeable in helping Julia with her virginity problem. It's rare to find erotic romance that's both touching as well as spicy, but Ms. Ryan manages it beautifully. If the rest of the stories in the BURNING UP anthology by Nina Bangs, Cheryl Holt and Kimberly Raye are half as good as Patricia Ryan's 'Possessing Julia,' this book should sell like hotcakes!"
--Patricia Rouse, Rouse's Romance Readers Groups
"Patricia Ryan’s 'Possessing Julia' is the highlight of the collection, a story that shimmers with passion and emotion. Widow Julia Hughes has a problem. She’s engaged to be remarried and is still a virgin. With the Civil War leaving her in genteel poverty, Julia needs this marriage to secure the futures of her son and elderly aunt. When Clay Redman, her cousin by her first marriage, shows up at her front door - she enters into a bargain with him to rid her of her troublesome maidenhead. However, what will happen when he learns that the 5-year-old son that she’s been passing off as her own, is really his illegitimate child he unknowingly sired with one of her bridesmaids?
"Ryan takes the ubiquitous secret baby plot and really makes it her own by infusing this story with tons of emotion. Clay and Julia have a bit of a past, and it’s heartwarming to watch them fall in love. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily easy; Clay is Alpha to the core and Julia is determined to protect her loved ones. Along with the interesting post-Civil War, New York City setting, “Possessing Julia” had me reading straight through, and forgetting all about the mug of hot tea I had sitting beside me.
"...Now to find all those Patricia Ryan books I have buried in my TBR."
--Wendy Cutcher, The Romance Reader
Excerpt
New York City, July 1867
"Mr. Van Lew, I have something rather difficult to confess," Julia Hughes told her reflection in the cloudy little toilet glass above her bedroom wash stand. "I haven't been entirely..."
Entirely what? Forthcoming? Honest?
Julia drew in as deep a breath as her stays would allow, and tested another approach. "Mr. Van Lew...Emmett." Surely, by the time they were wed and retiring to their marital bed, he would have invited her to call him by his Christian name. "There's something you should know before we..."
Her gaze shifted from her own mirrored image to that of the high, half-tester bed behind her. She eyed the rumpled sheets and counterpane uneasily, imagining her wedding night two weeks from today...and Emmett Van Lew's certain outrage when he bedded her and discovered the truth. He would cast her out; the scandal would be ruinous, and her little family of three would resume their downward spiral into abject destitution. New York City was a cruel place to be homeless, especially for the very young and the very old. Julia shuddered to think of little Tommy and Aunt Eunice in that squalid almshouse on Blackwell's Island. With a sense of mounting desperation, she turned back to the mirror.
"Mr. Van..." She swallowed, her hands fisted in the oft-mended skirt of her blue poplin day dress. "Emmett. Before we...retire, there's something I really should tell you. I'm sure, once I've explained why I...how it happened...that you'll understand and...forgive me for having let you think I was--"
"Fat chance."
Julia wheeled around to find Aunt Eunice in the doorway, one gnarled old hand gripping her cane and the other cradling her constant companion, Birdie--a wizened little mixed-breed terrier who'd come to Eunice as a stray fourteen years ago and grown to bear an unnerving resemblance to her mistress.
"How long have you been standing there?" Julia asked.
"Long enough to learn that you're still planning to break the news to him before the marriage is consummated instead of after, when he'll be all sleepy and satisfied and a good deal less likely to get his nose out of joint." Eunice's voice, vaguely British-inflected, like the rest of New York's "Upper Ten Thousand," had become tremulous with age and markedly sibilant from ill-fitting false teeth. "If you tell him beforehand, when he's still got his wits about him, he'll send you packing right then and there."
"If I wait to tell him, he'll find out on his own, just as soon as he..." Heat crawled up Julia's throat. "While we're...you know. That's what you told me, isn't it?--that he'd be able to tell? Hardly the best time to try to explain why a widow with a five-year-old son is still a virgin."
"Not necessarily," Eunice said as she hobbled over to the bed and lowered herself, the chairs and fainting couch having been sold off long ago, along with the Axminster carpet, cheval mirror and clothespress. Nesting Birdie in her billowing black skirts, she said, "Men can be most agreeable when they're in the throes of passion, you know. All I ever had to do to get my way with your Uncle Chester was to just put on his riding breeches and boots and nothing else. He knew what was coming. He'd be like a puppy panting for a bone."
"Aunt Eunice!" Julia exclaimed through shocked laughter.
"What every man secretly wants is a wife who's a perfect lady by day and a harlot by night. Be eager, seductive--and by the time he encounters that pesky maidenhead of yours, he'll be so smitten with you that he'll forgive you everything."
Eager? Seductive? Julia groaned and lowered her head in her hands, further disheveling her hair, which had been escaping in inky curlicues from its chignon all morning.
It was madness to imagine that she could forestall her bridegroom's wrath--by any means. Her seductive skills were nonexistent, and as for the pleas for sympathy and understanding she'd been rehearsing, well...it wasn't as if he'd negotiated this union out of affection. All Emmett Van Lew really knew about Julia was that she was young, widowed, well-born--albeit in reduced circumstances--and presumably fertile; Tommy was taken as proof of that. And all Julia really knew about her fiancé was that he was a middle-aged railroad tycoon with a mansion on Fifth Avenue and a country estate where he bred racehorses--and, of course, that he was determined to finally sire an heir, as determined as she was to rescue her family from genteel but increasingly desperate poverty. It was a match that would serve them both--assuming he didn't commence divorce proceedings the day after the wedding.
"Find out what gets his heart racing," Eunice was saying, "and then tease him, entice him. Get him good and hard and keep him there for as long as you--"
"Auntie, for pity's sake!"
Julia's outburst startled Birdie, who leapt down from Eunice's lap and skittered out of the room, claws rat-a-tat-tatting on the bare wooden floors.
"Just offering a bit of friendly advice," the old woman sniffed as she flicked open the ivory fan that hung by a chain around her neck, along with her keys and spectacles. "Beastly hot up here." The high-necked, multi-layered black crepe Eunice had worn since her husband's death nine years ago kept her in a state of quivering heat prostration in the summer.
"I couldn't begin to imagine how to tease and entice," Julia said.
Eunice eyed her great-niece balefully over her fluttering fan. "You're twenty-three years old."
"And never so much as been kissed."
The fan stilled. "Martin never kissed you?"
"Once--when Reverend Draper pronounced us man and wife."
"But he'd been courting you since you were that high."
"He was a seminarian." A good, sweet, darkly handsome seminarian--but a little shy and much too wary of offending her maidenly sensibilities. And there'd been no one since Martin--no sweetheart, not even a casual flirtation--Julia's maternal obligations and financial straits having kept her out of society for years. Her betrothal to Mr. Van Lew would never have occurred but for the machinations of mutual friends.
"Do you even know what men and women do together in bed?" Eunice asked.
"Of course," Julia bluffed as she twisted her engagement ring round and round. "The husband plants a seed in the wife's womb, and if conditions are right, it grows into a baby."
Eunice regarded Julia with arid bemusement. "A seed."
So Julia had surmised from the hints and whispers she'd managed to piece together over the years, marital relations being a taboo subject in polite circles and decent literature. Had Julia's mother lived to see her daughter wed, she might have offered some preparatory counsel, but she had perished, along with her husband, in the cholera outbreak of '49. An orphaned only child with a healthy trust fund, Julia had spent vacations here in her aunt and uncle's Gramercy Park townhouse, and the rest of her formative years at the exclusive Foxton Hall School for Girls up on the Hudson. There, she'd fallen in love with the headmistress's son, Martin Hughes. The morning after their June wedding in 1861, Martin joined the 48th Regiment New York State Volunteers as an assistant chaplain. Four months later, he succumbed to typhus at Hilton Head Island, leaving Julia widowed and devastated at seventeen.
"A seed," Eunice repeated, studying Julia as she fanned herself. "I don't suppose you happen to know how this...seed gets implanted in the woman's womb."
"Certainly," Julia said, striving for a matter-of-fact tone to match Eunice's. "The man expels it from his...you know."
"And how much time do you imagine this takes?"
Julia thought about it: insertion of the male member, expulsion of the seed, withdrawal. "A few seconds?"
"Oh, my Lord." Eunice snapped the fan closed.
"I do realize a certain amount of kissing is customary."
"Kissing. Oh, you silly little goose. I had no earthly idea. Twenty-three years old... What did you and your little school chums whisper about after lights out?"
"They knew even less than I did." Except, of course, for Libby Collier, but she preferred doing it to talking about it.
Eunice lifted her scrawny shoulders. "That's it, then. You're far too innocent and ill-informed to sway Van Lew with your body. Your only hope is to throw yourself on his mercy and hope he's not as cold and pitiless as everyone says he is."
"Yes, well, now that we've established the full magnitude of my ignorance and my dilemma, I believe I'll get back to those handkerchiefs." Eight cents apiece; time was money.
Reaching out to grasp Julia's hand as she started to turn away, Eunice said, "I hate this. I'd always hoped you'd find someone wonderful, like my Chester, and make a love match."
"I did," Julia said soberly. She was about to add, "He died," when she was interrupted by a sudden squall in the form of a tow-headed boy who darted in a blur across the room, scrambled belly-down under her bed, and took squinty-eyed aim at them with his wooden toy rifle.
"Take this, you stinkin' Rebs!" There ensued a battery of concussive mouth sounds of the type every male child was born knowing how to make.
"Tommy, come on out of there," Julia said. "I haven't had time to clean under there lately--you'll end up filthy."
Tommy squirmed out from under the bed and Julia knelt down to dust him off, taking the opportunity to gather him into a big hug, which he was still young enough to return enthusiastically. How she loved the feel of his solid little body, the pressure of his downy cheek against hers, his unique little-boy scent. He was wearing Martin's Union Army forage cap, which they'd sent her after he died. It should have been huge on him, but he was such a big, sturdy boy that it fit almost perfectly; he was rarely without it.
"Mama," he asked, straightening his cap as she released him and stood, "who's that man downstairs?"
"There's no man downstairs, sweetie."
"Is so. I was running after Birdie to put this on her--" he dug a yellow neckerchief out of his pocket "--so she could be Johnny Reb, but when I got halfway down the stairs, I saw some man snooping around down there, so I came back up."
"Oh, dear, he's right!" Eunice exclaimed. "I almost forgot why I came up here in the first place. You have a caller. "
"What? Auntie, you know we can't entertain visitors." They'd no proper food to serve, no decent gowns to receive in, and a home that had been very nearly stripped of furniture. "Send him away."
"I'm not sure I should." Planting her cane on the floor, Eunice hauled herself shakily to her feet. "It's..." She glanced at Tommy, hesitated, sighed. "It's Clay Redmond, dear."
Julia gaped at her aunt. "Clay? Why...why would he...?"
"Why would he be paying you a visit after all this time?" Eunice cast her niece a look ripe with significance. "I think I might try to find that out if I were you."
#
It was Clay. Dear God.
Martin's cousin, whom Julia hadn't seen--or wanted to see--since her wedding six years ago, had wandered out of the nominally furnished parlor and now stood with his back to her at the far end of the huge dining room in the rear of the house. Or rather, former dining room, since it was now entirely bare except for the watered silk wall coverings--stained with a ghostly patchwork of dark rectangles--and the window drapes. They couldn't sell those lest the neighbors see inside and realize the shameful extent of their poverty.
Clay had pulled aside both the heavy damask overdraperies and the net curtains beneath to gaze out at the back garden, releasing a glittering maelstrom of dust motes that whirled and spun in the streaming sunshine. Even silhouetted as he was against this blinding haze, he was instantly recognizable: those squared-off shoulders and rangy limbs, that nonchalant, hip-shot stance. He had something in one hand that he slapped softly against his leg; Julia couldn't make it out. Birdie sat on the floor next to him, mimicking his contemplative posture.
Clay must have sensed Julia's presence in the hallway, because he turned to look at her. He regarded her in silence for a long moment, during which she wished she could see his expression. Finally he walked toward her, Birdie bringing up the rear, his footsteps and her claw-clicks echoing in the vacant room. Pausing in the doorway, he inclined his head. "Julia."
She acknowledged his bow with a little nod. As a matron, she could have properly offered her hand; she didn't. "Mr. Redmond. How good to see you after all these years."
He stepped into the central hall, where she could finally view him clearly. It was something of a shock. The last time she'd seen him, he'd been in white tie and swallowtail, his brown hair well-combed and oiled, a sprig of lily of the valley gracing his satin lapel. He'd been twenty then, like the cousin for whom he'd served as best man that day, and a beautiful creature, almost indecently so, with those penetrating blue eyes and too-lush mouth. Now...
Life must have thrashed him rather mercilessly over the past six years to have weathered him so. The striking contours of his face--sharp-hewn cheekbones, beard-roughened jaw--had been honed to bone and muscle, as if scoured over time by the elements. Years of harsh sunlight had bronzed his skin and gilded that overgrown thatch of hair. And then there was his attire: navy reefer, baggy hemp trousers, a worn leather cap in his hand. A workingman's costume.
Clay's mild smile was at odds with the intensity of his gaze. "So it's 'Mr. Redmond' now, is it? Why not call me Clay, as you used to? After all, we are cousins by marriage."
She had to look away, inexplicably discomfited as always by this man she'd known since she was a child, but further rattled by something in his demeanor, a disquieting undercurrent that she couldn't quite get a bead on.
"Here you are," said Aunt Eunice as she joined them, having, as always, refused Julia's offer to help her down the stairs. As for Tommy, Julia had ordered him to confine his field of battle to the nursery until she came to get him. Eunice made a kissing sound at Birdie, who leapt into her embrace. "Touring the damage, are you?" she asked Clay.
Glancing around, he said, "What happened?"
Irked by his nosiness, Julia was searching for an appropriate way to put him off when Eunice said, "It was the Panic of Sixty-one. Our funds were invested in goods being shipped to southern ports, so of course we lost it all when the war broke out. Julia does some tatting and embroidery for a firm that offers fancywork to ladies in predicaments like ours--on a strictly confidential basis, of course."
Clay was looking at Julia as she contemplated the veins in the marble floor.
"Would you like some coffee, Clay?" Eunice offered. "I was just about to put a pot on."
"I'd love some, but I'll make it. I know how."
"You will not! Dr. Phipps says I should keep myself active, and besides, what kind of a hostess lets a gentleman make his own coffee?" She turned and trudged down the hall toward the kitchen, cradling Birdie and muttering, "The very idea." Ushering Clay into the front parlor, Julia gestured him toward the best of the remaining armchairs. "What brings you to our doorstep after all this time, Mr. Redmond?"
He settled back, legs crossed, his cap on his knee. "I just got into town from Boston and someone told me you were getting married again."
She seated herself across from him, swallowing to ease the tightness in her throat. "You live in Boston now? A beautiful city. I'm quite fond of it."
"As am I. I build ships there."
"Really? I know a little about shipping." It was how she'd lost all her money. "They tell me Donald McKay builds the finest clipper ships in Boston. I don't suppose you work for him."
He hesitated. "No."
Julia waited for him to offer the name of his employer, but he didn't. She wondered if he was a day laborer, taking whatever odd jobs were available in the shipyards.
He rasped a hand distractedly over his chin, a shaft of sunlight igniting his scalding blue eyes. Julia shivered when he turned those eyes on her. "I suppose I should congratulate you on making such a lucrative match."
Lucrative? She kept her expression carefully neutral.
"I understand you have a son," he said, a bit too casually.
Julia's fingers tightened on the arms of her chair.
"I heard about it a couple of years ago, when I got back from the war," he said. "You can imagine how surprised I was, given your, uh...well, having presumed your...maiden condition."
Her heart pounded in her chest; she didn't move.
"Martin and I were as close as brothers," he said softly. "Closer. He told me everything--everything of any importance. Such as the fact that he'd spent his wedding night passed out from drink and wasn't able to..." He paused meaningfully.
She looked away, thinking yes, of course. Of course. They'd confided in each other about everything.
Clay said, "He was mortified about that, you know. But mostly sad. Anguished, really. He didn't think he'd ever--" His voice caught in his throat. "It was as if he knew he wouldn't come back. I felt..." He shook his head, swearing softly.
Julia stared out the window, willing her eyes to stop stinging, her throat to unclog. How fervently had she anticipated her wedding night. At last, she and Martin would unite their bodies, as they had already united their souls. What on earth had possessed him to drink all that whiskey that night? He'd been a teetotaler, with no tolerance for strong spirits.
The bridal dinner had been served that mild June evening beneath a canopy on Foxton's Hall's croquet lawn overlooking the Hudson. When the garland-festooned carriage arrived to transport Julia and her new husband to the inn where they were to spend their wedding night, Martin was nowhere to be found; neither he nor Clay had been seen since the cake was cut.
Martin's choice of his cousin as best man had raised not a few eyebrows among the bluestockings and staid businessmen who dominated his family. Clay's own father led the protest, having disinherited his son for preferring fast sailboats and faster women to the family's iron foundry and a suitable marriage. A firebrand his whole life, Clay had given up on schooling after being kicked out of Andover, Exeter and Harvard for disciplinary infractions. He and his pious cousin couldn't have been more different, yet they'd been friends and confidants since boyhood.
Martin always insisted that Clay had hidden depths, but Julia suspected that was just wishful thinking. She had to admit, though, that despite his reputation as a charming lothario, Clay had never overstepped himself with her. Indeed, he could be strangely taciturn, but perhaps that was simply a reflection of her own vague uneasiness whenever she was around him. Clay had an aura of raw virility--predacious, carnal--that made the little hairs quiver on the back of her neck. He was the quintessential male animal, bewildering and even a little frightening to an unworldly girl like Julia. She understood nothing about him, and everything about her beloved Martin.
Julia, still clad in her organdy wedding gown and orange blossom coronet, had taken it upon herself to find her missing bridegroom. It was while she was searching the main academic building that she heard a warble of girlish laughter and muffled male speech from within the library. She opened the heavy oak door, breathing in the comforting redolence of linseed oil and old books--and something else tonight, an unfamiliar muskiness that sent a little buzz of awareness up her spine.
Libby Collier, Julia's pretty blond maid of honor, was sitting on the edge of the mahogany table in the middle of the dimly lit, book-lined room. She had her cage crinoline rucked up amidst a froth of pink tulle, exposing pale thighs and stockinged calves as she leaned over to pull up her drawers. An empty champagne bottle lay on its side next to her.
Libby's squeal of alarm upon seeing Julia dissolved into a flurry of giggles. "It's only you--thank God! No lectures, Julie, please. I love you--I hate it when you're cross with me."
Peering through the gloom, Julia saw him--whoever he was this time--standing in a dusky corner with his back to her, buttoning his trousers. He was in his shirtsleeves, silk braces dangling, tailcoat, vest and top hat tossed on a nearby couch.
Oh, Libby. Rich, sweet-natured, wildly wanton Libby. The other girls sometimes asked Julia how she could be friends with a person of such low character, Libby's weakness for men having blinded them to her warmth, her wit, her compassion, insight, loyalty... Libby Collier had innumerable sterling qualities. Unfortunately, sexual continence was not among them.
"Have you seen Martin?" Julia asked. "We have to go."
"He's passed out drunk somewhere." Before Julia could voice her incredulity at that, Libby looked toward her companion in the corner, who was shrugging his vest back on, and said, "Clay, where did you say he was?"
Clay? Of course: that height, the striking contrast between those titanic shoulders and lean hips. Without turning around, he lifted his sleek black coat with its knifelike tails, shook it out and slipped it on. He glanced behind him then, flushed and grim, his gaze seeking out Julia for one brief, taut moment before he quickly looked away. "Out by the tennis courts," he said, his voice strained and a little thick-tongued from drink.
Julia stuttered out her thanks and fled the room, awash in baffling despondency. Clay and Libby barely knew each other! From out in the hall, she heard Libby erupt into giggles again. "Clay, you darling thing! You're even redder than she is!"
The following December, Libby Collier's mother invited Julia--reeling with grief over Martin--to accompany her and her daughter on extended holiday at a friend's chateau in the south of France. As their Cunard liner was steaming away from the South Street dock, Libby stunned Julia by confiding the real reason for this trip: she was pregnant. She was sure the father was Clay Redmond, who'd dropped out of sight after the wedding, since he was the first man she'd been with in several months--a rare period of chastity inspired by Julia's advice and example. Even if Clay could be found and coerced into marriage, he was notoriously dissolute and, since his disinheritance, all but penniless--hardly the kind of husband a family like the Colliers considered worthy of their only child.
The plan was for Libby to spend the months preceding the birth far from the prying eyes of New York society, settle the child with some worthy family, and return to her former life with none the wiser. It would probably have worked out that way had not a stonemason who'd made repairs at the chateau commented to a client in Avignon--and that client's guests, who ran in the Colliers' social circle back in New York--about the two pretty femmes Américaines at Chateau Bartelais outside Aix-en-Provence, one of whom was expecting a child. When asked if he knew the girl's name, he said he thought it might be Collier.
When Libby's father back in New York cabled to report on the gossip flying around about her, Mrs. Collier and Julia put their heads together and came up with an amendment of the original plan. Rather than let Libby be ruined, Julia would take the baby and raise it as her own, on the pretense that it was her child by Martin. She promised the tearfully grateful Libby that she would keep her secret always--except from Aunt Eunice, in whom Julia had confided about her unconsummated marriage.
Libby gave birth the following March. Even as an infant, the robust baby boy looked indisputably like Clay Redmond. That summer, Julia returned home with little Tommy, while Mrs. Collier escorted her daughter to London for the summer social season. There, Libby met and married--to her mother's breathless delight--the second son of an earl. Julia's first order of business upon her arrival in New York was to invite every nabob and knickerbocker of her acquaintance to Trinity Church for the christening of Martin Thomas Hughes. To anyone who would listen, she related how comforting it had been, during her bittersweet confinement, to have the support of her good friend Libby Collier. Thus were the rumors forever silenced.
Clay yanked Julia out of her retrospection by saying, in a chillingly quiet voice, "Martin obviously can't be your son's father. I don't suppose you know who is."
She stared at him, too outraged to speak.
"Was it someone you'd been seeing on the side all along?" Clay asked. "Or just some street sweeper or lamplighter you fucked once and--"
"What? How-- My God, how dare you speak to me like that?" she demanded, heat searing her face. Despite Clay Redmond's many flaws, she'd never once heard him swear in front of a woman. And to accuse her of...of... "You are the crudest, most loathsome man I've ever known. How could you think to say such things to me?"
"You can still blush?" he asked with a humorless smile. "That must come in handy, but don't think it'll work on me."
"Go to hell, Clay," she said evenly, the first time a vulgar phrase had ever passed her lips.
"Who'd you spread your legs for while Martin was at war, grieving because he never got to make love to you? Did you have a good laugh over that, you and the street sweeper?"
"My God..."
"Whose little by-blow did you give his name to--his name, Julia!--while he was lying in a grave on Hilton Head--"
"Get out." She stood and pointed a trembling finger at the door. "You sicken me. Get out of my house right now."
Clay rose lazily from his chair, but instead of leaving, he stalked toward her; it took all her strength of will to hold her ground. He said, "You know, I can't help but wonder how Emmett Van Lew would react if he knew you've been passing off some other man's bastard as Martin's son all these years. How well do you know your fiancé, Julia? That man is carved out of ice. I can't imagine he'd be very eager to speak those vows, knowing how little they mean to you."
Her jaw dropped as it dawned on her what Clay was getting at, and why he'd really come here. "My God, you're blackmailing me!" she said through a sputter of incredulous laughter. "Do you think you can get blood from a stone? We've no money, no possessions... The bank will have the house within weeks."
He looked bitterly amused for some reason. "You'd pay me off in a heartbeat if you could afford to, though, wouldn't you? Anything to become Mrs. Emmett Van Lew. He's not a young man. If you're lucky, maybe he'll go under, too, and you'll have all that money without having to play the devoted wife, which I frankly doubt you could pull off. One good thing about Martin dying when he did--he never had to face the truth about you. You were probably relieved as hell when they told you he was dead, considering you were about to whelp another man's--"
Julia cracked her palm across Clay's face before she even realized she was doing it. The slap rang through the empty house like a rifle shot; her hand stung. A moment passed where she wondered, with odd dispassion, if he would strike back at her. Clay, curiously calm, massaged his reddened cheek as he shifted his jaw back and forth. "That was a good one," he said. "Most women don't put enough muscle behind it."
In a voice quaking with restrained emotion, Julia said, "Not that I owe you any explanations, but I don't fancy the idea of your spreading vicious rumors that could end up hurting Tommy. It's true he's not Martin's child, but neither is he mine--not the child of my body, that is. He's most certainly the child of my heart, and he means the world to me."
"Are you saying he's adopted?" Clay asked skeptically. "If so, why this fiction about him being yours and Martin's?"
"You know how the 'right sort' feel about adoption within their ranks. Tommy would never be accepted. As for my...maiden condition, it is unfortunately still quite intact, regardless of your disgusting speculation."
He cocked his head. "Unfortunately?"
"I think that's as much explanation as you're entitled to, Mr. Redmond, considering the things you've accused me of and the language with which you've--"
"Oh, for pity's sake," came Eunice's quivering rasp.
Julia turned to find her aunt lurking in the doorway; how the devil did she manage to creep up on people so well with that cane and all that noisy old horsehair crinoline? Birdie jumped down from her mistress's arms to gaze up worshipfully at Clay, tail thump-thump-thumping on the floor.
"Her 'maiden condition' happens to be unfortunate," Eunice told Clay, "because Emmett Van Lew will toss her aside like so much trash when he beds her and realizes she couldn't have possibly have given birth to Tommy. He's already divorced two wives for failing to give him an heir. The only reason he proposed to Julia was because Tommy supposedly proves she's fertile. She's no more to him than one of those precious Arabian brood mares of his."
Clay's mouth twitched. "That might not be so bad. From what I understand, he has the deepest love and admiration for those mares." To Julia, he said, "Have you considered the possibility that it's Van Lew himself who's infertile?"
"Of course I have. I insisted on a prenuptial agreement that guarantees me a settlement for living expenses and Tommy's education should he divorce me for not producing a child--providing I make a sincere effort for five years."
Clay looked impressed; she wished she didn't find that gratifying.
"You can see why I didn't want to tell you any of this," she said. "I beg you not to let on about Tommy being adopted--for his sake. Not only would it ruin him socially, but we'll be utterly destitute if my marriage to Mr. Van Lew falls through."
"Julia." Eunice clutched her niece's arm with surprising, talon-like strength. "Would you come into the kitchen and help me get the coffee tray set up?"
"Don't trouble yourself," Clay said. "I should really be--"
"You will stay right where you are until I come back, young man!" Eunice commanded as she prodded Julia down the hall.
"Auntie," Julia said as Eunice closed the kitchen door behind them, "what is this--"
"Tell him."
"You can't mean--"
"He's Tommy's father. He deserves to know."
"Oh, you are utterly in his thrall. Have you forgotten what an amoral hound he is?"
"Because he fathered a child out of wedlock? Then I suppose your friend Libby is amoral, as well."
"I can't risk losing guardianship of Tommy to that man-- he's no more father material than he is husband material. And have you forgotten that I promised Libby I'd keep her secret forever? It's not only her social standing that's at risk if he starts telling people--there's her marriage as well."
"Will you just think about--?"
"No! There's far too much at stake." Sighing unsteadily, Julia said, "I'm sorry, Auntie, but it would be disastrous. Come--let's show him out and be done with it."
They returned to the entrance hall to find Clay standing at the door tapping his cap against his leg, his expression sober. He said, "There's something I need you to know, Jul--" A muscle in his jaw flinched. "Mrs. Hughes. I didn't come here to blackmail you, and if I'd wanted to question Tommy's paternity publicly, I would have done so long before this. I only wanted to...make you squirm a little, I guess. To punish you for what I thought you'd done to Martin, and for not being what I..." He averted his pained gaze. "What I always thought you were. You can't get much more petty, and if it's any comfort to you, I'm ashamed of myself." He tugged his cap on and turned to leave.
Birdie and Eunice both pounced on him as he reached for the doorknob.
"Wait!" Eunice said. "I..." She glanced nervously at Julia. "I have a rather unorthodox proposal, but one which I believe will be of the utmost... Oh, bother. This is a bit awkward. Well." She spread her hands. "I'll just out with it."
Clay picked Birdie up to quell her whining, tucked her into one long arm and gently rubbed her belly.
"Julia's virginity has obviously become a problem," Eunice said starchily, "but it's a problem that can easily be rectified. Every man comes equipped with the necessary tool. It's just a matter of finding one who will perform the task capably and discreetly." She fixed her gaze on Clay.
"Oh, no," Julia said in dull, paralytic shock. "No. No."
Clay had paused in his petting to stare at Eunice.
"Why not?" Eunice demanded of her niece.
"You have to ask?" Julia was quivering head to toe.
"Here." Eunice wrestled off her magnificent diamond and sapphire ring and offered it to a nonplused Clay. "It's the only thing of value I've got left, but I'm sure you can get a pretty penny for it--it's Cartier. It's yours if you agree to perform this service for us. You appear to be in need of funds. There are worse ways to make a few thousand dollars."
"I don't believe this," Julia murmured dazedly. "That's your engagement ring, Aunt Eunice!" It was her aunt's most cherished possession, a memento of a long and loving marriage.
Still cradling the little dog, Clay took the ring. His cap shadowed his eyes, so Julia couldn't be sure, but they seemed to be focused not so much on the glittering bauble as on his own thoughts. His gaze lit on Julia briefly before he returned the ring to Eunice. "Take this back, Mrs. Sumner."
Eunice's face crumpled. Julia closed her eyes, battling competing emotions that didn't bear examination.
Clay said, "You can give it to me...afterward."
Julia's eyes flew open.
Eunice clasped her hands together. "You mean you'll do it?"
He stroked Birdie under the chin with his long, oddly graceful fingers; she went blissfully limp. Looking up, he met Julia's eyes with an expression she couldn't read. "If Mrs. Hughes is agreeable."
"Of course I'm not agreeable!"
"But why not, dear," Eunice asked, "seeing as--"
"Oh, do stop asking me why not! My God, Aunt Eunice, there are a hundred reasons, even if one discounts common decency. Someone might find out, and I'd be ruined. No, we'd be ruined. And I could end up like Lib--" Her gaze shot to Clay, watching her intently as he scratched Birdie behind her ears. "I could end up...in a family way, couldn't I?"
"There are..." Clay returned his gaze to the dog "...precautions I can take."
"There!" Eunice said brightly. "You see? It's the ideal solution to our problem."
Julia said, "I hardly consider it 'ideal' to...to do what you're suggesting with a man who...a man I..." A man who terrifies and intrigues me, a man I shouldn't even think about, much less...
"You don't have to like me," Clay said quietly, misconstruing her meaning. "It isn't required."
"I know how you feel, child," Eunice said, taking both of Julia's hands. "But what choice do you have? Plead with Van Lew for understanding and forgiveness? Sway him with your feminine wiles? Neither of those tactics will work, and you know it. He'll cast you out, everyone will find out why, and then we'll be not only homeless, but disgraced."
"Speaking of Emmett Van Lew," Julia said, "what will he think about me disappearing before the wedding?"
"On the off chance that he even notices--which I doubt, given how rarely he calls on you--I'll simply tell him you're visiting friends upstate."
Clay was pretending to be absorbed in petting the dog, but he was gazing sightlessly at the floor as he ran his fingers slowly through her fur...stroking, scratching... Julia wondered how would it feel to be caressed like that on her own soft, untouched flesh, in those secret places where she'd never even touched herself. Her corset seemed to tighten, squeezing the very breath from her lungs; she felt drunk, needful, reckless...
"Oh, God." She turned and strode several paces away, arms wrapped tightly around her, shaking her head.
Eunice followed after her, cane rap-rap-rapping, skirts crackling. "Do you want to talk about decency, Julia? Is it decent to let Tommy suffer because you're too timid to do what needs to be done to ensure his future? If Van Lew rejects you, the whole world will find that you've been lying about Tommy. Whether he ends up in an almshouse or not, he'll never be accepted. You'll have ruined any chance he ever had for--"
"All right!" Julia clapped her hands over her ears, head down, shaking like a rabbit. "All right. No more. I'll do it."
"I knew you'd see reason," Eunice sighed.
Julia turned to find Clay, still standing at the door with his cap on and Birdie in his arms, regarding her with something that might have been compassion--if he were that sort. There was something else in his eyes, too--a quicksilver glint that made her wonder if this would end up being the most excruciating experience of her life...or the most ecstatic.
"I'll do it," she told him, "providing, of course, that I can count on your complete discretion...afterward."
"Of course."
Setting Birdie down, Clay doffed his cap and held out his hand. She took it, finding it very strong and very warm, the flesh of his palms and fingers as rough as the bark of a tree.
He must have sensed her reaction, because he smiled and said, "Shipwright's hands." The smile faded as he studied her, still gripping her much smaller, too-stiff hand. "Are you sure about this? You do understand...what's involved."
"She has no idea," Eunice said.
Julia yanked her hand out of his grip. "I have some idea."
Eunice snorted. "She thinks the man takes a few seconds out of his day to plant some sort of little seed in the woman's--"
"Aunt Eunice!"
"All I'm saying is, it's not like digging a hole and shoving a tulip bulb in. If it's done right, it's more like..." the old woman's tone grew wistful "...creating a magnificent, fragrant garden that delights the senses and thrills the soul." Spots of pink bloomed on her softly creased cheeks; she cleared her throat. "Which is to say it can be quite a complicated undertaking, but a most diverting one." She smiled impishly. "Assuming the fellow helping you is a good man with the hoe."
Clay grinned. "I'd forgotten how taken I was with you when I met you at your niece's wedding, Mrs. Sumner. I remember thinking, if only I were a few years older..."
"Oh, what a lying dog you are. A splendid trait in a handsome man. Here." Prying a key off the chain around her neck, Eunice handed it to Clay. "You two will need a place to spend some time alone. My friends the Ashfords have an colossal new house they've built out on the south shore of Long Island. They're lovely people, but, well..." She lowered her voice and said "nouveau riche" in the same condemnatory tone with which she might have said "Irish." "They're related somehow to the--" again the damning whisper, for it was a family regarded by the Upper Ten as the worst sort of social climbing parvenus "--Vanderbilts. The house is surprisingly tasteful nonetheless, yellow with white trim, on ninety very secluded acres with a private beach. They call it Valhalla."
"How do you happen to have the key?" Clay asked.
"George Ashford has to spend the next year in London on business, so he took the family and staff with him. They closed up the house two weeks ago and told me I could use it any time I like. There are boats at your disposal, and Bellport Village is within walking distance. A gardener is to come on the first and third Friday of the month, so he would have been there yesterday. You'll have the place to yourselves until the wedding."
"That's two weeks from today," Julia said. "Surely it won't take that long to..."
"If it's to be done right, it will." Turning to Clay, Eunice said gravely, "I expect more than just a tulip bulb, young man."
He gave her knowing little smile. "That's understood."
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