A Woman’s Innocence Read online

  Even as she said it, she knew he wasn’t capable of such a thing, but a strange look flickered in his eyes.

  “I didn’t—but when I discovered what he’d done, it crossed my mind. I had to do a lot of things to survive in the East, Julia. Don’t underestimate me.”

  There was a threat implied there, but before she could think of a response, he began to stuff her jail smock into the saddlebag.

  “We’re leaving,” he said. “I’m going to find you a place to hide. I’ll come back for you after I’ve proven your innocence.”

  “No!” She grabbed his arm and pulled him around to face her. “This is my life and I will not hide! I need to prove to everyone that I did not let all those people die.”

  Chapter 4

  Sam looked at the stubborn expression on Julia’s face and knew that if he left her alone, she would be recaptured. She thought she was a grand adventurer because she’d sailed down Indian rivers and climbed Afghani mountain passes, but she knew nothing about life on the run, what it took to stay alive when there were men who wanted her dead.

  Yet, if she remained with him where he could keep her reasonably safe, she would be repulsed by the methods he might have to employ. He tried one more time to talk her into hiding, but she would have none of it. He was reluctantly grateful that she wasn’t a missish girl, pampered and spoiled. She would accept whatever difficulties their journey presented. Of course, that was why she was in so much trouble.

  “Now you listen to me, Julia,” he said in a low voice, wishing he could tower over her, but settling for leaning toward her.

  She lifted her chin stubbornly.

  “If you’re to remain with me, you will do exactly what I say.”

  “But I have the right to disagree with you.”

  “You have that right. But if I say ‘not now,’ you keep your mouth shut and follow my orders.”

  She wore the faintest smile, and laugh lines waited about her eyes for her good humor. At twenty-eight, she was not a girl fresh from the schoolroom, but there was a wisdom in her expression that was uncommon for young Englishwomen. Of course, the Englishwomen with whom he’d come in contact had mostly been the wives and daughters of officers or civil servants. Even in India, they were sheltered from the native people, still playing their society games.

  But Julia had lived parts of her life outside the boundaries of convention, and it was for that reason she was easy to implicate in treason. Sam had discovered she was in Afghanistan when he caught her sneaking back into the British encampment outside Kabul, dressed as a boy. After that, whenever he was in Kabul, he had looked for her, followed her on more than one occasion to protect her. And that was how he discovered she had shared a bed with Nick Wright, Sam’s good friend, the man who eventually arrested her. Sam had even introduced them to each other.

  It shouldn’t still hurt him, but it did.

  Her white-blond hair was drying now, softening, curling as it fell to her waist. It was the most distinctive thing about her, the easiest way for people to identify her. Yet if anyone was close enough, it was her eyes they remarked on next. They were wide with life, the brilliant color of sapphires. He still could not look at those precious stones without thinking of the wonder of Julia.

  “Very well, I’ll obey you,” she said, as if she were granting him a royal favor. “But know that it doesn’t sit well with me. You had me imprisoned—”

  “Julia—”

  “And yes, although you’ve helped me escape, you now want to blame everything on my brother. I’ll go along with you, and perhaps we can prove he is innocent.”

  There was a sudden, impatient knock on the door, and they both turned to stare at it.

  “What is it?” Sam demanded, sounding angry, sulky, as he tried to show that he’d been interrupted at an inopportune time.

  “If ye’re not gonna use the room—”

  “I paid for the night!” he shouted, then looked around, spotted the chair, and sent it crashing into the door.

  Julia rolled her eyes as her lips twitched up at the corners.

  When there was no answer, he fell backward to sit on the cot. The old wood gave a loud squeak.

  “No wonder they couldn’t tell what we were about,” he murmured, then bounced a bit for some rhythmic squeaking.

  “Stop that,” she said, attempting a stern frown.

  “We’ve got to give them a show. Sit down with me and we’ll talk. You have no choice, since I ruined the chair.”

  She narrowed her eyes as he bounced some more. “I’ll get seasick with all that jostling.”

  “You get seasick?”

  “Of course not!”

  “I didn’t think so. So are you going to stand all night?”

  He saw a trace of weariness before she hid it behind a grimace as she stared at the cot.

  “Sam, those sheets are disgusting.”

  “I’m sitting on the cloak.”

  “I don’t know—”

  He caught her around the waist, and though he meant to pull her next to him, somehow she ended up in his lap. She cried out, and the wood gave a mighty squeak.

  “Ah, that sounded just right,” he said, trying to ignore the warmth and weight of her.

  She folded her arms across her chest, sat stiffly for a moment, and then finally eased her back against him. He hated that she could probably feel the pounding of his heart.

  “I’m not hurting you?” she asked. “I’m not the most delicate of women.”

  “You’re not hurting me.”

  But he’d better start thinking of something else or she’d know just what she was sitting on. He gave a couple more bounces to satisfy the tavern customers, and she slapped his arm.

  “I have several plans to prove your innocence,” he said. “After we mislead our pursuit for a bit, we need to return to Misterton village and your family estate. Lewis went there immediately when you both returned from India. And your governess was murdered there as well.”

  “Murdered?” Her body stiffened, and she glanced over her shoulder at him with shock and horror.

  “It was the perfect excuse to send you north, wasn’t it? And a little too convenient that she happened to die just then.”

  She looked away from him, every line of her body mutinous. “She was very old and very frail.”

  “Then that made it even easier for the killer.”

  Her gaze snapped back to him. “I can’t believe Lewis did this. But I’m letting you do as you wish to prove that it wasn’t him. Maybe Edwin hired someone to kill his mother. You only have one witness’s word that he looked surprised to hear that his mother was dead.”

  “Too hard to believe.” Sam tried to imagine Edwin Hume as a criminal mastermind. All he could remember was the pathetic drunkard the man had become. But Julia wasn’t ready to understand that yet. “I’m assuming Lewis did this for the money. Did he have much?”

  “His government salary was enough for us to live on there, but more than once he complained to me about how expensive it was to keep up Hopewell Manor.” There seemed to be a longing in Julia’s voice when she mentioned her home, but it was quickly masked. “I rather got the impression that he was in debt. But many people are, without resorting to treason,” she added severely.

  “Of course.”

  “And—Never mind.”

  He frowned at the back of her head. “What are you thinking, Julia? Just say it.”

  With a sigh, she said, “I didn’t have much of a dowry. But what I had, I discovered that Lewis had spent. But—”

  “Yes, I know, that’s not proof he’s a traitor. Just the bullying, selfish ass I always knew he was.” He lowered his voice, angry that he still had to resist the temptation to lean closer and smell her hair. “But you didn’t need a dowry to attract a husband, Julia.”

  “Of course I did,” she scoffed. “I knew early in life that my meager dowry could hardly overcome the deficiencies of my unusual looks and my less-than-impressive bloodlines.”


  “You didn’t have a dowry when you attracted the Duke of Kelthorpe,” he said.

  “He didn’t need one.”

  She sounded sad and confused, and he found himself bitterly wondering if she loved the duke. It seemed like every man had had a chance with her but himself.

  “Somehow, he liked me for who I was, the experiences I’d had,” she continued. “But that’s over now, isn’t it?”

  “We’re going to prove you innocent.”

  “Yes, we are, but that won’t matter to the ton.”

  “Perhaps the duke won’t care what they think?”

  But she gave him a glance that said they both knew the truth. “Even if he doesn’t, the rest of his family will. I’ll never see him again.”

  “You don’t know that.” He should ask if she loved Kelthorpe; it was on the tip of his tongue, but he just couldn’t say it, and certainly didn’t want to hear the answer.

  She remained silent.

  Sam pulled her back more comfortably on his chest. “So if your brother received money from the Russians, he would need to hide it. He couldn’t just deposit it in his bank accounts, for that would be too obvious. And since he went to Hopewell Manor first, the money might be there.”

  She suddenly yawned, then apologized for it. Her head finally rested back on his shoulder, and he could feel the silkiness of her hair against his cheek. The fresh smell wafted over him, and he thought of summer gardens, and Julia with roses in her hair. He painfully needed to adjust himself, or twist his hips away from her—something. How was he going to concentrate on his mission if he had to constantly control himself when he was around her?

  She yawned again. “You won’t find any record of money, but we’ll look for it, see if he’s paid off any debts.”

  “Good girl,” he said.

  “I’m not a girl, Sam. I’m an old spinster.”

  She was half asleep as she said it, and he couldn’t help his faint smile.

  “We’re going to have to hide all the ‘old spinster’ that’s so evident in you. How do you feel about disguises? They’re my specialty.”

  But she didn’t answer, just rubbed her cheek into his neck in her sleep. Tilting his head, he could see the slope of her nose, the curve of her brown eyelashes.

  And suddenly he remembered a scene such as this in his childhood. Julia had only been six to his twelve years, and she had begun to follow him about, asking the names of the flowers in the garden. He liked her directness even then, and thought she was a fearless little girl. He hadn’t known that she was briefly escaping her home and the indifferent way she was treated by her family. Only months after they’d begun their friendship, she’d come running to find him digging out a new flower bed in a remote corner of the Hopewell gardens. She’d been trying to hide from the wrath of her brother, and since Sam knew all about Lewis’s pettiness, he’d taken the little girl under a trellis, where ivy grew in profusion to hide them. She’d sat in his lap and shivered, and wouldn’t tell him why, until finally she’d fallen asleep.

  Just like this.

  The urge to protect her had blossomed then, and hadn’t waned throughout the years of his adulthood. She still needed him. He would make everything up to her—his doubt in her innocence and his gathering proof of her treason. She would know safety for the first time in her life. And then when they were separated again, as they had to be, maybe he’d find some peace.

  Julia stirred, then came abruptly awake. She was confused for a moment, having felt so safe and warm. The window showed the early light before dawn, but there were no bars, only glass with a crack running through it. And she felt safe and warm because—

  Sam.

  She glanced over her shoulder and he was watching her solemnly.

  “Sorry to wake you,” he said. “We have to leave.”

  His arms were about her, his chest had been her pillow, and his hard thighs supported her. She flushed and rose quickly to her feet, straightening the plain gown, trying to fix her wild hair.

  “I think you said something about disguises,” she said.

  He stood up slowly, then lifted his arms over his head and stretched. She could see the buttons of his shirt pull as his chest expanded, and she felt a flush of awareness. She had slept in his arms, something she’d never done with a man before. It felt almost as intimate as—

  She turned away, not wanting him to see her reddening face. She didn’t want to be attracted to him now, not when he’d helped accuse her of treason. She needed her anger as a barrier between them.

  “We’ll definitely be hiding that hair of yours, but not today,” he said. “Today we want to be seen.”

  She gaped at him. “But…”

  “I have a plan.”

  An hour later, she stood at Sam’s side, in line for tickets at the Leeds railway station. The building was barely larger than a wooden shack beside the train tracks, with several benches inside for waiting passengers. A railway employee sat behind a desk slowly counting money and handing over paper tickets.

  Julia bit her lip and forced herself to keep her gaze on the people in front of her. She felt exposed, her hood swept back off her shoulders, her blond hair a blazing beacon of guilt. She fought the urge to look for the constables who must surely be searching for her now. Sam had insisted he’d tied the constables up tightly, that only this morning might the men be discovered and the alarm given.

  But wasn’t the train station one of the first places they’d look for her?

  Then it was their turn before the railway employee’s desk. She kept her hands folded to hide their trembling. When Sam began to speak she flinched, even though he was soft-spoken, subservient—with a hint of a lisp, she noticed with amazement.

  “Please, sir, we need to purchase two tickets to Edinburgh, Scotland.”

  The man carefully sorted through piles of tickets, and she wanted to scream her impatience.

  “Ye’d best hurry,” the man finally said, his speech as slow as his movements. “This train is about to leave, and there won’t be another till the mornin’.” He slid two tickets toward them, then searched for change.

  She gritted her teeth, trying to keep her composure. Sam had chosen their destination deliberately so they wouldn’t have to wait long at the station.

  “Any baggage?” the man asked.

  Sam hunched his head between his shoulders. “We sent most of it on ahead, sir, with my wife’s brother. Will that be all right?”

  The man only shrugged.

  Sam took Julia’s arm, and she silently let him lead her out onto the railway platform. A large black engine sat on the tracks, metal gleaming, steam hissing as if with impatience.

  Once again, she forced herself not to look behind her, even though the hairs on the back of her neck prickled with awareness. “Do you think they—”

  “Shh.”

  He steered her into the first railway car with wooden benches. She was grateful he’d had enough money for a second-class carriage, rather than the open boxcars where they’d be exposed to wind and rain. He’d had to sell his horse. She had a feeling they would miss the animal soon enough.

  The train finally got under way, and she breathed a sigh of relief. “We’re safe,” she whispered to Sam.

  He gave a small shake of his head and spoke softly without looking at her. “Yes, the constables would have set upon us by now, but they’re not all we have to worry about. The true traitor won’t want you to escape and discover the truth.”

  She bit her lip, absurdly grateful that he hadn’t said “your brother.” Her stomach clenched all over again. “So do you think we’re being followed?”

  He only shrugged.

  She turned and looked out the window, trying to focus only on the flat plain of southern Yorkshire, its fertility being harvested on every farm they passed. She had seldom traveled by train, and it was still rather stunning to see the countryside fly by so quickly. Her body was constantly jostled, and the rumbling of the wheels on the track
seemed loud not only in her ears, but vibrating through her chest.

  They reached the city of York in a little over an hour, and while the train stopped for passengers, they slipped off. Julia’s hair was now completely covered within her hooded cloak. Sam bought new tickets returning south, and this time he was a bombastic Scotsman, his auburn hair a little wilder, his brogue as pronounced as any Highlander. She wanted to cringe as his conduct drew attention to them, but since he seemed like such an utterly different person, maybe that was the point. Who would think a wanted man would behave so flamboyantly?

  They had to wait several hours at the York train station, which was a much larger stone building. She surreptitiously watched him as he charmed old ladies, chucked babies under the chin, and in general made himself a pleasant distraction. His ready smile was still so handsome that she felt like a young girl again, and remembered how painfully enamored of him she’d once been. She’d been so naïve about men.

  He bought chicken pies from a vendor, and they stayed within the station, surrounded by passengers for protection. Once on the train, it was several more hours before they reached Rotherham, a town less than thirty miles from Hopewell Manor.

  They purchased another horse, this one more worn with the years, but still capable of carrying two people. In the dirt alley outside the livery stables off High Street, Julia watched while Sam swung up into the saddle and reached down for her. She stared at his outstretched hand, her fists on her hips.

  “You cannot be serious,” she finally said.

  “Why? We rode this way yesterday.”

  “And it was uncomfortable. I can’t imagine riding thirty miles like that.”

  “So you’d rather walk?”

  The livery worker was leaning in a doorway laughing at her predicament. She understood that their finances were limited, but she’d have taken a donkey over riding with Sam again.

  But there would be no donkey. She roughly took his hand and let him pull her up, holding her hood over her hair. Before she could squeeze herself into the saddle behind him, the horse tossed its head and gave a little sideways dance that made her clutch Sam’s shoulders.