Love's Liberty Read online

  Love's Liberty

  A Regency Romance

  By

  Lesley-Anne McLeod

  Uncial Press Aloha, Oregon

  2007

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events described herein are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2006 by Lesley-Anne McLeod

  ISBN 13: 978-1-60174-006-9

  ISBN 10: 1-60174-006-9

  Cover art and design by Cait Bens

  All rights reserved. Except for use in review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the author or publisher.

  Published by Uncial Press,

  an imprint of GCT, Inc.

  Visit us at http://www.uncialpress.com

  Love's Liberty

  Julia Clemence had visited the ancient church of St. Stephen's daily, and twice on Sundays, for very nearly the entirety of the past five years. It was four years and nine months ago that Simon had gone to war--fifty-seven months of anxiety and fear, two hundred and twenty-eight weeks of daily prayer and loving hope. And now Simon was to come home.

  She had known for a week. She knew that he had been wounded, hospitalized, invalided out and intended to sell his commission. He would be changed, she could not doubt it, but how, she could not conjecture. Surely though, nothing could alter their affinity.

  The worst was the waiting; she did not know when he would return to her small corner of England, to the green forests and sapphire rivers of Hampshire. It was sunny this day, an over-heated summer day with a dazzling light. The old churchyard was murmurous with bees and brightened by cornflowers and sweet william. Ripening corn scented the breeze, and the ancient church drowsed in the brilliant sun of late summer as it had for more than five hundred years.

  When Julia slowly entered St. Stephen's, her blue-grey eyes bedazzled by the sunlight, she could see nothing in the dim, cool depths. It was of no consequence. She knew the old building to the smallest detail for it was her parish church and besides, there had been the daily visits of the past five years. The years that Simon had been gone.

  She moved silently down the north aisle, trailing one slender hand along the cool stone wall, her pale muslin skirts whispering about her. Her fingers sought the carving of the rood screen and she drifted into the chancel, deep in thought.

  She had been only sixteen when Simon bought his commission over the anguished protests of his parents. He had gone to war, proud, confident and courageous. He had kissed her cheek, telling her to be brave and good. As though he had been her older brother--or an uncle even--though he had not yet been two and twenty.

  His family had received news of him over the years; they shared the letters he had written to his parents, brothers and sisters with Julia's family, their closest friends and nearest neighbours. Julia even had had two letters; letters written to the girl she had been, not to the young woman she had become. Nevertheless she treasured them, kept them close by her always. She carried them now tucked in the bosom of her round gown.

  In the chancel her sun-dazzled eyes adjusted to the faint, faltering light reluctantly offered by the deep-set windows. There was someone else present, a man, kneeling at the altar rail. He was muttering, whether to himself or to his God, she could not say.

  His presence was disturbing, an intrusion she resented. Nevertheless, Julia was unwilling to intrude on him and she slipped into a choir stall seat. Her thoughts continued to wander.

  She loved Simon with more than a sister's love, more than a friend's devotion. She had realized it when she was fourteen. And she had thought perhaps he had shared her feelings. She had treasured every touch of his hand, believed that his glances held more than companionship and friendship. She had waited for him to speak, for it was not her place to first declare her love. But in the autumn of 1808 he had turned distant and cold. Then he announced he had bought a captaincy in the infantry and he would be going far away, possibly for a very long time. The news had devastated Julia, but Simon had paid no heed to anyone's strictures and departed Hampshire, leaving everything most dear to him behind.

  His absence had made no difference to her love. She had been honest enough to wonder if her devotion would fade as she was launched into local society in 1810. It had not; even the exalted society of London's ton a year later had not altered her heart's fidelity. The young men drawn to her fair, blue-eyed beauty meant nothing to her. Her two seasons in London left her unmoved by any other gentleman. She laughed, danced and drove out with them, but her heart remained untouched, loyal to Simon Mancroft-Martley. And every day she was at home at Edenton Park, she went to the little church to say a simple prayer for Simon's safety, for Simon's return.

  The man at the altar spoke, drawing Julia from her sad reverie. His words are unintelligible, but his deep voice was wonderfully familiar. Her hands pressed, tight-clasped, to her bosom, and she considered him closely now. He was a soldier, for he wore a once-fine braid-decorated coat now torn and stained. He bent his dark head to rest on the rail, in despair or exhaustion, and his left sleeve moved eerily. Julia realized it hung empty. She stared at him, the sharp angle of his jaw and the tumble of black curls. She was afraid to hope, unable to trust the evidence before her.

  But it was Simon--there could be no doubt. She knew his every characteristic movement and his idiosyncrasies, his habits. They had grown up together. Their fathers' properties marched together in a quiet valley between the North and South Downs. They were more attuned to each other than to any of their siblings enjoying, despite their age difference, the same books, the same country pastimes, and both the summer and winter days of their native Hampshire.

  She rose, stifling the cry that came to her lips. She stumbled from the choir seat across the chancel, made clumsy by the urgency of her agitation.

  He lifted his head and also rose apparently sensing, then hearing, a presence. He stood rigid and obviously dismayed to be discovered. Then as she ran to him, he recognized her, and caught her up to him with his single strong arm.

  "Julia," he groaned in breathless wonder, and bent to her lips as though her kiss alone would sustain him. His mouth clung then left hers to rain small, tender kisses across her soft cheeks before returning to explore her lips again. Her hands found his shoulders, his neck, cradled his fine disheveled head. They treasured his weary strength, his exhaustion, and traced his strong jaw and his wide brow.

  "Julia," he said again. His lips were against her tender throat, his arm never loosening, promising to hold her, mold her against him forever.

  "Simon, my darling Simon," she said between the passionate, heartfelt kisses. Her voice, it seemed, broke the binding magic of the embrace.

  She was released. His long hand covered his haggard face, rubbed his moist eyes, his brow. He stepped away from her, that single hand clenched with whitened knuckles.

  "Simon!" she sobbed in anguished dismay and confusion, pushed from the warm comfort of his broad chest.

  "No, Julia." The vitality, the wonder had drained from his voice.

  She clutched her arms about her waist, feeling the chill of the old church for the first time. "But Simon...I've longed for your return, I've waited for you. Just for you. I love you--and you love me or you would not have kissed me thus." She withdrew the two letters from the bosom of her gown. "I kept your letters. You wrote to me as to a child, but I am no longer a girl."

  He said nothing but his eyes, full of dark suffering, told her of his devot
ion and his recognition of her womanhood.

  She reached out to touch his left shoulder, but he flinched away. "We had no notion of the severity of your wounds, but it is of no consequence. When we received word of your imminent arrival nothing else mattered." There was no joy, no emotion at all in Simon's face now, and she clasped the letters tightly, beginning to fear what he would say.

  He turned a little away from her, staring up at the stained glass window over the altar. "This was not meant to happen. I am sorry you found me here. I would have visited your family but I was first going home, to Mancroft Court. Indeed my fellow will already be there; they will be waiting for me."

  So her concern was not unfounded. She could scarcely believe he had spoken those dismissive words. "Surely you don't begrudge me this time with you. I can see by your eyes that you love me; you cannot reject me. My love is true; I have dreamed of your return."

  "You dreamt of a hero returning," he said flatly. "Not a cripple, not an ordinary man burdened by nightmares of battle, and hobbled by guilt and grief. I will not burden you with the reality."

  "I wished for you--only you." She was appalled by his bitterness, but not repelled by it. "I will be one and twenty in a few weeks, come of age. My birthday is my day of independence, at least such as a woman may have. If you deny me your love, you deny me the right to choose my burdens."

  "So I will, for your own sake. I was going to the Court to rest and heal before I saw you. I could have concealed the way I felt when I had regained my strength, my energy. I can still deny it." He stared into her blue eyes, which were darkening with pain, and denied the truth. "I do not love you. I will not tie you to a cripple."

  * * * *

  He meant it, Julia thought in an agony of despair, as she ran from St. Stephens and from Simon, past verdant hedgerows and fields, unseeing to her home. He meant it when he said he would not acknowledge his love for her, would not court her or marry her. All for her own good.

  She ran, though she had to press one slim hand to a stitch in her side, ran until she stood before her parents on the stone flagged terrace on the south side of Edenton Park.

  "Simon is returned," she gasped out. "I met him quite by surprise in the church. He...I...he loves me."

  Lady Edenton laid aside her book and the baron his newspaper with precision and without haste.

  "How can you know this?" her mother asked her calm face very still.

  "He did not speak of it, but he could not conceal it; I think he could conceal nothing from me. He kissed me. He has lost an arm." She saw by the quick glance her parents exchanged that they had had knowledge that she had not. "You knew. You knew and did not tell me. How was I to discover it? Did you know that he would arrive this week? Was that to be kept from me as well? What other decisions have been made for me?"

  "You are intemperate, Julia. Calm yourself." Her father was ever pacific and collected and disliked thoughtless impetuosity.

  "I shall not! He says he will not burden--burden--me with a cripple. As if Simon Mancroft-Martley could ever be a burden to me. I love him, I love him." She dropped suddenly into a chair, and covered her face with her slender hands.

  Her father rose and departed the terrace, his usually serene countenance disturbed, his dislike of the emotional furor apparent.

  "My dear, you must not upset yourself so," her mother said. "Simon has to rest and recover himself. It will be a drastic adjustment for him. Taking up his old life after five years away would be challenge enough, but lacking an arm, well..."

  "I cannot bring myself to worry about his arm. He is still Simon; the lost arm does not alter who he is."

  "He is crippled, my love."

  "He can still think, speak, move."

  "He is crippled. We would not have you attached to less than a whole man. You are precious to us and deserving of the very best that life can offer."

  "Simon is the best--even with but one arm."

  "Julia, even disregarding those larger issues which may arise from Simon's new disability, you must consider that his injury may make him physically repulsive."

  "He looked wonderful to me."

  Her mother coloured faintly and she said with discomfort, "His injury, his scars would be horrifying for a gently bred young lady such as yourself."

  "I--do not--care about his scars," Julia said, through clenched teeth. "I would love him if he were green with yellow spots and had no arms at all."

  "Julia!" Her mother rose in indignation. "That is enough, more than enough; it is beyond the pale of acceptability. You will let Simon recover from his injuries, you will neither pursue nor pester him with your affection. We have obviously given you a great deal more independence than has been good for you. You must abandon your extravagant notions of freedom. And you will abandon your desire to wed Simon, for your father and I have discussed the matter, and you shall not marry him. Be so good as to go to your chamber."

  Julia, stared at her usually gentle mother, whom she was used to regard as the best of all possible parents. She felt as though the bottom had dropped out of her world. She turned without speaking and obeyed the peremptory direction, She entered the house and found her way to her bedchamber like an automaton. She was without support, for she had no doubt that her siblings would follow as their parents led. All older than she, married and several years from the family home, they continued to regard her as a child.

  If she was not careful, she might find herself without hope. She leaned against the door of her bedchamber after closing it behind her. She stared around at her familiar possessions, her treasures. She was twenty, nearly one and twenty; this had been her sanctuary long enough. She was an adult woman. She was prepared to be a wife, but only to the man she loved, and she would never lose hope.

  Her faith in her love, and in Simon's, was sorely tried over the following days and weeks.

  There existed, it seemed, a conspiracy. It was orchestrated by her parents, supported by Simon's family, and maintained by Simon himself. How it was managed she did not know, but she never saw him when she rode out about the countryside. She never encountered him in the village by chance; she did not come upon him at their long-time favourite spot among a tumble of rocks at the bank of the beck that formed a part of the boundary between their fathers' lands.

  Visits were occasionally exchanged between the households, but Simon and Julia were rarely in company, and then never alone. When the two families came together for informal dinner parties, Simon had always gone to London for the day or was visiting at some other friend's home. And always now with her, Simon's manner was formal, his gaze shuttered and cool and his conversation limited to the veriest commonplaces.

  She thought her heart must surely break, and after six weeks her hope did falter. Her maid, Elsy, was her only sympathizer and she brought news of the Mancroft-Martley household whenever she could. As she had a sister in service at the Court, the news was frequent and reliable.

  One morning two weeks before Julia's birthday, Elsy was bursting with news as she brushed Julia's hair. "There was ever such a dustup at the Court last evening, miss. At the dinner table it were, Addy said. You know, for I've told you, that Mr. and Mrs. Mancroft-Martley are that worried about Mr. Simon and following him about, and demanding they be told wherever he goes. They're cautioning him always what he should and shouldn't do, helping him do this, that and the other. Well, last even, he was having that much trouble with his beef, that Mrs. M-M jumped up and come to cut it for him. Well, he went dead quiet, and said that as he hadn't needed his mother to help him kill Frenchies, he thought he could struggle on with the beef.

  "You know Mrs. M-M, Miss Julia--she bursted into tears right then and there. And Mr. Simon apologized of course, but stayed for no more of the meal, and said he was going out. Mr. M.-M. asked where he might be going, and Mr. Simon said he didn't know, and with all respect, he would thank his parents to no longer wrap him in cotton wool. Said he felt he had no freedom at all and recognized that it came from co
ncern but he could not bear it, and would have to find his own 'stablishment if he could not be treated normal.

  "By this time Master George was saying 'hear, hear' and Miss Tiffany were also in tears and Mr. M-M lost his temper--you know him, miss. Said Mr. Simon was an ungrateful young dog, hero or no, and he'd best leave if he could not keep a civil tongue in his head. But by that time, Mr. Simon had gone out, and he didn't return 'til two of the clock in the night. Addy knows for she is sweet on Mr. Simon's man--Fletcher--that come back from the war with him, and Fletcher told her Mr. Simon was dead exhausted when he returned, had walked miles."

  Elsy paused for breath and Julia, thinking only of her need to consider the information, took the opportunity to send her maid away on a spurious errand.

  Half-dressed and deep in thought, Julia paced her bedchamber. Simon was unhappy too; perhaps she need not lose all hope. Possibly he regretted his intransigence over their future. Or perhaps he was only entrapped by smothering concern. She would not treat him so--could he not see it? She would not see his injury before himself; with her he could do what he would and ask for help only when he decided he needed it. If he felt his freedom restricted, would he not understand that he was curtailing hers by withholding his love from a misplaced sense of honour? She had to speak to him again, make him understand her concerns.

  * * * *

  She laid her plans carefully over the next two weeks as her siblings, their spouses and children arrived for her birthday celebrations. At the evening party held in honour of her birthday, she would find a way to confront Simon, to be alone with him. But to have meaningful conversation with him, she must know everything about him since his return to Hampshire, from his health to his opinions.

  She set about informing herself. Without shame, she gleaned every fragment of information she was able, from her family busy though they were with preparations, from Simon's reluctant family, and from all the servants of both households.