Sommersgate House (Ghosts and Reincarnation #2)(40)
Author: Kristen Ashley

He had barely processed her speech when she went on, telling him of Monique’s little “tea party” and something about “lollipop girls” and how Monique told Lizzie she was overweight. His brain conjured an image of the girl with her sunken cheeks and bruised eyes and his jaw tightened again.

“Enough, Charlotte,” Douglas interrupted her curtly. “I get your point.”

“You’d better because it isn’t fair on her, putting up with all of that and dealing with her homesickness and her and the children’s grief. I didn’t expect much of you, and, doubtlessly, neither did Tammy, but I expected more than this.” Before he could reply to that cutting remark, she said, “I’ll see you on Thanksgiving,” and the phone went dead in his hand.

He replaced the receiver and stared at the phone. As Charlotte and Mrs. Kilpatrick’s words started to penetrate, he felt a slow, unfamiliar, but not in the slightest indecipherable, burn begin.

“Darling! You’re home! How lovely.”

He looked up from the phone and saw his mother in the doorway.

Monique had very bad timing.

Douglas didn’t like what he was feeling. He had, for many years, guarded against feeling anything at all. He’d had to or he would have been crushed by his father’s tirades. But now the thoughts were racing through his mind and anger was boiling at his gut.

While he’d been away, he thought a great deal about Julia.

Once he made up his mind about something, he didn’t often turn back. He was intent on starting his strategy to win her around to his way of thinking, of making her his wife and then, or before (if he was successful) taking her to his bed.

But he’d allowed himself to think of that kiss. That extraordinary kiss in the dining room and just how easily she responded to it. Sean Webster had been a wealthy man of position; it wouldn’t be the first time Julia had found herself a good catch. Douglas was definitely her type if Webster was anything to go by.

And Douglas had allowed himself to believe from his vast experience of human behaviour that no one did something for nothing. Especially if that something required a great sacrifice that altered their entire life and their future.

And he had limitless knowledge of conniving women who put on a great show for the ultimate goal, which was him.

So he berated himself for his quick decision to make her his wife, which would be exactly what she wanted. He talked himself into believing the worst of her and then decided to confront her with it. He’d been thrilled she’d given him that opportunity quickly by appearing so fortuitously in his study last night. He intended to trip her up, make her expose herself and then he intended to kick her out.

He had not expected how their conversation would turn. He had not expected for her to admit to sustaining the same abuse from Webster as he himself had endured from his father.

And lastly, he had not expected his intense reaction to it.

When she said the word “hurt” in that awful voice as if it was dredged up from her very soul, he knew it corresponded to a feeling long since buried deep in the pit of his own.

Rage and sorrow for another human being, he found, did not mix well. Julia had never let on, not once, to the extent of Webster’s callousness. She had always put on a brave face.

He found, to his surprise, that he wanted to do something about it, to take away her pain, her bitterness, to make her happy.

Her face had been in shadow but her words were enough. She was either the best actress in the world or she was innately damaged. Her proclamation that she’d next marry a balding short man who would clean the bathroom was said with such force, he thought she believed it.

He then decided immediately to resume his strategy. She would not next marry a short, balding man unless he himself started to lose his hair and shrink.

And not only would he never, but she would also never again clean a bathroom.

He faced his mother with his temper close to the surface.

“Mother,” he said tersely by way of greeting, “you’ve been busy while I was away.”

Her step faltered when she caught site of the unusual look on his face but she persevered. “Well yes, I was just at the spa and –”

“I didn’t mean the spa. I meant Julia.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Of what, exactly, are you accusing me? Did she –?”

“Julia didn’t say a word,” he informed her and realised it was true.

Julia had been angry last night and said something about his mother being as warm as Siberia but that was the extent of it. After Mrs. Kilpatrick and Charlotte’s descriptions of his mother’s behaviour, he was a little surprised that Julia didn’t throw that in his face, especially when she was angry.

“Well,” Monique sat in a chair across from his desk, completely composed except her eyes flashed maliciously. “She’s insufferable. I cannot imagine what drove Tamsin to torture me in her death. It is, frankly, too much to take to force her poor, grasping, American,” she said the word with all the xenophobia she felt, “sister-in-law on us. It is simply too much!”

“Unka Douglas,” Ruby screamed from the doorway.

Douglas looked up to see Ruby racing across the room toward him and Julia standing in the doorway, her face pale beneath the rosy blush on her cheeks, acquired, no doubt, from being outside. Her posture was rigid, her eyes angry. She was wearing a pair of her faded, snug-fitting jeans, an item in her wardrobe of which he was beginning to be rather fond. The jeans ended in a pair of scuffed, old cowboy boots. She had on a thermal shirt with little pink dots printed on it, over that a Western-style denim shirt that buttoned part of the way up with pearl snaps and a thin, pink, downy vest over it all. Her hair was pulled back from her face in a ponytail at the crown of her head and her gorgeous face was free of makeup.

Ruby interrupted his perusal of Julia by jumping up, he caught her in his arms, lifting her into his lap and she threw her own arms around him, giving him a big, sloppy kiss on the cheek.

“Hello Ruby,” Douglas murmured when he caught her eyes.

“We just went to the supermarket,” Ruby yelled.

“Did you?” he asked but his eyes moved to Julia.

Monique didn’t bother to turn and her face remained a frozen mask.

“Yes, we’re going to make choca-chip cookies today!” Ruby shouted.

“I’ll bet you are,” Monique muttered scathingly and at that, Julia spoke.

“Come on Ruby, let’s get washed up and make those cookies.” Her voice betrayed nothing to Ruby as she extended her arm but her movements were jerky and Douglas knew she was angry and he knew this was because she’d heard his mother’s words.