Kitabı oku: «Regency Society», sayfa 10
‘Goodbye.’ His farewell contained no notion of intimacy, though he waited as two of her servants came to escort her in.
When she reached her front door and looked back she saw that the horses had already been called to walk on.
Chapter Eleven
‘’Tis only a hand cream that I have a need of, Elspeth. I should not wish to take up too much of your time.’
‘Oh, Beatrice, it is lovely just to be walking on such a fine day. Besides, we promised ourselves an outing at the new tea shop last time we ventured out this way.’
Bea laughed. She felt surprisingly relaxed after the party last night at the Cannons’. Perhaps she had come to terms with the fact that at least in friendship she would be able to see Taris Wellingham; besides, there was little use dwelling on the sort of happy endings that she knew, for her at least, would never come to pass.
‘Shall we go to the apothecary first and then—?’
Her words were snatched into a scream as a heavy shape from behind connected with the small of her back and pushed her forwards. Her arms came out to try to break the fall, but the heels of her boots had tangled with the hem of her skirt and she could not keep her balance. Tipping towards the road, the clatter of horses and the shout of a driver alerted her to the presence of danger even before she felt it, and she attempted to twist and roll away from the flailing hooves.
The wheels missed her face by a whisker, though her wrist and head hit the cobbles with a whacking crunch and the pain that radiated outwards made her feel nauseous, a receding blackness pushing away light. As she struggled to catch her breath, the shaking that she was engulfed in left her dizzy.
‘Sit still, ma’am.’ Sarah’s voice was so insistent that she did as she said, Elspeth’s sobbing behind making her wonder whether the accident was even worse than she had thought it. Wriggling her feet in her boots, she was relieved she could feel pain, for it meant that she was not paralysed.
The warmth of her maid’s hand came across her own. ‘I do not think anything is broken, ma’am. I think if you tried to sit up.’
Another man had now joined them and another. When Bea did as Sarah had directed and sat upright, she saw a whole group of people now ringed them. The back of her head throbbed in agony and the blood on her grazed arms soaked into her sleeves.
‘Wh…whathappened?’ She was still shaking and her heartbeat was so fast she wondered if she might have an apoplexy and simply expire, here on this road, with the thin spring sun on her now hatless head.
‘I think somebody pushed you, though I cannot be sure.’
‘Can you lift m…me up?’
The two men who had knelt down beside her now took her arms on each side and carefully helped her to stand. The weight hurt her ankle and she pressed her knuckles into the skirt of her gown.
‘This shopkeeper says that you can lie down to rest in his back parlour and wait for the physician to come.’
Beatrice nodded her head, regretting the motion as soon as she did so. To get away from all the stares of a growing audience would be most appreciated.
Suddenly she felt like crying and all she could think about was that she wanted Taris Wellingham, wanted his confidence and his arms about her, wanted the feeling of safety he gave her, and his reason and his careful logic. When she was inside the parlour she would send a missive to his town house and ask him to come to her, for suddenly she did not care who might see them together, who might gossip about it or wonder. The tears she had tried to hold in fell in big drops down her cheeks.
All she wanted was Taris Wellingham to come!
The note arrived as he was about to sit down for a late lunch. Bates at his side read it out.
‘It is from Mrs Bassingstoke, my lord, and there is an address in Regent Street. It says, “I have been in an accident. Hurt. I need you.”’
Taris came up from his seat before the missive was even finished and called out for his butler.
‘Morton. Get Berry to bring the carriage around immediately. I need to be in Regent Street.’
‘But, my lord…your lunch.’ Bates’s voice petered out as Taris picked up his cane and strode from the room.
The shop was tiny but warm, and the blanket the wife of the furniture maker had placed over her knees was welcomed. Her hat sat on the table, a for-lornly crushed shape with no hope of resurrection. The wheels had run straight over the feathers, the shopkeeper had said, and Beatrice was acutely aware that her head had only been inches away from being in exactly the same condition.
Lord, how fragile life was. A second earlier, an inch further, a grander coach or a faster conveyance and the whole outcome could have been so much different. Elspeth was still wailing noisily and she wished she would just stop, for her headache was worse.
A constable spoke to those who had witnessed her fall and Bea held her arms against her bodice, the throbbing ache easing only when she raised them up.
She felt dislocated and scared, the memory of the hooves and the horses and the violent push leaving her nervous that someone else might try to hurt her, and her shaking had not abated in the least.
A louder chatter had her looking up as Lord Wellingham walked into the shop. He came straight over to her, his hand resting on the sofa as he knelt, his cape falling into a ring of fine black wool.
‘Are you all right, Beatrice?’
She could not answer, could not say even yes as a wave of relief washed across her. When his fingers came into contact with hers, she knew he could feel the terrible shaking.
‘Where are you hurt?’
Because sound was such a part of how he viewed his world, she tried her hardest to answer him.
‘M…my head hit the g…ground and Elspeth said the c…carriage came very close.’
He turned at that. ‘Surely a doctor has been summoned?’ Hard. Harsh. Impatient. ‘Why is he not here?’
Watching the autocratic and imperious way he addressed the room, Bea understood power in a way she had not before. It was in bearing and expectation and in the sheer essence of history.
‘He has been called, sir,’ someone answered from behind.
‘Then call him again. Bates?’ His man stood next to him. Bea had not seen him when Taris Wellingham had first arrived in the room, but of course someone would be there to help him with the lay of the land. ‘Send Liam for my physician and make sure he knows the gravity of the situation.’
As the man hurried off with his orders Bea, feared that Taris might go too and she clung to him fervently.
‘Don’t worry, I shall stay here with you,’ he returned, and she felt his breath. Warm and real, no longer just her!
‘You p…promise?’
When he placed their joined fingers against his heart and smiled, she lay back against the cushion and closed her eyes.
He was here! Now she would be safe.
Taris felt the moment that she relaxed, his fingers measuring the beat of her pulse at her wrist and finding it reassuringly steady and strong. The sticky blood he had felt on her arms was mirrored on her forehead and neck when he ran his touch upwards.
Where the hell was the doctor and what the hell had happened? A woman he presumed to be Elspeth Hardy was sobbing incessantly at one end of the room and the quiet questioning of a constable at the other told him that this was no simple accident. When Bates returned and relayed the story of Beatrice being pushed on to the road and of how she had narrowly missed being run over by a carriage, he felt a roiling sense of disbelief.
Who would try to hurt her?
Who had nearly succeeded in killing her? His anger escalated as he felt the remains of a hat on the small table beside the sofa.
Ruined like her head could have so easily been!
MacLaren’s arrival a little time later took his mind from such suppositions. The family doctor had always been the sort who muttered, a trait that Taris had found useful so that he knew exactly where he was in a room.
‘My lord,’ he offered, and Taris felt his arm next to his, the quiet click of a doctor’s tools telling him that he was measuring Beatrice’s vital signs before making a judgement on her condition.
The astringent odour of smelling salts filled the space around them and then Bea’s voice. Confused. Embarrassed. Flustered.
‘I…I…should sit up,’ she said, her fingers creeping back into his hand as she held on tight.
But the doctor wanted her to stay still and through the grey haze Taris could see that he felt around the lump on her head.
‘A nasty accident. Do you remember if you lost consciousness at the time it happened?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Good. Good.’
‘Lord Wellingham, could you lift her and bring her out to the carriage? I think it may be more beneficial to the lady’s healing to treat her at home.’
‘Of course.’ He was certain that the doctor had long since guessed his eyesight to be weakening, but had never in any shape or form alluded to it. Taris was pleased to step forwards and lift Bea in his arms, the presence of Bates making it an easy pathway out to his conveyance.
Bea barely moved, the heat of her body melding into his, the soft abundance of her breasts against his cloak.
When they came to the doorway she curled in against him so it was easier to negotiate the portal and once outside he counted his footfalls to the kerb. His carriage stood where he had left it and, mounting the steps, he sat with Bea in his lap.
The trip home was completed in silence, Beatrice’s friend opposite sharing the seat with the doctor and Bates to his left. The small stern-faced maid named Sarah completed the party.
An hour later he was finally alone with Beatrice.
‘Doctor MacLaren said you were lucky not to have broken anything and that the grazes will feel a lot better by morning.’
‘Thank you for asking him to see to my injuries, my lord.’
He heard the wariness in her tone, but he was in no mood to ignore the larger question. He also wished she might just call him by his Christian name.
‘Who pushed you, Bea? Did you see him?’
He felt her shaking her head. ‘Sarah said he looked like a pauper and that he ran off into the backstreets as soon as I fell.’
‘A paid assailant, then?’
‘I would guess so.’
‘God. Who would hate you enough to do that?’
‘The same person who might have sawn through the axle of the carriage, perhaps?’
Said without any artifice at all and with a great deal of frank openness. Taris stiffened as something began to tug on his mind. A smell. A certain fragrance he had noticed as he had stepped into the town house this evening. Bergamot. Scattered bits and pieces began to fall into place.
‘The man James Radcliff? You said he was a lawyer?’
‘The junior partner in the firm who looked after my husband’s accounts. Why?’
‘Has he been here again today?’
‘No. I have not seen him since yesterday afternoon when you were here with the Duchess of Carisbrook.’
Such a smell would not linger, would not carry in a space for so very long. A sense of danger began to form and Taris felt as he had in Spain all those years ago before charging into battle.
Then, however, he had had all his faculties and the ability to catch sight of the slightest movement from a great distance away.
Could he protect Bea here if the man should choose to play his hand? The knife tucked into the specially made sock in his boot would help, as would the ring he wore. By turning the gold circle he clicked the edges into place and the heavy bauble changed into a lethal collar of diamond spears. Enough to surprise anyone. His cane would do the rest.
He tilted his head to listen and the silence in the house was comforting. At a guess he would say the lawyer had gone, but why had he been here in the first place? And had he come alone?
‘Did Mr Radcliff ask you for anything?’
‘He wanted to see some ledgers that were sent to me. He asked after them.’
‘And where do you keep them?’
‘Well, that is the strange thing—I do not remember having them.’
‘Does your door have a sturdy lock on it?’
‘I think so.’ Her answer held worry and hope strangely mixed.
Standing, Taris made his way over to it and threw the bolt, testing the door when he had finished doing so.
After listening for a further few moments he crossed to the bed, realising as he came closer that she was fast asleep.
She came awake instantly and fully, with the fright of one who did not quite understand where she was or what time of day it was.
Taris sat in a chair next to the bed, his long legs stretched out before him and the stubble of lost hours shadowing his chin.
Not quite asleep. When she stirred his amber eyes flicked open, unfocused and then alert.
‘What is wrong?’
When he moved his hand she saw a circle of diamond points coming from his ring. A knife lay in his lap, the other fist curled about it, easily, familiarly, in the way of a man who had long courted peril.
But as she frowned both the knife and ring were gone. A short illusion, a little fancy, and then gone; the accoutrements of battle disappearing from the everyday life of an aristocrat who walked the delicate pathways of the ton.
Secrets and menace and something more charged again, sensuality the other side of a dangerous coin.
The jeopardy of today’s accident made risk more accepted, made the fear of rejection less concerning, made the moments she had been given with him here in the night a chance that was to be taken and not lost.
She placed her hand across his and pressed down.
‘Thank you for coming today.’
‘How could I not have?’
‘Easily,’ she answered back, years of coping alone a burden she was more than used to. ‘I thought the carriage was going to run me over.’
‘As it did your hat?’
‘You saw it?’
‘Felt it.’
‘Could the person who did it come back here tonight?’
‘No.’ She liked his certainty, liked the way he did not even waver. A man who would protect her against everything.
‘Will you kiss me?’ Hardly even a question.
‘Could you stop me?’ His was not either.
‘I want to forget everything else save what is here, now, between us.’
‘Flesh?’ This time he ran his finger across her breast, easily distinguished under silk.
‘And blood,’ she answered, her tongue drawing a single wet trail through the stain on the skin of his hand.
‘I would not wish to hurt you.’
‘You will hurt me more if you do not come…’
‘Inside of you?’ No longer careful or limiting, the obvious stated, a balm to fright and hate and hurt.
In reply she held his finger to her lips and sucked in, the small noise thrilling and daring in a way that she had never been before.
Frankwell frowning at any enjoyment, the ghost of need always replaced by hurt.
Never again, she thought. Her body ached with the want of him, the air on her skin orange-glowed from the fire and the scars of her past disappearing into shadow, feeling and hot hard passion.
‘Call me Taris,’ he said. ‘Call me by my name.’
She wrote it on the back of his hand, in the wet of her tongue, and saw the way the hairs rose on his arm and the breath in his throat just stopped.
One second and then two. Suspended in time and place before beginning again, neither will in it nor choice.
A small touch here, a longer caress there. The music between them was heard in breaths and heartbeats and sighs.
Their music. A symphony. To life. To living. To danger. No past or future. Just now. Risking it all.
Beatrice wished the world might stop.
‘Love me, Beatrice?’ Barely his voice.
She laughed as she peeled back her nightgown before taking his fingers and placing them on to the warmth.
Chapter Twelve
She was sick into the china basin kept beneath her bed and then sick again as Taris stirred.
Swallowing, she could hardly hide her embarrassment. Such a far cry from last night’s loving and the first rays of dawn slanting through the gap in the curtains at her window.
Her stomach heaved again and she held back her hair, the sweat of exertion marking her skin with a glistening dew. She noticed that the grazes on her arms this morning had crusted, the first scabs of healing formed across open wounds.
Breathing heavily, she shut her eyes, shut everything out whilst she tried to find an equilibrium, the nausea receding as quickly as it had come and leaving a tiredness that was all encompassing.
‘Has this happened before?’ he asked when she turned towards him.
‘It has,’ she replied, wishing that she could have hidden it. Perhaps she was dying? Perhaps this was a sickness that had no cure, the exhaustion that accompanied the early-morning routine just another symptom of its severity. Frankwell had vomited often in the mornings in the last months of his life.
Taris didn’t look happy at all. ‘Hell,’ he said, pulling the length of his hair back off his face. Naked, the muscles of his chest stood out along the contours of his hard brownness. ‘Hell,’ he repeated when she did not say a thing.
Rallying, she tried to make light of her suppositions. ‘I am certain it must be something I am eating and—’
He interrupted her. ‘How old were you when your mother died?’
‘Seventeen.’
‘And you were close?’
Bea didn’t understand the meaning of such a topic change. ‘Very.’
His silence unnerved her.
‘Well, perhaps not as close as we had been when I was younger, but—’
‘I want you to come with me to Falder. I am repairing there today and Emerald and Asher will arrive later in the afternoon.’
‘I don’t understand?’
‘You need to be away from London.’
‘Because you feel that I might have another accident?’
His laugh was unexpected. ‘There are other reasons I have for asking this of you, but I would rather not discuss them here and now.’
Beatrice could not guess at what the ‘other reasons’ might be, but the fright yesterday had made her wary of being in the vicinity of a lot of people, and Falder with its isolated safeness appealed.
‘I should not wish to be a nuisance.’
‘The castle has one hundred and twenty-seven rooms! You would hardly be in the way and with Emerald and my mother as chaperons there could be no whisper of a scandal.’
Correct and careful! She wished he might have said that he wanted her to come, that he wanted to protect her, that the night they had just spent together had been the most wonderful in his life and that now he desired something more lasting…
But when she turned again he was pulling on his clothes with a haste that said he wanted to be gone.
‘Bates will return with the carriage in the midmorning and men will be sent to help with the lifting of any luggage. I am presuming that you will bring your maid with you.’
‘I am hardly an invalid and my luggage will not be heavy.’
‘No.’ He said this so angrily that she looked up at him in surprise. ‘You are not to lift anything, you understand? And do not go outside for any reason at all.’
Orders. Rules. Directives. Control.
Drawing in a breath, Bea turned away, the image of her late husband’s bluster and tyranny coming to mind.
Perhaps that was what happened with men. They took your body and wanted your mind as well. To own and shape and mould. A small interlude of bliss before getting down to the more serious business of obeying!
When she turned again he was at the door, his clothes replaced in a fashion that suggested his man Bates was close with a conveyance, his woollen cape merely draped across his arm.
‘The carriage shall be back in two hours to collect you, Beatrice-Maude. Please make certain that you are ready.’
Once again back at the Wellingham town house, Taris paced up and down in the library, taking a generous draught from the brandy glass and barely believing the turn that the day had taken.
Beatrice was with child, he was certain of it. His child? He counted back the weeks to the snowstorm in Maldon because with the slight swell of her stomach he knew that she must be at least three or four months into her pregnancy.
One part of his mind beseeched the Lord that it be his, the other mulled over her assertions of barrenness and all that such a state implied.
Barren with her late husband, but not with him? He counted the time in his head since Maldon.
A few weeks past three months! Enough time for a child to swell and the morning sickness to come. How the hell could she not know that when even his limited knowledge of childbirth encompassed such information?
The answer came easily. She had been a barren wife for all of the time she had been married, so why should the question of being otherwise occur to her now?
He felt a growing sense of worry after yesterday’s accident and knew that he could not just leave Beatrice in London. No, Falder represented the only chance of safety and sanctuary and perhaps there they could fashion a plan for the future. He kicked his leg against a chair that had been left out from under his armoire and swore soundly.
Blindness.
Barrenness.
Beatrice’s oft-stated penchant for independence and his own adherence to autonomy.
But a child changed everything. Everything! When the clock on the mantel chimed eleven he summoned men to bring down his luggage and walked out to the carriage.
She was ready, but she did not seem pleased. Indeed, when he took her arm to help her she snatched it away as soon as she was sitting in the carriage and placed a small bag in the space on the seat between them. Like a barrier! He could feel the leather when he brushed it with his hand.
Bates came with two maids. Both addressed him in greeting, and a new sense of quiet tension filled the space.
‘It should take us about three hours to arrive at Falder. There will be food and drink supplied to you on arrival there.’
He spoke to all those present in the carriage though no one responded.
‘The journey will take us east through Wickford and Raleigh.’
Still the silence was absolute.
Taris Wellingham was trying to make her feel better with his small talk, but Beatrice did not feel even remotely in the mood for chatter.
His orders from the morning still rankled, as did the way he made no mention of what had happened last night. A man who would take a relationship only up to a certain point, the control men valued more important than truth.
The truth of being together and intimate, nothing held back at all.
She ground her teeth and tightly clasped her hands together, the vestige of nausea still dogging her and the lack of sleep she had suffered last night making her feel heavy and cross. When tears pricked at the back of her eyes she willed them away by taking a deep breath. Perhaps if she tried to sleep the journey would go more quickly. Ramrod stiff and upright, she closed her eyes.
Her cheek was against a hard pillow, but the soft feel of an arm holding her close made her snuggle deeper, reaching for the comfort so thoughtfully provided.
‘Taris,’ she whispered, thinking that the night was still before them and they had all the time in the world.
‘We are almost at Falder, Mrs Bassingstoke. Perhaps now would be a good time to wake up?’
Mrs Bassingstoke? Falder? Wake up?
Horror hit her as she opened her eyes and realised the extent of her contact.
She was literally draped across him, her hand resting in his lap and her head on his chest. My God, had she snored, had she talked in her sleep, had her fingers crept where her dreams had lingered? Instantly she pulled away.
‘I cannot believe that I fell asleep. I rarely do so in any conveyance, my lord.’
‘Perhaps you slumbered fitfully last night?’ he questioned, and she heard the humour of complicity in his words.
Ignoring it, she made much of smoothing out the creases in her skirt. ‘How long was I asleep?’
‘All of three hours. Enough rest to improve anyone’s temper, I should imagine.’
She smiled despite the rebuke, for she did feel immeasurably better and far more able to cope. Her hat had all but been dislodged and she leant forwards whilst Sarah fashioned it into place, glad for the small interruption, though the interest in her maid’s eyes was unwelcome.
‘Falder should be coming into view in the next few minutes.’ Taris Wellingham’s voice interrupted her ministrations. ‘If you look to your right, you will be able see the sea off Fleetness Point. The finger of land jutting out into the ocean is Return Home Bay.’
He did not look himself, she noticed. Memory was as potent a force as any sight and the land of your birth would be an easy recall. Still, she thought, as the peninsula he spoke of came into view, he had an uncanny ability to place himself in the landscape he was in and as her maids craned their necks to look she could not help but admire such a characteristic.
The castle was huge and rambling with turrets and gables and it dominated the grassland around it. The Wellingham family seat for centuries. She imagined what it must be like to belong to a place where your ancestors had roamed and where the family still gathered for the celebrations and tribulations thrown at them.
Taris. Emerald. Asher. Their children. Lucinda. The Dowager Duchess. What must it be like to be a part of a group of people who would see to your back and protect you for ever?
She bit down on the poignant memory of her own parents’ deaths and the aloneness felt since. No one had ever looked out for her. If they had, then perhaps…? Shaking away memories, she concentrated on the moment.
A large group of servants were waiting as they pulled up into the circular drive, white pebbles clattering beneath the wheels of the carriage. She saw how Taris clasped his ebony cane and placed his fist against the handle, a habit she supposed of realising the exact moment when they stopped and when the door might open.
Always in control. Always cognisant of the slightest change in circumstance so that he would not be surprised.
The old man who opened the carriage door looked delighted by Taris Wellingham’s arrival.
‘Master Taris.’
‘Thompson.’ Instant recognition and his hand thrust forward. ‘I trust you are faring well up here.’
‘Better than in the city, my lord.’
‘And your wife, Margaret. Is she keeping well?’
‘Indeed, my lord. I will tell her that you asked after her.’
Another man strode up to join them and the same sort of conversation ensued. Taris Wellingham was a lord who would take the time to know old retainers on a familiar basis. Frankwell had never made an effort to learn the name of even one servant and consequently there was a never-ending stream of them through the house. Another thought occurred to her. Perhaps the ploy had been deliberate on his part to keep her isolated from any friendships? Loyal servants might have bolstered her revolt and led her to believe the fault did not lie entirely within her.
How naïve and stupid she once had been. That was the worst of it. The knowledge that a man had kept her so trapped and down-trodden made her feel diminished and guilty. A woman with a secret of shame.
Following Taris down the line of servants, she was surprised when he stopped and brought her to his side to make introductions to the housekeeper and the head butler. This was what a husband might do when first bringing a wife to his family domain, and she was hardly that. The strangeness of it all was confusing and she was glad when they walked up the front steps and came inside.
The entrance hall was beautiful. A wide staircase wound its way from the ground to the first and second floors, the banisters of old polished oak. Off the hall to all sides were numerous doors.
When one opened suddenly she saw an old woman sitting in a wheelchair, a blanket across her knees and a very fine gold-and-ruby necklace resting in the folds of her heavy woollen gown.
‘The Dowager Duchess is waiting in the blue salon, my lord.’ Bates’s voice was quiet and as he walked away Bea was surprised that Taris turned her aside with a whispered confidence.
‘My mother can be a little overpowering sometimes, but as she is old I usually humour her views.’
‘ You sound worried that I might not.’
He laughed. ‘It is not her I am trying to protect with such a warning, Bea, but you.’
‘I am not a green girl…’
‘She has some knowledge of your past.’
‘Oh.’ The wind was quite taken from her sails and where interest had been before, there now lingered dread. How much did she know and who had told her?
‘Mama.’ Taris leant down to kiss her forehead. Here in Falder Beatrice noticed his new ease of movement. He had even placed the cane at the front door with his cloak and hat.
His mother’s hands came across his and she held them close, the look on her face one of love and then considerable interest as her gaze fell behind him.
‘And you have brought a visitor…?’
‘Mama, may I present Mrs Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke. Beatrice, this is my mother, the Dowager Duchess of Carisbrook. I have asked Beatrice down for a few weeks in the hope of showing her Falder.’
‘I see.’ The woman’s eyes slid across her face, missing nothing. ‘I was sorry to hear of the recent loss of your husband, Mrs Bassingstoke.’
‘Thank you.’
‘My own husband was incapacitated for his last few years and I know how very difficult it can be.’
Beatrice nodded.
‘Did you have much help with him?’ Inside the question Beatrice sensed knowledge.
‘I did not, Duchess.’
‘No mother or father? No sisters or cousins?’
She waited as Bea shook her head.
‘No one?’
The silence stretched out until the old woman gestured her forwards. ‘Then you are in need of a good holiday, my dear. A long overdue holiday, I should imagine. Do you play whist?’
