Kitabı oku: «Regency Society», sayfa 17

She held herself tight with silence, the mute reserve helping her to come to terms with the gravity of her mistake.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Could she trust the woman? Would Beatrice-Maude Wellingham be true to her word of maintaining her silence? The thicker tie of blood would make things more difficult and, looking at the family group the other evening, she had detected a strong sense of solidarity. Too strong?

When Martin called her as she arrived home some half an hour later, she pinched colour into her cheeks before walking out to greet him, for none of this could ever be his problem and his health was fragile. Slipping her hand into his, she kissed him on the cheek, leaning against the handles of his chair for balance.

‘When will Florencia be home?’ he asked her. ‘Her governess said that she was not here yet.’

‘Soon, I think. Your sister has taken her out for the afternoon.’

‘You look pale.’

‘I sat in the park on the way home from the reading room and it was a little chilly. Lady Beatrice-Maude Wellingham stopped to ask how we were.’

How easy it was to stretch out the truth when all your life depended on it, Eleanor thought.

His hand squeezed her own. ‘Sometimes I worry that I have made your life very dull, my dear.’

She stopped him simply by raising her hand to his face. The stubble of an eight-hour shadow scratched and she noticed the way his skin had shrunk around the bones of his cheek.

Thinner. Older. More tired.

His fingers interlaced with hers. A good and honourable man, and a long way from the husband that she would have struggled to find had the true enormity of her predicament ever become public. No, she was the most fortunate of women and if the sacrifice of marital intimacy was the payment for respectability, then far be it from her to wish it different.

As he continued to stroke the back of her hand, however, worrying her skin with a dull repetition, she wondered how it was possible for Cristo Wellingham’s simple touch to engender a reaction that had raced through all her body.

‘I would like to hold a party, Taris, to celebrate Cristo’s return.’ Beatrice entwined her feet through those of her husband’s as they lay in bed later that night. His warmth was welcomed.

She felt his chest rise in laughter, the darkness of the room obscuring any expression. ‘I am not certain he would welcome such a thing. I know I should not. Besides, as yet we have no real idea of his motives for returning to England. He may be here to slander the name of Wellingham yet again and will leave as soon as he gets bored by the uneventful routine of everyday life.’

‘He is your brother, Taris. Whatever happens, you will need to mend your fences or face a lifetime of regret.’

‘Asher would rather erect higher barriers and push him out altogether. The sins in his past have not been simple and when he left last time the arguments between our father and Cristo were, at the least, vitriolic. He was a wild youth, I suppose, with few boundaries, though Ashborne always kept a certain distance from him, which probably made matters worse.’

Beatrice broke in with her own understanding of the matter. ‘Yet he is not an evil man, or even a bad one.’

His smile curved into the tips of her fingers. ‘You can tell so quickly?’

‘I was married to a miscreant for years. One gets a feel for them.’

‘Lord, Bea. Sometimes your wit is careless …’

Her laughter drifted across the room. ‘Only with you, Taris,’ she said softly, her nails running across the bare skin of his arm, before she returned to the matter in hand. ‘It could be a weekend house party down at Beaconsmeade. Not a huge affair, but a small one.’

‘Who would you invite?’

Bea felt her heart begin to race a little faster, for deception was something she had always been very bad at. ‘The family, of course, and a few other friends and acquaintances.’

His palm took her wrist, measuring the beat. ‘Acquaintances?’ There was a tone in the word demanding truth.

‘I saw Lady Dromorne today in the park, Taris. Did your brother ever mention her to you?’

Taris pushed back his pillow. ‘Eleanor Westbury? In what way?’

‘Had he been … interested in her at all?’

‘Did she say that he had been?’

‘No.’ Even to her own ears the denial was too quick. Too forced.

‘There was that fracas many years ago with Nigel Bracewell-Lowen that many insisted was a result of Cristo’s antics, though of course such an accusation was never proved. I do not think that she would welcome your invitation. Besides, she is a married woman and Martin Westbury rarely ventures out.’

Bea nodded. Reason pointed to a happy union, but her own intuition was telling her something very different. Lady Dromorne had fainted when she had seen Cristo at the theatre and this afternoon Prudence Tomlinson had mentioned she had seen them touching hands in the public reading room.

Bea had squashed this rumour by swearing her brother-in-law to be at Beaconsmeade for the day and Prue had laughed at her own silly imagination, glad for the chance to clear up such a misunderstanding. Yet the meeting with Eleanor had made Bea curious.

How could Cristo’s revelations be responsible for ruining Eleanor’s reputation? Her mind ran further afield to the age and infirmity of the husband. There was a daughter, too, of about five, if memory served her well. She wondered how such an unwell and aged man had been able to father a child. Another thought charged in over the top of that one and Beatrice took in a breath. What if Martin Westbury was not the true parent of Eleanor’s daughter? Cursing her fertile imagination, she listened again to her husband.

‘If you are bent on repairing the relations between our family, perhaps an invitation to the two younger Westbury nieces might be a better way to do it. They are reputed to be sensible girls. Ask some of the young bucks about Beaconsmeade to even out the numbers.’

Beatrice smiled tightly. Sense told her to leave the matter entirely, yet there was sadness in the pale blue eyes of Eleanor Westbury that was undeniably interlaced with her brother-in-law. The small opportunity to play out the conclusion of something important could not hurt, could it?

She snuggled down into the arms of her husband and pulled the light cover across them, his heavy masculinity treasured and safe.

‘I love you, Taris.’

He laughed as he turned her over, and covered the soft desire in her body with his own particular molten heat.

‘Show me.’

Chapter Seven

The invitation to the Wellinghams’ party in ten days’ time caused a stir in the Dromorne household and for many more reasons than any could have guessed.

The two younger Westbury girls screamed with delighted shock, each imagining the gowns that might catch the fancy and admiration of the enigmatic youngest Wellingham brother.

Martin Westbury, on the other hand, decided that he would simply decline the invite altogether, but was most insistent that his wife take his nieces and sister to the affair as it had been a long while since they had been invited to any soirée of the very first order. Not that Martin ranked things in accordance with such strict and rigid axioms, but his sister’s daughters’ futures had to be considered and another Season in London for the girls was beginning to pall on him with the hustle and bustle social intercourse demanded.

Eleanor was just struck dumb, unable to formulate any real understanding of any of it.

She had expected to be a persona non grata to Lady Beatrice-Maude after her outburst and instead had received one of the most sought-after social cards of the Season. A great dread engulfed her.

‘Sophie and Margaret must go, of course,’ she began, and was surprised when Martin raised his hand.

‘You and Diana will chaperone them, Lainie. It is only right and proper.’

‘I am quite happy to let Diana go in my stead. Besides, I could not leave Florencia for so very long.’

But her husband was having none of it.

‘As Florencia has her beloved governess and I have been feeling considerably better of late, I am certain this would be a good change for all of us.’ He winked at his sister. ‘To make sure that we live up to the standards required, you shall all go off to the dressmaker and get fitted out for such an occasion.’

Such a proclamation brought renewed shouts of delight, Margaret’s face even teasing a smile from the gloom that had overcome Eleanor, and when Florencia was brought down, Eleanor opened her arms to her daughter, enjoying her soft warmth.

‘Did you have a lovely time yesterday, Florencia?’ Margaret asked the question with a smile.

‘We saw some puppies. They licked my hands and followed me. Could we bring one home, Mama, even just for a little while?’ The silver in her hair was caught by the light from the window.

‘You know that Papa would get iller if a pet came home, darling.’

‘We could keep one outside, though? Aunt Diana’s friend said that it could be.’

‘It might get rather cold in the winter when you are warmly tucked up in your bed.’

Eleanor wished Martin would help her out on this, but his earlier forcefulness was gone, replaced instead by the more normal air of exhaustion. Even the scrambled eggs seemed too much bother for him to eat this morning. A pang of worry shot through her, her own concerns seeming selfish in the face of his sickness.

‘Should I ask the doctor to come and see you again, Martin? He is most happy to be called at any time.’

Her husband shook his head and closed his eyes, momentarily looking so washed out that a flurry of alarm made Eleanor start. When Florencia glanced up from her lap, she ordered herself to be calm. The doctor had assured them that his condition was stable and that the deterioration Eleanor could so plainly see had tapered off. She wanted to seek a second opinion, but Martin would have none of it, insisting on his satisfaction with such a prognosis.

Hugging Florencia tighter, she wondered if his condition would continue to worsen. In the breakfast room, with the happy talk of new gowns and the sun slanting through the French doors from the outside courtyard, such a thought was unsettling; an interloping truth that she wanted to ignore until she no longer could. The scent of summer roses in a large blue vase filled the air.

Taking a breath, she gathered her strength and joined in the conversation Margaret and Sophie were having on the dressmaker of their choice and on the weekend’s entertainment.

‘They say that Beaconsmeade is a beautiful old house and that Lord Taris Wellingham keeps his best horses at stud there.’ Sophie seemed full of information that Eleanor had not a notion of.

‘Perhaps there will be a chance to ride, then, for Cristo Wellingham is reported to be keen on the sport. I will put in my riding habit.’

Margaret’s hopes had Sophie giggling, though the youthful exuberance of the girls gave Eleanor a sharp pang of loss.

When had she ever been truly young? Pregnant at eighteen and a wife before twenty! And now with her twenty-fourth birthday on the horizon she felt old before her time. Stolen kisses would never be for her, the flirtatious dance of the fan in a crowded ballroom only a figment of imagination and fantasy, like some chapter of one of the romantic books she sometimes borrowed from the reading room.

Beaconsmeade suddenly felt like a trap! A terrible mistake that she was being drawn into. If Cristo Wellingham should be caught in the wiles of her beautiful nieces, what would happen then?

A lifetime of trying not to touch him or be alone with him or letting the truth of her lost year become public knowledge, for with a single misplaced glance her whole life could fall to pieces. So very, very easily.

Looking up, she saw Martin watching her in that peculiar way he had of seeing straight through a person.

‘Penny for your thoughts.’ She smiled, but he did not answer, the melancholy that was growing in him with each passing week so much more apparent amongst a roomful of sunshine, roses and hopeful expectations.

The evening fell across the land as Cristo rode down towards the shore, faster than safety might allow him, the breath of his horse caught in mist, white-shadowed warmth amidst all that was cold.

Home at Falder! Finally. He had come alone and late, the knowledge of an empty castle making it easier to journey here. He intended to return to London in the morning, after looking at the Graveson land.

Yet the ocean breathed its welcome, the foam of a fading storm caught in the pebbles and on the wind, tumbling into distance and lost. He laughed at the fragility of all that the sea could throw at him, her tendrils lapping at the feet of his mount as on and on he galloped, the bold speed of Demeter eating up the miles. Falder Castle lay far behind, the numerous turrets caught by the last pink rays of dusk, the new quarter moon hiding behind clouds of high cirrus tinged with red.

The anger in him settled into something more akin to acceptance and the wide-open freedom soothed a fury that had gripped him ever since he had touched Eleanor Westbury’s hand.

She was not for him!

Never for him!

The refrain beat across denial and desire and just plain damned common sense.

He had come home to become the person that he once had been, a son, a brother, a lord. He had not ventured into England to become a home-wrecker or a heartbreaker or a rake. The memory of Paris must be left there, forgotten, buried amongst the necessity of survival and civility. For too many years he had let the other side rule him; whether for the good of mankind or for the good of himself, he had got to the point where he could no longer tell, his forays into the underbelly of greed and falsity the only thing that let him believe anything mattered. Spying for the British had almost cost him his sanity, the company he had kept for years far away from any fellowship he might have enjoyed otherwise. Yet he saw the sacrifice as a penance and the recklessness in him had been tethered instead into the benefit of England’s protection and sovereignty. He was pleased that it had ended, that the Foreign Office had released him from further duties when his file had been closed.

Breathing out hard, he stopped and the light on the calmer waters of the peninsula of Return Home Bay was a perfect reflection of the sky. As unreal as he was, only mirroring what was outside, what was expected, the heavy burden of his name and his heritage finally grounding the fury of all that had happened in his life.

He remembered Nigel’s life-blood ebbing away and his own blood on the deck of the nightmare ship he had taken from London, fleeing from his father’s wrath and banishment! The blood of other souls in Paris was mixed in there, too, politics and persuasion exacting their own biting revenge. Sometimes he had killed innocents and then reasoned the sin gone by patriotic virtue. Sometimes at night he remembered those faces, the last expressions of terror etched for ever into his own regret. He frowned. The retribution of ghosts was surprisingly relentless and his own contrition undeniably growing.

Dismounting, he stooped to pick up a pebble, skipping it across the surface in the way that he had learnt in his youth. Lord, what mistakes he had made!

Time folded back and he was on the front steps of Nigel’s parents’ home, the story of a son’s demise full on his lips. On his lips until the door had been opened and the man who had stood there was the same one who had shot at them unexpectedly from the bridge behind the village cemetery. The recognition had been as fatal as Cristo’s lack of gumption, and though he had thought to run by then it was far, far too late. Nigel’s uncle had told him that he had seen the boys using guns for target practice; when Cristo had argued the point the man had become angry, blaming the alcohol the boys had drunk for skewing his memory. An accident was a thing of chance, after all, the older man had added, and no one needed to be ruined by it.

Cristo had returned to London that very night to tell his father the true version of events, but Ashborne had refused to believe his side of the story and had banished him to France on the next tide, forbidding him to return to England for a very long time. Faced with his father’s rejection, Nigel’s uncle’s slanderous untruths and a reputation that was hardly salubrious, he had boarded the ship, nearly nineteen but with the cares of the world firmly embedded on his shoulders.

Cristo swore as he remembered Eleanor’s words.

‘Know that you have already taken the full measure of happiness from my family.’

Another sin. A further damnation!

Falder spoke to him with the wisdom of generations enfolded in its soil, a prudent and enlightened message that bore the weight of ancestry reaching back into living history, and beyond, his body only a vassal of wardship for the few paltry years that God had allotted to him.

Eight-and-twenty gone, many frittered away in the quest for a justice that he himself had never gained. A wanderer. A stranger. A lover. A spy. A man with as many faces as he had needed: the list as endless as the sea, and as changing. But for now he wanted permanence. Bending down again, he filtered a handful of sand through his fingers and watched it fall onto a shore that was known, understood and cherished.

Tears blurred his eyes and he wiped them away with the cloth of his jacket, quickly, shaken by the depth of his love for the place and he knelt on the living and breathing ground, praying aloud to the Lord for deliverance.

‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned …’

Eleanor saw Lord Cristo in the park a few days later, his head a good couple of inches above those of the men about him and the material of his jacket straining across the breadth of his back. She was glad he was looking away, for it gave her a chance to seek out another trail that would lead her nowhere near him. The sun in his hair marked it with every shade of pale, the length creeping onto the material of his collar and tousled thick. She turned her gold wedding ring and remembered the feel of him beneath her fingers before hot guilt made her heart beat faster.

Angling the broad brim on her bonnet, she tipped her head, slicing off the whole end of the pathway.

She had slept badly in the past few days, dreams and nightmares entwined with shame and forbidden passion and banishing her to church early each dawn to pray for some ease from the sins of the flesh. The image of Jesus stretched on the cross in the stained glass etching was a timely reminder of what might happen to her should her indiscretion ever be known. She smiled at the word ‘indiscretion’ for it intimated such a small mistake, an ill-chosen pathway of moderate consequence. The truth of her ruin and loss was something far more brutal.

Two shiny brown boots suddenly blocked her path and she knew exactly to whom they belonged even before she looked up.

‘Ma’am.’ Cristo Wellingham gave her his greeting, eyes in the sunshine much lighter than she had seen them.

Beautiful eyes, her daughter’s eyes!

The very thought chased away fright and replaced it with a channelled resolve. Quietly asking her maid to allow her some space to talk, she walked over to the shelter of a line of elms and stopped there.

No one was in sight save her servant, and farther off two old men whom she did not know. Five moments at the most, she thought, and took a breath.

‘Your sister-in-law sent an invitation for a soirée at Beaconsmeade. Did you know that she had done so?’

He shook his head.

‘You of all people must realise that I cannot possibly come.’ She kept her voice as low as she might manage it and the frown on his brow indicated thought.

‘Because it might compromise your carefully constructed public persona?’ He stepped back as her glance raked across his, anger and uncertainty and sheer desperation melded with another growing truth. ‘Are you happily married, Lady Dromorne?’

The veneer of civilisation that he had affected here in England was suddenly much less obvious. Eleanor tasted fear as she never had before, because in the bare, cold amber she detected something she had seen in her own eyes in the mirror over the past few days.

Longing.

Longing that even anger and vigilance and sense had failed to dislodge. She stood wordless, the dreadful chasm of loss between them echoing in every breath that she took.

Tell him, yes, I am very happily married, she heard her mind say. Tell him that you love your husband and your life and your place in the world and that any interference from him would be most unwelcome and unacceptable. Tell him to go and to never look back and insist that the history between them was so repugnant she needed no more reminding of any of it.

She opened her mouth and then closed it again, the warm summer wind streaming between them and the silk of her dress touching her skin in the way he had once touched it, inviting passion, igniting lust.

Even for Florencia she could not say the words.

‘Meet me tonight. I have rooms here in London …’ He spoke as she did not.

Pulled from the past into the present, this harsh truth of seduction was a far easier thing to counter.

She could not believe he had said such words to her here in the wind and in the sunlight. A man who would throw away her good name on a whim, never even imagining whom else he would hurt. ‘My husband loves me, Lord Cristo, and I am a wife who applauds loyalty.’

‘Touch me, then.’

Shock filled her eyes.

‘Touch me and tell me that there is nothing at all left between us.’

She held her fists tight against her skirt. ‘The pull of flesh is only a fleeting thing, monseigneur.’ The title she gave him was deliberate, a grim reminder of the misunderstanding that trembled beneath anger. ‘Honour and trust and duty are the tenets that a sensible woman lives by.’

‘And you are sensible?’

‘Very.’ The word was as forceful as she could make it, moulded by her depth of fear.

Unexpectedly, he took three steps back. ‘Logic and reason run a poor second to the heat of passion, ma chérie. Should you relax your guard for a moment, the truth of all you deny might be a revelation to you.’

Pursing her lips, Eleanor allowed him no leeway. ‘I do not think you should presume to believe that you know anything of my fidelity. My life has changed completely since Paris and I am a woman who learns well from her mistakes.’

‘Mistakes?’ He echoed the word, turning it on his tongue as if trying to understand the very nature of its meaning before finding a retort. ‘I have relegated our night together to neither blunder nor error. Indeed, were I to give it a label, as you seem want to do, I might have chanced something very different.’

The glint in his eye was so carnal and lascivious that Eleanor knew exactly where he would have placed it. The smile he gave her showed off his gleaming white teeth.

Biting back impatience, she inclined her head as he gave her his leave without another word, his figure receding into the distance until he was lost altogether when the next corner claimed him.

It was over between them, the truth of circumstance bitingly clear: just a matter of the flesh, easily duplicated in a room for rent by the hour.

Turning, she watched the ducks on the lake in their small family groups. Mother. Father. Ducklings. How it should be. How it had been designed and planned. Florencia knew who her parents were and without Martin, Eleanor might never have made it back to England. Dark days and lonely days. Days when she had wondered if it might not have been easier to simply cease to exist at all. Pressing down on her chest in alarm, she tried to breathe, her composure reasserting itself as the tableau before her took shape. The trees, the birds, the pathways, people now further afield and the distant clatter of hooves.

A good life. Untainted and wholesome. A real life.

Her life.

Not thrilling or adventurous or even passionate, but safe and prudent and certain.

With a wave of her hand she gestured her maid forwards, resolutely ignoring the question in her eyes as she struck down the pathway for home, hating the tears that blurred everything before her. Disappointment lent her gait a tense anger that was almost as unreal as her honour, dissolved under the meaning of Cristo Wellingham’s words.

Meet me tonight. I have rooms here in London.

Only that. Only that.

The words rolled around in the empty corridors of her hope, a bitter pill pointing to the real character of a man of whom she had no true knowledge. It was done between them. Finished. Her nails dug into her palms, causing hurt until she released her grip and opened her fingers to the air.