Mistress at Midnight
Mistress at Midnight
Sophia James
THE DARKEST HOURS OF THE NIGHT BRING THE DEEPEST PASSIONS…Haunted by rumours following her husband’s suspicious death, Aurelia St Harlow has withdrawn from society. To secure her family’s future there’s only one man who can help. And that man demands payment – with a kiss!Lord Stephen Hawkhurst finds the troubled beauty impossible to resist. But Aurelia is suspected of treason and, as England’s greatest spy, Hawkhurst must uncover her every secret. As the truth unfolds so does their desire.Drawn together in the dark of the night, they unleash passions neither has ever experienced before…
‘I don’t know what burns between us, Mrs St Harlow, but there will come a time when we shall not have the will to stop it. I can promise you that.’
There—the words were said, falling against lies and covering them with a softer edge, like snow across the jagged sharpness of rocks.
The lump in her throat made her swallow as she tried to find an answer but what indeed could she say? If she agreed then only ruin would follow, and if she didn’t…
She could not speak, even with everything held in the balance, and Lord Hawkhurst let her hand go and took a pace backwards.
AUTHOR NOTE
Three homeless and parentless boys are sent to Eton, where they forge a bond of friendship that can never be broken.
Now powerful lords, they need to marry, but the complex and intriguing women they choose mean that the road to happiness is not going to be an easy one.
Lucas Clairmont’s story appeared in MISTLETOE MAGIC, Stephen Hawkhurst is the hero of MISTRESS AT MIDNIGHT and Nathaniel Lindsay’s story will be coming next.
About the Author
SOPHIA JAMES lives in Chelsea Bay on Auckland, New Zealand’s North Shore, with her husband, who is an artist. She has a degree in English and History from Auckland University and believes her love of writing was formed reading Georgette Heyer in the holidays at her grandmother’s house.
Sophia enjoys getting feedback at www.sophiajames.net
Previous novels by the same author:
FALLEN ANGEL
ASHBLANE’S LADY
HIGH SEAS TO HIGH SOCIETY
MASQUERADING MISTRESS
KNIGHT OF GRACE
(published as THE BORDER LORD in North America)
MISTLETOE MAGIC
(part of Christmas Betrothals)
ONE UNASHAMED NIGHT
ONE ILLICIT NIGHT
CHRISTMAS AT BELHAVEN CASTLE
(part of Gift-Wrapped Governesses)
LADY WITH THE DEVIL’S SCAR
THE DISSOLUTE DUKE
Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
Mistress at Midnight
Sophia James
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This one’s for you, Nina. I really appreciate your support.
Chapter One
June 1855—England
Stephen Hawkhurst, Lord of Atherton, felt the wind rise up from the bottom of Taylor’s Gap, salt on its edge. He frowned as he breathed in, a smooth wooden railing all that held him between this world and the next one.
So very easy to end it, to simply let go and fall into oblivion. Pushing harder, he felt the barrier give and a few stones, dislodged by the movement, hurled down the incline to disappear into nothingness.
‘If you jump, you would need to land exactly between that rock and the cliff,’ a voice said, one small gloved hand pointing downwards. ‘If you veer to the left, you will be caught on those bushes, you see, and such a fall could leave you merely crippled. To the right is a better option as the shale would be more forgiving before it threw you over the edge into the sea. However, if you excel at the art of swimming…?’ She stopped, the implication understood.
Stiffening, Hawk turned to see a woman standing near, a black veil hiding every feature of her face. Her clothes were heavy and practical. A lady of commerce, perhaps? Or the daughter of a merchant? God, what luck was there in that? Miles from anywhere and The voice of reason close by.
‘I may, of course, merely be taking in the view.’ The irritation in his words was unbecoming and he was a man who was seldom rude to women. But this one was far from cowed.
‘One would generally look to the horizon if that was the case, sir. The sun is setting, you see, and it would be this vista your eyes would be drawn towards.’
‘Then perhaps I am tired?’
‘Fatigue would show itself in a leaning gait and great exertion would be seen in dust upon your boots.’ Her head tipped down to look. Stephen imagined her satisfaction when she saw his shiny new black Hessians. He wished she would turn and leave, but she stood silent and waiting, breath even and unhurried.
Surveying the nearby paths, he realised that she was alone. Unusual for a lady not to be chaperoned. He wondered how she had got here and where she would go to next.
There was a hole in the thumb of her right-hand glove and an unbuffed nail was bitten to the quick. The hat she wore hid her hair completely, though an errant curl of vibrant red had escaped from its clutches and lay across the darkness of her clothes like rubies in a coal seam. Beneath the notes of a heavier perfume he smelt the light freshness of violets.
‘I came here often as a young girl with my mother and she would stand just where I am and speak of what was over the seas in all the directions that I might name.’ This was said suddenly after a good few moments of silence. He liked how she did not feel the need to fill in every space with chatter. ‘France lies that way, and Denmark, there. A thousand miles to the north-east a boat could founder against the rocky coast of the Kingdom of Norway.’
She had a slight accent, though the cadence held the timbre of something that Hawk did not recognise. The thought amused him for he was a master of discerning that which people wished not to divulge. He had made his life from it, after all.
‘Where is your mother now?’
‘Oh, she left England many years ago. She was French, you understand, and my father had no desire to stop her in her travels.’
His interest was firmly caught as he took a step back. ‘He did not accompany her, then?’
‘Papa loves poetry and text. His vocation is as small as my mother’s was large and a library filled with books was all he ever claimed to want in adventure. Her journeys would have worried him.’
‘The adventurer and the academic? An interesting combination. Which parent do you favour?’ The question came from nowhere, for Stephen had certainly not meant to voice it, but the woman had a charm that was…unexpected. It had been a long time since he had felt the sense of aliveness he did here with her.
One hand crossed to her face, pushing the gauze closer to her cheek. In The slanting light of sunset he could make out a finely chiselled nose. ‘Neither,’ she answered. ‘The will to do exactly as one wants requires a certain amount of spare time which is a commodity I can ill afford.’
‘Because you spend the day rearranging your father’s extensive library?’ He found himself smiling.
‘Everyone has a story, sir, though your assumptions lack as much in truth as any tale that I might fashion around you.’
Stepping back another pace, he felt the bush at his back, sturdy and green. ‘What would you say of me?’
‘I would say that you are a man who leads others, though few really know you.’
Such a truth cut quick, because she was right. He seldom showed anyone who he was.
But she was not finished. Taking his hand, she turned it palm upwards, tracing the lines with her first finger. Stephen felt like snatching it back, away from the things that she might or might not see.
‘You have a high falsetto singing voice, seldom touch strong drink and never bet at the New Year races at Newmarket.’
Her voice held a note of humour, and relief bloomed. ‘So very exact. You ought to have a stall outside the Leadenhall.’
‘It’s a gift, sir,’ she returned, her head tipping to one side as though measuring all that he was. Like a naturalist might watch an insect before sticking it through with a pin. There was something in her stillness that was unnerving and he tried his hardest to discern the rest of her features.
‘Do you have a name?’ Suddenly he wanted to know just who she was and where she came from. Coincidences were seldom as they seemed. His job had at least taught him that.
‘Aurelia, my lord,’ she offered, a new tone in his given title, a tone he understood too well. She gave no surname.
‘You know who I am, then?’
‘I have heard of you from many different people.’
‘And the gossip of strangers is so very truthful.’
‘It is my experience that beneath the embellishment, tittle-tattle always holds a measure of truth. It is said that you spend a lot of time away from England and its society?’
‘I am easily bored.’
‘Oh, I doubt that entirely.’
‘And easily disappointed.’
‘An explanation that may account for your presence here at Taylor’s Gap.’
He breathed out hard, the possibility of blackmail creeping in unbidden.
She faced him directly, now, and lifted her veil. Freckles across the bridge of a fine nose were the first things he registered. Then he saw that one eye was blue and the other dark brown. A mismatched angel!
‘It was an accident. A bleed. I fell from a horse as a child and hit my head hard.’ This explanation was given in the tone of one who might have often said it.
She was so pale the blood in her veins could be seen through the skin at her temple. Like the wings of a butterfly, barely there. He wanted to lean forwards and touch such delicacy, but he did not because something in her eyes stopped him. He knew this familiar look of supplication, his many estates holding the promise of a largesse that was tantalising.
But not from her. The disappointment of it pierced hard even as she began to speak.
‘I would ask a favour of you, Lord Hawkhurst.’
There. It was said, and in the circumstances he would have to be generous. It wasn’t everyone who had seen the demons in him so clearly.
‘Indeed.’
‘I have a sister, Leonora Beauchamp, who is both young and beautiful and I want her to marry a man who would care for her well.’
As her words settled, fury solidified. ‘I am not in the market for a wife, madam, no matter what you might like to say of this encounter.’
Her voice shook as she continued to speak. ‘It isn’t marriage I petition. I merely want you to invite Leonora to the ball I know you to be giving next week at your town house. I shall accompany her to ensure you know who it is to make some fuss of. A dance should do it, or two, if you will. After that I promise to never darken your pathway again.’
The anger in him abated slightly. ‘To where should I send the invitations?’
‘Braeburn House in Upper Brook Street. Any delivery boy would know of it.’
‘How old is your sister?’
‘Eighteen.’
‘And you?’
She did not answer and his heart felt heavy as he looked down at her. ‘So you are Aurelia Beauchamp?’
The shake of her head surprised him. ‘Nay, that is Leonora’s surname, but if you could see it in yourself to welcome my sister despite any…misgivings, I would be most appreciative.’ Removing one glove, she delved into her pocket and brought out a pendant fashioned with a single diamond in white gold. ‘I do not ask you to do this for nothing, Lord Hawkhurst, but if you say yes to the bargain between us I do expect you to hold up your end of it, without excuse. Could you promise me that?’
Interest began to creep under wrath, the flush on her face as becoming as any he had ever seen on a woman. She was a beauty! Beneath the fabric of her other hand he saw a ring, bold against the sheen of superfine.
Was she married? If she was his woman, he would have not let her roam the countryside so unprotected.
He smiled at such thoughts. Unprotected? Lord, was he finally growing a conscience? Thirty-one years old and all of them hard edged. The ends of his fingers curled against his thighs and he made himself breathe in, the souls of those he had sent to the afterlife calling close.
For Queen and for country or for the dubious needs of men left in charge of a foreign policy decades out of tune. Aye, England had not thanked him at all and he did not wish it to. But sometimes in a quiet corner of the world such as this one, and in the company of a woman who was as beautiful as she was beguiling, he wished for…something else.
He could not name it. It was too removed from the roads that he had followed, at first in wanderlust and excitement and now out of habit and ennui.
Murder, even in the circumstances of national security, sounded wrong. His father would have told him that, and his mother, too, had she lived. But they were long gone and the only family member left to give some guidance was Alfred; his uncle’s scrambled mind still lurked in the remnants of the second Peninsular Campaign under Wellington, reality lost in the scarred remains of his left temple.
Stephen would have sworn had he been alone, but the sunset crept over her upturned face, painting untarnished skin the blush pink of dusk. The very sight of her took his breath away. Like an angel offering redemption to a sinner, her fragile stillness warming a heart long since encased in ice.
‘Keep the pendant, madam, for I should wish another payment altogether, here in the open air and far from any community.’ The beat of his rising want hummed beneath the banter. Part of him knew he should not voice a request that was as inappropriate as it was banal, but the larger part of him ignored such a warning. He was a man who had lived for years in the land of shadows and ill repute and it had rubbed off on him, he supposed. Aye, he almost welcomed the distance scandal had brought, though sometimes, like now, a crack appeared, small and fragile, and a worm of longing for the good life that he might have lived wriggled through. He should turn and walk away, protecting the little decency still left inside him.
But he didn’t.
Instead he said that which had been building from the first moment of meeting her. ‘All I want as payment is a kiss, given freely and without anger.’
She waved such a notion away, the diamond clutched awkwardly in her hand. ‘You do not understand, my lord, it is my sister whom I need you to introduce into polite society. It is not a liaison for myself that I seek here… .’
‘Then I refuse your terms.’
She was silent and still, long slender fingers worrying the dark folds of her skirt, and further away the birds gathered for a last chorus before slumber.
‘Only a kiss, you say?’ Whispered. Unbelieving.
The deep blush of blood bloomed under paleness.
He would know her name soon enough and then he would despise her as everybody else did, and too late to change it. But a chance for Leonora to be in the top echelons of London’s Society was not to be dallied with.
One chance.
Fate had a way of occasionally throwing a lifeline and who was she to refuse? Even had he asked for more she could not have said no. For Leonora and for the twins. The stakes had risen as their circumstances had declined and with Papa…She shook her head. She would not think of him.
Goodness, why did he not just take the pendant and be done with it? It was worth so much more than this nonsense he sought. And how was this to work? Did she face him and wait or did he require some prior flirtation?
A refusal would egg a man like him on. She knew it. Better to be sensible and allow him this one small favour, hold her lips up to his and close her eyes, tightly, until it was over.
His finger against her throat stopped every logical train of thought, the gentle play of the sensual so very unexpected. If she had been stronger, she might have stepped back and away. But the sensation of a man whose very name incited hysteria and frenzy amongst a great portion of the fairer sex in England caressing her was mesmerising and she could neither move nor call a stop to it.
The braiding holding the material of her gown together was thick and stiff, a resilient barrier to any more intimate caress. She was glad of such armour.
The hat surprised her, though, his free hand simply lifting the contraption off her head and away, the trailing ties lost in a growing wind as the piece fell to her feet.
‘The colour of fire,’ he said of her hair.
Or of shame, she thought, deep amber catching the final burst of sunset. She could see in his expression just what she had so often seen in those of others.
Uncertainty.
All the difficulties in her life surfaced, roaming free in her head, and she shut her eyes.
‘Nay. I want you to see me.’ He waited until she complied.
Closer he came, breath against her skin, the dark green of his pupils surrounded by gold. She could have fallen into those eyes, like the sky into a puddle, fathomlessly deep. Disorientated, she felt him draw her inwards, the muscles in his arms strong. She would remember this particular moment all the days of her life, she thought, with a heat of anticipation beating inside. His right temple held a raised crescent scar beneath the line of hair.
Blood surged through fear, like a river breaking its banks and running unconfined across a land it did not normally traverse, taking with it all that was more usually there. A changing landscape. An altered truth.
His heat was surprising. Each part of her skin seemed on fire as his lips took her own, ignoring the small token she thought to give him and opening her mouth to his tongue instead.
Inside, tasting, hard pressure and thin pain winding upwards from the depths of her being. Her fingers came to his neck of their own accord, threading through dark strands, her body splayed along the length of his, no space to separate them. She felt him turn her into a deeper embrace, the ache of need blooming over any sense that she might have tried to keep hold of, and she opened to him further. Her whole body now, legs jammed against the junction of his thighs, riding lust. His breathing was as hoarse as hers, no control, the huge yawning space of nature about them consigned to only this touch.
Hers. She wanted more. She wanted what she read of and dreamed about in her bed late at night as all the house slumbered and the banked fires dimmed.
She felt his masculinity through the wool of her skirt as he tipped his head to break the kiss.
‘God.’ The sound he uttered was neither soft nor gladdened. It was harsh and angry and uncertain, his mouth nuzzling her throat, biting into flesh, asking for completion, the knowledge of all he sought unspoken. When his thumb ran across the hardness of her nipple, flicking at the covering of bombazine, she simply went to pieces, the control that she had kept so tightly bound dissolving into disorder.
He held her against the half-light and the silence and the empty landscape, and release left her shaking. No sense in it, save feeling. When he raised her chin she took in the glory as he watched her, waves of passion wrenching gasps without voice. Lost and found, the gold in his eyes the only touchstone to a different reality, the tightened cords of lust entwined into every sinew of her body, her nails running unnoticed down the skin at his neck. A thousand hours or a single moment? She could not know the extent of her loss of governance until the world reformed and they were standing again on the top of Taylor’s Gap.
Aurelia felt embarrassment and then shame. If he let her go, she would fall, like a boneless thing, all stamina gone. Laying her head against his chest, she listened to his heartbeat, the strong and even rhythm bringing her back.
‘Thank you.’ She could not say more and to say less would have been mean spirited. He had to know that, at least, but in the face of her appalling behaviour all she wanted was to be gone.
Lord. She had come as he watched her, the feel of her body tight against his own and wonder in her eyes. Like quicksilver. Like magic. Like all his dreams wrapped into one, her long red hair curling against his skin, the serpent snakes of Medusa.
He knew not one single thing about her save that of a connection in flesh.
But he wanted her. He wanted to lay her down beneath the bushes behind them and remove the black and dowdy robe. He wanted to see her slender pale limbs in the oncoming moonlight as his hands wandered the lines of them before slipping into the wet warmth of her centre. He wanted to take her and know her again and again until there was nothing left of self, melded into the eternal.
His cock grew at such awareness and he could not stop the swelling.
She felt it, too. He saw the flicker of the awareness of danger in her eyes as her tongue took the dryness from her lips. He heard her breath quicken, the line of darker blue around one pale eye pulsating.
His woman. To take. The smell of her filled his nostrils, dangerous yet tempting, all the rules of gentlemanly conduct crossing over into darkness.
‘Go.’ It was all he could say for he did not trust himself enough to deny such want. ‘I shall send you the invitations.’
The anger beneath his words must have registered because she moved back, shadow falling across her face, her hair lifting in the breeze as she turned, footsteps and then silence, only whorls of dust left in her wake.
Kneeling at the bottom of the railing, Stephen hung on to the solid wood, wild despondency all that was left. Lord, it was getting worse, this dispiritedness, claiming the early evening hours as well as the midnight ones. The demons of his past were gathering, armies of lost souls and foundered causes hammering at all he had stood for in the pursuit of justice. Could it have been for nothing?
Crumpling the black hat she had left behind in his fist, he looked for the brandy flask in his jacket pocket and undid the silver chain. Drinking deeply, he knew without a doubt that the solace of strong liquor was the only thing still keeping him sane.
The carriage she had rented was waiting in the place she had left it and she scrambled in, ordering the driver on even before she settled.
Away. Gone. It was all she wanted.
She should not have come to this place at all, but the memory of her mother here was strong and today, travelling between the mills and London, she had wanted to stop and remember.
Sylvienne had brought her here often because she said it reminded her of a place in Provence and for just a little while Mama did not stand in England, but in France, the mistral on her face and the little Alpilles at her back.
Aurelia would wait there with her, fingers laced together as her mother listened to the silence, her particular melancholy still remembered so vividly. Afterwards they would retire to one of the nearby villages for a drink and a meal and Mama would talk of her childhood, the heated sun and the trees that shaded roads bound by fields full of flowers.
And now here was another memory. Aurelia had recognised Lord Hawkhurst the moment she had seen him there, in the wind above the cliffs, his black cloak billowing and drawing her on despite misgivings. Had she gained a favour or lost one, she wondered, with her ridiculous reaction to his kiss? Shame had her breathing out hard and chastising herself for her inappropriate exchange with Lord Stephen Hawkhurst.
She should have insisted on the pendant as payment, but for a moment she had desired another truth, wanting to know something of unexpected passion and the melding together of souls.
She smiled wryly. Well, she had found that out. Bringing her hand to her lips, she touched her fingers to the place where they had been joined, trying to feel again the euphoria and delight.
Unexpected and addictive.
The sort of reaction her mother had made an art form of with her years of numerous lovers, reaching for that elusive and fleeting moment of forgetfulness.
A frown formed on Aurelia’s brow.
She could not be the same, could not encourage feelings long since bottled to spring into a sort of half life, contained between scandal and ecstasy.
Which parent do you favour?
Five moments ago she would have answered ‘Papa’ without question, but now…?
No. the genie must be stopped before more emotions wanted to escape. She had learnt already the high price of her own ill-considered choices and now there were others needing her, depending on her…
Taking a deep breath she smoothed down her skirts and pulled her gloves on. She was an expert in the appearance of control; the smile of casual indifference she had perfected returned and the racing beat in her heart returned to quiet.
Lord Stephen Hawkhurst was to be avoided at all costs. His cousin had at least taught her that.
Chapter Two
London
‘She’s a lovely girl from a good family, Hawk. Safe. Pretty. Well thought of.’
There was something in the way Lucas Clairmont listed the attributes of Lady Elizabeth Berkeley that made him feel uneasy.
‘You said you needed to settle down, for God’s sake, and that you wanted to be a thousand miles away from the intrigues of Europe. As the only daughter of a respectable and aristocratic family, she certainly fits that bill.’
Finishing the drink he was holding, Stephen poured himself another before phrasing a question that had been worrying him.
‘When you met Lillian, Luc, how did she make you feel?’
‘My wife knocked me sideways. She took the ground from underneath my feet in the first glance and I hated her for it, whilst wanting her as I had never wanted another woman in my life.’
‘I see.’ The heart fell out of his argument. ‘Elizabeth is more like a gentle wind or a quiet presence. When I kissed her once upon the hand she felt like a glass doll, ready to shatter into pieces should I take it further.’
Silence greeted this confession. Damn, Stephen thought, he should have said nothing, should have kept his mouth shut so that uncertainty did not escape to make him question an amiable and advantageous union. He was no longer young and Elizabeth Berkeley was the closest to coming near to what he thought he needed in a woman.
‘There are different kinds of attractions, I suppose,’ Luc finally replied. ‘You seemed happy enough with the arrangements last week. What’s changed that?’
‘Nothing.’ The room closed in on Hawk as he thought of his encounter at Taylor’s Gap, fiery silk running through his fingers like living flame.
Elizabeth did not question him. She accepted all that he had been with a gentle grace. She saw only the goodness in people, their conviviality and well-mannered ways—a paragon of docility and charm.
Unease made him dizzy, the black holes of his life filling with empty nothingness. What might a woman such as that see inside him when the shutters fell away? Nay, he would never allow them to.
‘I have it on good authority that her family expect you to offer for her. If you have any doubts…?’
‘I do not.’
Damn it, he liked Elizabeth. He liked her composure and her contentment. He liked her dimples, her sunny nature and her pale blue eyes that were always smiling. He needed peace and serenity and she would give him this, a sop against the chaos that had begun to consume him. He filled up his third glass.
‘You drink more than you ever have done, Hawk. Nat is as worried about you as I am.’
Smiling, the stretch of pretence felt tight around the edges of his mouth. Lucas Clairmont and Nathaniel Lindsay had been his best friends since childhood and each had had their demons.
‘I remember saying the same to you not so long ago.’
‘If you want to talk about it…’
‘There is nothing to say. I am about to be betrothed to a woman who is as beautiful as she is good natured. I like her family and I like her disposition. She will give me heirs and I in turn will give her the security of the Atherton wealth and title.’
‘Then it sounds like a sterling arrangement for you both. A marriage of much convenience.’ The hollow ring of censure worried him.
‘I am tired, Luc, tired of all that I have been. “A sterling arrangement”, as you put it, might not be such a bad thing. Hemmed in by domesticity, I shall be happy.’
He picked at the superfine of his breeches as he spoke and crossed his legs. His boots reflected the chandelier, its many tiers of light spilling down into the room, everything bright upon the surface.
‘Alexander Shavvon said you are doing more than reading codes for the Home Office?’
‘Shavvon could never keep his mouth shut.’
‘Ten years is too long to endure in service. Nat did five and nearly lost his soul. He swears that death stains everyone in the end whether they think it does or not.’ The condemnation in his friend’s words wasn’t gentle, though Hawk knew the warning was given with the very best of intentions.
I kill people, Stephen thought as he opened his hand to the light. It shook now, all of the time, the tremors of memory translated into The flesh. I take policy and make it personal again and again in the dark corruption of power. The black of night, the flame edge of gunpowder and the red crawl of blood. Those are my colours now.
He wanted to tell Luc this, as a purge or as an atonement, but the words buried in secrecy would not form; the consequence of a life depending on camouflage, he supposed, and ceased to try to find an explanation.
Shadows, veils and mirrors. He could barely recognise the man he had become. Certainly, he did not defend the Realm with the cloak of justice firmly fixed across his shoulders any more; a score of innocent lives had seen to that particular loss as well as a hundred others who had no notion of such a word.
Aye, he needed the fresh, uncomplicated innocence of Elizabeth Berkeley like a man lost in the desert needed water.
‘I am fine, Luc. I have a party about to begin in less than an hour and the promise of the company of a group of people around me whom I enjoy.’
‘A happy man, then?’
‘Indeed.’
Lucas nodded and leant forwards, his glass balanced on his knee. ‘Lilly wants you at Fairley for Hope’s twelfth birthday celebration. She says for me to tell you that were she not quite so pregnant she would be down herself to oversee your choice of a wife.’
Luc’s words relaxed the tension markedly as both laughed, and when the clock at the end of the room boomed out the hour of eight they stood.
‘Let the night begin,’ Lucas said as Stephen finished what was left of his brandy and his man knocked on the door to tell them the first of the evening’s guests would be arriving imminently.
Elizabeth Berkeley and her parents came in the second wave of company. Lady Berkeley looked like an older version of her offspring and for a moment Stephen could see just exactly how her daughter would age: the small lines around her mouth, the droop of skin above her eyes, the social ease with which she sailed into any occasion.
His glance went to Elizabeth dressed in lemon silk and lace. ‘It is so lovely to be here, my lord,’ she said in a lilting whisper, placing one hand on his arm. Her nails were long and polished to a sheen.
A sudden flash of other fingers with nails bitten almost to the quick worried him, for he still wore their trails down his neck, hidden carefully under the folds of collar and tie.
Shaking away memory, he settled back into the moment as the Berkeleys moved on in the line of greeting and the next visitors came forth to be welcomed.
She was suddenly there beside him, the very last of the evening’s guests, her hair wound up in an unflattering fashion, the black bombazine gown she wore unembellished and prim.
‘Mrs Aurelia St Harlow and her sister Miss Leonora Beauchamp.’
A wave of hush covered the room at the name, all eyes turning to the staircase. Aurelia was Charles St Harlow’s widow? God, but she was brave.
‘How on earth could she even think to come out in society, still?’
‘It was she who killed him, of course.’
‘Has the strumpet no shame at all?’
Threads of conversation reached Hawk even as she gave him her hand.
‘I thank you for the kind invitation, my lord,’ she said, her glance nowhere near meeting his own, ‘and would like to introduce to you my sister Miss Leonora Beauchamp.’
The chit was charming, young and well mannered, but Hawk smiled only cursorily before turning back to the other.
‘St Harlow was my cousin.’
For the first time, she looked at him directly, her eyes red rimmed from lack of sleep or from poorly placed cosmetics, he could not tell. She wore glasses that were so thick they distorted the shape of her face.
‘We are almost family, then.’ The smile accompanying the statement was hard.
He thought the sister might have turned away, but Aurelia held her there before him, her force of will biting through the atmosphere in the room, a small island of challenge and defiance.
Finally she leaned forwards and whispered, ‘I gave you the exacted payment for the promise of this evening, my lord, and Leonora is not at fault here. Two dances and we will leave.’
‘I am not sure, Lia. Perhaps we should go now.’ The beginning of tears shone in the younger girl’s frightened eyes.
‘Do not cry, Leonora. It is me whom they despise. They will love you if you only let them.’ Turning back, Stephen saw that Aurelia’s hand shook before she buried it into the matt blackness of the wool in her skirt, but she did not give an inch. He had to admire such a resolute feistiness.
‘If one beards the lion in his den, one must be brave.’ Hawk related this to Miss Leonora Beauchamp and was glad when she smiled because the relief in Aurelia St Harlow’s eyes was fathomless, hollow pools of mismatched colour focused upon him.
Years of deception flooded in. An unashamed façade undermined the certainty of others. If Aurelia St Harlow could brazen it out for an hour or more here, he doubted the rumours swirling around her would be quite as damning.
Lord. The promise of a dance with the sister had placed him in a position of difficulty, too. Charles had been one of the last living Hawkhursts, and the closest in blood to him save his uncle, but he had barely known him.
He saw Elizabeth with her family watching, her lips pinched in that particular way she had of showing worry. Guileless. He saw Luc observing him, too, the frown of anger on his brow as pronounced as those of many others. But even this could not make him withdraw his promise and order them gone.
His uncle next to him solved the whole thing entirely as he reached out and took the hand of the one woman in the world he should not have.
‘I remember you, Mrs St Harlow. You are Charles’s wife.’ The use of the present tense made those within hearing press forwards. It was Hawk’s experience that no one loved a scandal played out publicly more than the ton. ‘I liked you right from the start, you see, but you got sadder. She needs to smile more, Stephen. Ask her to dance with you.’
Tragedy, farce and comedy now. The orchestra positioned only a few yards away from them looked at Hawk with expectation on hearing his uncle’s loud command and the faces of those below were a mixture of indignation and shock.
He could do nothing less than consign Miss Leonora Beauchamp into the capable and kind hands of Cassandra Lindsay and offer Aurelia St Harlow the chance of a waltz.
The dance of love, he thought as he led her to the floor, and wondered why such a notion did not seem as ridiculous as he knew it should have. He hoped his right leg would stand up to the exercise, for of late the old wound had been playing up again.
When he placed his hands about her he felt her stiffen. ‘It is my sister whom I would prefer to be where I stand, my lord, for if you adhere to the promised two dances I have just wasted half of them.’
He could not help but smile at such a comment. In response he tightened his grip and felt the full front of her generous bosom. When he looked down he saw she squinted behind thick spectacles.
‘Glasses are supposed to cure poor eyesight, Mrs St Harlow, not cause it,’ he said softly.
‘Things to hide behind have their uses, however, my lord.’ He noticed her straining away and gave her the distance because just the feel of her in his arms had begun to make his blood beat thicker. Across the room Elizabeth Berkeley and her parents followed them intently. ‘You see, at a soirée such as this one it is preferable to be virtually invisible to those who might wish me ill.’
‘They wish you ill because your husband’s death was not one that made any sense. The fact that you were the only person there when it happened made you…culpable.’
‘A court of law proved I had no hand in anything untoward, my lord. It is not my problem that the ton at large refuses to believe these documented facts.’
‘Charles was an expert horseman.’
‘Who fell at a hedge.’
‘One does not generally end up with a sharpened stake embedded through the heart after such an encounter.’
‘I am not here to argue my husband’s unfortunate and early demise with you, my lord.’
The lack of any true feeling made Hawk pause, though his anger was softened a little when he felt the rapidity of her heartbeat beneath his fingers. She was good at hiding things, he thought. A spy’s trait, that.
‘Then why exactly are you here?’
‘I have three younger sisters with little chance of an advantageous alliance unless they are out and about in society. As you can guess from my reception here tonight, we seldom receive any invitations. I am trying to remedy such a difficulty.’
‘So you stalk the peerage in the hope of finding them in compromising positions and then inveigle a card requesting your company at their next social gathering?’
She laughed unexpectedly, the sound running through his bones into the empty darkness of his heart, and the room around them fell away into the windy barrenness of Taylor’s Gap.
Was she a sorceress with her bright red hair and her different eyes? Had she bewitched his cousin in the very same manner? He wished the music might end, allowing him the ease of escape, but the orchestra was in full flight with no chance of a quick finale and to order it otherwise would only incite comment.
Aurelia St Harlow continued as if he had not insulted her at all. ‘I had no knowledge of you being at Taylor’s Gap, Lord Hawk. It was on a whim that I walked in your direction to admire the view and by a trick of coincidence found you there.’
‘Fortuitous, then?’
‘You speak of our kiss?’
He could barely believe that she would mention such a thing here in the crowded room of the ton at play and looked to see that none close had heard her question.
‘There are ears everywhere in a gathering such as this one, Mrs St Harlow, and it is prudent to protect a reputation.’
She shook her head and looked away. ‘Oh, mine is lost completely already, my lord. I doubt anything else I do could lower it further.’
Again he smiled, the freedom inherent in such a thought enlivening. ‘How old are you?’ Said before he could think, said from the very depths of interest.
‘Twenty-six. An old maid. A woman on the shelf of life and happy for it.’ Her eyes strayed to a set of females of a similar age sitting against one wall. ‘I used to pity them until I realised how very liberated they actually were.’
His fingers tightened about hers, gloved tonight in a strange hue of grey. He wished he might have felt her skin beneath, the warmth of it and the smoothness.
‘My uncle seems more than taken with you and that is saying something. He seldom has time for anyone in society.’
For the first time that evening, genuine warmth entered her eyes. ‘I always liked him, too. He showed me around the gardens at the Atherton country seat once and I helped him collect the eggs from the henhouses.’
‘Most people ridicule him.’
‘Most people loathe me so perhaps the thread in common allows us communion.’
‘I do not loathe you, Aurelia.’
She tripped as he said it and fell up against him, the red in her face climbing into beetroot, though the dance music chose that particular point to end and he shepherded her back to her sister.
Chapter Three
Aurelia’s cheeks burnt molten and the anger in her rose. Hell and damnation, but she was doing exactly what she had promised herself she would not do. She was feeling again and the ache about her heart made her sick and disorientated.
Not here, she chastised herself, not here amongst the wolves and jackals of a group who would like to do nothing more than tear her to pieces. A plain and untitled girl did not get away with treating one of their own the way she had treated her husband, after all.
Biting down, she swallowed, the thick glass in her spectacles blurring the edges of the room and making her queasy. Leonora at least looked happy and the young man beside her was both personable and well presented. Perhaps this evening would not be such a total loss after all.
Lord Hawkhurst stood next to a beautiful woman, her face wreathed in kindness.
‘Lady Cassandra Lindsay, may I introduce Mrs Aurelia St Harlow.’
Lady Cassandra did not falter as she put out her hand in welcome, the grasp of her fingers warm and lingering. Such unexpected amiability was surprising, for it was far more common to encounter only censure.
‘It has been a long while since I remember Stephen conversing so fervently with a dance partner.’
‘The music did not allow him the courtesy of bidding me farewell, I am afraid, my lady,’ she returned. ‘I am certain he was much relieved when he was able to escape, though he has promised my sister a dance.’ She got this in because Lord Hawkhurst looked anything but happy on the other side of the small circle of people.
‘Oh, I rather think her card is full already, Mrs St Harlow. My brother Rodney has pencilled in at least two waltzes.’
Leonora fussed prettily as Lady Lindsay introduced her brother to Aurelia and a small bloom of hope lingered in the air.
Could it even possibly be this easy? When Aurelia looked across at Lord Hawkhurst she saw the gold shards in his eyes harden. He was the tallest man in the room and easily the most prepossessing. No wonder women fell over their feet to be near him. But there was something under the visage that he presented to this society that was…darker.
Glancing away, she made much of extracting a lace handkerchief from her reticule. Charles had had the same sort of darkness, and look where that had got her.
Her sister, on the other hand, had a broad smile on her face and was using her fan most agilely. Aurelia had never seen her so animated and hoped that this was not a bad thing. Did men like a woman to talk quite as much? Was it not too forward to tap a man on the arm in the way that she was doing? Lady Lindsay’s brother did not look in the slightest bit offended so perhaps such behaviour was expected. The headache that had been forming all day raked at the sides of her temple because she doubted that they would ever be given such a chance as excellent as this one again. The thought of coming away without contacts was dispiriting.
‘Mr Northrup enjoys riding, Lia. I said he should accompany us for a canter around the Park.’ Her sister’s eyes were wide with hope, the blue in them matching her gown.
‘Perhaps he should be careful, then, not to jump hedges,’ Hawkhurst drawled in reply, though Cassandra Lindsay merely swatted his arm with her fan.
‘Take no notice of Hawk, Mrs St Harlow. Charles was always taking great chances to show off his jumping skills. I couldn’t believe he had not broken his neck before he…’ She petered off, her brow furrowing, and the man beside her, whom Lia did not as yet know, began to speak.
‘Before he died in the same way that the legends abounding in Transylvania tell of?’
Vampires? He spoke of such? The conversation amongst this group of people seemed irreverent and quick witted. No taboos. No carefully untouched subjects, and after Charles’s rigid lack if humour such wit was refreshing. They laughed a lot, too, she thought, though Lord Hawkhurst’s smile came nowhere near his eyes.
‘You must not mind Hawk and my husband Nathaniel at all, Mrs St Harlow. I know how very difficult Charles’s death must have been for you and I am certain that Rodney would love the chance of being invited into the charming company of your sister for an afternoon’s ride. Where do you reside here in London?’
‘Braeburn House, Lady Lindsay, in Mayfair.’ Leonora was quick with her directions and Aurelia could only applaud her sister’s acumen at seizing the moment, but the thought of Hawkhurst paying a social call was worrying.
What would he see there that she had tried to hide? Would they expect to meet Papa? Was there a chance he might talk with those about the area and understand things that she had been so successful thus far in concealing from others?
She was so exhausted with trying to tie all the threads of her life together she could barely breathe. How quickly could it all unravel?
The arrival of a young blonde woman and an older one within the group changed the tone of what was spoken of as introductions were given.
‘You look as beautiful as ever, Lady Berkeley,’ Cassandra’s husband said as he kissed the back of the woman’s hand.
‘You were always the flatterer, Lord Lindsay. Your mother was the same, God bless her soul.’
The chatter was convivial and familiar between the people who had grown up all of their lives inside the sheltered world of the ton. Were Stephen Hawkhurst and Elizabeth Berkeley a couple promised to each other? The thought made Aurelia’s head throb harder and she knew that she did not fit in here. She watched as the younger Berkeley woman shyly laid her gloved fingers on Lord Hawkhurst’s arm and asked him a question beneath her breath.
His reply was as softly given back, the girl’s cheeks glowing as excitement filled her eyes. Elizabeth Berkeley was like the first flush of some exquisite English rose: all promise, sweetness and hope. Aurelia could not remember a time when she had ever been like that.
At five she had watched her mother pack her bags and disappear. At six she had been the unwanted stepdaughter of her father’s new wife and at seventeen Charles St Harlow had entered her life, like a falling star burning brightly.
Another waltz was struck and Lord Hawkhurst and Elizabeth Berkeley excused themselves to take to the floor, his arm around the young woman’s waist in a careful ownership, the height and colouring of each exactly complementing the other.
‘Did you know Hawk well when you were married to his cousin, Mrs St Harlow?’ The question was from Cassandra Lindsay, eyes full of curiosity as she moved to stand directly beside Aurelia.
‘No, I never once met him. His uncle, however, was a friend.’
A smile lit up Lady Lindsay’s entire face. ‘Alfred is rather picky about who he accords friendship to. Take Elizabeth Berkeley, for instance. I doubt he realises she exists.’
‘She is very beautiful.’
‘And quite lovely with it, which is a relief beyond measure if Stephen should decide to offer for her.’
‘Which he will?’ Aurelia had not meant to ask the question, and from the sharp interest in green eyes knew she had made a mistake by doing so. She was glad of the barrier of thick glass.
‘Lord Hawkhurst has never taken a wife and his estate is more than healthy, so it behoves him to provide heirs. How long were you married to Charles?’
‘Three years, my lady.’ The tone of her voice was flatter than it should have been but tonight, with Leonora’s face alight with possibility and hope, Aurelia was finding it hard to feign her usual pretence.
Cassandra Lindsay’s next words were therefore unexpected. ‘We are having a house party at our country estate in Kent in early September. Would you and your sister like to join us for the weekend?’
Her heart began to beat a little faster, the rhythm of it imbued with an unfamiliar kind of joy. It had been so long since a stranger had reached out a hand in friendship. Still, she could not quite accept the gift without honesty.
‘Perhaps Leonora could attend with a chaperon, Lady Lindsay. My presence may be detrimental to the success of your gathering, you see, for there are many stories about me—’
Cassandra Lindsay broke in. ‘There are always rumours, Mrs St Harlow, and there are always detractors, but anyone whom Uncle Alfred takes a shine to I would trust with my life.’
‘Thank you.’ The ache in her throat was surprising as she glanced around, the heavy frowns of others less intimidating after such a conversation.
As the music ended the party regrouped. Elizabeth Berkeley had joined her mother to one side of the room, chatting with a group of other young women all dressed in differing shades of yellow. Stephen Hawkhurst unexpectedly walked back to Aurelia’s side.
‘Are you promised for this set, Mrs St Harlow?’
His question came quietly and in response Aurelia showed him her dance card without a scribble upon it. ‘I seldom garner partners, my lord,’ she returned, ‘and certainly never the same man twice.’
His mouth turned up as he observed the empty page, and with the gracious strains of Strauss from the orchestra at the head of the room Aurelia felt disorientated.
Something else lingered there, too, but she did not care to examine those feelings as his fingers lifted the battered spectacles from her nose and held them away for a moment.
‘Is that better?’
The faces of those around them came into full focus. ‘Disfavour is often easier to stomach when it is barely seen, my lord.’
‘Many here have their own skeletons should one bother to dig deeper, Mrs St Harlow. Take heart, for you are not the only person in the room with a past.’
Aurelia glanced away as he replaced her looking glasses. Did he speak about himself?
His hair was draped long across the nape of a snowy, crisp white collar, strands of midnight reflecting blue, the sense of danger and menace that she associated with him heightened here.
Charles had been a man who had promised everything and delivered nothing, a liar and a cheat who used those in positions of less power ruthlessly. Stephen Hawkhurst appeared to be the very opposite. She could not imagine him striking fraudulent bargains or making empty promises.
As his uncle joined them, the old man’s hand reached down to extract a large handkerchief to wipe his shining brow. Alfred Hawkhurst’s eyes were more opaque than she remembered them to be and he had a wheeze that was concerning.
‘They don’t want me there, Stephen. They never do. I can feel it when I speak to people.’ His thin voice shook—a man who had had enough of the lofty world surrounding him.
‘I feel exactly the same, Lord Alfred,’ Aurelia began as his nephew failed to speak, ‘though I find that the wine is helping.’ She took two glasses from a passing waiter and handed one to him. Alfred smiled and downed the lot before leaning forwards in a conspiratorial way.
‘You were always a favourite, my dear, and I am glad that you do not seem so melancholy now. I used to worry for you when Charles was about.’
Embarrassment swept through Aurelia’s whole body. A thousand lies and yet an old man, reportedly mad, had seen through the lot of them. Like her father had. Catching the golden glance of Lord Hawkhurst, she looked away.
She had changed. She had grown up. No one could ever make her so sad again. The silk of Leonora’s dress swirled cornflower blue in the middle of the floor, the weave of silver within it catching the light.
Macclesfield silk. Her lifeblood.
‘I am more than content, Lord Alfred.’ And quite competent, too, she thought. Dancing, needlework, luncheons and music—the pursuits of a well-brought-up young lady had long ceased to be a part of her domain. She tried hard to smile. She fitted nowhere now, like Alfred, lost in the middle somehow, an eternal outsider, looking in but never belonging. Not even knowing how to.
Her fingers strayed to the pendant at her throat, clutching The single diamond until she saw Lord Hawkhurst’s eye upon the piece. Why had she worn it? The kiss at Taylor’s Gap hung in the air between them in the particular manner of something unfinished. She could see the shape of it in his eyes and in the way he stood, his shoulders rigid with the tension of memory.
‘I have always loved jewellery.’ Alfred’s proclamation was welcomed for it broke the unease, his outstretched hand touching the piece. ‘What would you wish to be paid for this, my dear? Is it for sale?’
Hawkhurst carefully moved him back. ‘Mrs St Harlow holds the bauble in much esteem and would part with it only under the most extreme of circumstances, Alfred.’
‘She told you of that?’
‘Indeed she did.’ Shadows moved across his face, the planes at his cheeks softer now, and her body recalled the feel of Lord Hawkhurst’s skin beneath her fingers, warm and solid, lips slanting deep with the taste of safety.
Aurelia shook her head. Such dreams were not ones she could contemplate again. Besides, had not Cassandra Lindsay stressed the need of a suitable bride at Atherton?
The black bombazine covering her from neck to foot was synonymous with the sort of life she led. Secretive. Careful. Lonely. In bed well after midnight and up well before the dawn.
When Elizabeth Berkeley came back to the circle Aurelia excused herself and wound her way to the ladies’ room, where she sat for a good three-quarters of an hour on a chair in the small salon, completely impervious to the stares of others who were also using the chamber.
Another twenty minutes and she could be gone.
Hawk felt Elizabeth’s fingers entwined in the fabric of his sleeve. He wished he might have shaken her off and followed Aurelia St Harlow to wherever it was she had gone at least half an hour ago, but appearances had to be maintained and he was always careful in this respect.
Cassie Lindsay watched him vigilantly, too, as she had done for months now, her eyes upon him filled with question. She had made it known that she had asked Mrs St Harlow and her sister to their country seat of St Auburn’s in a few weeks’ time and that the invitation had been accepted.
The evening was going exactly as Mrs St Harlow would have wished it to and yet now she had disappeared off into a crowd that detested her and was lost to sight.
Alfred had gone looking for her. Just that fact amazed him as his uncle seldom stayed for more than a few moments at any of these public gatherings and never inveigled himself into the lives of those he met here. And what did he damn well mean by referring to her melancholy?
‘I just love the colours of the gowns and the music, don’t you, my lord? Everyone says that yellow is quite the shade of things this season.’ Under the candelabras, Elizabeth’s cheekbones were striking.
‘Then you are eminently in fashion,’ he returned, her gown the colour of sunbeams shimmering in the light. The black bombazine of Mrs St Harlow came to mind, for his cousin had been years dead already and it was far past time to throw off the shades of mourning. He wondered how her hair might look against emerald green or a deep translucent gold.
No. He needed innocence and a lack of complication, he must remember that, the artless push of purity scattering the oncoming darkness. Why, Aurelia St Harlow probably had as many demons inside her as he did.
‘I went today into town with Mama and found a jewellery shop that I had not noticed before.’
Stephen smiled, imagining Elizabeth enjoying the wares.
‘Mama said I should have purchased the blue sapphire necklace because it showed off the colour of my eyes, but I preferred the ruby because it caught the light so beautifully. Do you think I have made a wise choice, my lord?’
His glance passed across the bauble nestled at her neck, the intricate patterns of gold fussy in design.
‘It suits you entirely.’
‘There was a bracelet to match, as well.’ the glance she gave him had a certain entreaty in it. Hawk knew he should enquire as to the name of the shop and the exactness of its location given the unsaid promises shimmering between them, but the words just would not come.
He saw Mrs St Harlow threading her way back into the room from the corner of his eye. She looked neither left nor right, though even from this distance he could see women and men turning away from her in a deliberate cut. Her chin rose and if he had not known of her unease in the social setting he might have thought that she did not care a jot for the good opinion of others. He was glad she had the glasses to shelter behind.
‘Do you not think so, my lord?’
The pale beauty of Elizabeth’s puzzled gaze fell upon him.
‘I do.’ He had no idea at all as to what he had just agreed but his attention was caught by a group of men Aurelia was about to walk past on one side of the room.
Lord Frederick Delsarte caught her arm, tightly, and held it. Stephen could see the others folding in about her, blocking off any means of escape. The smile she wore was imbued with solid anger, though even from this distance he could detect a certain panic.
‘Would you excuse me for a moment, Miss Berkeley?’
He did not wait for any reply, but strode across to the colonnade shielding the group from the notice of others and walked straight into the contretemps.
‘There you are, Mrs St Harlow,’ he said, placing Aurelia’s hand across the material of his sleeve as he pulled her into his side. ‘Lady Lindsay is most anxious to find you. Something about meeting an old school friend, I think she said.’
Unfortunately Delsarte had had too much to drink and was in no mood to observe the social niceties. ‘We have not finished here,’ he slurred with difficulty, ‘and your cousin’s widow and I have much to talk about.’
‘I sincerely doubt that, Delsarte.’ Hawk hurst’s free hand slipped to the top of the younger man’s arm and pressed, the yowl of pain heartening.
‘It’s Hawkhurst, for God’s sake, Freddy,’ a taller man next to Delsarte whispered in the tone Stephen had become accustomed to people using around him.
‘I would greatly prefer it if you were not to venture anywhere near Mrs St Harlow again, do you understand?’
Caution finally shone through bloodshot eyes. ‘I didn’t realise you knew her so well, Lord Hawkhurst.’
‘Ahhh, but now you do.’ Hawk let go his hold and stepped back, shepherding Aurelia before him as they moved out from behind the pillars.
Fury raced through him as he saw the paleness of her skin welting already into bruises where the bombazine had ridden above her wrist in the struggle. He also saw she swallowed often as though trying to keep back the tears, but he could not be kind. ‘Why the hell would you go off alone and unprotected when you know the communal feeling in the room is so against you? Surely you understand the dangers inherent in social animosity?’
She took a breath. ‘Hatred is generally less demonstrative,’ she returned, and had the temerity to smile.
Hawkhurst looked as if he wanted to kill her, here in the ballroom twenty yards from the woman it was said he would marry, and the ache in her arm from where Freddy Delsarte had grabbed her was beginning to throb.
If Hawk had not intervened, she wondered what might have happened. Could they have dragged her from the room kicking and screaming and not a soul willing to lift a hand in aid?
Save for him.
She should not have come. It was too dangerous and too uncertain and Charles’s more carnal predilections were shown within the leer of the younger man’s eyes. She knew Hawk had seen this, too, for his grip upon her had tightened imperceptibly.
‘You incite great emotion in those about you, Mrs St Harlow, even in the dress of a dowager.’
‘Men see what they wish to see, my lord. It is a fault that is universal.’
‘I cannot remember you much in the company of my cousin. It seemed you were never in London at all.’
Breathe, Aurelia instructed herself when she realised she had simply stopped doing so, the beat of her heart racing through the thickness of black wool.
‘There was always much to do at Medlands. Gardening was one of my particular favourites and Charles enjoyed the colours.’ She tried to imbue the sort of gladness that she imagined a lady of leisure might feel for such a hobby, her mind scrambling around for the names of common plants just in case he took the conversation further.
‘Then you must have been saddened to see the house sold on his death?’
Worry turned. As Charles’s only cousin he did not know? She could scarcely believe that he would not, although the fact that Lord Hawkhurst was rumoured to have barely been in England for many years made it seem more than possible. Perhaps no one save her lawyers knew of the financial collapse that her husband had left her in, a hundred chits from the merchants of Medlands village presented and little money to honour them. She had been so careful to pay them back, after all.
Medlands sheltered another family now and Aurelia had not been sorry to pack up the few belongings that were her own and leave the place for ever.
‘I have many memories left to remind me, Lord Hawkhurst.’ Shame. Anger. Disappointment. Murder.
He watched her carefully, the shadows in his eyes pulled back into puzzlement. With him at her side she felt completely safe, the stares of those around her muted in his company. She wished he would ask her to dance again as the music of a waltz was struck but, of course, he did not as they came into the little group she had left a good fifty minutes earlier. The young and beautiful Elizabeth Berkeley was again quick to take his arm. Aurelia thought she would have liked to have done the same, simply laid her fingers across such security and held on.
She remembered Freddy Delsarte at the parties at Medlands come Christmas, where the girls from London were brought up to satisfy the wants of married men who had long become bored of their wives.
As Charles had with her.
Closing her eyes, a dizziness that had become more frequent of late made her world spin.
‘Are you quite well, Mrs St Harlow? You suddenly seem very pale.’ Cassandra Lindsay’s tone was worried.
‘Just tiredness, I think,’ Aurelia returned, looking at Leonora and Cassandra’s brother on the dance floor enjoying each other’s company.
‘I could bring your sister back, if you would like, and Stephen could organise a carriage to take you home immediately. We will not be late ourselves and I promise you I would chaperon her as if she were my own daughter.’
The offer was tempting with Charles’s friends watching her from one corner and the rest of the ton scowling from the others.
‘If it would not be too much trouble…?’
Cassandra Lindsay’s smile was bright as she bid Aurelia goodnight. Then she drew Elizabeth Berkeley away from her grip on Lord Hawkhurst’s person with talk of the colour and cut of the gowns that were her very favourite in the room tonight.
Aurelia gained the distinct impression that in doing so the woman was helping her.
Chapter Four
‘I most certainly did not expect you to accompany me home, Lord Hawkhurst.’
He smiled, his teeth white in the dark of the carriage and his thighs less than an inch from her own. ‘But I wanted to, Mrs St Harlow, because it will give us the chance to talk about how it is you know Lord Frederick Delsarte and his lackeys.’
‘They were acquaintances of my husband.’
‘But not of yours?’ No humour lingered now, his voice cold, cut glass.
She shook her head. ‘My disapproval of their antics was more than obvious, I should imagine.’
‘Did Charles ever hurt you?’
The very intimacy of the question made her turn away. ‘No. He was a wonderful husband.’ The words were exactly those she had used in the courts when the law had tried to lay the blame at her feet for his unexplained death.
‘Why is it that I think you lie?’
she turned back. ‘I have no idea, my lord.’
The air all around them contained something that she had never felt before. The pure and utter longing for a man, this man, their unfinished kiss from a week before shimmering on the edge of a lust so foreign it made her feel light headed.
‘Charles enjoyed a wide interpretation of the word “fairness” and when he died at Medlands there were probably a number of people both in London and further afield who breathed a sigh of relief to hear of his passing. As his wife you must have known this.’
Such criticism hung in the darkness, a living and breathing thing, defining all that Charles had been. Given that what he said held a great dollop of truth Aurelia found it hard to argue. ‘There were also a number who may have mourned him.’ She stated this with as much certainty as she could feign. Those who came up for the party weekends at a country mansion who held strict morals in little worth probably rued his passing, but she doubted there were many others. The Medlands estate had buried him with a smile upon its collective face, their lord and master a man who held little regard for the feelings and needs of others more lowly born than he was.
When Lord Hawkhurst caught her hand and held it tight, she could feel tremors within the strength—a surprising thing, that, given his easy confidence. The night of London was black and endless, a quarter-moon lost behind banks of cloud, leaving only them in the dark and empty space of the world.
The warmth of his skin comforted her though, a solid contact amidst all that was strange and she felt her fingers curl around his. He did nothing to resist.
‘I would have asked you to dance again if I knew a scandal wouldn’t have ensued because of it.’
She could not believe he would admit this, to her, a stranger. ‘Lady Elizabeth Berkeley may not have been pleased about that,’ she retorted, hating the bait she threw at him. It was beneath her to involve such an innocent young beauty for her own means, but there it was and she did not take it back. Rather, she waited.
‘A title like mine, and the possessions accompanying it, have a way of garnering interest. It is a known fact.’
‘Such is the ease of being wealthy.’
‘Charles was rich, too. Perhaps you are more like Elizabeth Berkeley than you think.’
She did laugh at that, the sound lost into a mirth that was humourless. ‘I cannot determine one trait that we might share, my lord.’
‘What of beauty?’ he replied.
Was this a joke he played upon her? ‘I am hardly that, my lord.’
‘A woman who does not know her true worth is a rare and valuable thing.’ His voice allowed no tremor of falsity and when she turned towards him the breath left her body, his expression exactly the one she had seen at Taylor’s Gap: lust and want beaten back by will.
Breaking the contact, he fisted his palm against his thighs so that every knuckle stretched white. the scars on his knuckles stood out as raised edges of knotted flesh.
He swore soundly, the frustration expressed coursing between them. She should have bidden him to let her make the rest of the journey alone, should have replaced her gloves with a stern reprimand and ordered him from the carriage. But she could not. Instead she sat there, too, the silence growing as an ache, her hands bare in her lap and cold, her head heavy against the cushioned velour of the seat. For twenty-six long years she had imagined exactly this, a man who might transport her from the tight restraint of her life and deliver her into temptation.
His eyes glinted in the dark when she chanced to take a look, the bleakness in them shivering through green.
‘Your husband had questionable friends, Aurelia. Take care that they do not become your own.’
He would warn her even given the public perception of her part in Charles’s murder. Gratitude rose unbidden.
‘I live a simple and quiet life with my father and sisters. There is little in me that could be of interest to anyone.’
His laugh was menacing. ‘Somehow I doubt that entirely.’ The residual feeling existing between them since their kiss thickened. What on earth was happening to her? Hope drove into a veiled anger.
He would never be hers. It was written in exactly who she was. As she moved away carefully, the space between them became bathed in a pool of light reaching in from outside and when she saw that they were back in Upper Brook Street the relief was indescribable.
Braeburn House. The horses slowed to an amble and then stopped as Aurelia stretched the fabric of her unworn gloves out whilst deciding exactly what it was she would say. There were so many things that she might have told him, but in the end she settled on the one that would keep her family safe.
‘I relinquish you from any bargain that stands between us, my lord, and I realise that my insistence on an invitation to your ball was both forward and foolish.’ she enunciated the words very carefully and hoped that the need in her was not as visible as she thought it might be.
‘Your sister and Rodney Northrup may not say the same, Mrs St Harlow.’
The words were cold and stilted, none of the delight of the evening held within them, and as if to underline his desire to have her gone he simply leaned across to the door and flipped the handle, gesturing to one of his servants to help her alight.
He should not have been alone with her, jammed into the small space with the warmth of her skin and the rapid beat of her heart searing into all his good intentions. Aurelia St Harlow was his cousin’s widow and he was all but promised to Elizabeth Berkeley.
The anger in him grew along with a more unfamiliar frustration as he ran his fingers across his face, hating the way he was never able to hold them still. The night had left him wrung out and tired with the wax and wane of emotion and he still had a great deal of it to get through before everybody left. He wished that the hour was later and that the throng who danced and laughed in the Hawkhurst town house could have been gone, especially the Berkeleys. He did not have the energy to deal with Elizabeth’s unrelenting innocence in the light of his thoughts in the carriage, or the hopeful encouragement of her mother. He also knew that as the host he should not have left the party, but the opportunity for time alone with Aurelia St Harlow had been too enticing.
Cassandra Lindsay greeted him as he walked back into his downstairs salon a little time later.
‘Lady Elizabeth has been asking after you, Hawk. I said that I had seen you in conversation with Lord Calthorp and that you were heading towards the library.’
Sometimes, Hawkhurst felt Cassie knew a lot more than she let on.
‘Business,’ he returned and took a drink from one of the passing waiters as Nat and Lucas joined them.
‘The St Harlow widow is gone, then?’ Luc asked. ‘She looked nothing like the sort of wife I imagined Charles to take.’
‘What had you imagined?’ Nathaniel asked the question and Stephen was glad for it.
‘Someone of less substance, perhaps.’
‘Leonora Beauchamp spoke very highly of the sister, too,’ Cassie put in. ‘There are two other younger sisters, by her account, who will be out in the next few years.’
‘And the father?’ Stephen did not want to ask the question, but found himself doing so.
‘Sir Richard Beauchamp. He keeps to himself and seldom ventures into town. He is known as somewhat of an eccentric academic, a man of few words and little animation. Mrs St Harlow drives him around the park on a Monday afternoon straight after the luncheon hour, but they rarely stop to socialise with anyone.’
‘I get the feeling she is not quite the woman that society paints her to be.’ Lucas’s smile was puzzled.
‘If she wore a dress that showed off something of her very fine figure and a style that enhanced the vivid red of her hair she could be an original. Where on earth do you think she got the black gown? It looked like something a dowager would have worn back in the Regency days.’ Cassandra addressed the query to Hawkhurst, who shrugged it off as he watched his uncle thread his way through the room to join them.
‘I cannot find her anywhere, Stephen. Mrs St Harlow is quite gone.’
‘That is because I ordered a carriage to take her home, Alfred.’
‘Your man said that you were in it, too.’ Opaque eyes glinted in the sort of wily knowledge few understood his uncle to have retained. He was pleased Elizabeth was speaking with her mother a little way off, though he knew from the flare in Cassie’s eyes that she would make much of the revelation when she was able. Both Nat and Luc displayed no trace of hearing anything.
A careful neglect, he surmised, and turned his attention back to Elizabeth Berkeley as she joined them.
‘Your ball is becoming the very crush of the Season, my lord. I have never in all my life seen so many of the ton in one place and dancing.’
Stephen smiled, Elizabeth’s bright and happy reflection making him relax. ‘Lady Lindsay and Mrs Clairmont had a great deal of say in the organisation. Any success owes more to their management than my own.’
‘Mama says that it is a rare man who can inveigle so many to attend in the first place, and the supper was magnificent. Why, there are people here I have not seen venture out to any other soirée all Season.’
‘The power of a fortune is not to be easily underestimated, Lady Elizabeth.’ Nat’s tone was laconic.
‘I said exactly the same to my friends, Lord Lindsay, and they were all in agreement.’
‘Then I rest my case.’
Elizabeth’s fluster made Hawkhurst want to laugh, her innocence no match for the cynicism of his friend, but he did not because in the admission of such naivety another quandary rose unbidden. Could he really live for ever in the shadow of such unimpeachable trust without wanting more? The quick burst of risk? The enlivening rush of a gamble?
Leonora Beauchamp swept by them in the arms of Rodney Northrup at that very moment, all blond curls and youthful exuberance, the waltz giving them an excuse for closeness that no other dance managed to.
‘She is so very pretty,’ Elizabeth’s mother tapped her fan closed against her arm. ‘It is a shame that she comes tarnished by the reputation of her oldest sibling. My husband says if she had sense, Mrs St Harlow would leave society altogether and never return.’
Truth. How skewered it could become. Aurelia had risked everything for her sister’s welfare and none would ever know of it. He smiled, for ‘leaving society altogether’ might have been her most ardent wish.
A group of Elizabeth’s friends now stood beside her. He could tell that they had heard the words uttered about his cousin’s widow because the look of agreement and gossip was written full on their faces. Excusing himself summarily, he went to find a drink.
Aurelia sat in the downstairs salon near the hallway on a chair that was hard and straight, waiting for Leonora to come home. It was later than Lady Lindsay had promised it would be and she felt an exhaustion rise up that made her bone-weary. The clock at the other end of the room pointed to the hour of one, and she knew John, their servant, was waiting and then he, too, could find his repose.
He had left the lights burning this evening at her request, which was an expensive luxury, and they both watched the shadows at the window, listening for a noise. Finally it came.
‘They are here, ma’am.’
Nodding, she watched as he took a lamp and went out to greet the carriage. The laughter and the voices were joyful, Leonora’s particularly so, as she bid her companions goodnight.
A few moments later her sister was back inside and the large front door was closed against the darkness.
‘I have never in all my life had such a wonderful night,’ she trilled, turning on the floor as though she was still dancing with an imaginary Rodney. ‘Mr Northrup will come and call on us tomorrow, I am certain of it. Oh, Lia, you are the most caring sister in the whole world to have procured such an invitation for me.’
Her overt enthusiasm only had the effect of making Aurelia feel older and more tired and she was glad when Leonora bade them good evening and went to find the twins in their beds. To regale the whole episode to them, she supposed, and hoped that they would not wake Papa in their excitement.
John doused the flame of the lamp, his brow lined in worry.
‘The young gentleman was adamant about shepherding Miss Leonora in until I told him that your father had been ill with the influenza, Miss Aurelia, but he seemed most anxious to visit.’
‘Then let us hope he does not stay long.’
‘I sometimes think, ma’am, that it is my family who has made everything impossible for you and that it would have been better had we just disappeared—’
She didn’t let him finish. ‘The court came to the conclusion that no one was to blame save Charles for his own death, John. It is my opinion that they were right.’
‘Without your help they may have come to another decision altogether.’ His face held the agony she had become accustomed to seeing there—an old man with the weight of secrets and sadness upon his shoulders. She recognised his anguish as the same emotion that crouched inside of her, waiting to pounce, biding its time.
‘And any other decision would have been an erroneous one, given all the facts.’
The older servant bowed his head and nodded before going to check that the doors were fastened. He had aged considerably in the years since Charles had been dead, but then so had she, his influence still lingering long after his demise.
Of a sudden she felt light-headed and dizzy. She had not eaten anything at the Hawkhurst ball and had been too busy helping finish the last stitches in Leonora’s gown to take succour at lunchtime, and here was a stranger who would be back knocking at the door of Braeburn House in only a matter of hours.
Had she made a huge mistake by petitioning Lord Hawkhurst for the invitations? She shook her head. No, there was nothing else she could have done and with careful management the whole thing could still work to their advantage for Leonora had been more than taken with Rodney Northrup.
It could have been a lot worse. Cassandra Lindsay’s brother seemed a kind man and the influenza that John had mentioned was also inspired. No one would expect Papa to appear downstairs for a good week or two at least.
Looking around, she was pleased they had kept a hold of some of the better furniture, though there were places where more expensive artefacts had once languished. The missing pieces were her inheritance, mostly; she had been careful not to strip the house of those things Leonora, Harriet and Prudence held dear.
They were finally gone, the last of the guests on their way home at almost five in the morning. Hawkhurst imagined the first flush of dawn on the eastern horizon as he climbed the stairs to his bedroom on the first floor.
He had met his agent and exchanged the papers, easily and secretly. He had watched Delsarte and his group, too, for there were rumours of an involvement in clandestine activities that the British Service wanted some measure of. Aurelia’s contretemps with Delsarte came to mind, his mission of watching the lord and his minions suddenly at risk. The personal and the professional were beginning to impinge on each other and he knew he would need to be more careful. Ten years of stellar service to his country were not to be taken away on a…whim. Hawk frowned at the word as he lay down, kicking off his shoes and watching the play of light and shadow outside through his undrawn curtains.
‘Aurelia St Harlow.’ He whispered the name into the darkness, listening to the sound of it return to him like some forbidden music.
Elizabeth Berkeley was softer and more familiar, yet it was not to the blond ringlets and pale eyes that his mind wandered as he remembered his cousin’s widow writhing against him in the dusk.
He wanted to kiss Aurelia and feel again what he had once, the sharp and unexpected delight of lust surprising him, for it had been many a year since he had known the sort of quickness that she inspired. The anger at such a demented fantasy had him sitting upright.
She was a woman who was said to have killed his cousin and got away with it, the whispered gossip of society following her every step. She would be forever ostracized and dismissed. He breathed out with a heavy force of air, for years of being a rolling stone had worn him away, homeless and searching, the shadows now thick harbingers of all he had become. He needed the security of a warm and easy home. He needed goodness and humanity and mercy to heal his demons, crouched now closer than ever. Taylor’s Gap had been a warning of his precarious state of mind and he knew he had to be more careful for with only a little push he might lose the touchstones altogether.
He opened a drawer on a small cabinet beside his bed and took out a box. A golden timepiece lay inside. His brother’s. Stopped at the moment of his death. The claws of grief had him standing and he made his way to the seat by the window to watch the heavens, a distant glimmer of light claiming the darkness to the east as dawn finally broke.
Alone. For so long now. The burden of it all made worse by his need for an heir. He swore as the hallowed legends of the Hawkhurst family wrapped around his chest so tightly he found it hard to move. The scent of violets felt close and his leg ached in the early morning cold.
Chapter Five
‘No, Papa, you have to eat your breakfast.’
Aurelia had had three hours’ sleep last night and she swallowed down irritation as her father refused to open his mouth, her eyes straying to the clock on the mantel. Eight o’clock already. She hoped Mr Rodney Northrup would not come calling until well into the afternoon, although she could already hear Leonora preparing herself for his visit.
‘I want to read, Lia. I want to sit and read.’ His hand came out and she smiled when warm fingers curled into her own. It had been two years since the father they had known had been largely swallowed up by a stranger that they did not, but sometimes like now there were the old glimpses of him.
‘Eat the egg, Papa, and then I will take you into the library.’
When he finally allowed her to feed him she breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Leonora has a beau coming to see her this afternoon. His name is Mr Rodney Northrup and he is a friend of Lord Hawkhurst.’ Aurelia always told him the news of the house each morning just in case he might take something in.
Prudence joined her after a few moments, her youngest sister’s face alight with anticipation, her hair a golden froth of curls.
‘Leonora says Rodney Northrup is the most handsome boy she has ever met, Lia. She says that he danced with her all night and sat close beside her in the carriage on the way home. She also mentioned that you had had a waltz with the menacing Lord Hawkhurst. Could you not have refused him?’
‘Hawkhurst?’ Her father spluttered the name. ‘Charles knew Hawkhurst?’
‘Indeed, Papa, he did.’
Prudence’s eyes widened. ‘Did Papa just understand us, Lia?’
Aurelia waited to see if her father would say more, but silence seemed to have claimed him again as he sat and fiddled with a spoon and a fork.
‘There are glimmers of comprehension still, Pru, although we have to expect that they will become fewer and further between, but enough of all this for now. Tell me, what is Leonora wearing today?’ The topic distracted her sister completely and as she talked excitedly about a silk gown trimmed with lace, Aurelia wandered her own pathway of thoughts.
Would Stephen Hawkhurst accompany Rodney Northrup? She hoped that he would not. Please, God, let him not come, she prayed over and over, jolted from her musings as her sister asked a question.
‘Did the invitation to Lady Lindsay’s country party include Harriet and me?’
‘As you have not even come out yet I should doubt it very much!’
‘But we are almost seventeen, Lia. Could we not at least plan a time when we should be able to accompany you to such things? We could borrow the older gowns Leonora no longer fits. It won’t be expensive.’
The plaintive tone in her voice had Aurelia taking a breath. When would it ever be easy? The silks were beginning to pay, but their debts were still substantial.
She should be at the warehouse now, sorting through fabric, but this visit by Cassandra Lindsay’s brother meant that she needed to be at home today, chaperoning her sisters as there was nobody else to do it.
As she closed her eyes the exhaustion she had felt last night was there again this morning so, after finishing her father’s leftover breakfast, she poured herself a glass of milk. If she became ill then the whole game was lost. One mistake and her father’s second cousin would be in to claim Braeburn House, leaving them homeless and penniless.
The horror of such a thing happening was not even to be considered and she stood to help her father back to the library. He did not understand what he read any more, but he enjoyed holding the books. She would instruct his maid to keep him there until after the visitors had gone, influenza giving her a good excuse for his absence.
Rodney Northrup was accompanied by his sister and they arrived well into the afternoon.
They were all in the downstairs salon when they heard the sound of a carriage stopping. Prudence ran to the window to be roundly growled at by Leonora who wanted everything to be simply perfect. Harriet rolled her eyes at Aurelia as they all took their seats again and listened to the approaching voices.
He was not with them! Relief flooded into Aurelia’s whole body. Hawkhurst had not come with his golden eyes, night-dark hair and menacing certainty. She unclenched her fists, removed her glasses and found herself smiling as Cassandra Lindsay and Rodney Northrup were shown into the room by John.
‘I hope we did not keep you waiting at all.’
‘You are right on time, Lady Lindsay,’ Aurelia returned, her sentiment not echoed in the face of both Prudence and Harriet.
‘Oh, please call me Cassie. All of my friends do.’
Without waiting for a reply she clasped Leonora’s hands next. ‘Rodney has been most keen to come today, my dear, and with you looking so pretty in pink I can well see why. Your two sisters mirror you in their pastel hues.’ She waited as Aurelia introduced the twins, their curly blond hair catching the light from the window.
‘I did not realise your sisters were almost all of the same age, Mrs St Harlow.’
‘Prudence and Harriet are nearly seventeen. They will come out next Season.’ Aurelia did not quite feel comfortable using Lady Lindsay’s first name and so did not add anything else at all.
‘And your father?’
‘Is indisposed at the moment with the influenza. He is in bed and has been for the past few days.’
‘Then let us hope he makes a good recovery with no lingering bad effects.’
In answer Aurelia smiled, the lies falling bald into the room between them. It had been so long since any stranger had set foot in Braeburn House and the need for lies made everything dangerous. Her eyes strayed to the clock. How long did one of these visits usually last for? She hoped it might be quick.
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Sophia James
THE DARKEST HOURS OF THE NIGHT BRING THE DEEPEST PASSIONS…Haunted by rumours following her husband’s suspicious death, Aurelia St Harlow has withdrawn from society. To secure her family’s future there’s only one man who can help. And that man demands payment – with a kiss!Lord Stephen Hawkhurst finds the troubled beauty impossible to resist. But Aurelia is suspected of treason and, as England’s greatest spy, Hawkhurst must uncover her every secret. As the truth unfolds so does their desire.Drawn together in the dark of the night, they unleash passions neither has ever experienced before…
‘I don’t know what burns between us, Mrs St Harlow, but there will come a time when we shall not have the will to stop it. I can promise you that.’
There—the words were said, falling against lies and covering them with a softer edge, like snow across the jagged sharpness of rocks.
The lump in her throat made her swallow as she tried to find an answer but what indeed could she say? If she agreed then only ruin would follow, and if she didn’t…
She could not speak, even with everything held in the balance, and Lord Hawkhurst let her hand go and took a pace backwards.
AUTHOR NOTE
Three homeless and parentless boys are sent to Eton, where they forge a bond of friendship that can never be broken.
Now powerful lords, they need to marry, but the complex and intriguing women they choose mean that the road to happiness is not going to be an easy one.
Lucas Clairmont’s story appeared in MISTLETOE MAGIC, Stephen Hawkhurst is the hero of MISTRESS AT MIDNIGHT and Nathaniel Lindsay’s story will be coming next.
About the Author
SOPHIA JAMES lives in Chelsea Bay on Auckland, New Zealand’s North Shore, with her husband, who is an artist. She has a degree in English and History from Auckland University and believes her love of writing was formed reading Georgette Heyer in the holidays at her grandmother’s house.
Sophia enjoys getting feedback at www.sophiajames.net
Previous novels by the same author:
FALLEN ANGEL
ASHBLANE’S LADY
HIGH SEAS TO HIGH SOCIETY
MASQUERADING MISTRESS
KNIGHT OF GRACE
(published as THE BORDER LORD in North America)
MISTLETOE MAGIC
(part of Christmas Betrothals)
ONE UNASHAMED NIGHT
ONE ILLICIT NIGHT
CHRISTMAS AT BELHAVEN CASTLE
(part of Gift-Wrapped Governesses)
LADY WITH THE DEVIL’S SCAR
THE DISSOLUTE DUKE
Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
Mistress at Midnight
Sophia James
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This one’s for you, Nina. I really appreciate your support.
Chapter One
June 1855—England
Stephen Hawkhurst, Lord of Atherton, felt the wind rise up from the bottom of Taylor’s Gap, salt on its edge. He frowned as he breathed in, a smooth wooden railing all that held him between this world and the next one.
So very easy to end it, to simply let go and fall into oblivion. Pushing harder, he felt the barrier give and a few stones, dislodged by the movement, hurled down the incline to disappear into nothingness.
‘If you jump, you would need to land exactly between that rock and the cliff,’ a voice said, one small gloved hand pointing downwards. ‘If you veer to the left, you will be caught on those bushes, you see, and such a fall could leave you merely crippled. To the right is a better option as the shale would be more forgiving before it threw you over the edge into the sea. However, if you excel at the art of swimming…?’ She stopped, the implication understood.
Stiffening, Hawk turned to see a woman standing near, a black veil hiding every feature of her face. Her clothes were heavy and practical. A lady of commerce, perhaps? Or the daughter of a merchant? God, what luck was there in that? Miles from anywhere and The voice of reason close by.
‘I may, of course, merely be taking in the view.’ The irritation in his words was unbecoming and he was a man who was seldom rude to women. But this one was far from cowed.
‘One would generally look to the horizon if that was the case, sir. The sun is setting, you see, and it would be this vista your eyes would be drawn towards.’
‘Then perhaps I am tired?’
‘Fatigue would show itself in a leaning gait and great exertion would be seen in dust upon your boots.’ Her head tipped down to look. Stephen imagined her satisfaction when she saw his shiny new black Hessians. He wished she would turn and leave, but she stood silent and waiting, breath even and unhurried.
Surveying the nearby paths, he realised that she was alone. Unusual for a lady not to be chaperoned. He wondered how she had got here and where she would go to next.
There was a hole in the thumb of her right-hand glove and an unbuffed nail was bitten to the quick. The hat she wore hid her hair completely, though an errant curl of vibrant red had escaped from its clutches and lay across the darkness of her clothes like rubies in a coal seam. Beneath the notes of a heavier perfume he smelt the light freshness of violets.
‘I came here often as a young girl with my mother and she would stand just where I am and speak of what was over the seas in all the directions that I might name.’ This was said suddenly after a good few moments of silence. He liked how she did not feel the need to fill in every space with chatter. ‘France lies that way, and Denmark, there. A thousand miles to the north-east a boat could founder against the rocky coast of the Kingdom of Norway.’
She had a slight accent, though the cadence held the timbre of something that Hawk did not recognise. The thought amused him for he was a master of discerning that which people wished not to divulge. He had made his life from it, after all.
‘Where is your mother now?’
‘Oh, she left England many years ago. She was French, you understand, and my father had no desire to stop her in her travels.’
His interest was firmly caught as he took a step back. ‘He did not accompany her, then?’
‘Papa loves poetry and text. His vocation is as small as my mother’s was large and a library filled with books was all he ever claimed to want in adventure. Her journeys would have worried him.’
‘The adventurer and the academic? An interesting combination. Which parent do you favour?’ The question came from nowhere, for Stephen had certainly not meant to voice it, but the woman had a charm that was…unexpected. It had been a long time since he had felt the sense of aliveness he did here with her.
One hand crossed to her face, pushing the gauze closer to her cheek. In The slanting light of sunset he could make out a finely chiselled nose. ‘Neither,’ she answered. ‘The will to do exactly as one wants requires a certain amount of spare time which is a commodity I can ill afford.’
‘Because you spend the day rearranging your father’s extensive library?’ He found himself smiling.
‘Everyone has a story, sir, though your assumptions lack as much in truth as any tale that I might fashion around you.’
Stepping back another pace, he felt the bush at his back, sturdy and green. ‘What would you say of me?’
‘I would say that you are a man who leads others, though few really know you.’
Such a truth cut quick, because she was right. He seldom showed anyone who he was.
But she was not finished. Taking his hand, she turned it palm upwards, tracing the lines with her first finger. Stephen felt like snatching it back, away from the things that she might or might not see.
‘You have a high falsetto singing voice, seldom touch strong drink and never bet at the New Year races at Newmarket.’
Her voice held a note of humour, and relief bloomed. ‘So very exact. You ought to have a stall outside the Leadenhall.’
‘It’s a gift, sir,’ she returned, her head tipping to one side as though measuring all that he was. Like a naturalist might watch an insect before sticking it through with a pin. There was something in her stillness that was unnerving and he tried his hardest to discern the rest of her features.
‘Do you have a name?’ Suddenly he wanted to know just who she was and where she came from. Coincidences were seldom as they seemed. His job had at least taught him that.
‘Aurelia, my lord,’ she offered, a new tone in his given title, a tone he understood too well. She gave no surname.
‘You know who I am, then?’
‘I have heard of you from many different people.’
‘And the gossip of strangers is so very truthful.’
‘It is my experience that beneath the embellishment, tittle-tattle always holds a measure of truth. It is said that you spend a lot of time away from England and its society?’
‘I am easily bored.’
‘Oh, I doubt that entirely.’
‘And easily disappointed.’
‘An explanation that may account for your presence here at Taylor’s Gap.’
He breathed out hard, the possibility of blackmail creeping in unbidden.
She faced him directly, now, and lifted her veil. Freckles across the bridge of a fine nose were the first things he registered. Then he saw that one eye was blue and the other dark brown. A mismatched angel!
‘It was an accident. A bleed. I fell from a horse as a child and hit my head hard.’ This explanation was given in the tone of one who might have often said it.
She was so pale the blood in her veins could be seen through the skin at her temple. Like the wings of a butterfly, barely there. He wanted to lean forwards and touch such delicacy, but he did not because something in her eyes stopped him. He knew this familiar look of supplication, his many estates holding the promise of a largesse that was tantalising.
But not from her. The disappointment of it pierced hard even as she began to speak.
‘I would ask a favour of you, Lord Hawkhurst.’
There. It was said, and in the circumstances he would have to be generous. It wasn’t everyone who had seen the demons in him so clearly.
‘Indeed.’
‘I have a sister, Leonora Beauchamp, who is both young and beautiful and I want her to marry a man who would care for her well.’
As her words settled, fury solidified. ‘I am not in the market for a wife, madam, no matter what you might like to say of this encounter.’
Her voice shook as she continued to speak. ‘It isn’t marriage I petition. I merely want you to invite Leonora to the ball I know you to be giving next week at your town house. I shall accompany her to ensure you know who it is to make some fuss of. A dance should do it, or two, if you will. After that I promise to never darken your pathway again.’
The anger in him abated slightly. ‘To where should I send the invitations?’
‘Braeburn House in Upper Brook Street. Any delivery boy would know of it.’
‘How old is your sister?’
‘Eighteen.’
‘And you?’
She did not answer and his heart felt heavy as he looked down at her. ‘So you are Aurelia Beauchamp?’
The shake of her head surprised him. ‘Nay, that is Leonora’s surname, but if you could see it in yourself to welcome my sister despite any…misgivings, I would be most appreciative.’ Removing one glove, she delved into her pocket and brought out a pendant fashioned with a single diamond in white gold. ‘I do not ask you to do this for nothing, Lord Hawkhurst, but if you say yes to the bargain between us I do expect you to hold up your end of it, without excuse. Could you promise me that?’
Interest began to creep under wrath, the flush on her face as becoming as any he had ever seen on a woman. She was a beauty! Beneath the fabric of her other hand he saw a ring, bold against the sheen of superfine.
Was she married? If she was his woman, he would have not let her roam the countryside so unprotected.
He smiled at such thoughts. Unprotected? Lord, was he finally growing a conscience? Thirty-one years old and all of them hard edged. The ends of his fingers curled against his thighs and he made himself breathe in, the souls of those he had sent to the afterlife calling close.
For Queen and for country or for the dubious needs of men left in charge of a foreign policy decades out of tune. Aye, England had not thanked him at all and he did not wish it to. But sometimes in a quiet corner of the world such as this one, and in the company of a woman who was as beautiful as she was beguiling, he wished for…something else.
He could not name it. It was too removed from the roads that he had followed, at first in wanderlust and excitement and now out of habit and ennui.
Murder, even in the circumstances of national security, sounded wrong. His father would have told him that, and his mother, too, had she lived. But they were long gone and the only family member left to give some guidance was Alfred; his uncle’s scrambled mind still lurked in the remnants of the second Peninsular Campaign under Wellington, reality lost in the scarred remains of his left temple.
Stephen would have sworn had he been alone, but the sunset crept over her upturned face, painting untarnished skin the blush pink of dusk. The very sight of her took his breath away. Like an angel offering redemption to a sinner, her fragile stillness warming a heart long since encased in ice.
‘Keep the pendant, madam, for I should wish another payment altogether, here in the open air and far from any community.’ The beat of his rising want hummed beneath the banter. Part of him knew he should not voice a request that was as inappropriate as it was banal, but the larger part of him ignored such a warning. He was a man who had lived for years in the land of shadows and ill repute and it had rubbed off on him, he supposed. Aye, he almost welcomed the distance scandal had brought, though sometimes, like now, a crack appeared, small and fragile, and a worm of longing for the good life that he might have lived wriggled through. He should turn and walk away, protecting the little decency still left inside him.
But he didn’t.
Instead he said that which had been building from the first moment of meeting her. ‘All I want as payment is a kiss, given freely and without anger.’
She waved such a notion away, the diamond clutched awkwardly in her hand. ‘You do not understand, my lord, it is my sister whom I need you to introduce into polite society. It is not a liaison for myself that I seek here… .’
‘Then I refuse your terms.’
She was silent and still, long slender fingers worrying the dark folds of her skirt, and further away the birds gathered for a last chorus before slumber.
‘Only a kiss, you say?’ Whispered. Unbelieving.
The deep blush of blood bloomed under paleness.
He would know her name soon enough and then he would despise her as everybody else did, and too late to change it. But a chance for Leonora to be in the top echelons of London’s Society was not to be dallied with.
One chance.
Fate had a way of occasionally throwing a lifeline and who was she to refuse? Even had he asked for more she could not have said no. For Leonora and for the twins. The stakes had risen as their circumstances had declined and with Papa…She shook her head. She would not think of him.
Goodness, why did he not just take the pendant and be done with it? It was worth so much more than this nonsense he sought. And how was this to work? Did she face him and wait or did he require some prior flirtation?
A refusal would egg a man like him on. She knew it. Better to be sensible and allow him this one small favour, hold her lips up to his and close her eyes, tightly, until it was over.
His finger against her throat stopped every logical train of thought, the gentle play of the sensual so very unexpected. If she had been stronger, she might have stepped back and away. But the sensation of a man whose very name incited hysteria and frenzy amongst a great portion of the fairer sex in England caressing her was mesmerising and she could neither move nor call a stop to it.
The braiding holding the material of her gown together was thick and stiff, a resilient barrier to any more intimate caress. She was glad of such armour.
The hat surprised her, though, his free hand simply lifting the contraption off her head and away, the trailing ties lost in a growing wind as the piece fell to her feet.
‘The colour of fire,’ he said of her hair.
Or of shame, she thought, deep amber catching the final burst of sunset. She could see in his expression just what she had so often seen in those of others.
Uncertainty.
All the difficulties in her life surfaced, roaming free in her head, and she shut her eyes.
‘Nay. I want you to see me.’ He waited until she complied.
Closer he came, breath against her skin, the dark green of his pupils surrounded by gold. She could have fallen into those eyes, like the sky into a puddle, fathomlessly deep. Disorientated, she felt him draw her inwards, the muscles in his arms strong. She would remember this particular moment all the days of her life, she thought, with a heat of anticipation beating inside. His right temple held a raised crescent scar beneath the line of hair.
Blood surged through fear, like a river breaking its banks and running unconfined across a land it did not normally traverse, taking with it all that was more usually there. A changing landscape. An altered truth.
His heat was surprising. Each part of her skin seemed on fire as his lips took her own, ignoring the small token she thought to give him and opening her mouth to his tongue instead.
Inside, tasting, hard pressure and thin pain winding upwards from the depths of her being. Her fingers came to his neck of their own accord, threading through dark strands, her body splayed along the length of his, no space to separate them. She felt him turn her into a deeper embrace, the ache of need blooming over any sense that she might have tried to keep hold of, and she opened to him further. Her whole body now, legs jammed against the junction of his thighs, riding lust. His breathing was as hoarse as hers, no control, the huge yawning space of nature about them consigned to only this touch.
Hers. She wanted more. She wanted what she read of and dreamed about in her bed late at night as all the house slumbered and the banked fires dimmed.
She felt his masculinity through the wool of her skirt as he tipped his head to break the kiss.
‘God.’ The sound he uttered was neither soft nor gladdened. It was harsh and angry and uncertain, his mouth nuzzling her throat, biting into flesh, asking for completion, the knowledge of all he sought unspoken. When his thumb ran across the hardness of her nipple, flicking at the covering of bombazine, she simply went to pieces, the control that she had kept so tightly bound dissolving into disorder.
He held her against the half-light and the silence and the empty landscape, and release left her shaking. No sense in it, save feeling. When he raised her chin she took in the glory as he watched her, waves of passion wrenching gasps without voice. Lost and found, the gold in his eyes the only touchstone to a different reality, the tightened cords of lust entwined into every sinew of her body, her nails running unnoticed down the skin at his neck. A thousand hours or a single moment? She could not know the extent of her loss of governance until the world reformed and they were standing again on the top of Taylor’s Gap.
Aurelia felt embarrassment and then shame. If he let her go, she would fall, like a boneless thing, all stamina gone. Laying her head against his chest, she listened to his heartbeat, the strong and even rhythm bringing her back.
‘Thank you.’ She could not say more and to say less would have been mean spirited. He had to know that, at least, but in the face of her appalling behaviour all she wanted was to be gone.
Lord. She had come as he watched her, the feel of her body tight against his own and wonder in her eyes. Like quicksilver. Like magic. Like all his dreams wrapped into one, her long red hair curling against his skin, the serpent snakes of Medusa.
He knew not one single thing about her save that of a connection in flesh.
But he wanted her. He wanted to lay her down beneath the bushes behind them and remove the black and dowdy robe. He wanted to see her slender pale limbs in the oncoming moonlight as his hands wandered the lines of them before slipping into the wet warmth of her centre. He wanted to take her and know her again and again until there was nothing left of self, melded into the eternal.
His cock grew at such awareness and he could not stop the swelling.
She felt it, too. He saw the flicker of the awareness of danger in her eyes as her tongue took the dryness from her lips. He heard her breath quicken, the line of darker blue around one pale eye pulsating.
His woman. To take. The smell of her filled his nostrils, dangerous yet tempting, all the rules of gentlemanly conduct crossing over into darkness.
‘Go.’ It was all he could say for he did not trust himself enough to deny such want. ‘I shall send you the invitations.’
The anger beneath his words must have registered because she moved back, shadow falling across her face, her hair lifting in the breeze as she turned, footsteps and then silence, only whorls of dust left in her wake.
Kneeling at the bottom of the railing, Stephen hung on to the solid wood, wild despondency all that was left. Lord, it was getting worse, this dispiritedness, claiming the early evening hours as well as the midnight ones. The demons of his past were gathering, armies of lost souls and foundered causes hammering at all he had stood for in the pursuit of justice. Could it have been for nothing?
Crumpling the black hat she had left behind in his fist, he looked for the brandy flask in his jacket pocket and undid the silver chain. Drinking deeply, he knew without a doubt that the solace of strong liquor was the only thing still keeping him sane.
The carriage she had rented was waiting in the place she had left it and she scrambled in, ordering the driver on even before she settled.
Away. Gone. It was all she wanted.
She should not have come to this place at all, but the memory of her mother here was strong and today, travelling between the mills and London, she had wanted to stop and remember.
Sylvienne had brought her here often because she said it reminded her of a place in Provence and for just a little while Mama did not stand in England, but in France, the mistral on her face and the little Alpilles at her back.
Aurelia would wait there with her, fingers laced together as her mother listened to the silence, her particular melancholy still remembered so vividly. Afterwards they would retire to one of the nearby villages for a drink and a meal and Mama would talk of her childhood, the heated sun and the trees that shaded roads bound by fields full of flowers.
And now here was another memory. Aurelia had recognised Lord Hawkhurst the moment she had seen him there, in the wind above the cliffs, his black cloak billowing and drawing her on despite misgivings. Had she gained a favour or lost one, she wondered, with her ridiculous reaction to his kiss? Shame had her breathing out hard and chastising herself for her inappropriate exchange with Lord Stephen Hawkhurst.
She should have insisted on the pendant as payment, but for a moment she had desired another truth, wanting to know something of unexpected passion and the melding together of souls.
She smiled wryly. Well, she had found that out. Bringing her hand to her lips, she touched her fingers to the place where they had been joined, trying to feel again the euphoria and delight.
Unexpected and addictive.
The sort of reaction her mother had made an art form of with her years of numerous lovers, reaching for that elusive and fleeting moment of forgetfulness.
A frown formed on Aurelia’s brow.
She could not be the same, could not encourage feelings long since bottled to spring into a sort of half life, contained between scandal and ecstasy.
Which parent do you favour?
Five moments ago she would have answered ‘Papa’ without question, but now…?
No. the genie must be stopped before more emotions wanted to escape. She had learnt already the high price of her own ill-considered choices and now there were others needing her, depending on her…
Taking a deep breath she smoothed down her skirts and pulled her gloves on. She was an expert in the appearance of control; the smile of casual indifference she had perfected returned and the racing beat in her heart returned to quiet.
Lord Stephen Hawkhurst was to be avoided at all costs. His cousin had at least taught her that.
Chapter Two
London
‘She’s a lovely girl from a good family, Hawk. Safe. Pretty. Well thought of.’
There was something in the way Lucas Clairmont listed the attributes of Lady Elizabeth Berkeley that made him feel uneasy.
‘You said you needed to settle down, for God’s sake, and that you wanted to be a thousand miles away from the intrigues of Europe. As the only daughter of a respectable and aristocratic family, she certainly fits that bill.’
Finishing the drink he was holding, Stephen poured himself another before phrasing a question that had been worrying him.
‘When you met Lillian, Luc, how did she make you feel?’
‘My wife knocked me sideways. She took the ground from underneath my feet in the first glance and I hated her for it, whilst wanting her as I had never wanted another woman in my life.’
‘I see.’ The heart fell out of his argument. ‘Elizabeth is more like a gentle wind or a quiet presence. When I kissed her once upon the hand she felt like a glass doll, ready to shatter into pieces should I take it further.’
Silence greeted this confession. Damn, Stephen thought, he should have said nothing, should have kept his mouth shut so that uncertainty did not escape to make him question an amiable and advantageous union. He was no longer young and Elizabeth Berkeley was the closest to coming near to what he thought he needed in a woman.
‘There are different kinds of attractions, I suppose,’ Luc finally replied. ‘You seemed happy enough with the arrangements last week. What’s changed that?’
‘Nothing.’ The room closed in on Hawk as he thought of his encounter at Taylor’s Gap, fiery silk running through his fingers like living flame.
Elizabeth did not question him. She accepted all that he had been with a gentle grace. She saw only the goodness in people, their conviviality and well-mannered ways—a paragon of docility and charm.
Unease made him dizzy, the black holes of his life filling with empty nothingness. What might a woman such as that see inside him when the shutters fell away? Nay, he would never allow them to.
‘I have it on good authority that her family expect you to offer for her. If you have any doubts…?’
‘I do not.’
Damn it, he liked Elizabeth. He liked her composure and her contentment. He liked her dimples, her sunny nature and her pale blue eyes that were always smiling. He needed peace and serenity and she would give him this, a sop against the chaos that had begun to consume him. He filled up his third glass.
‘You drink more than you ever have done, Hawk. Nat is as worried about you as I am.’
Smiling, the stretch of pretence felt tight around the edges of his mouth. Lucas Clairmont and Nathaniel Lindsay had been his best friends since childhood and each had had their demons.
‘I remember saying the same to you not so long ago.’
‘If you want to talk about it…’
‘There is nothing to say. I am about to be betrothed to a woman who is as beautiful as she is good natured. I like her family and I like her disposition. She will give me heirs and I in turn will give her the security of the Atherton wealth and title.’
‘Then it sounds like a sterling arrangement for you both. A marriage of much convenience.’ The hollow ring of censure worried him.
‘I am tired, Luc, tired of all that I have been. “A sterling arrangement”, as you put it, might not be such a bad thing. Hemmed in by domesticity, I shall be happy.’
He picked at the superfine of his breeches as he spoke and crossed his legs. His boots reflected the chandelier, its many tiers of light spilling down into the room, everything bright upon the surface.
‘Alexander Shavvon said you are doing more than reading codes for the Home Office?’
‘Shavvon could never keep his mouth shut.’
‘Ten years is too long to endure in service. Nat did five and nearly lost his soul. He swears that death stains everyone in the end whether they think it does or not.’ The condemnation in his friend’s words wasn’t gentle, though Hawk knew the warning was given with the very best of intentions.
I kill people, Stephen thought as he opened his hand to the light. It shook now, all of the time, the tremors of memory translated into The flesh. I take policy and make it personal again and again in the dark corruption of power. The black of night, the flame edge of gunpowder and the red crawl of blood. Those are my colours now.
He wanted to tell Luc this, as a purge or as an atonement, but the words buried in secrecy would not form; the consequence of a life depending on camouflage, he supposed, and ceased to try to find an explanation.
Shadows, veils and mirrors. He could barely recognise the man he had become. Certainly, he did not defend the Realm with the cloak of justice firmly fixed across his shoulders any more; a score of innocent lives had seen to that particular loss as well as a hundred others who had no notion of such a word.
Aye, he needed the fresh, uncomplicated innocence of Elizabeth Berkeley like a man lost in the desert needed water.
‘I am fine, Luc. I have a party about to begin in less than an hour and the promise of the company of a group of people around me whom I enjoy.’
‘A happy man, then?’
‘Indeed.’
Lucas nodded and leant forwards, his glass balanced on his knee. ‘Lilly wants you at Fairley for Hope’s twelfth birthday celebration. She says for me to tell you that were she not quite so pregnant she would be down herself to oversee your choice of a wife.’
Luc’s words relaxed the tension markedly as both laughed, and when the clock at the end of the room boomed out the hour of eight they stood.
‘Let the night begin,’ Lucas said as Stephen finished what was left of his brandy and his man knocked on the door to tell them the first of the evening’s guests would be arriving imminently.
Elizabeth Berkeley and her parents came in the second wave of company. Lady Berkeley looked like an older version of her offspring and for a moment Stephen could see just exactly how her daughter would age: the small lines around her mouth, the droop of skin above her eyes, the social ease with which she sailed into any occasion.
His glance went to Elizabeth dressed in lemon silk and lace. ‘It is so lovely to be here, my lord,’ she said in a lilting whisper, placing one hand on his arm. Her nails were long and polished to a sheen.
A sudden flash of other fingers with nails bitten almost to the quick worried him, for he still wore their trails down his neck, hidden carefully under the folds of collar and tie.
Shaking away memory, he settled back into the moment as the Berkeleys moved on in the line of greeting and the next visitors came forth to be welcomed.
She was suddenly there beside him, the very last of the evening’s guests, her hair wound up in an unflattering fashion, the black bombazine gown she wore unembellished and prim.
‘Mrs Aurelia St Harlow and her sister Miss Leonora Beauchamp.’
A wave of hush covered the room at the name, all eyes turning to the staircase. Aurelia was Charles St Harlow’s widow? God, but she was brave.
‘How on earth could she even think to come out in society, still?’
‘It was she who killed him, of course.’
‘Has the strumpet no shame at all?’
Threads of conversation reached Hawk even as she gave him her hand.
‘I thank you for the kind invitation, my lord,’ she said, her glance nowhere near meeting his own, ‘and would like to introduce to you my sister Miss Leonora Beauchamp.’
The chit was charming, young and well mannered, but Hawk smiled only cursorily before turning back to the other.
‘St Harlow was my cousin.’
For the first time, she looked at him directly, her eyes red rimmed from lack of sleep or from poorly placed cosmetics, he could not tell. She wore glasses that were so thick they distorted the shape of her face.
‘We are almost family, then.’ The smile accompanying the statement was hard.
He thought the sister might have turned away, but Aurelia held her there before him, her force of will biting through the atmosphere in the room, a small island of challenge and defiance.
Finally she leaned forwards and whispered, ‘I gave you the exacted payment for the promise of this evening, my lord, and Leonora is not at fault here. Two dances and we will leave.’
‘I am not sure, Lia. Perhaps we should go now.’ The beginning of tears shone in the younger girl’s frightened eyes.
‘Do not cry, Leonora. It is me whom they despise. They will love you if you only let them.’ Turning back, Stephen saw that Aurelia’s hand shook before she buried it into the matt blackness of the wool in her skirt, but she did not give an inch. He had to admire such a resolute feistiness.
‘If one beards the lion in his den, one must be brave.’ Hawk related this to Miss Leonora Beauchamp and was glad when she smiled because the relief in Aurelia St Harlow’s eyes was fathomless, hollow pools of mismatched colour focused upon him.
Years of deception flooded in. An unashamed façade undermined the certainty of others. If Aurelia St Harlow could brazen it out for an hour or more here, he doubted the rumours swirling around her would be quite as damning.
Lord. The promise of a dance with the sister had placed him in a position of difficulty, too. Charles had been one of the last living Hawkhursts, and the closest in blood to him save his uncle, but he had barely known him.
He saw Elizabeth with her family watching, her lips pinched in that particular way she had of showing worry. Guileless. He saw Luc observing him, too, the frown of anger on his brow as pronounced as those of many others. But even this could not make him withdraw his promise and order them gone.
His uncle next to him solved the whole thing entirely as he reached out and took the hand of the one woman in the world he should not have.
‘I remember you, Mrs St Harlow. You are Charles’s wife.’ The use of the present tense made those within hearing press forwards. It was Hawk’s experience that no one loved a scandal played out publicly more than the ton. ‘I liked you right from the start, you see, but you got sadder. She needs to smile more, Stephen. Ask her to dance with you.’
Tragedy, farce and comedy now. The orchestra positioned only a few yards away from them looked at Hawk with expectation on hearing his uncle’s loud command and the faces of those below were a mixture of indignation and shock.
He could do nothing less than consign Miss Leonora Beauchamp into the capable and kind hands of Cassandra Lindsay and offer Aurelia St Harlow the chance of a waltz.
The dance of love, he thought as he led her to the floor, and wondered why such a notion did not seem as ridiculous as he knew it should have. He hoped his right leg would stand up to the exercise, for of late the old wound had been playing up again.
When he placed his hands about her he felt her stiffen. ‘It is my sister whom I would prefer to be where I stand, my lord, for if you adhere to the promised two dances I have just wasted half of them.’
He could not help but smile at such a comment. In response he tightened his grip and felt the full front of her generous bosom. When he looked down he saw she squinted behind thick spectacles.
‘Glasses are supposed to cure poor eyesight, Mrs St Harlow, not cause it,’ he said softly.
‘Things to hide behind have their uses, however, my lord.’ He noticed her straining away and gave her the distance because just the feel of her in his arms had begun to make his blood beat thicker. Across the room Elizabeth Berkeley and her parents followed them intently. ‘You see, at a soirée such as this one it is preferable to be virtually invisible to those who might wish me ill.’
‘They wish you ill because your husband’s death was not one that made any sense. The fact that you were the only person there when it happened made you…culpable.’
‘A court of law proved I had no hand in anything untoward, my lord. It is not my problem that the ton at large refuses to believe these documented facts.’
‘Charles was an expert horseman.’
‘Who fell at a hedge.’
‘One does not generally end up with a sharpened stake embedded through the heart after such an encounter.’
‘I am not here to argue my husband’s unfortunate and early demise with you, my lord.’
The lack of any true feeling made Hawk pause, though his anger was softened a little when he felt the rapidity of her heartbeat beneath his fingers. She was good at hiding things, he thought. A spy’s trait, that.
‘Then why exactly are you here?’
‘I have three younger sisters with little chance of an advantageous alliance unless they are out and about in society. As you can guess from my reception here tonight, we seldom receive any invitations. I am trying to remedy such a difficulty.’
‘So you stalk the peerage in the hope of finding them in compromising positions and then inveigle a card requesting your company at their next social gathering?’
She laughed unexpectedly, the sound running through his bones into the empty darkness of his heart, and the room around them fell away into the windy barrenness of Taylor’s Gap.
Was she a sorceress with her bright red hair and her different eyes? Had she bewitched his cousin in the very same manner? He wished the music might end, allowing him the ease of escape, but the orchestra was in full flight with no chance of a quick finale and to order it otherwise would only incite comment.
Aurelia St Harlow continued as if he had not insulted her at all. ‘I had no knowledge of you being at Taylor’s Gap, Lord Hawk. It was on a whim that I walked in your direction to admire the view and by a trick of coincidence found you there.’
‘Fortuitous, then?’
‘You speak of our kiss?’
He could barely believe that she would mention such a thing here in the crowded room of the ton at play and looked to see that none close had heard her question.
‘There are ears everywhere in a gathering such as this one, Mrs St Harlow, and it is prudent to protect a reputation.’
She shook her head and looked away. ‘Oh, mine is lost completely already, my lord. I doubt anything else I do could lower it further.’
Again he smiled, the freedom inherent in such a thought enlivening. ‘How old are you?’ Said before he could think, said from the very depths of interest.
‘Twenty-six. An old maid. A woman on the shelf of life and happy for it.’ Her eyes strayed to a set of females of a similar age sitting against one wall. ‘I used to pity them until I realised how very liberated they actually were.’
His fingers tightened about hers, gloved tonight in a strange hue of grey. He wished he might have felt her skin beneath, the warmth of it and the smoothness.
‘My uncle seems more than taken with you and that is saying something. He seldom has time for anyone in society.’
For the first time that evening, genuine warmth entered her eyes. ‘I always liked him, too. He showed me around the gardens at the Atherton country seat once and I helped him collect the eggs from the henhouses.’
‘Most people ridicule him.’
‘Most people loathe me so perhaps the thread in common allows us communion.’
‘I do not loathe you, Aurelia.’
She tripped as he said it and fell up against him, the red in her face climbing into beetroot, though the dance music chose that particular point to end and he shepherded her back to her sister.
Chapter Three
Aurelia’s cheeks burnt molten and the anger in her rose. Hell and damnation, but she was doing exactly what she had promised herself she would not do. She was feeling again and the ache about her heart made her sick and disorientated.
Not here, she chastised herself, not here amongst the wolves and jackals of a group who would like to do nothing more than tear her to pieces. A plain and untitled girl did not get away with treating one of their own the way she had treated her husband, after all.
Biting down, she swallowed, the thick glass in her spectacles blurring the edges of the room and making her queasy. Leonora at least looked happy and the young man beside her was both personable and well presented. Perhaps this evening would not be such a total loss after all.
Lord Hawkhurst stood next to a beautiful woman, her face wreathed in kindness.
‘Lady Cassandra Lindsay, may I introduce Mrs Aurelia St Harlow.’
Lady Cassandra did not falter as she put out her hand in welcome, the grasp of her fingers warm and lingering. Such unexpected amiability was surprising, for it was far more common to encounter only censure.
‘It has been a long while since I remember Stephen conversing so fervently with a dance partner.’
‘The music did not allow him the courtesy of bidding me farewell, I am afraid, my lady,’ she returned. ‘I am certain he was much relieved when he was able to escape, though he has promised my sister a dance.’ She got this in because Lord Hawkhurst looked anything but happy on the other side of the small circle of people.
‘Oh, I rather think her card is full already, Mrs St Harlow. My brother Rodney has pencilled in at least two waltzes.’
Leonora fussed prettily as Lady Lindsay introduced her brother to Aurelia and a small bloom of hope lingered in the air.
Could it even possibly be this easy? When Aurelia looked across at Lord Hawkhurst she saw the gold shards in his eyes harden. He was the tallest man in the room and easily the most prepossessing. No wonder women fell over their feet to be near him. But there was something under the visage that he presented to this society that was…darker.
Glancing away, she made much of extracting a lace handkerchief from her reticule. Charles had had the same sort of darkness, and look where that had got her.
Her sister, on the other hand, had a broad smile on her face and was using her fan most agilely. Aurelia had never seen her so animated and hoped that this was not a bad thing. Did men like a woman to talk quite as much? Was it not too forward to tap a man on the arm in the way that she was doing? Lady Lindsay’s brother did not look in the slightest bit offended so perhaps such behaviour was expected. The headache that had been forming all day raked at the sides of her temple because she doubted that they would ever be given such a chance as excellent as this one again. The thought of coming away without contacts was dispiriting.
‘Mr Northrup enjoys riding, Lia. I said he should accompany us for a canter around the Park.’ Her sister’s eyes were wide with hope, the blue in them matching her gown.
‘Perhaps he should be careful, then, not to jump hedges,’ Hawkhurst drawled in reply, though Cassandra Lindsay merely swatted his arm with her fan.
‘Take no notice of Hawk, Mrs St Harlow. Charles was always taking great chances to show off his jumping skills. I couldn’t believe he had not broken his neck before he…’ She petered off, her brow furrowing, and the man beside her, whom Lia did not as yet know, began to speak.
‘Before he died in the same way that the legends abounding in Transylvania tell of?’
Vampires? He spoke of such? The conversation amongst this group of people seemed irreverent and quick witted. No taboos. No carefully untouched subjects, and after Charles’s rigid lack if humour such wit was refreshing. They laughed a lot, too, she thought, though Lord Hawkhurst’s smile came nowhere near his eyes.
‘You must not mind Hawk and my husband Nathaniel at all, Mrs St Harlow. I know how very difficult Charles’s death must have been for you and I am certain that Rodney would love the chance of being invited into the charming company of your sister for an afternoon’s ride. Where do you reside here in London?’
‘Braeburn House, Lady Lindsay, in Mayfair.’ Leonora was quick with her directions and Aurelia could only applaud her sister’s acumen at seizing the moment, but the thought of Hawkhurst paying a social call was worrying.
What would he see there that she had tried to hide? Would they expect to meet Papa? Was there a chance he might talk with those about the area and understand things that she had been so successful thus far in concealing from others?
She was so exhausted with trying to tie all the threads of her life together she could barely breathe. How quickly could it all unravel?
The arrival of a young blonde woman and an older one within the group changed the tone of what was spoken of as introductions were given.
‘You look as beautiful as ever, Lady Berkeley,’ Cassandra’s husband said as he kissed the back of the woman’s hand.
‘You were always the flatterer, Lord Lindsay. Your mother was the same, God bless her soul.’
The chatter was convivial and familiar between the people who had grown up all of their lives inside the sheltered world of the ton. Were Stephen Hawkhurst and Elizabeth Berkeley a couple promised to each other? The thought made Aurelia’s head throb harder and she knew that she did not fit in here. She watched as the younger Berkeley woman shyly laid her gloved fingers on Lord Hawkhurst’s arm and asked him a question beneath her breath.
His reply was as softly given back, the girl’s cheeks glowing as excitement filled her eyes. Elizabeth Berkeley was like the first flush of some exquisite English rose: all promise, sweetness and hope. Aurelia could not remember a time when she had ever been like that.
At five she had watched her mother pack her bags and disappear. At six she had been the unwanted stepdaughter of her father’s new wife and at seventeen Charles St Harlow had entered her life, like a falling star burning brightly.
Another waltz was struck and Lord Hawkhurst and Elizabeth Berkeley excused themselves to take to the floor, his arm around the young woman’s waist in a careful ownership, the height and colouring of each exactly complementing the other.
‘Did you know Hawk well when you were married to his cousin, Mrs St Harlow?’ The question was from Cassandra Lindsay, eyes full of curiosity as she moved to stand directly beside Aurelia.
‘No, I never once met him. His uncle, however, was a friend.’
A smile lit up Lady Lindsay’s entire face. ‘Alfred is rather picky about who he accords friendship to. Take Elizabeth Berkeley, for instance. I doubt he realises she exists.’
‘She is very beautiful.’
‘And quite lovely with it, which is a relief beyond measure if Stephen should decide to offer for her.’
‘Which he will?’ Aurelia had not meant to ask the question, and from the sharp interest in green eyes knew she had made a mistake by doing so. She was glad of the barrier of thick glass.
‘Lord Hawkhurst has never taken a wife and his estate is more than healthy, so it behoves him to provide heirs. How long were you married to Charles?’
‘Three years, my lady.’ The tone of her voice was flatter than it should have been but tonight, with Leonora’s face alight with possibility and hope, Aurelia was finding it hard to feign her usual pretence.
Cassandra Lindsay’s next words were therefore unexpected. ‘We are having a house party at our country estate in Kent in early September. Would you and your sister like to join us for the weekend?’
Her heart began to beat a little faster, the rhythm of it imbued with an unfamiliar kind of joy. It had been so long since a stranger had reached out a hand in friendship. Still, she could not quite accept the gift without honesty.
‘Perhaps Leonora could attend with a chaperon, Lady Lindsay. My presence may be detrimental to the success of your gathering, you see, for there are many stories about me—’
Cassandra Lindsay broke in. ‘There are always rumours, Mrs St Harlow, and there are always detractors, but anyone whom Uncle Alfred takes a shine to I would trust with my life.’
‘Thank you.’ The ache in her throat was surprising as she glanced around, the heavy frowns of others less intimidating after such a conversation.
As the music ended the party regrouped. Elizabeth Berkeley had joined her mother to one side of the room, chatting with a group of other young women all dressed in differing shades of yellow. Stephen Hawkhurst unexpectedly walked back to Aurelia’s side.
‘Are you promised for this set, Mrs St Harlow?’
His question came quietly and in response Aurelia showed him her dance card without a scribble upon it. ‘I seldom garner partners, my lord,’ she returned, ‘and certainly never the same man twice.’
His mouth turned up as he observed the empty page, and with the gracious strains of Strauss from the orchestra at the head of the room Aurelia felt disorientated.
Something else lingered there, too, but she did not care to examine those feelings as his fingers lifted the battered spectacles from her nose and held them away for a moment.
‘Is that better?’
The faces of those around them came into full focus. ‘Disfavour is often easier to stomach when it is barely seen, my lord.’
‘Many here have their own skeletons should one bother to dig deeper, Mrs St Harlow. Take heart, for you are not the only person in the room with a past.’
Aurelia glanced away as he replaced her looking glasses. Did he speak about himself?
His hair was draped long across the nape of a snowy, crisp white collar, strands of midnight reflecting blue, the sense of danger and menace that she associated with him heightened here.
Charles had been a man who had promised everything and delivered nothing, a liar and a cheat who used those in positions of less power ruthlessly. Stephen Hawkhurst appeared to be the very opposite. She could not imagine him striking fraudulent bargains or making empty promises.
As his uncle joined them, the old man’s hand reached down to extract a large handkerchief to wipe his shining brow. Alfred Hawkhurst’s eyes were more opaque than she remembered them to be and he had a wheeze that was concerning.
‘They don’t want me there, Stephen. They never do. I can feel it when I speak to people.’ His thin voice shook—a man who had had enough of the lofty world surrounding him.
‘I feel exactly the same, Lord Alfred,’ Aurelia began as his nephew failed to speak, ‘though I find that the wine is helping.’ She took two glasses from a passing waiter and handed one to him. Alfred smiled and downed the lot before leaning forwards in a conspiratorial way.
‘You were always a favourite, my dear, and I am glad that you do not seem so melancholy now. I used to worry for you when Charles was about.’
Embarrassment swept through Aurelia’s whole body. A thousand lies and yet an old man, reportedly mad, had seen through the lot of them. Like her father had. Catching the golden glance of Lord Hawkhurst, she looked away.
She had changed. She had grown up. No one could ever make her so sad again. The silk of Leonora’s dress swirled cornflower blue in the middle of the floor, the weave of silver within it catching the light.
Macclesfield silk. Her lifeblood.
‘I am more than content, Lord Alfred.’ And quite competent, too, she thought. Dancing, needlework, luncheons and music—the pursuits of a well-brought-up young lady had long ceased to be a part of her domain. She tried hard to smile. She fitted nowhere now, like Alfred, lost in the middle somehow, an eternal outsider, looking in but never belonging. Not even knowing how to.
Her fingers strayed to the pendant at her throat, clutching The single diamond until she saw Lord Hawkhurst’s eye upon the piece. Why had she worn it? The kiss at Taylor’s Gap hung in the air between them in the particular manner of something unfinished. She could see the shape of it in his eyes and in the way he stood, his shoulders rigid with the tension of memory.
‘I have always loved jewellery.’ Alfred’s proclamation was welcomed for it broke the unease, his outstretched hand touching the piece. ‘What would you wish to be paid for this, my dear? Is it for sale?’
Hawkhurst carefully moved him back. ‘Mrs St Harlow holds the bauble in much esteem and would part with it only under the most extreme of circumstances, Alfred.’
‘She told you of that?’
‘Indeed she did.’ Shadows moved across his face, the planes at his cheeks softer now, and her body recalled the feel of Lord Hawkhurst’s skin beneath her fingers, warm and solid, lips slanting deep with the taste of safety.
Aurelia shook her head. Such dreams were not ones she could contemplate again. Besides, had not Cassandra Lindsay stressed the need of a suitable bride at Atherton?
The black bombazine covering her from neck to foot was synonymous with the sort of life she led. Secretive. Careful. Lonely. In bed well after midnight and up well before the dawn.
When Elizabeth Berkeley came back to the circle Aurelia excused herself and wound her way to the ladies’ room, where she sat for a good three-quarters of an hour on a chair in the small salon, completely impervious to the stares of others who were also using the chamber.
Another twenty minutes and she could be gone.
Hawk felt Elizabeth’s fingers entwined in the fabric of his sleeve. He wished he might have shaken her off and followed Aurelia St Harlow to wherever it was she had gone at least half an hour ago, but appearances had to be maintained and he was always careful in this respect.
Cassie Lindsay watched him vigilantly, too, as she had done for months now, her eyes upon him filled with question. She had made it known that she had asked Mrs St Harlow and her sister to their country seat of St Auburn’s in a few weeks’ time and that the invitation had been accepted.
The evening was going exactly as Mrs St Harlow would have wished it to and yet now she had disappeared off into a crowd that detested her and was lost to sight.
Alfred had gone looking for her. Just that fact amazed him as his uncle seldom stayed for more than a few moments at any of these public gatherings and never inveigled himself into the lives of those he met here. And what did he damn well mean by referring to her melancholy?
‘I just love the colours of the gowns and the music, don’t you, my lord? Everyone says that yellow is quite the shade of things this season.’ Under the candelabras, Elizabeth’s cheekbones were striking.
‘Then you are eminently in fashion,’ he returned, her gown the colour of sunbeams shimmering in the light. The black bombazine of Mrs St Harlow came to mind, for his cousin had been years dead already and it was far past time to throw off the shades of mourning. He wondered how her hair might look against emerald green or a deep translucent gold.
No. He needed innocence and a lack of complication, he must remember that, the artless push of purity scattering the oncoming darkness. Why, Aurelia St Harlow probably had as many demons inside her as he did.
‘I went today into town with Mama and found a jewellery shop that I had not noticed before.’
Stephen smiled, imagining Elizabeth enjoying the wares.
‘Mama said I should have purchased the blue sapphire necklace because it showed off the colour of my eyes, but I preferred the ruby because it caught the light so beautifully. Do you think I have made a wise choice, my lord?’
His glance passed across the bauble nestled at her neck, the intricate patterns of gold fussy in design.
‘It suits you entirely.’
‘There was a bracelet to match, as well.’ the glance she gave him had a certain entreaty in it. Hawk knew he should enquire as to the name of the shop and the exactness of its location given the unsaid promises shimmering between them, but the words just would not come.
He saw Mrs St Harlow threading her way back into the room from the corner of his eye. She looked neither left nor right, though even from this distance he could see women and men turning away from her in a deliberate cut. Her chin rose and if he had not known of her unease in the social setting he might have thought that she did not care a jot for the good opinion of others. He was glad she had the glasses to shelter behind.
‘Do you not think so, my lord?’
The pale beauty of Elizabeth’s puzzled gaze fell upon him.
‘I do.’ He had no idea at all as to what he had just agreed but his attention was caught by a group of men Aurelia was about to walk past on one side of the room.
Lord Frederick Delsarte caught her arm, tightly, and held it. Stephen could see the others folding in about her, blocking off any means of escape. The smile she wore was imbued with solid anger, though even from this distance he could detect a certain panic.
‘Would you excuse me for a moment, Miss Berkeley?’
He did not wait for any reply, but strode across to the colonnade shielding the group from the notice of others and walked straight into the contretemps.
‘There you are, Mrs St Harlow,’ he said, placing Aurelia’s hand across the material of his sleeve as he pulled her into his side. ‘Lady Lindsay is most anxious to find you. Something about meeting an old school friend, I think she said.’
Unfortunately Delsarte had had too much to drink and was in no mood to observe the social niceties. ‘We have not finished here,’ he slurred with difficulty, ‘and your cousin’s widow and I have much to talk about.’
‘I sincerely doubt that, Delsarte.’ Hawk hurst’s free hand slipped to the top of the younger man’s arm and pressed, the yowl of pain heartening.
‘It’s Hawkhurst, for God’s sake, Freddy,’ a taller man next to Delsarte whispered in the tone Stephen had become accustomed to people using around him.
‘I would greatly prefer it if you were not to venture anywhere near Mrs St Harlow again, do you understand?’
Caution finally shone through bloodshot eyes. ‘I didn’t realise you knew her so well, Lord Hawkhurst.’
‘Ahhh, but now you do.’ Hawk let go his hold and stepped back, shepherding Aurelia before him as they moved out from behind the pillars.
Fury raced through him as he saw the paleness of her skin welting already into bruises where the bombazine had ridden above her wrist in the struggle. He also saw she swallowed often as though trying to keep back the tears, but he could not be kind. ‘Why the hell would you go off alone and unprotected when you know the communal feeling in the room is so against you? Surely you understand the dangers inherent in social animosity?’
She took a breath. ‘Hatred is generally less demonstrative,’ she returned, and had the temerity to smile.
Hawkhurst looked as if he wanted to kill her, here in the ballroom twenty yards from the woman it was said he would marry, and the ache in her arm from where Freddy Delsarte had grabbed her was beginning to throb.
If Hawk had not intervened, she wondered what might have happened. Could they have dragged her from the room kicking and screaming and not a soul willing to lift a hand in aid?
Save for him.
She should not have come. It was too dangerous and too uncertain and Charles’s more carnal predilections were shown within the leer of the younger man’s eyes. She knew Hawk had seen this, too, for his grip upon her had tightened imperceptibly.
‘You incite great emotion in those about you, Mrs St Harlow, even in the dress of a dowager.’
‘Men see what they wish to see, my lord. It is a fault that is universal.’
‘I cannot remember you much in the company of my cousin. It seemed you were never in London at all.’
Breathe, Aurelia instructed herself when she realised she had simply stopped doing so, the beat of her heart racing through the thickness of black wool.
‘There was always much to do at Medlands. Gardening was one of my particular favourites and Charles enjoyed the colours.’ She tried to imbue the sort of gladness that she imagined a lady of leisure might feel for such a hobby, her mind scrambling around for the names of common plants just in case he took the conversation further.
‘Then you must have been saddened to see the house sold on his death?’
Worry turned. As Charles’s only cousin he did not know? She could scarcely believe that he would not, although the fact that Lord Hawkhurst was rumoured to have barely been in England for many years made it seem more than possible. Perhaps no one save her lawyers knew of the financial collapse that her husband had left her in, a hundred chits from the merchants of Medlands village presented and little money to honour them. She had been so careful to pay them back, after all.
Medlands sheltered another family now and Aurelia had not been sorry to pack up the few belongings that were her own and leave the place for ever.
‘I have many memories left to remind me, Lord Hawkhurst.’ Shame. Anger. Disappointment. Murder.
He watched her carefully, the shadows in his eyes pulled back into puzzlement. With him at her side she felt completely safe, the stares of those around her muted in his company. She wished he would ask her to dance again as the music of a waltz was struck but, of course, he did not as they came into the little group she had left a good fifty minutes earlier. The young and beautiful Elizabeth Berkeley was again quick to take his arm. Aurelia thought she would have liked to have done the same, simply laid her fingers across such security and held on.
She remembered Freddy Delsarte at the parties at Medlands come Christmas, where the girls from London were brought up to satisfy the wants of married men who had long become bored of their wives.
As Charles had with her.
Closing her eyes, a dizziness that had become more frequent of late made her world spin.
‘Are you quite well, Mrs St Harlow? You suddenly seem very pale.’ Cassandra Lindsay’s tone was worried.
‘Just tiredness, I think,’ Aurelia returned, looking at Leonora and Cassandra’s brother on the dance floor enjoying each other’s company.
‘I could bring your sister back, if you would like, and Stephen could organise a carriage to take you home immediately. We will not be late ourselves and I promise you I would chaperon her as if she were my own daughter.’
The offer was tempting with Charles’s friends watching her from one corner and the rest of the ton scowling from the others.
‘If it would not be too much trouble…?’
Cassandra Lindsay’s smile was bright as she bid Aurelia goodnight. Then she drew Elizabeth Berkeley away from her grip on Lord Hawkhurst’s person with talk of the colour and cut of the gowns that were her very favourite in the room tonight.
Aurelia gained the distinct impression that in doing so the woman was helping her.
Chapter Four
‘I most certainly did not expect you to accompany me home, Lord Hawkhurst.’
He smiled, his teeth white in the dark of the carriage and his thighs less than an inch from her own. ‘But I wanted to, Mrs St Harlow, because it will give us the chance to talk about how it is you know Lord Frederick Delsarte and his lackeys.’
‘They were acquaintances of my husband.’
‘But not of yours?’ No humour lingered now, his voice cold, cut glass.
She shook her head. ‘My disapproval of their antics was more than obvious, I should imagine.’
‘Did Charles ever hurt you?’
The very intimacy of the question made her turn away. ‘No. He was a wonderful husband.’ The words were exactly those she had used in the courts when the law had tried to lay the blame at her feet for his unexplained death.
‘Why is it that I think you lie?’
she turned back. ‘I have no idea, my lord.’
The air all around them contained something that she had never felt before. The pure and utter longing for a man, this man, their unfinished kiss from a week before shimmering on the edge of a lust so foreign it made her feel light headed.
‘Charles enjoyed a wide interpretation of the word “fairness” and when he died at Medlands there were probably a number of people both in London and further afield who breathed a sigh of relief to hear of his passing. As his wife you must have known this.’
Such criticism hung in the darkness, a living and breathing thing, defining all that Charles had been. Given that what he said held a great dollop of truth Aurelia found it hard to argue. ‘There were also a number who may have mourned him.’ She stated this with as much certainty as she could feign. Those who came up for the party weekends at a country mansion who held strict morals in little worth probably rued his passing, but she doubted there were many others. The Medlands estate had buried him with a smile upon its collective face, their lord and master a man who held little regard for the feelings and needs of others more lowly born than he was.
When Lord Hawkhurst caught her hand and held it tight, she could feel tremors within the strength—a surprising thing, that, given his easy confidence. The night of London was black and endless, a quarter-moon lost behind banks of cloud, leaving only them in the dark and empty space of the world.
The warmth of his skin comforted her though, a solid contact amidst all that was strange and she felt her fingers curl around his. He did nothing to resist.
‘I would have asked you to dance again if I knew a scandal wouldn’t have ensued because of it.’
She could not believe he would admit this, to her, a stranger. ‘Lady Elizabeth Berkeley may not have been pleased about that,’ she retorted, hating the bait she threw at him. It was beneath her to involve such an innocent young beauty for her own means, but there it was and she did not take it back. Rather, she waited.
‘A title like mine, and the possessions accompanying it, have a way of garnering interest. It is a known fact.’
‘Such is the ease of being wealthy.’
‘Charles was rich, too. Perhaps you are more like Elizabeth Berkeley than you think.’
She did laugh at that, the sound lost into a mirth that was humourless. ‘I cannot determine one trait that we might share, my lord.’
‘What of beauty?’ he replied.
Was this a joke he played upon her? ‘I am hardly that, my lord.’
‘A woman who does not know her true worth is a rare and valuable thing.’ His voice allowed no tremor of falsity and when she turned towards him the breath left her body, his expression exactly the one she had seen at Taylor’s Gap: lust and want beaten back by will.
Breaking the contact, he fisted his palm against his thighs so that every knuckle stretched white. the scars on his knuckles stood out as raised edges of knotted flesh.
He swore soundly, the frustration expressed coursing between them. She should have bidden him to let her make the rest of the journey alone, should have replaced her gloves with a stern reprimand and ordered him from the carriage. But she could not. Instead she sat there, too, the silence growing as an ache, her hands bare in her lap and cold, her head heavy against the cushioned velour of the seat. For twenty-six long years she had imagined exactly this, a man who might transport her from the tight restraint of her life and deliver her into temptation.
His eyes glinted in the dark when she chanced to take a look, the bleakness in them shivering through green.
‘Your husband had questionable friends, Aurelia. Take care that they do not become your own.’
He would warn her even given the public perception of her part in Charles’s murder. Gratitude rose unbidden.
‘I live a simple and quiet life with my father and sisters. There is little in me that could be of interest to anyone.’
His laugh was menacing. ‘Somehow I doubt that entirely.’ The residual feeling existing between them since their kiss thickened. What on earth was happening to her? Hope drove into a veiled anger.
He would never be hers. It was written in exactly who she was. As she moved away carefully, the space between them became bathed in a pool of light reaching in from outside and when she saw that they were back in Upper Brook Street the relief was indescribable.
Braeburn House. The horses slowed to an amble and then stopped as Aurelia stretched the fabric of her unworn gloves out whilst deciding exactly what it was she would say. There were so many things that she might have told him, but in the end she settled on the one that would keep her family safe.
‘I relinquish you from any bargain that stands between us, my lord, and I realise that my insistence on an invitation to your ball was both forward and foolish.’ she enunciated the words very carefully and hoped that the need in her was not as visible as she thought it might be.
‘Your sister and Rodney Northrup may not say the same, Mrs St Harlow.’
The words were cold and stilted, none of the delight of the evening held within them, and as if to underline his desire to have her gone he simply leaned across to the door and flipped the handle, gesturing to one of his servants to help her alight.
He should not have been alone with her, jammed into the small space with the warmth of her skin and the rapid beat of her heart searing into all his good intentions. Aurelia St Harlow was his cousin’s widow and he was all but promised to Elizabeth Berkeley.
The anger in him grew along with a more unfamiliar frustration as he ran his fingers across his face, hating the way he was never able to hold them still. The night had left him wrung out and tired with the wax and wane of emotion and he still had a great deal of it to get through before everybody left. He wished that the hour was later and that the throng who danced and laughed in the Hawkhurst town house could have been gone, especially the Berkeleys. He did not have the energy to deal with Elizabeth’s unrelenting innocence in the light of his thoughts in the carriage, or the hopeful encouragement of her mother. He also knew that as the host he should not have left the party, but the opportunity for time alone with Aurelia St Harlow had been too enticing.
Cassandra Lindsay greeted him as he walked back into his downstairs salon a little time later.
‘Lady Elizabeth has been asking after you, Hawk. I said that I had seen you in conversation with Lord Calthorp and that you were heading towards the library.’
Sometimes, Hawkhurst felt Cassie knew a lot more than she let on.
‘Business,’ he returned and took a drink from one of the passing waiters as Nat and Lucas joined them.
‘The St Harlow widow is gone, then?’ Luc asked. ‘She looked nothing like the sort of wife I imagined Charles to take.’
‘What had you imagined?’ Nathaniel asked the question and Stephen was glad for it.
‘Someone of less substance, perhaps.’
‘Leonora Beauchamp spoke very highly of the sister, too,’ Cassie put in. ‘There are two other younger sisters, by her account, who will be out in the next few years.’
‘And the father?’ Stephen did not want to ask the question, but found himself doing so.
‘Sir Richard Beauchamp. He keeps to himself and seldom ventures into town. He is known as somewhat of an eccentric academic, a man of few words and little animation. Mrs St Harlow drives him around the park on a Monday afternoon straight after the luncheon hour, but they rarely stop to socialise with anyone.’
‘I get the feeling she is not quite the woman that society paints her to be.’ Lucas’s smile was puzzled.
‘If she wore a dress that showed off something of her very fine figure and a style that enhanced the vivid red of her hair she could be an original. Where on earth do you think she got the black gown? It looked like something a dowager would have worn back in the Regency days.’ Cassandra addressed the query to Hawkhurst, who shrugged it off as he watched his uncle thread his way through the room to join them.
‘I cannot find her anywhere, Stephen. Mrs St Harlow is quite gone.’
‘That is because I ordered a carriage to take her home, Alfred.’
‘Your man said that you were in it, too.’ Opaque eyes glinted in the sort of wily knowledge few understood his uncle to have retained. He was pleased Elizabeth was speaking with her mother a little way off, though he knew from the flare in Cassie’s eyes that she would make much of the revelation when she was able. Both Nat and Luc displayed no trace of hearing anything.
A careful neglect, he surmised, and turned his attention back to Elizabeth Berkeley as she joined them.
‘Your ball is becoming the very crush of the Season, my lord. I have never in all my life seen so many of the ton in one place and dancing.’
Stephen smiled, Elizabeth’s bright and happy reflection making him relax. ‘Lady Lindsay and Mrs Clairmont had a great deal of say in the organisation. Any success owes more to their management than my own.’
‘Mama says that it is a rare man who can inveigle so many to attend in the first place, and the supper was magnificent. Why, there are people here I have not seen venture out to any other soirée all Season.’
‘The power of a fortune is not to be easily underestimated, Lady Elizabeth.’ Nat’s tone was laconic.
‘I said exactly the same to my friends, Lord Lindsay, and they were all in agreement.’
‘Then I rest my case.’
Elizabeth’s fluster made Hawkhurst want to laugh, her innocence no match for the cynicism of his friend, but he did not because in the admission of such naivety another quandary rose unbidden. Could he really live for ever in the shadow of such unimpeachable trust without wanting more? The quick burst of risk? The enlivening rush of a gamble?
Leonora Beauchamp swept by them in the arms of Rodney Northrup at that very moment, all blond curls and youthful exuberance, the waltz giving them an excuse for closeness that no other dance managed to.
‘She is so very pretty,’ Elizabeth’s mother tapped her fan closed against her arm. ‘It is a shame that she comes tarnished by the reputation of her oldest sibling. My husband says if she had sense, Mrs St Harlow would leave society altogether and never return.’
Truth. How skewered it could become. Aurelia had risked everything for her sister’s welfare and none would ever know of it. He smiled, for ‘leaving society altogether’ might have been her most ardent wish.
A group of Elizabeth’s friends now stood beside her. He could tell that they had heard the words uttered about his cousin’s widow because the look of agreement and gossip was written full on their faces. Excusing himself summarily, he went to find a drink.
Aurelia sat in the downstairs salon near the hallway on a chair that was hard and straight, waiting for Leonora to come home. It was later than Lady Lindsay had promised it would be and she felt an exhaustion rise up that made her bone-weary. The clock at the other end of the room pointed to the hour of one, and she knew John, their servant, was waiting and then he, too, could find his repose.
He had left the lights burning this evening at her request, which was an expensive luxury, and they both watched the shadows at the window, listening for a noise. Finally it came.
‘They are here, ma’am.’
Nodding, she watched as he took a lamp and went out to greet the carriage. The laughter and the voices were joyful, Leonora’s particularly so, as she bid her companions goodnight.
A few moments later her sister was back inside and the large front door was closed against the darkness.
‘I have never in all my life had such a wonderful night,’ she trilled, turning on the floor as though she was still dancing with an imaginary Rodney. ‘Mr Northrup will come and call on us tomorrow, I am certain of it. Oh, Lia, you are the most caring sister in the whole world to have procured such an invitation for me.’
Her overt enthusiasm only had the effect of making Aurelia feel older and more tired and she was glad when Leonora bade them good evening and went to find the twins in their beds. To regale the whole episode to them, she supposed, and hoped that they would not wake Papa in their excitement.
John doused the flame of the lamp, his brow lined in worry.
‘The young gentleman was adamant about shepherding Miss Leonora in until I told him that your father had been ill with the influenza, Miss Aurelia, but he seemed most anxious to visit.’
‘Then let us hope he does not stay long.’
‘I sometimes think, ma’am, that it is my family who has made everything impossible for you and that it would have been better had we just disappeared—’
She didn’t let him finish. ‘The court came to the conclusion that no one was to blame save Charles for his own death, John. It is my opinion that they were right.’
‘Without your help they may have come to another decision altogether.’ His face held the agony she had become accustomed to seeing there—an old man with the weight of secrets and sadness upon his shoulders. She recognised his anguish as the same emotion that crouched inside of her, waiting to pounce, biding its time.
‘And any other decision would have been an erroneous one, given all the facts.’
The older servant bowed his head and nodded before going to check that the doors were fastened. He had aged considerably in the years since Charles had been dead, but then so had she, his influence still lingering long after his demise.
Of a sudden she felt light-headed and dizzy. She had not eaten anything at the Hawkhurst ball and had been too busy helping finish the last stitches in Leonora’s gown to take succour at lunchtime, and here was a stranger who would be back knocking at the door of Braeburn House in only a matter of hours.
Had she made a huge mistake by petitioning Lord Hawkhurst for the invitations? She shook her head. No, there was nothing else she could have done and with careful management the whole thing could still work to their advantage for Leonora had been more than taken with Rodney Northrup.
It could have been a lot worse. Cassandra Lindsay’s brother seemed a kind man and the influenza that John had mentioned was also inspired. No one would expect Papa to appear downstairs for a good week or two at least.
Looking around, she was pleased they had kept a hold of some of the better furniture, though there were places where more expensive artefacts had once languished. The missing pieces were her inheritance, mostly; she had been careful not to strip the house of those things Leonora, Harriet and Prudence held dear.
They were finally gone, the last of the guests on their way home at almost five in the morning. Hawkhurst imagined the first flush of dawn on the eastern horizon as he climbed the stairs to his bedroom on the first floor.
He had met his agent and exchanged the papers, easily and secretly. He had watched Delsarte and his group, too, for there were rumours of an involvement in clandestine activities that the British Service wanted some measure of. Aurelia’s contretemps with Delsarte came to mind, his mission of watching the lord and his minions suddenly at risk. The personal and the professional were beginning to impinge on each other and he knew he would need to be more careful. Ten years of stellar service to his country were not to be taken away on a…whim. Hawk frowned at the word as he lay down, kicking off his shoes and watching the play of light and shadow outside through his undrawn curtains.
‘Aurelia St Harlow.’ He whispered the name into the darkness, listening to the sound of it return to him like some forbidden music.
Elizabeth Berkeley was softer and more familiar, yet it was not to the blond ringlets and pale eyes that his mind wandered as he remembered his cousin’s widow writhing against him in the dusk.
He wanted to kiss Aurelia and feel again what he had once, the sharp and unexpected delight of lust surprising him, for it had been many a year since he had known the sort of quickness that she inspired. The anger at such a demented fantasy had him sitting upright.
She was a woman who was said to have killed his cousin and got away with it, the whispered gossip of society following her every step. She would be forever ostracized and dismissed. He breathed out with a heavy force of air, for years of being a rolling stone had worn him away, homeless and searching, the shadows now thick harbingers of all he had become. He needed the security of a warm and easy home. He needed goodness and humanity and mercy to heal his demons, crouched now closer than ever. Taylor’s Gap had been a warning of his precarious state of mind and he knew he had to be more careful for with only a little push he might lose the touchstones altogether.
He opened a drawer on a small cabinet beside his bed and took out a box. A golden timepiece lay inside. His brother’s. Stopped at the moment of his death. The claws of grief had him standing and he made his way to the seat by the window to watch the heavens, a distant glimmer of light claiming the darkness to the east as dawn finally broke.
Alone. For so long now. The burden of it all made worse by his need for an heir. He swore as the hallowed legends of the Hawkhurst family wrapped around his chest so tightly he found it hard to move. The scent of violets felt close and his leg ached in the early morning cold.
Chapter Five
‘No, Papa, you have to eat your breakfast.’
Aurelia had had three hours’ sleep last night and she swallowed down irritation as her father refused to open his mouth, her eyes straying to the clock on the mantel. Eight o’clock already. She hoped Mr Rodney Northrup would not come calling until well into the afternoon, although she could already hear Leonora preparing herself for his visit.
‘I want to read, Lia. I want to sit and read.’ His hand came out and she smiled when warm fingers curled into her own. It had been two years since the father they had known had been largely swallowed up by a stranger that they did not, but sometimes like now there were the old glimpses of him.
‘Eat the egg, Papa, and then I will take you into the library.’
When he finally allowed her to feed him she breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Leonora has a beau coming to see her this afternoon. His name is Mr Rodney Northrup and he is a friend of Lord Hawkhurst.’ Aurelia always told him the news of the house each morning just in case he might take something in.
Prudence joined her after a few moments, her youngest sister’s face alight with anticipation, her hair a golden froth of curls.
‘Leonora says Rodney Northrup is the most handsome boy she has ever met, Lia. She says that he danced with her all night and sat close beside her in the carriage on the way home. She also mentioned that you had had a waltz with the menacing Lord Hawkhurst. Could you not have refused him?’
‘Hawkhurst?’ Her father spluttered the name. ‘Charles knew Hawkhurst?’
‘Indeed, Papa, he did.’
Prudence’s eyes widened. ‘Did Papa just understand us, Lia?’
Aurelia waited to see if her father would say more, but silence seemed to have claimed him again as he sat and fiddled with a spoon and a fork.
‘There are glimmers of comprehension still, Pru, although we have to expect that they will become fewer and further between, but enough of all this for now. Tell me, what is Leonora wearing today?’ The topic distracted her sister completely and as she talked excitedly about a silk gown trimmed with lace, Aurelia wandered her own pathway of thoughts.
Would Stephen Hawkhurst accompany Rodney Northrup? She hoped that he would not. Please, God, let him not come, she prayed over and over, jolted from her musings as her sister asked a question.
‘Did the invitation to Lady Lindsay’s country party include Harriet and me?’
‘As you have not even come out yet I should doubt it very much!’
‘But we are almost seventeen, Lia. Could we not at least plan a time when we should be able to accompany you to such things? We could borrow the older gowns Leonora no longer fits. It won’t be expensive.’
The plaintive tone in her voice had Aurelia taking a breath. When would it ever be easy? The silks were beginning to pay, but their debts were still substantial.
She should be at the warehouse now, sorting through fabric, but this visit by Cassandra Lindsay’s brother meant that she needed to be at home today, chaperoning her sisters as there was nobody else to do it.
As she closed her eyes the exhaustion she had felt last night was there again this morning so, after finishing her father’s leftover breakfast, she poured herself a glass of milk. If she became ill then the whole game was lost. One mistake and her father’s second cousin would be in to claim Braeburn House, leaving them homeless and penniless.
The horror of such a thing happening was not even to be considered and she stood to help her father back to the library. He did not understand what he read any more, but he enjoyed holding the books. She would instruct his maid to keep him there until after the visitors had gone, influenza giving her a good excuse for his absence.
Rodney Northrup was accompanied by his sister and they arrived well into the afternoon.
They were all in the downstairs salon when they heard the sound of a carriage stopping. Prudence ran to the window to be roundly growled at by Leonora who wanted everything to be simply perfect. Harriet rolled her eyes at Aurelia as they all took their seats again and listened to the approaching voices.
He was not with them! Relief flooded into Aurelia’s whole body. Hawkhurst had not come with his golden eyes, night-dark hair and menacing certainty. She unclenched her fists, removed her glasses and found herself smiling as Cassandra Lindsay and Rodney Northrup were shown into the room by John.
‘I hope we did not keep you waiting at all.’
‘You are right on time, Lady Lindsay,’ Aurelia returned, her sentiment not echoed in the face of both Prudence and Harriet.
‘Oh, please call me Cassie. All of my friends do.’
Without waiting for a reply she clasped Leonora’s hands next. ‘Rodney has been most keen to come today, my dear, and with you looking so pretty in pink I can well see why. Your two sisters mirror you in their pastel hues.’ She waited as Aurelia introduced the twins, their curly blond hair catching the light from the window.
‘I did not realise your sisters were almost all of the same age, Mrs St Harlow.’
‘Prudence and Harriet are nearly seventeen. They will come out next Season.’ Aurelia did not quite feel comfortable using Lady Lindsay’s first name and so did not add anything else at all.
‘And your father?’
‘Is indisposed at the moment with the influenza. He is in bed and has been for the past few days.’
‘Then let us hope he makes a good recovery with no lingering bad effects.’
In answer Aurelia smiled, the lies falling bald into the room between them. It had been so long since any stranger had set foot in Braeburn House and the need for lies made everything dangerous. Her eyes strayed to the clock. How long did one of these visits usually last for? She hoped it might be quick.
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Sophia James
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: THE DARKEST HOURS OF THE NIGHT BRING THE DEEPEST PASSIONS…Haunted by rumours following her husband’s suspicious death, Aurelia St Harlow has withdrawn from society. To secure her family’s future there’s only one man who can help. And that man demands payment – with a kiss!Lord Stephen Hawkhurst finds the troubled beauty impossible to resist. But Aurelia is suspected of treason and, as England’s greatest spy, Hawkhurst must uncover her every secret. As the truth unfolds so does their desire.Drawn together in the dark of the night, they unleash passions neither has ever experienced before…