A Proposition For The Comte
A Proposition For The Comte
Sophia James
Dark. Dangerous. Damaged.This man will protect her.After years of an unhappy and bitter marriage, cautious Lady Violet Addington is intrigued by the Comte de Beaumont. His air of danger, mysterious scars and pure sexuality pose a temptation that’s hard to resist. Threatened by her late husband’s enemies, she makes a daring proposition: in exchange for the Comte’s protection, she’ll join him in his bed!
Dark. Dangerous. Damaged. This man will protect her.
After years of an unhappy and bitter marriage, cautious Lady Violet Addington is intrigued by the Comte de Beaumont. His air of danger, mysterious scars and pure sexuality pose a temptation that’s hard to resist.
Threatened by her late husband’s enemies, she makes a daring proposition: in exchange for the Comte’s protection, she’ll join him in his bed!
Gentlemen of Honor miniseries
Book 1—A Night of Secret Surrender
Book 2—A Proposition for the Comte
Look out for the next book in the miniseries, coming soon!
“Sophia James again delivers a truly wonderful love story filled with adventure and surprising twists.”
—Goodreads on A Night of Secret Surrender
“A fantastically vivid setting, characters (and a relationship) you really believe in, suspense and tension, and an emotional impact that stays with you long after the last page has been turned.”
—Goodreads on A Night of Secret Surrender
SOPHIA JAMES lives in Chelsea Bay, on the North Shore of Auckland, New Zealand, 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 by reading Georgette Heyer on vacations at her grandmother’s house. Sophia enjoys getting feedback at sophiajames.co (http://www.sophiajames.co).
Also By Sophia James
Ruined by the Reckless Viscount
Gentlemen of Honor
A Night of Secret Surrender
A Proposition for the Comte
The Society of Wicked Gentlemen
A Secret Consequence for the Viscount
The Penniless Lords
Marriage Made in Money
Marriage Made in Shame
Marriage Made in Rebellion
Marriage Made in Hope
Once Upon a Regency Christmas
“Marriage Made at Christmas”
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
A Proposition for the Comte
Sophia James
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-07410-0
A PROPOSITION FOR THE COMTE
© 2018 Sophia James
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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Version: 2018-08-06
“I need protection and I am willing to pay for it,” Violet said.
His fingers turned and curled over hers, eyes rising to lock into her own.
“How?”
“I can see that you want me. You would not have come here otherwise.”
He laughed at that. “You are bold, Violet Addington, but are you also foolish?”
“I am a twenty-seven-year-old widow who is soon to be twenty-eight. It is not permanence I am petitioning you for, only safety. I have not offered my body to any other and there have been many who have asked.” She couldn’t make it any plainer.
Author Note (#u00340f8a-934c-527f-a28a-a3af51ed4bd3)
Aurelian de la Tomber, Comte de Beaumont, was one of the main lesser characters in my last book, A Night of Secret Surrender.
He fascinated me not only with his cleverness and his danger but also because of his vulnerability. I wanted to know more of his story and his life. I felt that his utter darkness needed the counterpoint of a woman who brought him the light.
Lady Violet Addington has suffered her own losses, too, but she is a woman of resilience and purpose.
Can the secrets that lie between them bridge the gap of politics, greed and history?
Can love overcome darkness?
Contents
Cover (#ub1a4be71-3a8c-54c0-8f94-4edffc1092a9)
Back Cover Text (#u9720a750-2c3b-53d7-b048-06b582c3e134)
About the Author (#u6ec20788-dc42-5cc4-bcaf-38da9ea16509)
Booklist (#uf8d9662f-0875-5fe6-aa1b-19dd57b789c0)
Title Page (#u54cc6c01-674e-56e3-81d1-e2d5c3de4daa)
Copyright (#u018bf8ed-5773-5823-b6f9-9067f5ae2ec8)
Introduction (#uc08a2e46-e3f7-519c-8ccb-f6d3038d2aee)
Author Note (#u88b04b81-e4ad-5d9b-b32e-e047cfa459d6)
Chapter One (#u0fe4fa40-8601-5df3-ade3-8ed35fa93375)
Chapter Two (#u0ee0786d-4442-513a-901f-c6874a4f8c7a)
Chapter Three (#u6b5d6946-94a5-5558-8fd3-21457fb616e0)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#u00340f8a-934c-527f-a28a-a3af51ed4bd3)
London 1815
Aurelian de la Tomber felt the bullet rip through his arm, rebounding off bone and travelling on to some further softer place in his side. Standing perfectly still, he waited, for life, or for death, his blood racing as vision lightened.
After a long moment he wondered if he might lose consciousness altogether and be found here by others in this damning position, caught red-handed and without excuse. Catching his balance, he breathed in hard and fast, his mind calculating all the variables in the situation as he struggled for logic.
The bullet had patently not pierced an artery for the flow from his wounds was already slowing. The heavy beat of blood in his ears suggested that his heart still worked despite the intrusion and, with careful movement, his impaired balance might also be manageable. That he could even reason any of this out was another plus and if the sweat on his forehead and upper lip was building he knew this to be a normal part of shock. Still, he had no idea of how deep the bullet had gone and the pain numbed in the first moment of impact was rising. A good sign that, he thought, for in the quickening of discomfort lay the first defence in a body’s quest for living.
The man before him was dead and no longer any threat, the blood from his neck pooling on to a thick rug. Kicking away the gun, Aurelian turned to the door. People would have heard the shot, he was certain of it, for the upmarket boarding house on Brompton Place was well inhabited. Unlacing his neckcloth, he used his teeth to anchor the end of the fabric before winding it as tightly as he could around his upper arm. It was all he could do for now. It would staunch the flow and allow him a passage of escape. Hopefully.
When he began to shake he cursed, the world blurring before him and moving in a strange and convoluted way. It felt as if he was on the deck of a ship in a storm, his footfalls not quite where he placed them, the roiling world making him nauseous.
‘Merde.’
The expletive was short and harsh. He had to get as far from here as he could before he collapsed. Placing his good hand against the wall, he counted the rises. Fourteen on one set of stairs and another fourteen on the next. He always knew how many steps went up or down in every building he entered, for it was part of his training and laxity led to mistakes. His breathing was laboured and he coughed to hide the noise as he passed by the small blue room to one side of the lobby. He was relieved to see that the watcher who’d been there when he arrived a quarter of an hour ago was now absent.
The front door was ten footfalls from the base of the stairs, the fourth tile risen and badly cracked, then the door handle was in his grasp. Blood made his fingers slip from the metal and he wiped his palm against his jacket before trying again.
Finally he was out, the cold of the night on his face, a blustery nor’wester, he reasoned as he turned, the stone wall a new anchor, a way to walk straight. His nails dug into the crumbling mortar, scraggly plants reaching up from the pathway and smelling of something akin to the chestnuts roasting on open fires on the Champs-Élysées at Christmas.
That wasn’t right, he thought.
There were no vendors at this time of night in Brompton Place in Chelsea. He closed his eyes and then opened them again quickly. Brompton Road lay before him and then Hyde Park. If he could get there he would be safe, for the greenery would hide him. He could take stock of things in solitude and stuff his jacket with grass to staunch the blood. If he followed the tree lines he could find sanctuary and silence. It was cold and the fingers on his left hand felt strange, the pins and needles lessening now down to nothingness.
If this had been Paris, he thought, he would have known countless alleys to simply disappear into and numerous contacts from whom to find help. He swore again, only this time his voice sounded distant and hollow.
Falling heavily, he knew he could no longer stand, but there was a grate that led to an underground drain in the gutter and he crawled there until his fingers closed on cold metal. He lifted the covering, straining for all he was worth, the weight of the thing throwing him backwards on to the road, slick with the black ice of a freezing January morning. His head took the knock of it as he slammed against the cobbles.
The sound of carriage wheels close by was his last thought before a tunnel of darkness took him in.
Violet Augusta Juliet, the Dowager Viscountess Addington, should never have encouraged the Honourable Alfred Bigglesworth to air his opinions on horseflesh because all night she had been forced to pay attention to them. No, she should have smiled nicely and moved on when he first waylaid her at the Barringtons’ ball, but there had been something in his expression that looked rather desperate and so she had listened.
It was both her best and worst point, she thought, this worry for other people’s feelings and her need to make them...happy. She shook her head and turned to gaze out of the carriage window and into the darkness. Happy was not quite the word she sought. Valued was a better one, perhaps. Frowning at such ruminations, she removed her gloves. She’d never liked her hands wrapped in fabric and it was a nightly habit of hers to tear off the strictures as soon as she was able. Her cap followed.
‘Mr Bigglesworth seemed to have taken your fancy, Violet?’
Amaryllis Hamilton sat beside her in the carriage, dark eyes observant, and Violet felt a spurt of guilt for she’d meant to leave earlier as she knew her sister-in-law had only recently recovered from a malady of the chest.
She continued, ‘He is said to be a sterling catch and those who know him speak highly of the family.’
Her tone was playful and dimples showed plainly, but Violet hoped Amara might have said all she wanted to. However, she was not yet finished.
‘You deserve a good man to walk in life beside you, Violet, and I pray nightly to the Lord above that you might yet find one.’
This was a conversation that had been ongoing across the past twelve months between them, but tonight Violet was irritated by it. ‘I have attained the grand old age of twenty-seven, Amara, and I am not on the lookout for another husband. Thank goodness.’
That echo of honesty had her sitting up straighter, the wedding ring on her left hand catching at the light.
She remembered when Harland had placed it on her finger under a window of stained glass and beside a vase filled with lilies.
She’d never liked the flowers since, the sheen on waxy petals somehow synonymous with the sweat across her new husband’s brow. Avaricious. Relieved. A coupling written in law and not easily broken. Her substantial dowry in his hands and her father standing there with a broad smile upon his face.
The carriage had now slowed to pass through the narrow lanes off Brompton Road and then it stopped altogether—which was unusual given that the traffic at this time of the early morning should have been negligible.
Pushing back the curtain, Violet peered out and saw a man lying there. A gentleman, by the style of his clothing, though he was without his necktie and was more than rumpled looking. Unlatching the window, she called out to her driver.
‘Is there some problem, Reidy?’
‘It’s nothing, my lady. Just a drunk who’s fallen asleep on the throughway. The young footman is trying to remove him to a safer distance as we speak. We shall be off again in a moment.’
Violet glanced down and saw the half-truth of such a statement, for the Addington footman was a slight lad who was having a good deal of trouble in dragging the larger man to safety. The glint of dark blood caught what little light there was and without hesitation she opened the door and slipped out of the carriage.
‘He is hurt and will need to be seen by a doctor straight away.’ A heavy gash in the hairline above his right ear had spread blood across his face and there was a bandage wrapped about the top half of his left arm. His eyes opened at the sound of her voice, but she had no true picture of his visage in the midnight gloom.
‘I...will...be...fine.’ It was almost whispered, irritated and impatient.
She bent down. ‘Fine to lie here and die from loss of blood, sir, or fine to simply freeze in the cold of this night?’
Her driver had brought forth a light and the stranger’s smile heartened her. If he was indeed dying, she did not imagine he would find humour in anything. Laying one hand across his own, she felt it to be frozen.
‘Bring him into the carriage. Owing to the lateness of the hour and the falling temperature, I think it wise to deliver him home ourselves without further ado.’
With a struggle the servants righted him and Violet saw that he was tall, towering a good way above her own five foot six.
He swore in fluent French, too, a fact that made her stiffen and take in breath. Then he was sick all over his boots, the look of horror on his face plain.
‘Find the water bottle and sluice him down.’
Her driver’s frown was heavy. ‘It seems the man might be better left to go his own way, my lady.’
‘Please do as I say, Reidy. It is cold out here and I should like to be inside the warmth of the carriage.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
The water soaked her own silken slippers as it tumbled from the man’s Hessians on to the icy street. As the stranger wiped the blood from around his mouth with the fabric of his sleeve, a scar across the lower part of his chin was much more easily detected.
He looked like a pirate dragged in from battle, dangerous, huge and unknown, his dark hair loose and his eyes caught in the half-light to gleam a furious and glittering gold.
‘Where do you live, sir?’ She asked this question as soon as she had him settled, instructing her driver to wait and see which direction he required.
But even as he coughed and tried to speak his eyes simply rolled back and he toppled against the cushioned leather.
‘We will make for home. He needs warmth and a physician.’
‘You are certain, my lady?’
‘I am. Mrs Hamilton will see that I am unharmed and the young footman can join us inside. If there is any difficulty at all we will bang loudly on the roof. In his state, I hardly think that he constitutes a threat.’
As the conveyance began to move, Violet looked across at the new arrival. She thought he was awkwardly placed, the stranger, his good arm caught in an angle beneath him. He held a weapon in his pocket and another in the soft leather of his right boot. She could see the swell of the haft of a blade.
Armed and unsafe. She should throw him out right now on to the street where another might find him. Yet she did not.
He was wounded and the strange vulnerability of a strong man bent into unconsciousness played at her heartstrings.
It had begun to sleet, too, the weather sealing them into a small and warm cocoon as they wound their way back to her town house. Soon it would snow hard for the storm clouds across the city last evening had been purple. Further off towards the river, bands of freezing rain blurred the horizon. She shivered and then ground her teeth, top against bottom with the thought of all that she had done.
Impetuous. Foolish. How often had Harland said that of her? A woman of small and insignificant opinion. A woman who never quite got things right. Amara was observing her with uncertainty and even the footman had trouble meeting her eyes. The price of folly, she thought, yet if she had left him he would have died, she was certain of it.
Arriving home, she bade her servants to help the driver to carry the man in and sent a footman off to fetch the physician.
‘At this time of night he may be difficult to find, my lady.’
‘All I ask is that you hurry, Adams, and instruct the doctor that he shall be paid well when he comes.’
Placing her guest in a bedchamber a good few doors down from her own, Violet ignored Amara’s qualms.
‘He does not look like a tame man,’ her sister-in-law offered, watching from the doorway. ‘He does not quite look English, either.’
She was right. He looked nothing like the milksop lords they had waded through tonight at the Barringtons’ ball. His dress was too plain and his hair was far longer than any man in the ton would have worn theirs. He looked menacing and severe and beautiful. Society would tiptoe around a man like this, not quite knowing how to categorise him. Left in a bedchamber filled with ruffled yellow fabric and ornate fragile furniture he was badly misplaced. His natural home looked to be far more rudimentary than this.
‘Clean him up, Mrs Kennings, and find him one of my late husband’s nightshirts. The doctor should be here in a short while. Choose others to help you.’
The clock struck the half-hour as she walked past the main staircase to the library. She no longer felt tired. She felt alive and somewhat confused as to her reaction to this whole conundrum.
Harland had insisted that every decision had been his to make and she had seldom had a hand in it. Tonight there was a sort of freedom dancing in the air, a possibility of all that could be, another layer between who she had been and who she was to become.
If the servants wondered at her orders they didn’t say, obeying her and refraining from further query. Power held a quiet energy that was gratifying.
A knock on the door of her library a few moments later brought a footman inside the room with an armful of weapons. ‘Mrs Kennings sent me in with these, my lady. She said she thought they were better off here than on the stranger’s person. The doctor has just arrived, too.’
‘Ask him to come and see me when he has finished then, Adams. I shall wait for him in here.’
‘Very well.’
She noted the armaments were many and varied as she looked over the array on the table. A flintlock pistol made of walnut and steel sat before her, the brass butt plate catching the light. A well-weighted piece, she thought, as she lifted it and wondered at its history. A selection of knives sat to one side: a blade wedged into rough leather; a longer, sharper knife with a handle of inlaid shell; and a thicker, broader half-sword, the haft engraved with some ancient design.
The tools of his trade and a violent declaration of intent. Such a truth was as undeniable as it was shocking. This man she had helped was a dealer in death, a pillager of lives. She wondered how being such would have marked him. Perhaps at this very moment Mrs Kennings was lifting away the fabric of his shirt to show the doctor the scars written on his skin as a history.
She was sure it would be so. A darkness of blood was smeared across the dull grey of the sword’s steel where it had bitten into bone and flesh only recently. She imagined what the other opponent might now look like and crossed to the cabinet to pour herself a brandy.
She had not drunk anything stronger than a spiced punch in all the years of her marriage. Now she found herself inclined to brandy for the spirit took away some of her pain, though she was always careful to drink alone. The brandy slid down her throat like a warm tonic, settling in her stomach and quelling her nerves.
She wanted to rise and go to the stranger just to make certain that he was not dead. She wanted to touch him again, too, and feel the heat of his skin, to know that he breathed. Tilting her head, she listened for any sign of footsteps, glad when they did not come, for if the moments multiplied it could only mean he lived. The dead would not hold a physician here for an extended length of time and a medic expecting payment would be quick to come to the library and claim what was owed.
She heard a deep cry of pain and tensed, the ensuing silence just as potent as the noise had been. She imagined the treatment that he was now being subjected to as the doctor tried to make sense of his wounds.
‘Please, God, help him.’ She whispered these words into the night and looked across at the fire burning in the grate.
The maid must have been roused from the warmth of her bed to set it. Sometimes the unfairness in life was a never-ending carousel—a misfortune here, a death there, the nuisance of it left as a past-midnight duty for those who served their masters even in exhaustion.
Harland was a part of it, too, with his immorality and anger. After their first few months together she had rarely seen him happy. She frowned. The events of the evening were making her maudlin and there was no point in looking back on all that had been so shattering.
Her father’s words were in the mix there, too. When he had seen her off into the arms of Harland Addington, he had leaned down and given his advice.
‘The Viscount is a man going places, a clever and titled young man. He will do you well, Violet, you will see.’
She had imagined at the time he’d believed it, but now she was not so certain. Her father had been a hard and distant parent whose personal relationships had faltered consistently.
They had hated each other after a few years together, her stepmother and father, almost with the same heated distaste that she and Harland had regarded one another by the end of it all. Like father like daughter. Lost in the tricky mire of right and wrong.
A noise in the passageway twenty-five minutes later had her turning and she put the empty second glass of brandy on the table and waited for the door to open.
‘Dr Barry is ready to depart, my lady.’ Her housekeeper stood at the old physician’s side. Violet vaguely recognised the man. Perhaps Harland had had him here at the town house before to diagnose one of his many and varied physical complaints.
‘How does the patient fare?’
‘Poorly, I am afraid, Lady Addington.’ She knew from the expression on his face that the prognosis was not a hopeful one. ‘The whole site is swollen. If God in all his wisdom wants him to recover then he might, but if not...’
He left the sentiment hanging for a second before he carried on. ‘A man of violence must take his chances with the angels or the demons.’
‘Are there instructions for his care?’
‘There are, my lady. Make certain he takes in water and apply this salve to his right temple and left arm every six hours. I have a compress in place at his side under the bandage and will change that in the morning. The ribcage is the area of the most worry, but the bullet has been removed. I will return on the morrow at the noon hour to examine him again unless you would wish to have him taken from here...’
‘No, I do not.’ She barely knew where that reply came from and the doctor looked surprised.
‘Very well, Lady Addington. I have left my receipt and wish you well for what remains of this night. If he dies by the morning, send word. I’ll come for the body.’
Nodding, she swallowed away any thank you she had been about to offer. Violet had expected more grace, honour and hope in one whose path in life was to tend to the needs of the sick. She would not let him call again, she swore it.
Moments later she was perched on a chair by her tall stranger’s bed, the weight of her decision to bring him into her custody firming upon her shoulders.
He was even more beautiful without the blood and the dirt. She could see that in the first second of observing him. Better for him to have been plain and homely, for Harland had been as remarkably handsome and look at what had happened there.
Shaking her head, she concentrated on the man before her, glad to be alone with him, glad for the night-time and the candles and the half-forgotten world outside.
Her housekeeper had dressed him in one of Harland’s starched and embroidered gowns, the collar of it stiff about his neck. The gash above his ear had been stitched and his long dark hair fell over the yellow ointment smeared across the wound. Nothing could hide the mark on his chin, though, a scar just under the side of his mouth and curling beneath his neck. A knife wound, Violet thought, that had been left untended till it festered for it was no cleanly healed injury at all. She wondered at the pain of such a wound.
He was hot. She could see this in the bloom of his skin and the stretched closeness of bone, the pulse in his throat skittering and thready.
‘Let him live,’ she pleaded to no one in particular, though she supposed it was to God that she made this entreaty. It had been a long time since she had prayed with any sincerity.
He was pale and the dark bruising of tiredness lay beneath closed eyes. His nails were short and well trimmed, the ring he wore brought into full relief by the light in the room. It was crested and fashioned out of a heavy gold, a row of small diamonds caught under an engraved coronet.
He had lost the top of the third finger on his right hand, a clean healed cut that spoke of intent and expertise, but a relatively old wound for the scarring was opaque and faded. A man with life drawn upon him like a story and tonight with more chapters adding to the tale. The bed barely contained his height, his knees bent so that his feet did not overlap the base board. The boots placed beside the bed were of the finest leather, the buckles heavy, well fashioned and expensive, the same coronet of the ring engraved in silver.
With a sigh she stood and turned to the window, looking out across the city and the tableau of fading lights. London felt safe and busy. It felt peopled and close with the movement and the noise and the constant change of things to see. She had been here for twelve months now and had not once left the central district of the town. An ordered life with nothing surprising in it. Why had she then insisted that this dangerous golden-eyed stranger be brought home?
Taking up the book she had brought in with her, she sat again on the chair by the bed and began to read aloud. She’d heard somewhere that connections to the living world were advantageous to those knocking on the door of the next one, for it brought them back, guiding them.
Half an hour later when he spoke she almost jumped.
‘Where...am...I?’ His tongue wet the dryness of his lips, each word carefully enunciated.
‘In Chelsea at my town house. I am Violet, Lady Addington, sir, and we found you wounded on Brompton Place in the very early hours of this morning. When you were unable to give us your address we brought you here.’
‘We?’ The one word held a wealth of questions.
The quiet blush of blood ran across her cheeks. It was the curse of having such a fair skin and she gritted her teeth in fury. She had no need to explain any of her circumstances to him and she would not. Ignoring his query, she went on.
‘You have a substantial wound in the hairline above your right ear. It has bled profusely, though it has now been stitched. You also have a bullet hole in your left side which travelled through your arm to enter your ribcage. It has been removed, but the doctor who was summoned to tend to you is not certain of the effects it might engender. My housekeeper, however, insists she has seen others with your malady up and walking within a matter of days.’
In point of fact, Mrs Kennings had said a lot more than that about the patient, Violet thought, but was not about to repeat her servant’s fervent appreciation of the more favourable parts of his body.
‘Did anyone follow me here?’
The horror of such a question had her staring. ‘No. Did you expect them to?’
He turned his head away.
‘Where are my clothes?’
‘They were filthy, sir. We placed a nightgown upon you and tucked you into bed. There are garments you can wear in the drawer across the room when you recover. Your own clothes shall be returned to you on the morrow.’
‘And my weapons?’
‘Are being cleaned. I think you need to rest, for it was the opinion of my driver that you would feel dizzy if you moved too fast.’
‘He was right.’
He raised his hand against the light to shade his eyes. A headache, perhaps?
‘I do not think it was a robber who hurt you.’
‘No. I do not think that, either.’
His diction was aristocratic and old-fashioned. He spoke as if every word needed to be carefully said and thought about. She had the vague impression that perhaps English was not his first language and another worry surfaced as she remembered how he had sworn in French when first she had found him.
‘Who exactly are you, sir?’
This time Violet allowed more sharpness into her tone.
The woman peering at him was beautiful. He hadn’t seen such colouring on anyone before, with her green-grey eyes, stark white skin and hair that fell around a finely sculpted face in a blaze of red glory. She also looked uncertain, her full lips parted and the tip-tilt of her nose above giving her the appearance of an angel newly delivered from Heaven. A sun-kissed one at that, given her freckles.
Shaking his head hard, he imagined her as an illusion resulting from the blow to his temple and the shot in his side, but when he looked again all the parts of Violet Addington were still assembled in such a startling comeliness.
Violet. She suited her name. Delicate. Unadorned. Fragile. A hint of steel was there, too, as well as a baffling openness.
Lady Addington? Why would she be in a bedchamber with him across the depths of a frigid London night wearing a dark green high-necked ballgown with her hair down?
Nothing quite made sense.
‘Why are you here with me alone?’ He did not wish to give her his name for it meant some involvement in his life that she could not help but be hurt by. He was pleased when he saw her measure the truth of his reticence and look away. If he could have dragged himself off the bed and got to the door there and then, he would have, but nothing seemed to be working properly and he was so damnably tired.
‘You were reading me a story about the Spartans?’
She smiled. ‘I imagined you might enjoy it. You look a little like one of those ancient warriors yourself.’
‘In an embroidered nightshirt?’
‘Oh, it’s not your clothes I am speaking of, but your disposition. One would need to be more than dangerous to be allowed within their ranks. It’s a certain peril, an expectation, a darkness that does not allow in the light.’
‘Well, you’re right about that at least.’
Shadows crossed her face, a frown marking a line on her forehead. ‘I should probably leave you to sleep.’
He closed his eyes momentarily as he nodded and when he opened them again she was gone.
She barely slumbered that night, but lay tense and fidgety in her bed, listening for any sound of movement, but hearing none at all from his chamber at the end of the corridor. Was he asleep or did he lie there as she did, eyes wide open with expectation?
He had not wanted to give her his name which meant there were secrets he wished hidden. His weapons were back at his side now and she wondered if that was a safe thing to have done for the well-being of her household. But his query as to whether anyone had followed them also rang loud in her head.
Did he expect more trouble? Was he a man whom others could be hunting even at this moment along the wealthy streets of Chelsea and Knightsbridge? If peril were indeed to arrive at her door would he be able to protect them all? Or was he the peril?
The clock in her room beat out the hour of four and still she felt sleep far away. Once she had seldom slept at all through the night, day after day of restless slumber ending only when her husband’s factor had come up from the stables with a solemn face to pronounce Harland dead from an accident.
Nowadays she slept a little better, if not dreamlessly, the city enveloping her with its noise and its toil; the sort of rest that had taken the circles from beneath her eyes. The dragging lethargy was gone, but often she felt the self-blame of doubt.
Could she ever regain the girl she had once been before her marriage, the one who had thought the world open and good and fair? The one who was not so scared of life?
She turned her wedding ring on her finger, wishing she could simply tear it off and be done with memories, but there were expectations here in society and requirements for grief, even if the emotion did not exist in her. She could not expunge the memory of Harland completely from either her person or from the town house without such vehemence tossing up questions. Questions she could ill afford to answer.
She felt old and dried up, today’s unexpected ending so out of the ordinary that she was certain it would all finish badly, just as everything else in her life so far had.
The stranger had been hurt many times, the doctor had said and so had her housekeeper, for his skin was marked with years of violence. The stillness in him magnified his danger, too, his observation menacing. He gave an impression that he was just waiting for his time to strike, marking out his territory, lying there injured and pale but with watchfulness alive in his eyes.
It was as if she had invited a Bengal tiger to sit down with her for supper. She could already feel the damage he might leave for he was far from tame, perhaps temporarily muzzled and bridled by his substantial injuries, but undeniably perilous. She would be a fool to think otherwise.
The anger in her rose and sleep seemed a long way off.
She woke up with a start, her heart pounding, and the clock at her bedside pointing to the late hour of ten. Was he dead? Had the doctor come again? Was the world changed in a way that might make everything different? Why had no one woken her? All these questions went around and around as she sat and rang the small silver bell to summon her maid.
Edith came with her usual bustle, though this morning she had news to impart. ‘When Mrs Kennings went in early to check on the newcomer the bed was made and the gown was folded. The junior maid said he was not in bed when she came to stoke the fires just after six, my lady. She said that he was a neat and tidy guest, though, and that he left you a note. I put it in my pocket here to give to you the moment you woke so that it would not be lost.’
With trepidation Violet took the paper, seeing how intricately the note had been folded in on itself. Her name lay on the outside. She waited until her maid left to fossick around in her dressing room for the day’s adornments.
Violet
It was written with a sharpened piece of charcoal from the fireplace in his room. Carefully she opened the missive so as not to tear the paper.
Thank you for your help. I will not forget it.
It was unsigned.
The hand was bold and sloped, the f’s tailed in a way that was foreign to an English way of writing. He’d underscored the word not as a means of emphasising its importance and somehow she believed him, for he hadn’t given the appearance of a man who might forget a promise.
Edith stepped back into the room, clothing across her arms and her expression full of curiosity. ‘I don’t know why he left so quickly, my lady, for the downstairs girl said there was blood on the handrail of the stair balustrade so he was hardly well.’
‘Let us hope then that he got to his home safely and is being cared for by his own family as we speak.’
Even as she gave this platitude she wondered if he would have a family. He gave the impression of detachment and isolation, a man who had walked the harsher corners of the world and survived. Alone.
He’d been dressed as a gentleman and had spoken like one, too. Had she the way of his name she might have made enquiries, but she shook away such a thought. If he had wanted her to know him, he would have given it and when he had made a veiled reference about others who might have followed him she had sensed his preference to remain anonymous.
She had finally got her life back on track and she did not wish to derail her newly found contentment. Better to forget him. Better still, maybe, to have never stopped and picked him up in the first place, but she could not quite make herself believe in this line of reasoning. The snow outside today was thick and the temperatures had plummeted. If he had been left all night out in such conditions she doubted he would have been alive come the morning.
Later that evening, sitting with Amaryllis in the downstairs parlour, Violet tried to concentrate on the piece of embroidery she was doing of a rural scene with a thatched cottage near a river, the garden full of summer flowers before it. The fire was bright and warm, the embers sending out a good deal of heat. Outside she could hear the occasional carriage passing, their noise muffled by at least four inches of newly fallen snow. Usually she loved this kind of quiet end to a winter day, with the darkness complete and a project in hand. Tonight, however, she was feeling restless and agitated.
‘My lady’s maid said that the marketplace was full of gossip this morning.’ There was a certain tone to Amara’s words that made her look up.
‘Gossip?’ Violet was not one to enjoy the whispers of tittle-tattle, but after her badly broken sleep she could not help but ask.
‘It is being said that there was a fight last night in a boarding house in Brompton Place that left a man dead. A gentleman, too, by the sounds. Seems the man had his throat cut. Brutally.’
The hint of question in her sister-in-law’s voice demanded an answer.
‘And you think the stranger we brought home may have had something to do with this?’
‘Well, we did find him at one end of Brompton Place and there was blood on his clothes, Violet. He also carried multiple weapons. God, he might have done away with us all in our beds had he the inclination for it and then where would we have been?’
Violet stopped the tirade as soon as she could. ‘Did anyone in the marketplace have an idea of the dead man’s name or occupation?’
‘I do not think so. It is understood that he was from the city and that he had a gun found beside him and a full purse in his pocket.’
‘It was not taken by whoever had killed him?’
‘That’s the way of it. It was violence the murderer was after, not the money, it seems. I suppose there are men here like that, men who live in the underbelly of London and in places we would have no knowledge of. Maybe he wanted to silence the other so that what was known between them should never be allowed to escape and it is a secret so terrible there will be repercussions everywhere.’
‘I think you have been reading too many books, Amara. Perhaps it was simply an argument that got out of hand.’
A sniffle alerted her to stronger feelings. ‘I feel scared, Violet, for an incident like this brings everything that much closer. What if they find out about us? What then? This could all happen again if we are not cautious.’
‘It won’t, I promise you. They will never find out.’
‘I cannot pretend to be as brave as you are. I wish I could be, but I can’t.’
‘We are here in London, Amaryllis, and it has been over fifteen months since Harland died. We are safe.’
Violet laid the embroidery in her lap, all the neat and ordered rows of stitchery so contrary to the thoughts she was having. Did Amara hold the right of it? Had she fallen headlong into a world of disorder and tumult by rescuing a man she knew nothing at all about?
I will not forget it.
His note came to mind, too. Words of gratitude or of threat?
She had promised herself at the graveside of her late husband to be circumspect and prudent for that was the way that safety dwelled. And now look. Here she was wondering if the locks on her doors would be strong enough and if the stranger who knew exactly the layout of her house might be back.
Her contentment fell into disarray like a house built of cards, each argument falling on to the other until there was nothing left at all to find a truth with.
Stupid. Stupid, she chastised herself, her heart racing. She had been here before, in a position of weakness and vulnerability, a place she had promised never to be again. The worry inside knocked her off balance.
Swallowing hard, she made herself smile. It never paid to let anyone know your true feelings, for then control would be gone and this charade was all she had left of herself.
‘I am sure the constable will find the culprit, Amara, and that shall be the very last we hear of it.’
‘You do not think we ought to say anything about the one who was here last night? His wounds? The blood?’
‘No, I don’t think we should.’ These words came with all the conviction she could muster and she was glad to see her sister-in-law nod in agreement.
He was most memorable. He would stand out in a crowd. The scar, the golden eyes, his beauty and his tallness. All the pieces of a man who was not in any way ordinary and so easy to find if someone was looking.
Danger balanced on the edge of a precipice, the beginnings of the consequences of her lies, the start of all that might come next? Another thought also occurred to her.
‘Are the clothes the stranger wore last night still in the laundry?’
‘No. They were dried early before the kitchen fire and the downstairs maid has ironed them.’
‘Can you find them for me, Amara? Perhaps they might tell us things.’
‘Things we may not wish to know?’
When Violet failed to answer, her sister-in-law stood and took her leave.
Why should she want to understand more about the stranger by gathering clues from his laundered garments? Could knowing more hurt her? With Harland she remembered sifting through his lies and truths and feeling sullied, a sort of panicked dirtiness inherent in every new thing she discovered about him.
When Amaryllis returned, she handed the items over with a heavy frown. ‘If one made it one’s business never to look into the hidden affairs of others, oblivion would be the result, Violet. Perhaps the curious hold a curse that trips them up repeatedly. I think we ought to donate these garments to charity and forget that we ever met this man. He is gone and it is for the best. For what it is worth, the butler said he had the look of duplicity about him and, of all the things in the world, we do not need that again.’
Then, after uttering a quick goodnight, her sister-in-law was gone, the door closed behind her. Violet was pleased to be alone with what was left of the man she’d found on the street, the fine linen of his shirtsleeves edged in silver and the breeches of a good quality serge. Lifting the material to her face, she breathed in, but the smell of him had disappeared. Only lye soap and fire smoke remained.
‘Who are you?’ she whispered into the night. ‘And where are you now?’
The booming of a clock out in the hallway was her answer. He had faded into the teeming thousands who called London their home, lost in the melee of survival and danger. He would not be back.
Placing the garments on the small table beside her, she determined not to think of him again.
Chapter Two (#u00340f8a-934c-527f-a28a-a3af51ed4bd3)
Aurelian de la Tomber, Eighth Comte de Beaumont and heir to the Dukedom of Lorraine-Lillebonne, lay in a gilded bathtub in his rented town house on Portman Square, trying to block out the throbbing pain in his side.
The man who had jumped out at him in the darkness of the boarding house had meant business and it was only a last-second intuition that had made him duck to the left and catch a bullet in his arm rather than the full force of it through his chest. He’d slit his assailant’s throat without blinking, his training homing in to demand full retribution. The fellow had gone down without a word, dead before he hit the floor, a fact that Lian deemed a shame given it would have been useful to have known who’d been sent to kill him.
The man’s clothes had held some clue for they were the garments of a gentleman. Lian had found a purse full of gold when he had rifled through the jacket in the few moments he’d had before the alarm was raised and footsteps were heard. The chain about his neck had sported a St Christopher medallion. A travelling man, perhaps, or a superstitious one? The medallion had looked like a bauble of good quality silver.
He should have known it might come to this when he’d left France, for greed was a powerful deterrent to telling the truth and the monies sent by the supporters of Napoleon to those who might help them in England had been substantial.
What he had not expected was her. Lady Addington with her red hair and kind eyes, blessed with the sort of light shimmering all around that could expose every single demon within him.
He raised one hand and saw it shake, a froth of fine lavender soap across his skin. He’d been noticing these tremors more and more of late, just another side effect of the life he had lived.
‘Dieu, aidez-moi.’
He remembered he’d sworn in French last night, too, a mistake that came from blood loss and dizziness. He seldom made such errors and cursed anew, the shifting exhaustion he’d felt for months lessening his usual caution.
Who the hell could have known that he was here in London on the sort of business that usually stayed secret and unheralded? What had happened after he had left the boarding house on Brompton Place?
He could remember very little of the previous night’s attack, save for speaking to Lady Addington in a bedchamber when he’d been cleaned up and the doctor had left. The swelling in his side was greater this morning, the tight heat releasing into a throbbing ache. There were slight memories of sleet and cold and the sound of a carriage coming on as he fell, but that was about the most of it.
Would Lady Addington talk to the London law-keepers and give them his description? Would there be repercussions that might follow? He had no family here save for his younger sister and his two ageing aunts. A further worry that, for their safety was paramount in everything he did.
Violet Addington’s freckles had been astonishing and her colouring had held the sort of vivid glowing richness that he could never before remember seeing and now could not forget.
She’d worn a diamond ring on the third finger of her left hand, but there had been no sign of a husband save for the portrait he’d caught sight of at the bottom of the stairs as he had left, the night light in the hall falling across the face of a man who was imposing and elegant. Her countenance was drawn beside his, a younger, more uncertain version of the woman she’d become.
Rising from the water, he took a towel from the rack and tied it about his waist, catching his reflection in the full-length mirror. He rarely looked at himself these days, but tonight he did. Tonight the scar on his chin was raised and red in the light and the new wound above his ear ate into the black of his hair. His chest was bandaged, hiding ruin’s pathway across the skin, though the swollen bruising on his arm was visible.
His life was reflected in the hardness of his eyes and in the deep lines that ran down each side of his face. Every year he’d worked for the Ministère de la Guerre had placed new scars upon him. The sabre cuts across his back, the many small knife wounds that ran over his hands and his lower arms, the missing half-finger resulting from the debacle with Les Chevaliers and his betrayal by Celeste Fournier-Shayborne.
He knew that the Addington servants must have seen such ruination upon him and wondered just what they might have relayed to their mistress. Or to a master?
The cross on plaited leather at his neck caught his attention next. Veronique. He’d taken it from her body after he’d pulled her out of the Seine and he’d never removed it. The remnants of lost chances and the aching brokenness of love. The beginning of his indifference, too.
A clean shirt hid most of the damage as he pulled it on, a pair of breeches following and then his boots. This double game of intelligence was taking his life piece by piece.
At any moment chaos could consume him. He felt it coming as a bleakness he could not control and then as a shaking that numbed all he knew to be good.
The images of Paris were there, too, of course, Henri Clarke’s ministère and its constant and brutal violence. There was softness in small snatches at brothels and taverns filled with music, connections of the flesh that held only darkness and brevity.
Once he had been a good man. He’d believed in justice and equality and fairness. Once he had slumbered from dusk to dawn barely moving, his dreams quiet, graceful things without any of the monsters that now came calling as soon as he shut his eyes.
In the town house of Lady Addington he had slept the best he had in months. He could barely believe it when the clock in the corridor outside had struck out the hour of six and he had woken.
Three hours of straight and uninterrupted slumber. It was a record.
He knew he had to go back into society to complete his mission here, but she would recognise him now, would know his face. Would she be wise enough to keep quiet about their meeting in the middle of a cold London night? He didn’t want her to be implicated. He didn’t want her to be pulled into something he knew could hurt her.
But if she saw him unbidden? What might happen then? What if her servants talked? Or the driver of the Addington conveyance? Or the doctor with his clumsy hands? Even the plump housekeeper had watched him in a way that made him wonder.
Hell. He never took these risks at home, never walked through the streets of Paris compromised by mistake. He was getting old and soft, that was the trouble. Thirty-four years were upon him already and, he wondered, would he even manage thirty-five?
The wound at his side pulled as he turned too fast and he placed his arm hard against the pain, containing it and keeping it in. He’d need to lay low for a week at least to gather strength, but after that he meant to find those who had ordered his demise. Find them and deal with them. He had his leads and his hunches in the art of intelligence had always served him well.
After his father came to England, they would never return to France. There would be no more favours, no more final turn of the dice for a regime he’d long since stopped believing in. He would live on his estate in the ordered greenness of Sussex.
Compton Park.
The remodelling had been finished for a good ten months now and yet he had barely spent a night there. He wanted that to change. He needed a base so that all the parts of him that were compromised did not spin out, never to be regathered again. Lost in artifice and trickery.
He needed light.
That thought had him swearing because the only woman he had ever met with a distinct aura of brightness was Lady Addington and she was probably rueing her decision to pick him up off the freezing streets to take him home.
Such rumination made him feel dizzy and he sat with relief on the leather chair in his dressing room, a drink in hand and trying to regain a balance that could allow his breath to soften.
He could do nothing yet. He needed to get stronger, needed the weakness that held him captive to dissipate and to lessen. Wisdom came with the knowing of when to wait and when to strike and at this moment he understood that his physical means were restricted.
Drawing in, he made himself relax, made himself reach for the remembered warmth of a Parisian summer, the music in the streets of Montmartre, the pastries in the small bakeries off St Germaine. The lazy flow of the Seine was there, too, in his mind’s eye, wending its easy way through the city, as were the ancient mellow buildings of the Marais with its hidden spaces and green trees. The history of life wound about his uncertainty, knitting resolve and purpose together.
His thumb rubbed across the engraving on his ring which evoked the traditions of an ancient and powerful family. Such rituals heartened him and rebuilt the shaken foundations of his hurt.
Lord, how many are my foes.
How many rise up against me...
David’s Prayer of Deliverance had helped him many times and he liked the peace of it. Finishing the entreaty and the last of his drink he leaned back against leather and closed his eyes. To rest, not to sleep. He’d long since given up even the hope of that.
Six nights later Summerley Shayborne, Viscount Luxford, was at his door.
‘This is unexpected.’ Aurelian could barely take in his friend’s presence.
‘Celeste insisted I come up to see you, Lian. She felt there was something wrong.’
‘Has your wife become a clairvoyant now? A woman who might see through space and time?’
‘More like a pregnant and anxious worrier. She has constant inklings of imminent danger about those who are close to her and sends me to check.’
Aurelian smiled. Shay’s wife might have been the reason for the scar on his chin and the missing half-finger but there was a lot of respect between them now. He liked Celeste Shayborne, loved her even, if he were to be honest, like a favoured sister or cousin.
‘I am fine.’
He suddenly remembered uttering those very words when first Violet Addington had leaned over him on the street, the clouds above her filled with snow. A new memory, that. He filed it away to think about later.
‘Hawkins said that you were lucky to escape with your life. Your valet said a bullet that went through your arm and side festered and it was only the ministrations and expertise of your old aunt’s physician that stood between you and death.’
‘Hawkins talks too much.’
‘Your valet is the cousin of mine. He feels he is family and kin looks after its own.’
Family. Shay had always been like that to him, the brother he’d never had and a friend who through thick and thin had stuck beside him.
‘Someone is trying to kill me, Shay.’
‘Hell.’
‘Someone sent a note to meet at the boarding house at Brompton Place. My assailant shot me the moment I arrived, missing anything important inside by a hair’s breadth.’
‘Had you seen him before?’
‘No, but he was well dressed and had a heavy purse in his jacket pocket.’
‘When you first arrived in England two weeks ago, you said that you were here to recover some lost gold. Someone might be more than interested in stopping you from doing that.’
Lian crossed the room and found two glasses and his best bottle of brandy. Proceeding to pour out generous drinks, he motioned Shay to take a seat in a chair by the fire and, when he did so, took the opposite one himself.
‘Interested because ill-gotten gains can make men do a lot of things that they might not otherwise countenance?’
‘Like shoot a man in cold blood?’
He smiled. ‘That, too. Those in Paris who sent the gold to England in the first place now want it back, for it seems that their plans of a rebellion against the English way of life has come to nothing.’
‘That’s what this is about? Napoleon languishes at Elba. They can’t possibly think to keep his hopes of conquering Europe again alive.’
‘There were six substantial shipments of gold sent in the hopes of inciting insurgence. They stopped fourteen months ago.’
‘Shipments to whom?’
‘That’s the problem. Whoever received the gold was careful to hide their identity, but a small statue was sent anonymously to Paris warning against dispatching more. The gold marks on the piece had been tampered with and the bust consisted mostly of silver and lead.’
‘A way to hide the missing gold should anyone ask after it?’
‘Precisely. The jeweller who I am led to believe fashioned the piece is away from London until the week after next and has left no mention of his travel intentions. When I see him perhaps then there will be some answers.’
‘Leaving you as the one visible person trying to shed light on a world of greed?’
This time Lian laughed. ‘Everyone is expendable. You of all people would know that, Shay.’
‘Then get out. Come south to Sussex and stop. Settle down at Compton Park and become another man, a happier one, just as I have. Leave the gold alone and allow others to die for its recovery.’
Shay’s advice was so like the hope he had just been ruminating on that Lian felt the rip of it in his heart. ‘My father is still in Paris.’
‘So if you were to defect now he would be at risk?’
‘Precisely.’
He liked talking with Shay. He liked his honest astuteness. He liked that the shadows others never saw were so much part of what they both knew. It made the truth easy.
He could see the thoughts racing in his friend’s eyes and knew the moment when the tumblers clicked into place.
‘You’ve been made the damn bait for all of this?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you think you can win against everyone in a city that you no longer know well?’
‘It’s still possible. These people are sometimes like amateurs who are easy to gain the measure of.’
‘The other night did not sound so easy. Who the hell was it that rescued you, then?’
Lian gritted his teeth together and shook his head. He should have known that this would be the next question.
‘Lady Addington, a widow from Chelsea, brought me back to her home. I have found out since that she was married to Viscount Addington, a minor aristocrat from the north. She came down here to London after the death of her husband.’
‘Addington? The name is familiar although I cannot quite place it.’
‘A statue identical to the one that turned up in Paris sat on the mantel of her downstairs salon.’
The shock of that statement settled for a moment into the silence, vibrating into question.
‘So Violet Addington knew you would be there? On that particular street after midnight? She is involved?’
‘I hope not.’
‘Why?’
‘I’d be long dead if she had not picked me up out of the gutter. I think I owe her something for it.’
Shay started to laugh. ‘There’s more, by God, for you don’t even sound like yourself. Work was always strictly professional for you and damned be anyone who got in the way.’
‘That was when I believed in Napoleon’s ability to make France a better place. Then I didn’t and your own wife was a part of that. When she exposed me in Paris I understood that there was no true loyalty left and the idea of spilling one’s blood for nothing was less appealing.’
‘I still have contacts, Lian. Good ones, too. Perhaps...’
‘No. Your loyalties now lie with your family, with Celeste and Loring and the new little one when it comes. I can handle this.’
‘Wounded and alone?’
‘I am improving daily. This morning I managed the stairs without holding on to the banister. Tomorrow I will climb them twice.’
‘Someone knows you are here and if they are prepared to kill you without any dialogue at all, then everyone is dangerous. You have to promise me that you’ll send word if you need help.’
Lian nodded, but knew that only if he lay dying would he consider it and he did not intend for that to happen. His more usual manner was reasserting itself, the ideas churning and the details noticed. It was a jigsaw, intelligence, all the pieces needing to be put in just the right place. Talking to Shay had steadied him and made him think. He would need to go back to see Violet Addington and ask her about the statue.
He dreaded her answer.
When the conversation turned to other things, Aurelian relaxed. It was good to have a friend to talk with.
‘How is Celeste’s grandmother?’
‘Flourishing as she hurls advice and gives her opinion on any and everything related to bringing up children.’
‘Yet her own were such disappointments.’
‘Well, Celeste says that a second chance is what everybody needs and she is going to give it with love to Susan Joyce.’
‘You were lucky in her, Shay. Lucky to have found her.’
‘And don’t I know it.’
Fiddling with his glass, Lian leaned back in the wing chair, the ancient leather squeaking.
‘When did you realise that she was the one, the one you loved? The one you could not live without.’
‘About a moment after I met her again in Paris in heavy disguise and whispering sensitive state secrets. Why do you want to know that?’
Lian looked down, careful to shade his eyes. Shay was a man who noticed almost as much as he did and it was always the tiny gestures that gave one away.
‘Sometimes it is good to hear about things that are not hard or wrong or dangerous.’
‘Does Lytton Staines know you are back?’
‘I haven’t seen him yet, but then I have not been here for long. He is due back from Scotland tomorrow.’
‘My advice would be to go out on the town with him when you are better, for in a social setting you can observe Lady Addington without being noticed. See who she converses with. Find out those who might also be involved and get your leads there. If you are going to be the lure in all of this, you may as well go slowly and carefully so that what’s just happened to you never does so again. Where was the gold sent to here in England?’
‘To a man who went by the name of Derwent in Kensington. I followed up that lead and can find no sign that he ever existed.’
‘A front, then?’
‘The investors in Paris received acknowledgement of the donations. They also received correspondence outlining detailed plans of connecting with others who were anti-government here. Then communication simply stopped about a year and a half ago.’
‘It took you a while to get here, then?’
‘Those sending the gold were all gentlemen. They did not wish to be identified publicly with such an endeavour, preferring to make it a more private crusade.’
‘What changed?’
‘When the statue turned up with the warning they thought that blackmail might come next.’
‘And because you were half-English and had been to school here you were chosen as the one to come and sort it all out?’
‘Not quite. After your wife’s accusations against me in Paris I have been watched, though distrusted might even be a better word for it. When I was shot in the boarding house on Brompton Place I even wondered if the man was not French.’
‘God. A double-cross? Le Ministère de la Guerre?’
‘The struggle for power is never easy. People do not wish to relinquish their assets without a fight.’
‘And one of those assets is you?’
Lian began to laugh and felt better. It had been a long time since he had been able to speak so openly like this.
‘I got out the money I had in France a good while ago after selling my personal properties.’
‘Which was another black mark to your name?’
‘I suppose so. Being the first to recognise the truth of Napoleon’s doomed campaigns and act upon it leaves others...vengeful. The noble families are not what they once were in France, for although aristocracy is tolerated it is no longer encouraged. Papa sent my sister and his old aunts here to England when he sensed the danger in it all, but nothing could induce him to leave.’
‘So he stayed?’
‘My mother’s grave is at Vernon. That was part of it, too. His heart lies in that soil.’
‘The soft underside of true politics? The place where the soul collides with reason?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘So your first questions will be to Lady Addington.’
He nodded, hating to have her name so carelessly tossed into the ring. ‘She is scared somehow and isolated. When she speaks there are shadows in her words.’
‘How long were you in her house?’
‘Four hours and I slept for three of them.’
Shay finished his brandy and got up to pour himself another. ‘She made quite an impression on you, then, for such a brief acquaintance.’
‘There were many books in French in the downstairs library, though the whole place looked shabby and in need of redecoration.’
‘The twin persuasions of loyalty and greed.’
‘But that’s not enough, is it? I need a reason. She is a lady and a gentlewoman. She is delicate and thin. Her hands are soft. Her heart is kind.’
‘The husband, then? Lord Addington? How did he die?’
‘In an accident in the Addington stables. One of his prize stallions booted him.’
‘Were there witnesses?’
‘None.’
‘Easy to apply such a death, then, if you had the motivation. Enough gold might give you that.’
‘There’s something else, too.’ He waited until Shay returned again before beginning.
‘Violet Addington’s father, Wilfred Bartholomew, was a northern businessman made rich by his acquisition of jewellery shops.’
‘A man who knew his way around gold, then, and how to stretch its worth.’
‘And his sister left England years ago to marry a Frenchman and settle in Lyon. A family connection?’
Shay stood against the warmth of flame. ‘I miss it sometimes, Lian, all the energy of intelligence. I miss it until I kiss my wife and son and understand the impossibility of ever inviting danger to arrive again at my hearth.’
Lian knew exactly what it was he spoke about. ‘When I get out I will be like you and never look back. It will be a relief.’
‘Then do it soon, for you appear as if you have not slept well for a year.’
‘That’s probably because I haven’t.’
‘Here’s to Lady Addington, then, a woman who fills you with light and sleep.’
Chapter Three (#u00340f8a-934c-527f-a28a-a3af51ed4bd3)
The music was the ‘Duke of Kent’s Waltz’. Violet had always hated the piece and she gritted her teeth together to try to block out the anger inside that arose unbidden. The country-dance tune had been the one she had been playing on her small piano at Addington Manor when Harland had found out her father’s will had left him all the Bartholomew wealth and he reasoned he no longer needed to be conciliatory.
She’d dressed with care tonight, though her ancient green high-necked gown was plain. Harland would have loathed it because it did nothing to dampen down her vivid colouring and consume some of the flame. She remembered her husband wrapping her hair around his fist and pulling her into him, not in gentleness but in a burning anger.
‘Stop showing yourself like you do, Violet. Stop being brazen. You are no longer a simple commoner, but the wife of a viscount. Act like it.’
Tonight she had caught the length of her tresses up and added a turban to hide them, though there was no help for the fire-flamed tendrils that kept escaping around her face.
‘Your hair is reminiscent of the shade a street prostitute might favour.’ Harland had let her know of all the connotations of the colour after their marriage and for the first few years she had taken to dyeing it a dark brown.
Since coming out of an enforced mourning a few months ago, she’d often worn bright hues, six years of anonymity enough of a punishment for any woman with sense. But she had yet to release her hair from the confines of habit and thus the turban had stayed.
‘Violet.’ The call of her name had her turning and a friend, Lady Antonia MacMillan, caught at her arm. ‘I’ve been waiting an age for you to come and thought you must have decided to stay home.’
‘I was at the Wilsons’ ball for the early part of the evening and did not realise the lateness of the hour.’
Amara had taken herself off to sit along the side of the room. Violet thought she would join her after talking with Antonia. Tonight she felt tired and a bit restless. It had been over two weeks since rescuing her stranger from the frozen street and she thought he might have contacted her somehow. But he hadn’t.
‘Well, I am so glad you have arrived for you need to catch sight of the Comte de Beaumont. He has most recently returned from Paris and has set the ton alight. There are, of course, a few whispers of his past which only help to make him more...alluring.’
‘Whispers?’ She smiled at the theatrical voice Antonia used.
‘He was once heartbroken. His young wife drowned.’
The sadness of such a thing washed across Violet. For young lovers to be parted for ever by such adversity was shocking, though a little piece of her also thought if Harland had been snatched away by ill fortune in the first month of their marriage she would have remembered him with far more fondness.
‘He is tall, handsome and clever and I have been doing my very best to catch his eye all evening, but to no avail whatsoever...’
Such words produced a wariness and she hoped that Antonia would not throw herself at the man in her company. She was here at the Creightons’ ball for the light conversation and not for the machinations of attraction, so when Mr Douglas Cummings crossed the floor to ask her for the next dance, Violet assented.
Cummings was a man who sorely needed a woman to boost his morale and confidence and a shudder went through her. Once she had been that sort of a wife to Harland.
The anger that sat close made her breathe in deeply. It was why she came to these soirées night after night and stayed late into the early mornings so that when she reached her home and her bed she would be weak with exhaustion and would sleep. Dreamless.
She was thinner than she had been in years, the generous curves that her husband had delighted in at first now lessened. A changed and altered appearance; but it was the inside she truly worried about, for there were weeks when she felt empty save for an all-consuming fury.
It was on the third turn of the room dancing in the arms of Mr Douglas Cummings that she saw him, standing over against the wall and surrounded by people. She felt her footing falter.
‘Are you quite well? We can sit this dance out should you wish it.’ Cummings’s words held question.
‘No, it was only a misstep.’
Her voice sounded off even to her own ears, but she wanted to pass by again to make sure that it was truly her mysterious stranger and the best way to do this was by using the waltz.
She tried to smile and concentrate, on Cummings, on the dance steps, on her heartbeat that sounded louder and louder in her ears. Then he was in sight again, twenty feet away, speaking with a woman whose hand rested in a daring fashion across his chest.
There was no sign at all of the wound above his right ear. Tonight his hair was en queue, tightly tied back, and was much longer than anyone here wore theirs. He looked different from the man who had been pale and drawn and trussed up in a nightgown in her house.
He looked magnificent.
Who was he?
As though she had spoken out loud he looked up and their gazes caught across the space. Shocking. Unfathomable. For the first time in a long, long while Violet felt her body rouse into heat. Breaking the contact, she turned back to her dancing partner.
‘There are many people here tonight, almost a crush.’ If each word held a quiver, Cummings had the good grace not to comment upon it.
‘It’s the speciality of the Creightons. Invite anybody and everybody and hope that in the mix there is scandal and mayhem. They thrive on it and it is why the invites are so sought after.’
‘A dangerous logic?’
‘And yet everyone turns up because it is mesmerising to see the risk of chaos in action.’
Her head felt light and she clutched at Cummings’s hand more tightly than she meant to. Would there be some repercussion this evening to the man with the scar on his chin? Were there others here tonight who might know of the fracas in the boarding house on Brompton Place? More than a fracas. A murder. Over two weeks ago now which could indicate some sense of safety?
She did not recognise any of the men who stood in the group around him. The ladies were some of the most beautiful women of the ton and the ones whose reputations were not quite solid. The stranger gave off the same sort of air, one of danger and risk and plain pure sexuality. The connection shocked her.
‘I think perhaps I might sit down now, Mr Cummings, if you do not mind.’
When she peered back at the group in the corner she saw that his interest had once again been taken by the woman beside him and he was laughing at something she’d said, the lines in his cheeks deeply etched.
Dismissed and forgotten. Perhaps he truly did not recognise her or perhaps he did and wanted no reminder of that particular peculiar evening. Both possibilities left her with no avenue of further discourse.
Antonia swept into view beside her even as Violet sat.
‘Did you see the French Comte? You must have noticed him. He is over by the pillars at the far side of the room?’
‘Who?’ An inkling as to just what Antonia was going to say raced through reason.
‘The Comte de Beaumont, of course. The man I was telling you of. I saw you looking at him so do not say you weren’t. Is he not just the most divine creature you have ever laid your eyes on?’
Her stranger was the Comte de Beaumont? The man recently come into English society and sending all its ladies into swoons?
Such a realisation was shocking, but beneath this truth other things were solidifying. He was unmatched, but he was also full of a darkness that could only hurt her.
‘My brother said he saw him going into one of the wicked opium dens in town. To partake, do you think?’ The shock in Antonia’s eyes was underlined by excitement.
Harland had used laudanum in the last years of his life, too, as an aid to his gambling losses, the sickly-sweet smell still inclined to make her feel ill. The dream weaver, he had called it, as he’d tried to foist it upon her.
‘It might loosen you up, Violet. You used to be so much more fun than you are now.’
He had said other things, too; an undertone of bitter recrimination in each and every word.
With determination she pulled her thoughts back to this minute, the gentle three-point melody of a waltz in the distance and the chandeliers above twinkling in long lines of muted light. The beauty and energy of the room swirled around her. Here nothing sordid or ignoble could touch her. Here she was beyond reproach and lauded.
The vanity of such a thought worried her, but she tossed that aside.
Could the Comte de Beaumont have murdered a man a few moments before she’d found him? There had been blood on the blade in his boot and much more on his clothes.
‘The Frenchman is a man of secrets, would you not say, for there are whispers that in Paris his family escaped the Terror unscathed and are rich beyond imagination.’
‘Anything can be said of anyone, Antonia, yet that does not make it true.’
Her friend smiled. ‘Still, is there not something about him, Violet? Some tempting beauty? Lady Catherine Osborne obviously thinks so, for look how she hangs on to him as if she might never let him go.’
Making no effort to turn in that direction, Violet wished that her friend would show the same sort of reserve.
‘His mother was English. One of the Forsythes from Essex, although she passed away a good few years ago in France. His father is still hale and hearty. Duc de Lorraine-Lillebonne is his title as he hails from that ancient family.’
Lineage and wealth. No wonder the Comte was being fêted by all the women of the ton. But why then had she found him lying wounded on the side of a cold and midnight road, a man who had given her no name by which to place him?
Secrets. They hung across his shoulders like a heavy mantle; she could see it in the way he held himself and in the quiet watchfulness of his person. Perhaps it took one to know one, she also thought, wondering if her own mistruths were so very easily noted.
The sound of the orchestra tuning up for another dance caught at her attention and she smiled. The quadrille. More usually on any given night her dance card would have been full, but because she had been so late in arriving this evening she had not even taken it out of her reticule. She was pleased that she hadn’t, for it meant she could leave earlier and without comment.
Antonia knocked at her arm. ‘De Beaumont is coming this way with my brother. Smile, Violet, for you have the grimace of one marching to her death instead of feasting your eyes and appreciating true masculine beauty.’
Gregory MacMillan was all eagerness as he reached them. ‘Comte de Beaumont, may I present my sister, Lady Antonia MacMillan, and her great friend Lady Addington. The Comte is recently come from Paris and has asked me for an introduction to the two most beautiful women in the room.’
When Violet looked up she could see that the flowery words of Antonia’s brother were just that. The Comte de Beaumont looked as surprised by the sentiment as she had been.
‘I am pleased to meet you both.’
So that is how he wished to play it, the recent history between them discounted. With a small tip of her head she noticed that Antonia was doing her very best to crawl up against the newcomer. ‘I do hope that you are enjoying your sojourn to London, Comte?’
The flirtatiousness in her tone made Violet wince.
Please, God, she thought, let this finish. Let him move away before the dancing begins in earnest. Let him tip his head and leave us behind.
‘It is a city I do not know well any more, I am afraid, Lady Antonia. A city of contrasts.’
Dangerous and bustling. Lies and truth. Gunshots and dancing. Coyness and peril. Life and death. Love and hate. Light and darkness.
He did not now exhibit any semblance of pain or discomfort and the scar across his chin looked almost pale, lost in the dim light of candelabras.
But Antonia had not finished with all her questions. ‘I have heard you have bought a house in Sussex, my lord, and a very fine one by all accounts.’
‘Indeed. I was down south for a few weeks last year and purchased it on a whim.’
A whim?
The Comte de Beaumont did not look like a man who ever acted upon whims. Light and fancy things, whims. When he saw Violet smile at such a musing his eyes darkened.
‘Would you like to dance, Lady Addington? I think I can just about remember the steps of the quadrille.’
She could not refuse under such close perusal, though Antonia did not look pleased at all.
Within a moment he had shepherded her on to the floor, the touch of his good arm burning into her back. When they stood to face each other she was lost for words.
‘Thank you.’ His voice was low and quiet.
For the lie? For the dance? For not calling in at the Home Office and telling them her story in detail? For standing there and pretending she did not know him? For rescuing him from certain death on a frozen night?
‘You are welcome.’
Here was not the place for more with the cream of the ton present, as their love of gossip and scandal could ruin him. Violet wondered if de Beaumont held a knife in his pocket even under the lights and among the rustle of silk. She decided that he must.
‘You have made quite an impression in society since arriving in England, Comte de Beaumont. Everyone is talking of you and you have not been here long.’
‘A daunting thing that, Lady Addington, given our circumstances.’
‘I received your note.’ She whispered this, just in case.
‘And I meant every word on it.’
She felt the tightening of his fingers against her hand, a small and hidden communication. Barely there.
‘Why?’
Suddenly she no longer wanted to be so careful. If he had murdered a man the other week he was not someone she should encourage. But then again if he hadn’t...
‘When someone saves your life there is a debt owed.’
‘And when someone takes a life it is just the same.’
‘Touché,’ he whispered as the dance pulled them apart into the arms of others.
When he returned she felt a giddy sense of place, but firmly squashed it down as his arms linked with her own.
‘Do you try to make yourself unattractive, Lady Addington?’
She nearly missed her step.
‘The turban does not suit you. Neither does the gown.’
The shock of such an unexpected and personal remark ran through her unchecked. ‘My dressmaker would be distraught.’
‘How old is the woman?’
‘Pardon?’
‘The female who fashions your garments? What is her age?’
Violet frowned, thinking of how hard she had worked all week to modify her ancient gown with her lady’s maid to make it presentable. She had never been offered a budget for clothing when she had been married and now even making ends meet was hard. Harland’s heavy gambling had all but ruined them, the town house the only thing as his widow she had been able to save unencumbered. There had certainly not been enough left for a refurbishment or for new gowns.
‘I think you should hardly be—’
He interrupted her.
‘Tell her to find a dark blue velvet and to slash down both the neckline and the sleeves. More is not always better,’ he added and she saw a definite twinkle in his eyes.
‘The Parisian love of decadence might not suit the British mentality.’
‘And you think the Puritan look does? Look around you. Others show much more than an inch of skin. You are still a woman beneath the heavy serge and one with gentle curves. I felt them when you helped me up from the frozen street.’
‘A gentleman does not mention such things, sir.’
‘Yet it seems to me you need to hear them, my lady. You are hiding yourself and I am wondering why?’
This sort of conversation was one she was unpractised at, though the tone of it was exhilarating.
‘Is every young lord in Paris tutored in this art of shallow flattery?’
‘I wasn’t at school in France.’
‘Oh.’ She was surprised by his answer.
‘I went to Eton and then on to Oxford. A proper English upbringing with all my manners minded.’
‘But then you left. You went home again?’
‘Home,’ he repeated, ‘is often not where one expects it to be.’
‘You talk in riddles, my lord, and I comprehend that your dancing style is so much more proficient than my own. Do not ask me to stand up with you again because I shall refuse.’
‘Because you would worry about the opinions of those around you?’
‘Oh, indeed I would, sir. If you do not realise that, then you fail to know me at all.’
‘A disappointing honesty.’
‘And there are so many more of them.’
‘Violet.’
‘Yes.’ She jumped at his informal use of her name.
‘Stop talking and dance with me.’
When he pulled her closer and his arms led her into steps she had never before learned she wondered if perhaps he was a magician making gold from clay, making flame from ashes.
‘Will you be in London for long, Comte de Beaumont?’ She asked this as the music slowed a few moments later.
‘I hope not.’
‘You will return to Paris, then?’
‘No.’
Her effort at small talk faltered back into silence and on the final flourish of the violin he dropped her hand and bowed at her solemnly. Then he was gone.
Violet found Antonia with two of her other friends and joined their small group. She would have simply liked to have walked to the door and left, to have found her carriage and retreated from the battle. For that is exactly what this meeting had felt like. As it was, she would need to wait for Amara’s return from wherever it was she had disappeared to because she knew there would be questions otherwise.
It seemed that any conversation with the unknowable French Count always spiralled into uncertainty. She felt the anger of him, too, the hidden man under the urbanity of the more public one. His hands were not soft. They were the hands of one who had toiled and worked hard. He smelt of both brandy and lavender, the two scents combining into a wholly masculine flavour.
His sense of humour worried her the most. She knew that he watched her for she caught his glance across the room and hurriedly looked away.
What could he want? What did she? She wished suddenly that they might have met in the park, sheltered by the greenery from the eyes of others. And then what?
Lord, what was happening to her? For six years she had been frozen into shame and woodenness, any sense of the intimate pushed away firmly and resolutely. Yet just with one small dance it was as if a dam had been breached, allowing life to begin again, to green and blossom.
Le Comte de Beaumont probably had not even realised he was doing it. He was a man who would be overrun with feminine company, a male who would understand exactly his effect on the opposite sex.
She was twenty-seven years old, after all, and not a debutante filled with hopes and fantasy. She frowned, remembering Harland. He had swept her off her feet within a month and she had never thought to question all the things that did not quite add up about him.
Well, here was another man where nothing about him truly made sense. A wealthy foreign aristocrat in London and looking for what? He had said that he would not be here long and yet he had purchased a place in Sussex? A further question. The top portion of the third finger on his right hand was missing, a scar attesting to the injury.
A man of war, she thought, but not a soldier.
The settle of coldness within her began to build just as a shout of anger and challenge rang out from his direction.
‘You think that you can get away with this, you French bastard, just walk in here and have society at your feet?’
The shorter fellow standing before de Beaumont had pulled himself right up into the Comte’s face and had raised his voice in a threatening manner.
‘You are more than inebriated, sir, and most irritating with it. Perhaps you should go away?’ These words were strained and less than flattering, the Comte’s accent all perfect English privilege and wealth.
But the other man was not backing off, whether by reason of hard liquor or of poor judgement, and she watched him raise his fist and slam it directly into the mouth of the Frenchman.
A general gasp emanated all around them and there was a skittering as those in the burst of violence rushed out of the way, the exodus bringing her in closer to the action. It was easy to see the fury on de Beaumont’s face.
Another assailant spun into the fracas, but the Comte simply caught his hand and twisted it, the aggressor screaming in pain. Then everything disintegrated as further punches were thrown. Suddenly the whole side at this end of the room seemed to be involved in a brawling fight.
This would never have happened in any other social situation of the ton, but those here this evening were a varied lot and the chance of a fight seemed to be exactly what they were waiting for.
De Beaumont looked more than at home and he was a most proficient adversary, for he shook off his assailants while barely breaking a sweat.
Violet shouted out a warning as a further man came from behind him, but already Antonia was pulling at her arm.
‘Come, Violet. It is dangerous to be so close. There is no sense here—’
She did not finish, for there was the crash of a body hard against their own and then dizziness. When Violet put her hand up to her head she felt a sizeable lump and she straightened her silk turban with shaking fingers.
The room stood still, a slow-motion dance of eyes turning, the floating yellow fabric ballooned against each wall strange and blurring. Sound seemed diminished and distant and she was having difficulty in breathing.
Tilting her head, she saw the Comte watching her, blood on his lip and fury in his eyes. Then Antonia grabbed at her and lead her away.
‘Are you hurt, Violet? My goodness, I have never in my whole life seen such a terrible thing.’
Her head ached and she was dizzy, but she did not wish to make a fuss. Amara was at her side now, too, shaking her head.
‘We should not have come here—I knew it. The Creightons have little taste and even less sense. We should leave straight away.’
With a ringing in her ears and a feeling of nausea rising, Violet did just as they both wanted her to and turned for the door.
The French Comte had disappeared and she thought that he would just have to take his chances even with a recent bullet wound to the side. Only a few weeks had passed since his being almost dead and she imagined that he might have had the sense to lie low and recover. The beautiful woman he had been attached to was nowhere to be seen, either, so perhaps they had both left together? That realisation was surprisingly hurtful and she quickly shook it away.
Violet awoke in her room just as the clock outside in the hallway struck three. The Comte de Beaumont sat on the chair beside the bed, watching her. Surprisingly, she felt in no danger at all.
‘I am sorry for what happened tonight.’
Violet held up her hand as though to stop any apology.
‘How did you get in?’
‘Your locks are very flimsy. It would be safer to have them changed.’
Ignoring that, she sat up further. The evening before had been like a small window into the life of a man for whom violence was a common theme and she could scarcely believe that he was here. ‘Who are you?’
‘Aurelian de la Tomber. My friends call me Lian.’
‘And am I that? A friend?’
‘You tried to help me a few hours ago. Why?’
‘Help you?’ She was stalling for time and he knew it.
‘By calling out. By warning me. By involving yourself in something you should not have.’
‘Because you are dangerous?’
‘Completely.’ One word ground out slowly. One word that didn’t seem quite so English now. ‘And you got wounded because of it.’
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Sophia James
Dark. Dangerous. Damaged.This man will protect her.After years of an unhappy and bitter marriage, cautious Lady Violet Addington is intrigued by the Comte de Beaumont. His air of danger, mysterious scars and pure sexuality pose a temptation that’s hard to resist. Threatened by her late husband’s enemies, she makes a daring proposition: in exchange for the Comte’s protection, she’ll join him in his bed!
Dark. Dangerous. Damaged. This man will protect her.
After years of an unhappy and bitter marriage, cautious Lady Violet Addington is intrigued by the Comte de Beaumont. His air of danger, mysterious scars and pure sexuality pose a temptation that’s hard to resist.
Threatened by her late husband’s enemies, she makes a daring proposition: in exchange for the Comte’s protection, she’ll join him in his bed!
Gentlemen of Honor miniseries
Book 1—A Night of Secret Surrender
Book 2—A Proposition for the Comte
Look out for the next book in the miniseries, coming soon!
“Sophia James again delivers a truly wonderful love story filled with adventure and surprising twists.”
—Goodreads on A Night of Secret Surrender
“A fantastically vivid setting, characters (and a relationship) you really believe in, suspense and tension, and an emotional impact that stays with you long after the last page has been turned.”
—Goodreads on A Night of Secret Surrender
SOPHIA JAMES lives in Chelsea Bay, on the North Shore of Auckland, New Zealand, 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 by reading Georgette Heyer on vacations at her grandmother’s house. Sophia enjoys getting feedback at sophiajames.co (http://www.sophiajames.co).
Also By Sophia James
Ruined by the Reckless Viscount
Gentlemen of Honor
A Night of Secret Surrender
A Proposition for the Comte
The Society of Wicked Gentlemen
A Secret Consequence for the Viscount
The Penniless Lords
Marriage Made in Money
Marriage Made in Shame
Marriage Made in Rebellion
Marriage Made in Hope
Once Upon a Regency Christmas
“Marriage Made at Christmas”
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
A Proposition for the Comte
Sophia James
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-07410-0
A PROPOSITION FOR THE COMTE
© 2018 Sophia James
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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Version: 2018-08-06
“I need protection and I am willing to pay for it,” Violet said.
His fingers turned and curled over hers, eyes rising to lock into her own.
“How?”
“I can see that you want me. You would not have come here otherwise.”
He laughed at that. “You are bold, Violet Addington, but are you also foolish?”
“I am a twenty-seven-year-old widow who is soon to be twenty-eight. It is not permanence I am petitioning you for, only safety. I have not offered my body to any other and there have been many who have asked.” She couldn’t make it any plainer.
Author Note (#u00340f8a-934c-527f-a28a-a3af51ed4bd3)
Aurelian de la Tomber, Comte de Beaumont, was one of the main lesser characters in my last book, A Night of Secret Surrender.
He fascinated me not only with his cleverness and his danger but also because of his vulnerability. I wanted to know more of his story and his life. I felt that his utter darkness needed the counterpoint of a woman who brought him the light.
Lady Violet Addington has suffered her own losses, too, but she is a woman of resilience and purpose.
Can the secrets that lie between them bridge the gap of politics, greed and history?
Can love overcome darkness?
Contents
Cover (#ub1a4be71-3a8c-54c0-8f94-4edffc1092a9)
Back Cover Text (#u9720a750-2c3b-53d7-b048-06b582c3e134)
About the Author (#u6ec20788-dc42-5cc4-bcaf-38da9ea16509)
Booklist (#uf8d9662f-0875-5fe6-aa1b-19dd57b789c0)
Title Page (#u54cc6c01-674e-56e3-81d1-e2d5c3de4daa)
Copyright (#u018bf8ed-5773-5823-b6f9-9067f5ae2ec8)
Introduction (#uc08a2e46-e3f7-519c-8ccb-f6d3038d2aee)
Author Note (#u88b04b81-e4ad-5d9b-b32e-e047cfa459d6)
Chapter One (#u0fe4fa40-8601-5df3-ade3-8ed35fa93375)
Chapter Two (#u0ee0786d-4442-513a-901f-c6874a4f8c7a)
Chapter Three (#u6b5d6946-94a5-5558-8fd3-21457fb616e0)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#u00340f8a-934c-527f-a28a-a3af51ed4bd3)
London 1815
Aurelian de la Tomber felt the bullet rip through his arm, rebounding off bone and travelling on to some further softer place in his side. Standing perfectly still, he waited, for life, or for death, his blood racing as vision lightened.
After a long moment he wondered if he might lose consciousness altogether and be found here by others in this damning position, caught red-handed and without excuse. Catching his balance, he breathed in hard and fast, his mind calculating all the variables in the situation as he struggled for logic.
The bullet had patently not pierced an artery for the flow from his wounds was already slowing. The heavy beat of blood in his ears suggested that his heart still worked despite the intrusion and, with careful movement, his impaired balance might also be manageable. That he could even reason any of this out was another plus and if the sweat on his forehead and upper lip was building he knew this to be a normal part of shock. Still, he had no idea of how deep the bullet had gone and the pain numbed in the first moment of impact was rising. A good sign that, he thought, for in the quickening of discomfort lay the first defence in a body’s quest for living.
The man before him was dead and no longer any threat, the blood from his neck pooling on to a thick rug. Kicking away the gun, Aurelian turned to the door. People would have heard the shot, he was certain of it, for the upmarket boarding house on Brompton Place was well inhabited. Unlacing his neckcloth, he used his teeth to anchor the end of the fabric before winding it as tightly as he could around his upper arm. It was all he could do for now. It would staunch the flow and allow him a passage of escape. Hopefully.
When he began to shake he cursed, the world blurring before him and moving in a strange and convoluted way. It felt as if he was on the deck of a ship in a storm, his footfalls not quite where he placed them, the roiling world making him nauseous.
‘Merde.’
The expletive was short and harsh. He had to get as far from here as he could before he collapsed. Placing his good hand against the wall, he counted the rises. Fourteen on one set of stairs and another fourteen on the next. He always knew how many steps went up or down in every building he entered, for it was part of his training and laxity led to mistakes. His breathing was laboured and he coughed to hide the noise as he passed by the small blue room to one side of the lobby. He was relieved to see that the watcher who’d been there when he arrived a quarter of an hour ago was now absent.
The front door was ten footfalls from the base of the stairs, the fourth tile risen and badly cracked, then the door handle was in his grasp. Blood made his fingers slip from the metal and he wiped his palm against his jacket before trying again.
Finally he was out, the cold of the night on his face, a blustery nor’wester, he reasoned as he turned, the stone wall a new anchor, a way to walk straight. His nails dug into the crumbling mortar, scraggly plants reaching up from the pathway and smelling of something akin to the chestnuts roasting on open fires on the Champs-Élysées at Christmas.
That wasn’t right, he thought.
There were no vendors at this time of night in Brompton Place in Chelsea. He closed his eyes and then opened them again quickly. Brompton Road lay before him and then Hyde Park. If he could get there he would be safe, for the greenery would hide him. He could take stock of things in solitude and stuff his jacket with grass to staunch the blood. If he followed the tree lines he could find sanctuary and silence. It was cold and the fingers on his left hand felt strange, the pins and needles lessening now down to nothingness.
If this had been Paris, he thought, he would have known countless alleys to simply disappear into and numerous contacts from whom to find help. He swore again, only this time his voice sounded distant and hollow.
Falling heavily, he knew he could no longer stand, but there was a grate that led to an underground drain in the gutter and he crawled there until his fingers closed on cold metal. He lifted the covering, straining for all he was worth, the weight of the thing throwing him backwards on to the road, slick with the black ice of a freezing January morning. His head took the knock of it as he slammed against the cobbles.
The sound of carriage wheels close by was his last thought before a tunnel of darkness took him in.
Violet Augusta Juliet, the Dowager Viscountess Addington, should never have encouraged the Honourable Alfred Bigglesworth to air his opinions on horseflesh because all night she had been forced to pay attention to them. No, she should have smiled nicely and moved on when he first waylaid her at the Barringtons’ ball, but there had been something in his expression that looked rather desperate and so she had listened.
It was both her best and worst point, she thought, this worry for other people’s feelings and her need to make them...happy. She shook her head and turned to gaze out of the carriage window and into the darkness. Happy was not quite the word she sought. Valued was a better one, perhaps. Frowning at such ruminations, she removed her gloves. She’d never liked her hands wrapped in fabric and it was a nightly habit of hers to tear off the strictures as soon as she was able. Her cap followed.
‘Mr Bigglesworth seemed to have taken your fancy, Violet?’
Amaryllis Hamilton sat beside her in the carriage, dark eyes observant, and Violet felt a spurt of guilt for she’d meant to leave earlier as she knew her sister-in-law had only recently recovered from a malady of the chest.
She continued, ‘He is said to be a sterling catch and those who know him speak highly of the family.’
Her tone was playful and dimples showed plainly, but Violet hoped Amara might have said all she wanted to. However, she was not yet finished.
‘You deserve a good man to walk in life beside you, Violet, and I pray nightly to the Lord above that you might yet find one.’
This was a conversation that had been ongoing across the past twelve months between them, but tonight Violet was irritated by it. ‘I have attained the grand old age of twenty-seven, Amara, and I am not on the lookout for another husband. Thank goodness.’
That echo of honesty had her sitting up straighter, the wedding ring on her left hand catching at the light.
She remembered when Harland had placed it on her finger under a window of stained glass and beside a vase filled with lilies.
She’d never liked the flowers since, the sheen on waxy petals somehow synonymous with the sweat across her new husband’s brow. Avaricious. Relieved. A coupling written in law and not easily broken. Her substantial dowry in his hands and her father standing there with a broad smile upon his face.
The carriage had now slowed to pass through the narrow lanes off Brompton Road and then it stopped altogether—which was unusual given that the traffic at this time of the early morning should have been negligible.
Pushing back the curtain, Violet peered out and saw a man lying there. A gentleman, by the style of his clothing, though he was without his necktie and was more than rumpled looking. Unlatching the window, she called out to her driver.
‘Is there some problem, Reidy?’
‘It’s nothing, my lady. Just a drunk who’s fallen asleep on the throughway. The young footman is trying to remove him to a safer distance as we speak. We shall be off again in a moment.’
Violet glanced down and saw the half-truth of such a statement, for the Addington footman was a slight lad who was having a good deal of trouble in dragging the larger man to safety. The glint of dark blood caught what little light there was and without hesitation she opened the door and slipped out of the carriage.
‘He is hurt and will need to be seen by a doctor straight away.’ A heavy gash in the hairline above his right ear had spread blood across his face and there was a bandage wrapped about the top half of his left arm. His eyes opened at the sound of her voice, but she had no true picture of his visage in the midnight gloom.
‘I...will...be...fine.’ It was almost whispered, irritated and impatient.
She bent down. ‘Fine to lie here and die from loss of blood, sir, or fine to simply freeze in the cold of this night?’
Her driver had brought forth a light and the stranger’s smile heartened her. If he was indeed dying, she did not imagine he would find humour in anything. Laying one hand across his own, she felt it to be frozen.
‘Bring him into the carriage. Owing to the lateness of the hour and the falling temperature, I think it wise to deliver him home ourselves without further ado.’
With a struggle the servants righted him and Violet saw that he was tall, towering a good way above her own five foot six.
He swore in fluent French, too, a fact that made her stiffen and take in breath. Then he was sick all over his boots, the look of horror on his face plain.
‘Find the water bottle and sluice him down.’
Her driver’s frown was heavy. ‘It seems the man might be better left to go his own way, my lady.’
‘Please do as I say, Reidy. It is cold out here and I should like to be inside the warmth of the carriage.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
The water soaked her own silken slippers as it tumbled from the man’s Hessians on to the icy street. As the stranger wiped the blood from around his mouth with the fabric of his sleeve, a scar across the lower part of his chin was much more easily detected.
He looked like a pirate dragged in from battle, dangerous, huge and unknown, his dark hair loose and his eyes caught in the half-light to gleam a furious and glittering gold.
‘Where do you live, sir?’ She asked this question as soon as she had him settled, instructing her driver to wait and see which direction he required.
But even as he coughed and tried to speak his eyes simply rolled back and he toppled against the cushioned leather.
‘We will make for home. He needs warmth and a physician.’
‘You are certain, my lady?’
‘I am. Mrs Hamilton will see that I am unharmed and the young footman can join us inside. If there is any difficulty at all we will bang loudly on the roof. In his state, I hardly think that he constitutes a threat.’
As the conveyance began to move, Violet looked across at the new arrival. She thought he was awkwardly placed, the stranger, his good arm caught in an angle beneath him. He held a weapon in his pocket and another in the soft leather of his right boot. She could see the swell of the haft of a blade.
Armed and unsafe. She should throw him out right now on to the street where another might find him. Yet she did not.
He was wounded and the strange vulnerability of a strong man bent into unconsciousness played at her heartstrings.
It had begun to sleet, too, the weather sealing them into a small and warm cocoon as they wound their way back to her town house. Soon it would snow hard for the storm clouds across the city last evening had been purple. Further off towards the river, bands of freezing rain blurred the horizon. She shivered and then ground her teeth, top against bottom with the thought of all that she had done.
Impetuous. Foolish. How often had Harland said that of her? A woman of small and insignificant opinion. A woman who never quite got things right. Amara was observing her with uncertainty and even the footman had trouble meeting her eyes. The price of folly, she thought, yet if she had left him he would have died, she was certain of it.
Arriving home, she bade her servants to help the driver to carry the man in and sent a footman off to fetch the physician.
‘At this time of night he may be difficult to find, my lady.’
‘All I ask is that you hurry, Adams, and instruct the doctor that he shall be paid well when he comes.’
Placing her guest in a bedchamber a good few doors down from her own, Violet ignored Amara’s qualms.
‘He does not look like a tame man,’ her sister-in-law offered, watching from the doorway. ‘He does not quite look English, either.’
She was right. He looked nothing like the milksop lords they had waded through tonight at the Barringtons’ ball. His dress was too plain and his hair was far longer than any man in the ton would have worn theirs. He looked menacing and severe and beautiful. Society would tiptoe around a man like this, not quite knowing how to categorise him. Left in a bedchamber filled with ruffled yellow fabric and ornate fragile furniture he was badly misplaced. His natural home looked to be far more rudimentary than this.
‘Clean him up, Mrs Kennings, and find him one of my late husband’s nightshirts. The doctor should be here in a short while. Choose others to help you.’
The clock struck the half-hour as she walked past the main staircase to the library. She no longer felt tired. She felt alive and somewhat confused as to her reaction to this whole conundrum.
Harland had insisted that every decision had been his to make and she had seldom had a hand in it. Tonight there was a sort of freedom dancing in the air, a possibility of all that could be, another layer between who she had been and who she was to become.
If the servants wondered at her orders they didn’t say, obeying her and refraining from further query. Power held a quiet energy that was gratifying.
A knock on the door of her library a few moments later brought a footman inside the room with an armful of weapons. ‘Mrs Kennings sent me in with these, my lady. She said she thought they were better off here than on the stranger’s person. The doctor has just arrived, too.’
‘Ask him to come and see me when he has finished then, Adams. I shall wait for him in here.’
‘Very well.’
She noted the armaments were many and varied as she looked over the array on the table. A flintlock pistol made of walnut and steel sat before her, the brass butt plate catching the light. A well-weighted piece, she thought, as she lifted it and wondered at its history. A selection of knives sat to one side: a blade wedged into rough leather; a longer, sharper knife with a handle of inlaid shell; and a thicker, broader half-sword, the haft engraved with some ancient design.
The tools of his trade and a violent declaration of intent. Such a truth was as undeniable as it was shocking. This man she had helped was a dealer in death, a pillager of lives. She wondered how being such would have marked him. Perhaps at this very moment Mrs Kennings was lifting away the fabric of his shirt to show the doctor the scars written on his skin as a history.
She was sure it would be so. A darkness of blood was smeared across the dull grey of the sword’s steel where it had bitten into bone and flesh only recently. She imagined what the other opponent might now look like and crossed to the cabinet to pour herself a brandy.
She had not drunk anything stronger than a spiced punch in all the years of her marriage. Now she found herself inclined to brandy for the spirit took away some of her pain, though she was always careful to drink alone. The brandy slid down her throat like a warm tonic, settling in her stomach and quelling her nerves.
She wanted to rise and go to the stranger just to make certain that he was not dead. She wanted to touch him again, too, and feel the heat of his skin, to know that he breathed. Tilting her head, she listened for any sign of footsteps, glad when they did not come, for if the moments multiplied it could only mean he lived. The dead would not hold a physician here for an extended length of time and a medic expecting payment would be quick to come to the library and claim what was owed.
She heard a deep cry of pain and tensed, the ensuing silence just as potent as the noise had been. She imagined the treatment that he was now being subjected to as the doctor tried to make sense of his wounds.
‘Please, God, help him.’ She whispered these words into the night and looked across at the fire burning in the grate.
The maid must have been roused from the warmth of her bed to set it. Sometimes the unfairness in life was a never-ending carousel—a misfortune here, a death there, the nuisance of it left as a past-midnight duty for those who served their masters even in exhaustion.
Harland was a part of it, too, with his immorality and anger. After their first few months together she had rarely seen him happy. She frowned. The events of the evening were making her maudlin and there was no point in looking back on all that had been so shattering.
Her father’s words were in the mix there, too. When he had seen her off into the arms of Harland Addington, he had leaned down and given his advice.
‘The Viscount is a man going places, a clever and titled young man. He will do you well, Violet, you will see.’
She had imagined at the time he’d believed it, but now she was not so certain. Her father had been a hard and distant parent whose personal relationships had faltered consistently.
They had hated each other after a few years together, her stepmother and father, almost with the same heated distaste that she and Harland had regarded one another by the end of it all. Like father like daughter. Lost in the tricky mire of right and wrong.
A noise in the passageway twenty-five minutes later had her turning and she put the empty second glass of brandy on the table and waited for the door to open.
‘Dr Barry is ready to depart, my lady.’ Her housekeeper stood at the old physician’s side. Violet vaguely recognised the man. Perhaps Harland had had him here at the town house before to diagnose one of his many and varied physical complaints.
‘How does the patient fare?’
‘Poorly, I am afraid, Lady Addington.’ She knew from the expression on his face that the prognosis was not a hopeful one. ‘The whole site is swollen. If God in all his wisdom wants him to recover then he might, but if not...’
He left the sentiment hanging for a second before he carried on. ‘A man of violence must take his chances with the angels or the demons.’
‘Are there instructions for his care?’
‘There are, my lady. Make certain he takes in water and apply this salve to his right temple and left arm every six hours. I have a compress in place at his side under the bandage and will change that in the morning. The ribcage is the area of the most worry, but the bullet has been removed. I will return on the morrow at the noon hour to examine him again unless you would wish to have him taken from here...’
‘No, I do not.’ She barely knew where that reply came from and the doctor looked surprised.
‘Very well, Lady Addington. I have left my receipt and wish you well for what remains of this night. If he dies by the morning, send word. I’ll come for the body.’
Nodding, she swallowed away any thank you she had been about to offer. Violet had expected more grace, honour and hope in one whose path in life was to tend to the needs of the sick. She would not let him call again, she swore it.
Moments later she was perched on a chair by her tall stranger’s bed, the weight of her decision to bring him into her custody firming upon her shoulders.
He was even more beautiful without the blood and the dirt. She could see that in the first second of observing him. Better for him to have been plain and homely, for Harland had been as remarkably handsome and look at what had happened there.
Shaking her head, she concentrated on the man before her, glad to be alone with him, glad for the night-time and the candles and the half-forgotten world outside.
Her housekeeper had dressed him in one of Harland’s starched and embroidered gowns, the collar of it stiff about his neck. The gash above his ear had been stitched and his long dark hair fell over the yellow ointment smeared across the wound. Nothing could hide the mark on his chin, though, a scar just under the side of his mouth and curling beneath his neck. A knife wound, Violet thought, that had been left untended till it festered for it was no cleanly healed injury at all. She wondered at the pain of such a wound.
He was hot. She could see this in the bloom of his skin and the stretched closeness of bone, the pulse in his throat skittering and thready.
‘Let him live,’ she pleaded to no one in particular, though she supposed it was to God that she made this entreaty. It had been a long time since she had prayed with any sincerity.
He was pale and the dark bruising of tiredness lay beneath closed eyes. His nails were short and well trimmed, the ring he wore brought into full relief by the light in the room. It was crested and fashioned out of a heavy gold, a row of small diamonds caught under an engraved coronet.
He had lost the top of the third finger on his right hand, a clean healed cut that spoke of intent and expertise, but a relatively old wound for the scarring was opaque and faded. A man with life drawn upon him like a story and tonight with more chapters adding to the tale. The bed barely contained his height, his knees bent so that his feet did not overlap the base board. The boots placed beside the bed were of the finest leather, the buckles heavy, well fashioned and expensive, the same coronet of the ring engraved in silver.
With a sigh she stood and turned to the window, looking out across the city and the tableau of fading lights. London felt safe and busy. It felt peopled and close with the movement and the noise and the constant change of things to see. She had been here for twelve months now and had not once left the central district of the town. An ordered life with nothing surprising in it. Why had she then insisted that this dangerous golden-eyed stranger be brought home?
Taking up the book she had brought in with her, she sat again on the chair by the bed and began to read aloud. She’d heard somewhere that connections to the living world were advantageous to those knocking on the door of the next one, for it brought them back, guiding them.
Half an hour later when he spoke she almost jumped.
‘Where...am...I?’ His tongue wet the dryness of his lips, each word carefully enunciated.
‘In Chelsea at my town house. I am Violet, Lady Addington, sir, and we found you wounded on Brompton Place in the very early hours of this morning. When you were unable to give us your address we brought you here.’
‘We?’ The one word held a wealth of questions.
The quiet blush of blood ran across her cheeks. It was the curse of having such a fair skin and she gritted her teeth in fury. She had no need to explain any of her circumstances to him and she would not. Ignoring his query, she went on.
‘You have a substantial wound in the hairline above your right ear. It has bled profusely, though it has now been stitched. You also have a bullet hole in your left side which travelled through your arm to enter your ribcage. It has been removed, but the doctor who was summoned to tend to you is not certain of the effects it might engender. My housekeeper, however, insists she has seen others with your malady up and walking within a matter of days.’
In point of fact, Mrs Kennings had said a lot more than that about the patient, Violet thought, but was not about to repeat her servant’s fervent appreciation of the more favourable parts of his body.
‘Did anyone follow me here?’
The horror of such a question had her staring. ‘No. Did you expect them to?’
He turned his head away.
‘Where are my clothes?’
‘They were filthy, sir. We placed a nightgown upon you and tucked you into bed. There are garments you can wear in the drawer across the room when you recover. Your own clothes shall be returned to you on the morrow.’
‘And my weapons?’
‘Are being cleaned. I think you need to rest, for it was the opinion of my driver that you would feel dizzy if you moved too fast.’
‘He was right.’
He raised his hand against the light to shade his eyes. A headache, perhaps?
‘I do not think it was a robber who hurt you.’
‘No. I do not think that, either.’
His diction was aristocratic and old-fashioned. He spoke as if every word needed to be carefully said and thought about. She had the vague impression that perhaps English was not his first language and another worry surfaced as she remembered how he had sworn in French when first she had found him.
‘Who exactly are you, sir?’
This time Violet allowed more sharpness into her tone.
The woman peering at him was beautiful. He hadn’t seen such colouring on anyone before, with her green-grey eyes, stark white skin and hair that fell around a finely sculpted face in a blaze of red glory. She also looked uncertain, her full lips parted and the tip-tilt of her nose above giving her the appearance of an angel newly delivered from Heaven. A sun-kissed one at that, given her freckles.
Shaking his head hard, he imagined her as an illusion resulting from the blow to his temple and the shot in his side, but when he looked again all the parts of Violet Addington were still assembled in such a startling comeliness.
Violet. She suited her name. Delicate. Unadorned. Fragile. A hint of steel was there, too, as well as a baffling openness.
Lady Addington? Why would she be in a bedchamber with him across the depths of a frigid London night wearing a dark green high-necked ballgown with her hair down?
Nothing quite made sense.
‘Why are you here with me alone?’ He did not wish to give her his name for it meant some involvement in his life that she could not help but be hurt by. He was pleased when he saw her measure the truth of his reticence and look away. If he could have dragged himself off the bed and got to the door there and then, he would have, but nothing seemed to be working properly and he was so damnably tired.
‘You were reading me a story about the Spartans?’
She smiled. ‘I imagined you might enjoy it. You look a little like one of those ancient warriors yourself.’
‘In an embroidered nightshirt?’
‘Oh, it’s not your clothes I am speaking of, but your disposition. One would need to be more than dangerous to be allowed within their ranks. It’s a certain peril, an expectation, a darkness that does not allow in the light.’
‘Well, you’re right about that at least.’
Shadows crossed her face, a frown marking a line on her forehead. ‘I should probably leave you to sleep.’
He closed his eyes momentarily as he nodded and when he opened them again she was gone.
She barely slumbered that night, but lay tense and fidgety in her bed, listening for any sound of movement, but hearing none at all from his chamber at the end of the corridor. Was he asleep or did he lie there as she did, eyes wide open with expectation?
He had not wanted to give her his name which meant there were secrets he wished hidden. His weapons were back at his side now and she wondered if that was a safe thing to have done for the well-being of her household. But his query as to whether anyone had followed them also rang loud in her head.
Did he expect more trouble? Was he a man whom others could be hunting even at this moment along the wealthy streets of Chelsea and Knightsbridge? If peril were indeed to arrive at her door would he be able to protect them all? Or was he the peril?
The clock in her room beat out the hour of four and still she felt sleep far away. Once she had seldom slept at all through the night, day after day of restless slumber ending only when her husband’s factor had come up from the stables with a solemn face to pronounce Harland dead from an accident.
Nowadays she slept a little better, if not dreamlessly, the city enveloping her with its noise and its toil; the sort of rest that had taken the circles from beneath her eyes. The dragging lethargy was gone, but often she felt the self-blame of doubt.
Could she ever regain the girl she had once been before her marriage, the one who had thought the world open and good and fair? The one who was not so scared of life?
She turned her wedding ring on her finger, wishing she could simply tear it off and be done with memories, but there were expectations here in society and requirements for grief, even if the emotion did not exist in her. She could not expunge the memory of Harland completely from either her person or from the town house without such vehemence tossing up questions. Questions she could ill afford to answer.
She felt old and dried up, today’s unexpected ending so out of the ordinary that she was certain it would all finish badly, just as everything else in her life so far had.
The stranger had been hurt many times, the doctor had said and so had her housekeeper, for his skin was marked with years of violence. The stillness in him magnified his danger, too, his observation menacing. He gave an impression that he was just waiting for his time to strike, marking out his territory, lying there injured and pale but with watchfulness alive in his eyes.
It was as if she had invited a Bengal tiger to sit down with her for supper. She could already feel the damage he might leave for he was far from tame, perhaps temporarily muzzled and bridled by his substantial injuries, but undeniably perilous. She would be a fool to think otherwise.
The anger in her rose and sleep seemed a long way off.
She woke up with a start, her heart pounding, and the clock at her bedside pointing to the late hour of ten. Was he dead? Had the doctor come again? Was the world changed in a way that might make everything different? Why had no one woken her? All these questions went around and around as she sat and rang the small silver bell to summon her maid.
Edith came with her usual bustle, though this morning she had news to impart. ‘When Mrs Kennings went in early to check on the newcomer the bed was made and the gown was folded. The junior maid said he was not in bed when she came to stoke the fires just after six, my lady. She said that he was a neat and tidy guest, though, and that he left you a note. I put it in my pocket here to give to you the moment you woke so that it would not be lost.’
With trepidation Violet took the paper, seeing how intricately the note had been folded in on itself. Her name lay on the outside. She waited until her maid left to fossick around in her dressing room for the day’s adornments.
Violet
It was written with a sharpened piece of charcoal from the fireplace in his room. Carefully she opened the missive so as not to tear the paper.
Thank you for your help. I will not forget it.
It was unsigned.
The hand was bold and sloped, the f’s tailed in a way that was foreign to an English way of writing. He’d underscored the word not as a means of emphasising its importance and somehow she believed him, for he hadn’t given the appearance of a man who might forget a promise.
Edith stepped back into the room, clothing across her arms and her expression full of curiosity. ‘I don’t know why he left so quickly, my lady, for the downstairs girl said there was blood on the handrail of the stair balustrade so he was hardly well.’
‘Let us hope then that he got to his home safely and is being cared for by his own family as we speak.’
Even as she gave this platitude she wondered if he would have a family. He gave the impression of detachment and isolation, a man who had walked the harsher corners of the world and survived. Alone.
He’d been dressed as a gentleman and had spoken like one, too. Had she the way of his name she might have made enquiries, but she shook away such a thought. If he had wanted her to know him, he would have given it and when he had made a veiled reference about others who might have followed him she had sensed his preference to remain anonymous.
She had finally got her life back on track and she did not wish to derail her newly found contentment. Better to forget him. Better still, maybe, to have never stopped and picked him up in the first place, but she could not quite make herself believe in this line of reasoning. The snow outside today was thick and the temperatures had plummeted. If he had been left all night out in such conditions she doubted he would have been alive come the morning.
Later that evening, sitting with Amaryllis in the downstairs parlour, Violet tried to concentrate on the piece of embroidery she was doing of a rural scene with a thatched cottage near a river, the garden full of summer flowers before it. The fire was bright and warm, the embers sending out a good deal of heat. Outside she could hear the occasional carriage passing, their noise muffled by at least four inches of newly fallen snow. Usually she loved this kind of quiet end to a winter day, with the darkness complete and a project in hand. Tonight, however, she was feeling restless and agitated.
‘My lady’s maid said that the marketplace was full of gossip this morning.’ There was a certain tone to Amara’s words that made her look up.
‘Gossip?’ Violet was not one to enjoy the whispers of tittle-tattle, but after her badly broken sleep she could not help but ask.
‘It is being said that there was a fight last night in a boarding house in Brompton Place that left a man dead. A gentleman, too, by the sounds. Seems the man had his throat cut. Brutally.’
The hint of question in her sister-in-law’s voice demanded an answer.
‘And you think the stranger we brought home may have had something to do with this?’
‘Well, we did find him at one end of Brompton Place and there was blood on his clothes, Violet. He also carried multiple weapons. God, he might have done away with us all in our beds had he the inclination for it and then where would we have been?’
Violet stopped the tirade as soon as she could. ‘Did anyone in the marketplace have an idea of the dead man’s name or occupation?’
‘I do not think so. It is understood that he was from the city and that he had a gun found beside him and a full purse in his pocket.’
‘It was not taken by whoever had killed him?’
‘That’s the way of it. It was violence the murderer was after, not the money, it seems. I suppose there are men here like that, men who live in the underbelly of London and in places we would have no knowledge of. Maybe he wanted to silence the other so that what was known between them should never be allowed to escape and it is a secret so terrible there will be repercussions everywhere.’
‘I think you have been reading too many books, Amara. Perhaps it was simply an argument that got out of hand.’
A sniffle alerted her to stronger feelings. ‘I feel scared, Violet, for an incident like this brings everything that much closer. What if they find out about us? What then? This could all happen again if we are not cautious.’
‘It won’t, I promise you. They will never find out.’
‘I cannot pretend to be as brave as you are. I wish I could be, but I can’t.’
‘We are here in London, Amaryllis, and it has been over fifteen months since Harland died. We are safe.’
Violet laid the embroidery in her lap, all the neat and ordered rows of stitchery so contrary to the thoughts she was having. Did Amara hold the right of it? Had she fallen headlong into a world of disorder and tumult by rescuing a man she knew nothing at all about?
I will not forget it.
His note came to mind, too. Words of gratitude or of threat?
She had promised herself at the graveside of her late husband to be circumspect and prudent for that was the way that safety dwelled. And now look. Here she was wondering if the locks on her doors would be strong enough and if the stranger who knew exactly the layout of her house might be back.
Her contentment fell into disarray like a house built of cards, each argument falling on to the other until there was nothing left at all to find a truth with.
Stupid. Stupid, she chastised herself, her heart racing. She had been here before, in a position of weakness and vulnerability, a place she had promised never to be again. The worry inside knocked her off balance.
Swallowing hard, she made herself smile. It never paid to let anyone know your true feelings, for then control would be gone and this charade was all she had left of herself.
‘I am sure the constable will find the culprit, Amara, and that shall be the very last we hear of it.’
‘You do not think we ought to say anything about the one who was here last night? His wounds? The blood?’
‘No, I don’t think we should.’ These words came with all the conviction she could muster and she was glad to see her sister-in-law nod in agreement.
He was most memorable. He would stand out in a crowd. The scar, the golden eyes, his beauty and his tallness. All the pieces of a man who was not in any way ordinary and so easy to find if someone was looking.
Danger balanced on the edge of a precipice, the beginnings of the consequences of her lies, the start of all that might come next? Another thought also occurred to her.
‘Are the clothes the stranger wore last night still in the laundry?’
‘No. They were dried early before the kitchen fire and the downstairs maid has ironed them.’
‘Can you find them for me, Amara? Perhaps they might tell us things.’
‘Things we may not wish to know?’
When Violet failed to answer, her sister-in-law stood and took her leave.
Why should she want to understand more about the stranger by gathering clues from his laundered garments? Could knowing more hurt her? With Harland she remembered sifting through his lies and truths and feeling sullied, a sort of panicked dirtiness inherent in every new thing she discovered about him.
When Amaryllis returned, she handed the items over with a heavy frown. ‘If one made it one’s business never to look into the hidden affairs of others, oblivion would be the result, Violet. Perhaps the curious hold a curse that trips them up repeatedly. I think we ought to donate these garments to charity and forget that we ever met this man. He is gone and it is for the best. For what it is worth, the butler said he had the look of duplicity about him and, of all the things in the world, we do not need that again.’
Then, after uttering a quick goodnight, her sister-in-law was gone, the door closed behind her. Violet was pleased to be alone with what was left of the man she’d found on the street, the fine linen of his shirtsleeves edged in silver and the breeches of a good quality serge. Lifting the material to her face, she breathed in, but the smell of him had disappeared. Only lye soap and fire smoke remained.
‘Who are you?’ she whispered into the night. ‘And where are you now?’
The booming of a clock out in the hallway was her answer. He had faded into the teeming thousands who called London their home, lost in the melee of survival and danger. He would not be back.
Placing the garments on the small table beside her, she determined not to think of him again.
Chapter Two (#u00340f8a-934c-527f-a28a-a3af51ed4bd3)
Aurelian de la Tomber, Eighth Comte de Beaumont and heir to the Dukedom of Lorraine-Lillebonne, lay in a gilded bathtub in his rented town house on Portman Square, trying to block out the throbbing pain in his side.
The man who had jumped out at him in the darkness of the boarding house had meant business and it was only a last-second intuition that had made him duck to the left and catch a bullet in his arm rather than the full force of it through his chest. He’d slit his assailant’s throat without blinking, his training homing in to demand full retribution. The fellow had gone down without a word, dead before he hit the floor, a fact that Lian deemed a shame given it would have been useful to have known who’d been sent to kill him.
The man’s clothes had held some clue for they were the garments of a gentleman. Lian had found a purse full of gold when he had rifled through the jacket in the few moments he’d had before the alarm was raised and footsteps were heard. The chain about his neck had sported a St Christopher medallion. A travelling man, perhaps, or a superstitious one? The medallion had looked like a bauble of good quality silver.
He should have known it might come to this when he’d left France, for greed was a powerful deterrent to telling the truth and the monies sent by the supporters of Napoleon to those who might help them in England had been substantial.
What he had not expected was her. Lady Addington with her red hair and kind eyes, blessed with the sort of light shimmering all around that could expose every single demon within him.
He raised one hand and saw it shake, a froth of fine lavender soap across his skin. He’d been noticing these tremors more and more of late, just another side effect of the life he had lived.
‘Dieu, aidez-moi.’
He remembered he’d sworn in French last night, too, a mistake that came from blood loss and dizziness. He seldom made such errors and cursed anew, the shifting exhaustion he’d felt for months lessening his usual caution.
Who the hell could have known that he was here in London on the sort of business that usually stayed secret and unheralded? What had happened after he had left the boarding house on Brompton Place?
He could remember very little of the previous night’s attack, save for speaking to Lady Addington in a bedchamber when he’d been cleaned up and the doctor had left. The swelling in his side was greater this morning, the tight heat releasing into a throbbing ache. There were slight memories of sleet and cold and the sound of a carriage coming on as he fell, but that was about the most of it.
Would Lady Addington talk to the London law-keepers and give them his description? Would there be repercussions that might follow? He had no family here save for his younger sister and his two ageing aunts. A further worry that, for their safety was paramount in everything he did.
Violet Addington’s freckles had been astonishing and her colouring had held the sort of vivid glowing richness that he could never before remember seeing and now could not forget.
She’d worn a diamond ring on the third finger of her left hand, but there had been no sign of a husband save for the portrait he’d caught sight of at the bottom of the stairs as he had left, the night light in the hall falling across the face of a man who was imposing and elegant. Her countenance was drawn beside his, a younger, more uncertain version of the woman she’d become.
Rising from the water, he took a towel from the rack and tied it about his waist, catching his reflection in the full-length mirror. He rarely looked at himself these days, but tonight he did. Tonight the scar on his chin was raised and red in the light and the new wound above his ear ate into the black of his hair. His chest was bandaged, hiding ruin’s pathway across the skin, though the swollen bruising on his arm was visible.
His life was reflected in the hardness of his eyes and in the deep lines that ran down each side of his face. Every year he’d worked for the Ministère de la Guerre had placed new scars upon him. The sabre cuts across his back, the many small knife wounds that ran over his hands and his lower arms, the missing half-finger resulting from the debacle with Les Chevaliers and his betrayal by Celeste Fournier-Shayborne.
He knew that the Addington servants must have seen such ruination upon him and wondered just what they might have relayed to their mistress. Or to a master?
The cross on plaited leather at his neck caught his attention next. Veronique. He’d taken it from her body after he’d pulled her out of the Seine and he’d never removed it. The remnants of lost chances and the aching brokenness of love. The beginning of his indifference, too.
A clean shirt hid most of the damage as he pulled it on, a pair of breeches following and then his boots. This double game of intelligence was taking his life piece by piece.
At any moment chaos could consume him. He felt it coming as a bleakness he could not control and then as a shaking that numbed all he knew to be good.
The images of Paris were there, too, of course, Henri Clarke’s ministère and its constant and brutal violence. There was softness in small snatches at brothels and taverns filled with music, connections of the flesh that held only darkness and brevity.
Once he had been a good man. He’d believed in justice and equality and fairness. Once he had slumbered from dusk to dawn barely moving, his dreams quiet, graceful things without any of the monsters that now came calling as soon as he shut his eyes.
In the town house of Lady Addington he had slept the best he had in months. He could barely believe it when the clock in the corridor outside had struck out the hour of six and he had woken.
Three hours of straight and uninterrupted slumber. It was a record.
He knew he had to go back into society to complete his mission here, but she would recognise him now, would know his face. Would she be wise enough to keep quiet about their meeting in the middle of a cold London night? He didn’t want her to be implicated. He didn’t want her to be pulled into something he knew could hurt her.
But if she saw him unbidden? What might happen then? What if her servants talked? Or the driver of the Addington conveyance? Or the doctor with his clumsy hands? Even the plump housekeeper had watched him in a way that made him wonder.
Hell. He never took these risks at home, never walked through the streets of Paris compromised by mistake. He was getting old and soft, that was the trouble. Thirty-four years were upon him already and, he wondered, would he even manage thirty-five?
The wound at his side pulled as he turned too fast and he placed his arm hard against the pain, containing it and keeping it in. He’d need to lay low for a week at least to gather strength, but after that he meant to find those who had ordered his demise. Find them and deal with them. He had his leads and his hunches in the art of intelligence had always served him well.
After his father came to England, they would never return to France. There would be no more favours, no more final turn of the dice for a regime he’d long since stopped believing in. He would live on his estate in the ordered greenness of Sussex.
Compton Park.
The remodelling had been finished for a good ten months now and yet he had barely spent a night there. He wanted that to change. He needed a base so that all the parts of him that were compromised did not spin out, never to be regathered again. Lost in artifice and trickery.
He needed light.
That thought had him swearing because the only woman he had ever met with a distinct aura of brightness was Lady Addington and she was probably rueing her decision to pick him up off the freezing streets to take him home.
Such rumination made him feel dizzy and he sat with relief on the leather chair in his dressing room, a drink in hand and trying to regain a balance that could allow his breath to soften.
He could do nothing yet. He needed to get stronger, needed the weakness that held him captive to dissipate and to lessen. Wisdom came with the knowing of when to wait and when to strike and at this moment he understood that his physical means were restricted.
Drawing in, he made himself relax, made himself reach for the remembered warmth of a Parisian summer, the music in the streets of Montmartre, the pastries in the small bakeries off St Germaine. The lazy flow of the Seine was there, too, in his mind’s eye, wending its easy way through the city, as were the ancient mellow buildings of the Marais with its hidden spaces and green trees. The history of life wound about his uncertainty, knitting resolve and purpose together.
His thumb rubbed across the engraving on his ring which evoked the traditions of an ancient and powerful family. Such rituals heartened him and rebuilt the shaken foundations of his hurt.
Lord, how many are my foes.
How many rise up against me...
David’s Prayer of Deliverance had helped him many times and he liked the peace of it. Finishing the entreaty and the last of his drink he leaned back against leather and closed his eyes. To rest, not to sleep. He’d long since given up even the hope of that.
Six nights later Summerley Shayborne, Viscount Luxford, was at his door.
‘This is unexpected.’ Aurelian could barely take in his friend’s presence.
‘Celeste insisted I come up to see you, Lian. She felt there was something wrong.’
‘Has your wife become a clairvoyant now? A woman who might see through space and time?’
‘More like a pregnant and anxious worrier. She has constant inklings of imminent danger about those who are close to her and sends me to check.’
Aurelian smiled. Shay’s wife might have been the reason for the scar on his chin and the missing half-finger but there was a lot of respect between them now. He liked Celeste Shayborne, loved her even, if he were to be honest, like a favoured sister or cousin.
‘I am fine.’
He suddenly remembered uttering those very words when first Violet Addington had leaned over him on the street, the clouds above her filled with snow. A new memory, that. He filed it away to think about later.
‘Hawkins said that you were lucky to escape with your life. Your valet said a bullet that went through your arm and side festered and it was only the ministrations and expertise of your old aunt’s physician that stood between you and death.’
‘Hawkins talks too much.’
‘Your valet is the cousin of mine. He feels he is family and kin looks after its own.’
Family. Shay had always been like that to him, the brother he’d never had and a friend who through thick and thin had stuck beside him.
‘Someone is trying to kill me, Shay.’
‘Hell.’
‘Someone sent a note to meet at the boarding house at Brompton Place. My assailant shot me the moment I arrived, missing anything important inside by a hair’s breadth.’
‘Had you seen him before?’
‘No, but he was well dressed and had a heavy purse in his jacket pocket.’
‘When you first arrived in England two weeks ago, you said that you were here to recover some lost gold. Someone might be more than interested in stopping you from doing that.’
Lian crossed the room and found two glasses and his best bottle of brandy. Proceeding to pour out generous drinks, he motioned Shay to take a seat in a chair by the fire and, when he did so, took the opposite one himself.
‘Interested because ill-gotten gains can make men do a lot of things that they might not otherwise countenance?’
‘Like shoot a man in cold blood?’
He smiled. ‘That, too. Those in Paris who sent the gold to England in the first place now want it back, for it seems that their plans of a rebellion against the English way of life has come to nothing.’
‘That’s what this is about? Napoleon languishes at Elba. They can’t possibly think to keep his hopes of conquering Europe again alive.’
‘There were six substantial shipments of gold sent in the hopes of inciting insurgence. They stopped fourteen months ago.’
‘Shipments to whom?’
‘That’s the problem. Whoever received the gold was careful to hide their identity, but a small statue was sent anonymously to Paris warning against dispatching more. The gold marks on the piece had been tampered with and the bust consisted mostly of silver and lead.’
‘A way to hide the missing gold should anyone ask after it?’
‘Precisely. The jeweller who I am led to believe fashioned the piece is away from London until the week after next and has left no mention of his travel intentions. When I see him perhaps then there will be some answers.’
‘Leaving you as the one visible person trying to shed light on a world of greed?’
This time Lian laughed. ‘Everyone is expendable. You of all people would know that, Shay.’
‘Then get out. Come south to Sussex and stop. Settle down at Compton Park and become another man, a happier one, just as I have. Leave the gold alone and allow others to die for its recovery.’
Shay’s advice was so like the hope he had just been ruminating on that Lian felt the rip of it in his heart. ‘My father is still in Paris.’
‘So if you were to defect now he would be at risk?’
‘Precisely.’
He liked talking with Shay. He liked his honest astuteness. He liked that the shadows others never saw were so much part of what they both knew. It made the truth easy.
He could see the thoughts racing in his friend’s eyes and knew the moment when the tumblers clicked into place.
‘You’ve been made the damn bait for all of this?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you think you can win against everyone in a city that you no longer know well?’
‘It’s still possible. These people are sometimes like amateurs who are easy to gain the measure of.’
‘The other night did not sound so easy. Who the hell was it that rescued you, then?’
Lian gritted his teeth together and shook his head. He should have known that this would be the next question.
‘Lady Addington, a widow from Chelsea, brought me back to her home. I have found out since that she was married to Viscount Addington, a minor aristocrat from the north. She came down here to London after the death of her husband.’
‘Addington? The name is familiar although I cannot quite place it.’
‘A statue identical to the one that turned up in Paris sat on the mantel of her downstairs salon.’
The shock of that statement settled for a moment into the silence, vibrating into question.
‘So Violet Addington knew you would be there? On that particular street after midnight? She is involved?’
‘I hope not.’
‘Why?’
‘I’d be long dead if she had not picked me up out of the gutter. I think I owe her something for it.’
Shay started to laugh. ‘There’s more, by God, for you don’t even sound like yourself. Work was always strictly professional for you and damned be anyone who got in the way.’
‘That was when I believed in Napoleon’s ability to make France a better place. Then I didn’t and your own wife was a part of that. When she exposed me in Paris I understood that there was no true loyalty left and the idea of spilling one’s blood for nothing was less appealing.’
‘I still have contacts, Lian. Good ones, too. Perhaps...’
‘No. Your loyalties now lie with your family, with Celeste and Loring and the new little one when it comes. I can handle this.’
‘Wounded and alone?’
‘I am improving daily. This morning I managed the stairs without holding on to the banister. Tomorrow I will climb them twice.’
‘Someone knows you are here and if they are prepared to kill you without any dialogue at all, then everyone is dangerous. You have to promise me that you’ll send word if you need help.’
Lian nodded, but knew that only if he lay dying would he consider it and he did not intend for that to happen. His more usual manner was reasserting itself, the ideas churning and the details noticed. It was a jigsaw, intelligence, all the pieces needing to be put in just the right place. Talking to Shay had steadied him and made him think. He would need to go back to see Violet Addington and ask her about the statue.
He dreaded her answer.
When the conversation turned to other things, Aurelian relaxed. It was good to have a friend to talk with.
‘How is Celeste’s grandmother?’
‘Flourishing as she hurls advice and gives her opinion on any and everything related to bringing up children.’
‘Yet her own were such disappointments.’
‘Well, Celeste says that a second chance is what everybody needs and she is going to give it with love to Susan Joyce.’
‘You were lucky in her, Shay. Lucky to have found her.’
‘And don’t I know it.’
Fiddling with his glass, Lian leaned back in the wing chair, the ancient leather squeaking.
‘When did you realise that she was the one, the one you loved? The one you could not live without.’
‘About a moment after I met her again in Paris in heavy disguise and whispering sensitive state secrets. Why do you want to know that?’
Lian looked down, careful to shade his eyes. Shay was a man who noticed almost as much as he did and it was always the tiny gestures that gave one away.
‘Sometimes it is good to hear about things that are not hard or wrong or dangerous.’
‘Does Lytton Staines know you are back?’
‘I haven’t seen him yet, but then I have not been here for long. He is due back from Scotland tomorrow.’
‘My advice would be to go out on the town with him when you are better, for in a social setting you can observe Lady Addington without being noticed. See who she converses with. Find out those who might also be involved and get your leads there. If you are going to be the lure in all of this, you may as well go slowly and carefully so that what’s just happened to you never does so again. Where was the gold sent to here in England?’
‘To a man who went by the name of Derwent in Kensington. I followed up that lead and can find no sign that he ever existed.’
‘A front, then?’
‘The investors in Paris received acknowledgement of the donations. They also received correspondence outlining detailed plans of connecting with others who were anti-government here. Then communication simply stopped about a year and a half ago.’
‘It took you a while to get here, then?’
‘Those sending the gold were all gentlemen. They did not wish to be identified publicly with such an endeavour, preferring to make it a more private crusade.’
‘What changed?’
‘When the statue turned up with the warning they thought that blackmail might come next.’
‘And because you were half-English and had been to school here you were chosen as the one to come and sort it all out?’
‘Not quite. After your wife’s accusations against me in Paris I have been watched, though distrusted might even be a better word for it. When I was shot in the boarding house on Brompton Place I even wondered if the man was not French.’
‘God. A double-cross? Le Ministère de la Guerre?’
‘The struggle for power is never easy. People do not wish to relinquish their assets without a fight.’
‘And one of those assets is you?’
Lian began to laugh and felt better. It had been a long time since he had been able to speak so openly like this.
‘I got out the money I had in France a good while ago after selling my personal properties.’
‘Which was another black mark to your name?’
‘I suppose so. Being the first to recognise the truth of Napoleon’s doomed campaigns and act upon it leaves others...vengeful. The noble families are not what they once were in France, for although aristocracy is tolerated it is no longer encouraged. Papa sent my sister and his old aunts here to England when he sensed the danger in it all, but nothing could induce him to leave.’
‘So he stayed?’
‘My mother’s grave is at Vernon. That was part of it, too. His heart lies in that soil.’
‘The soft underside of true politics? The place where the soul collides with reason?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘So your first questions will be to Lady Addington.’
He nodded, hating to have her name so carelessly tossed into the ring. ‘She is scared somehow and isolated. When she speaks there are shadows in her words.’
‘How long were you in her house?’
‘Four hours and I slept for three of them.’
Shay finished his brandy and got up to pour himself another. ‘She made quite an impression on you, then, for such a brief acquaintance.’
‘There were many books in French in the downstairs library, though the whole place looked shabby and in need of redecoration.’
‘The twin persuasions of loyalty and greed.’
‘But that’s not enough, is it? I need a reason. She is a lady and a gentlewoman. She is delicate and thin. Her hands are soft. Her heart is kind.’
‘The husband, then? Lord Addington? How did he die?’
‘In an accident in the Addington stables. One of his prize stallions booted him.’
‘Were there witnesses?’
‘None.’
‘Easy to apply such a death, then, if you had the motivation. Enough gold might give you that.’
‘There’s something else, too.’ He waited until Shay returned again before beginning.
‘Violet Addington’s father, Wilfred Bartholomew, was a northern businessman made rich by his acquisition of jewellery shops.’
‘A man who knew his way around gold, then, and how to stretch its worth.’
‘And his sister left England years ago to marry a Frenchman and settle in Lyon. A family connection?’
Shay stood against the warmth of flame. ‘I miss it sometimes, Lian, all the energy of intelligence. I miss it until I kiss my wife and son and understand the impossibility of ever inviting danger to arrive again at my hearth.’
Lian knew exactly what it was he spoke about. ‘When I get out I will be like you and never look back. It will be a relief.’
‘Then do it soon, for you appear as if you have not slept well for a year.’
‘That’s probably because I haven’t.’
‘Here’s to Lady Addington, then, a woman who fills you with light and sleep.’
Chapter Three (#u00340f8a-934c-527f-a28a-a3af51ed4bd3)
The music was the ‘Duke of Kent’s Waltz’. Violet had always hated the piece and she gritted her teeth together to try to block out the anger inside that arose unbidden. The country-dance tune had been the one she had been playing on her small piano at Addington Manor when Harland had found out her father’s will had left him all the Bartholomew wealth and he reasoned he no longer needed to be conciliatory.
She’d dressed with care tonight, though her ancient green high-necked gown was plain. Harland would have loathed it because it did nothing to dampen down her vivid colouring and consume some of the flame. She remembered her husband wrapping her hair around his fist and pulling her into him, not in gentleness but in a burning anger.
‘Stop showing yourself like you do, Violet. Stop being brazen. You are no longer a simple commoner, but the wife of a viscount. Act like it.’
Tonight she had caught the length of her tresses up and added a turban to hide them, though there was no help for the fire-flamed tendrils that kept escaping around her face.
‘Your hair is reminiscent of the shade a street prostitute might favour.’ Harland had let her know of all the connotations of the colour after their marriage and for the first few years she had taken to dyeing it a dark brown.
Since coming out of an enforced mourning a few months ago, she’d often worn bright hues, six years of anonymity enough of a punishment for any woman with sense. But she had yet to release her hair from the confines of habit and thus the turban had stayed.
‘Violet.’ The call of her name had her turning and a friend, Lady Antonia MacMillan, caught at her arm. ‘I’ve been waiting an age for you to come and thought you must have decided to stay home.’
‘I was at the Wilsons’ ball for the early part of the evening and did not realise the lateness of the hour.’
Amara had taken herself off to sit along the side of the room. Violet thought she would join her after talking with Antonia. Tonight she felt tired and a bit restless. It had been over two weeks since rescuing her stranger from the frozen street and she thought he might have contacted her somehow. But he hadn’t.
‘Well, I am so glad you have arrived for you need to catch sight of the Comte de Beaumont. He has most recently returned from Paris and has set the ton alight. There are, of course, a few whispers of his past which only help to make him more...alluring.’
‘Whispers?’ She smiled at the theatrical voice Antonia used.
‘He was once heartbroken. His young wife drowned.’
The sadness of such a thing washed across Violet. For young lovers to be parted for ever by such adversity was shocking, though a little piece of her also thought if Harland had been snatched away by ill fortune in the first month of their marriage she would have remembered him with far more fondness.
‘He is tall, handsome and clever and I have been doing my very best to catch his eye all evening, but to no avail whatsoever...’
Such words produced a wariness and she hoped that Antonia would not throw herself at the man in her company. She was here at the Creightons’ ball for the light conversation and not for the machinations of attraction, so when Mr Douglas Cummings crossed the floor to ask her for the next dance, Violet assented.
Cummings was a man who sorely needed a woman to boost his morale and confidence and a shudder went through her. Once she had been that sort of a wife to Harland.
The anger that sat close made her breathe in deeply. It was why she came to these soirées night after night and stayed late into the early mornings so that when she reached her home and her bed she would be weak with exhaustion and would sleep. Dreamless.
She was thinner than she had been in years, the generous curves that her husband had delighted in at first now lessened. A changed and altered appearance; but it was the inside she truly worried about, for there were weeks when she felt empty save for an all-consuming fury.
It was on the third turn of the room dancing in the arms of Mr Douglas Cummings that she saw him, standing over against the wall and surrounded by people. She felt her footing falter.
‘Are you quite well? We can sit this dance out should you wish it.’ Cummings’s words held question.
‘No, it was only a misstep.’
Her voice sounded off even to her own ears, but she wanted to pass by again to make sure that it was truly her mysterious stranger and the best way to do this was by using the waltz.
She tried to smile and concentrate, on Cummings, on the dance steps, on her heartbeat that sounded louder and louder in her ears. Then he was in sight again, twenty feet away, speaking with a woman whose hand rested in a daring fashion across his chest.
There was no sign at all of the wound above his right ear. Tonight his hair was en queue, tightly tied back, and was much longer than anyone here wore theirs. He looked different from the man who had been pale and drawn and trussed up in a nightgown in her house.
He looked magnificent.
Who was he?
As though she had spoken out loud he looked up and their gazes caught across the space. Shocking. Unfathomable. For the first time in a long, long while Violet felt her body rouse into heat. Breaking the contact, she turned back to her dancing partner.
‘There are many people here tonight, almost a crush.’ If each word held a quiver, Cummings had the good grace not to comment upon it.
‘It’s the speciality of the Creightons. Invite anybody and everybody and hope that in the mix there is scandal and mayhem. They thrive on it and it is why the invites are so sought after.’
‘A dangerous logic?’
‘And yet everyone turns up because it is mesmerising to see the risk of chaos in action.’
Her head felt light and she clutched at Cummings’s hand more tightly than she meant to. Would there be some repercussion this evening to the man with the scar on his chin? Were there others here tonight who might know of the fracas in the boarding house on Brompton Place? More than a fracas. A murder. Over two weeks ago now which could indicate some sense of safety?
She did not recognise any of the men who stood in the group around him. The ladies were some of the most beautiful women of the ton and the ones whose reputations were not quite solid. The stranger gave off the same sort of air, one of danger and risk and plain pure sexuality. The connection shocked her.
‘I think perhaps I might sit down now, Mr Cummings, if you do not mind.’
When she peered back at the group in the corner she saw that his interest had once again been taken by the woman beside him and he was laughing at something she’d said, the lines in his cheeks deeply etched.
Dismissed and forgotten. Perhaps he truly did not recognise her or perhaps he did and wanted no reminder of that particular peculiar evening. Both possibilities left her with no avenue of further discourse.
Antonia swept into view beside her even as Violet sat.
‘Did you see the French Comte? You must have noticed him. He is over by the pillars at the far side of the room?’
‘Who?’ An inkling as to just what Antonia was going to say raced through reason.
‘The Comte de Beaumont, of course. The man I was telling you of. I saw you looking at him so do not say you weren’t. Is he not just the most divine creature you have ever laid your eyes on?’
Her stranger was the Comte de Beaumont? The man recently come into English society and sending all its ladies into swoons?
Such a realisation was shocking, but beneath this truth other things were solidifying. He was unmatched, but he was also full of a darkness that could only hurt her.
‘My brother said he saw him going into one of the wicked opium dens in town. To partake, do you think?’ The shock in Antonia’s eyes was underlined by excitement.
Harland had used laudanum in the last years of his life, too, as an aid to his gambling losses, the sickly-sweet smell still inclined to make her feel ill. The dream weaver, he had called it, as he’d tried to foist it upon her.
‘It might loosen you up, Violet. You used to be so much more fun than you are now.’
He had said other things, too; an undertone of bitter recrimination in each and every word.
With determination she pulled her thoughts back to this minute, the gentle three-point melody of a waltz in the distance and the chandeliers above twinkling in long lines of muted light. The beauty and energy of the room swirled around her. Here nothing sordid or ignoble could touch her. Here she was beyond reproach and lauded.
The vanity of such a thought worried her, but she tossed that aside.
Could the Comte de Beaumont have murdered a man a few moments before she’d found him? There had been blood on the blade in his boot and much more on his clothes.
‘The Frenchman is a man of secrets, would you not say, for there are whispers that in Paris his family escaped the Terror unscathed and are rich beyond imagination.’
‘Anything can be said of anyone, Antonia, yet that does not make it true.’
Her friend smiled. ‘Still, is there not something about him, Violet? Some tempting beauty? Lady Catherine Osborne obviously thinks so, for look how she hangs on to him as if she might never let him go.’
Making no effort to turn in that direction, Violet wished that her friend would show the same sort of reserve.
‘His mother was English. One of the Forsythes from Essex, although she passed away a good few years ago in France. His father is still hale and hearty. Duc de Lorraine-Lillebonne is his title as he hails from that ancient family.’
Lineage and wealth. No wonder the Comte was being fêted by all the women of the ton. But why then had she found him lying wounded on the side of a cold and midnight road, a man who had given her no name by which to place him?
Secrets. They hung across his shoulders like a heavy mantle; she could see it in the way he held himself and in the quiet watchfulness of his person. Perhaps it took one to know one, she also thought, wondering if her own mistruths were so very easily noted.
The sound of the orchestra tuning up for another dance caught at her attention and she smiled. The quadrille. More usually on any given night her dance card would have been full, but because she had been so late in arriving this evening she had not even taken it out of her reticule. She was pleased that she hadn’t, for it meant she could leave earlier and without comment.
Antonia knocked at her arm. ‘De Beaumont is coming this way with my brother. Smile, Violet, for you have the grimace of one marching to her death instead of feasting your eyes and appreciating true masculine beauty.’
Gregory MacMillan was all eagerness as he reached them. ‘Comte de Beaumont, may I present my sister, Lady Antonia MacMillan, and her great friend Lady Addington. The Comte is recently come from Paris and has asked me for an introduction to the two most beautiful women in the room.’
When Violet looked up she could see that the flowery words of Antonia’s brother were just that. The Comte de Beaumont looked as surprised by the sentiment as she had been.
‘I am pleased to meet you both.’
So that is how he wished to play it, the recent history between them discounted. With a small tip of her head she noticed that Antonia was doing her very best to crawl up against the newcomer. ‘I do hope that you are enjoying your sojourn to London, Comte?’
The flirtatiousness in her tone made Violet wince.
Please, God, she thought, let this finish. Let him move away before the dancing begins in earnest. Let him tip his head and leave us behind.
‘It is a city I do not know well any more, I am afraid, Lady Antonia. A city of contrasts.’
Dangerous and bustling. Lies and truth. Gunshots and dancing. Coyness and peril. Life and death. Love and hate. Light and darkness.
He did not now exhibit any semblance of pain or discomfort and the scar across his chin looked almost pale, lost in the dim light of candelabras.
But Antonia had not finished with all her questions. ‘I have heard you have bought a house in Sussex, my lord, and a very fine one by all accounts.’
‘Indeed. I was down south for a few weeks last year and purchased it on a whim.’
A whim?
The Comte de Beaumont did not look like a man who ever acted upon whims. Light and fancy things, whims. When he saw Violet smile at such a musing his eyes darkened.
‘Would you like to dance, Lady Addington? I think I can just about remember the steps of the quadrille.’
She could not refuse under such close perusal, though Antonia did not look pleased at all.
Within a moment he had shepherded her on to the floor, the touch of his good arm burning into her back. When they stood to face each other she was lost for words.
‘Thank you.’ His voice was low and quiet.
For the lie? For the dance? For not calling in at the Home Office and telling them her story in detail? For standing there and pretending she did not know him? For rescuing him from certain death on a frozen night?
‘You are welcome.’
Here was not the place for more with the cream of the ton present, as their love of gossip and scandal could ruin him. Violet wondered if de Beaumont held a knife in his pocket even under the lights and among the rustle of silk. She decided that he must.
‘You have made quite an impression in society since arriving in England, Comte de Beaumont. Everyone is talking of you and you have not been here long.’
‘A daunting thing that, Lady Addington, given our circumstances.’
‘I received your note.’ She whispered this, just in case.
‘And I meant every word on it.’
She felt the tightening of his fingers against her hand, a small and hidden communication. Barely there.
‘Why?’
Suddenly she no longer wanted to be so careful. If he had murdered a man the other week he was not someone she should encourage. But then again if he hadn’t...
‘When someone saves your life there is a debt owed.’
‘And when someone takes a life it is just the same.’
‘Touché,’ he whispered as the dance pulled them apart into the arms of others.
When he returned she felt a giddy sense of place, but firmly squashed it down as his arms linked with her own.
‘Do you try to make yourself unattractive, Lady Addington?’
She nearly missed her step.
‘The turban does not suit you. Neither does the gown.’
The shock of such an unexpected and personal remark ran through her unchecked. ‘My dressmaker would be distraught.’
‘How old is the woman?’
‘Pardon?’
‘The female who fashions your garments? What is her age?’
Violet frowned, thinking of how hard she had worked all week to modify her ancient gown with her lady’s maid to make it presentable. She had never been offered a budget for clothing when she had been married and now even making ends meet was hard. Harland’s heavy gambling had all but ruined them, the town house the only thing as his widow she had been able to save unencumbered. There had certainly not been enough left for a refurbishment or for new gowns.
‘I think you should hardly be—’
He interrupted her.
‘Tell her to find a dark blue velvet and to slash down both the neckline and the sleeves. More is not always better,’ he added and she saw a definite twinkle in his eyes.
‘The Parisian love of decadence might not suit the British mentality.’
‘And you think the Puritan look does? Look around you. Others show much more than an inch of skin. You are still a woman beneath the heavy serge and one with gentle curves. I felt them when you helped me up from the frozen street.’
‘A gentleman does not mention such things, sir.’
‘Yet it seems to me you need to hear them, my lady. You are hiding yourself and I am wondering why?’
This sort of conversation was one she was unpractised at, though the tone of it was exhilarating.
‘Is every young lord in Paris tutored in this art of shallow flattery?’
‘I wasn’t at school in France.’
‘Oh.’ She was surprised by his answer.
‘I went to Eton and then on to Oxford. A proper English upbringing with all my manners minded.’
‘But then you left. You went home again?’
‘Home,’ he repeated, ‘is often not where one expects it to be.’
‘You talk in riddles, my lord, and I comprehend that your dancing style is so much more proficient than my own. Do not ask me to stand up with you again because I shall refuse.’
‘Because you would worry about the opinions of those around you?’
‘Oh, indeed I would, sir. If you do not realise that, then you fail to know me at all.’
‘A disappointing honesty.’
‘And there are so many more of them.’
‘Violet.’
‘Yes.’ She jumped at his informal use of her name.
‘Stop talking and dance with me.’
When he pulled her closer and his arms led her into steps she had never before learned she wondered if perhaps he was a magician making gold from clay, making flame from ashes.
‘Will you be in London for long, Comte de Beaumont?’ She asked this as the music slowed a few moments later.
‘I hope not.’
‘You will return to Paris, then?’
‘No.’
Her effort at small talk faltered back into silence and on the final flourish of the violin he dropped her hand and bowed at her solemnly. Then he was gone.
Violet found Antonia with two of her other friends and joined their small group. She would have simply liked to have walked to the door and left, to have found her carriage and retreated from the battle. For that is exactly what this meeting had felt like. As it was, she would need to wait for Amara’s return from wherever it was she had disappeared to because she knew there would be questions otherwise.
It seemed that any conversation with the unknowable French Count always spiralled into uncertainty. She felt the anger of him, too, the hidden man under the urbanity of the more public one. His hands were not soft. They were the hands of one who had toiled and worked hard. He smelt of both brandy and lavender, the two scents combining into a wholly masculine flavour.
His sense of humour worried her the most. She knew that he watched her for she caught his glance across the room and hurriedly looked away.
What could he want? What did she? She wished suddenly that they might have met in the park, sheltered by the greenery from the eyes of others. And then what?
Lord, what was happening to her? For six years she had been frozen into shame and woodenness, any sense of the intimate pushed away firmly and resolutely. Yet just with one small dance it was as if a dam had been breached, allowing life to begin again, to green and blossom.
Le Comte de Beaumont probably had not even realised he was doing it. He was a man who would be overrun with feminine company, a male who would understand exactly his effect on the opposite sex.
She was twenty-seven years old, after all, and not a debutante filled with hopes and fantasy. She frowned, remembering Harland. He had swept her off her feet within a month and she had never thought to question all the things that did not quite add up about him.
Well, here was another man where nothing about him truly made sense. A wealthy foreign aristocrat in London and looking for what? He had said that he would not be here long and yet he had purchased a place in Sussex? A further question. The top portion of the third finger on his right hand was missing, a scar attesting to the injury.
A man of war, she thought, but not a soldier.
The settle of coldness within her began to build just as a shout of anger and challenge rang out from his direction.
‘You think that you can get away with this, you French bastard, just walk in here and have society at your feet?’
The shorter fellow standing before de Beaumont had pulled himself right up into the Comte’s face and had raised his voice in a threatening manner.
‘You are more than inebriated, sir, and most irritating with it. Perhaps you should go away?’ These words were strained and less than flattering, the Comte’s accent all perfect English privilege and wealth.
But the other man was not backing off, whether by reason of hard liquor or of poor judgement, and she watched him raise his fist and slam it directly into the mouth of the Frenchman.
A general gasp emanated all around them and there was a skittering as those in the burst of violence rushed out of the way, the exodus bringing her in closer to the action. It was easy to see the fury on de Beaumont’s face.
Another assailant spun into the fracas, but the Comte simply caught his hand and twisted it, the aggressor screaming in pain. Then everything disintegrated as further punches were thrown. Suddenly the whole side at this end of the room seemed to be involved in a brawling fight.
This would never have happened in any other social situation of the ton, but those here this evening were a varied lot and the chance of a fight seemed to be exactly what they were waiting for.
De Beaumont looked more than at home and he was a most proficient adversary, for he shook off his assailants while barely breaking a sweat.
Violet shouted out a warning as a further man came from behind him, but already Antonia was pulling at her arm.
‘Come, Violet. It is dangerous to be so close. There is no sense here—’
She did not finish, for there was the crash of a body hard against their own and then dizziness. When Violet put her hand up to her head she felt a sizeable lump and she straightened her silk turban with shaking fingers.
The room stood still, a slow-motion dance of eyes turning, the floating yellow fabric ballooned against each wall strange and blurring. Sound seemed diminished and distant and she was having difficulty in breathing.
Tilting her head, she saw the Comte watching her, blood on his lip and fury in his eyes. Then Antonia grabbed at her and lead her away.
‘Are you hurt, Violet? My goodness, I have never in my whole life seen such a terrible thing.’
Her head ached and she was dizzy, but she did not wish to make a fuss. Amara was at her side now, too, shaking her head.
‘We should not have come here—I knew it. The Creightons have little taste and even less sense. We should leave straight away.’
With a ringing in her ears and a feeling of nausea rising, Violet did just as they both wanted her to and turned for the door.
The French Comte had disappeared and she thought that he would just have to take his chances even with a recent bullet wound to the side. Only a few weeks had passed since his being almost dead and she imagined that he might have had the sense to lie low and recover. The beautiful woman he had been attached to was nowhere to be seen, either, so perhaps they had both left together? That realisation was surprisingly hurtful and she quickly shook it away.
Violet awoke in her room just as the clock outside in the hallway struck three. The Comte de Beaumont sat on the chair beside the bed, watching her. Surprisingly, she felt in no danger at all.
‘I am sorry for what happened tonight.’
Violet held up her hand as though to stop any apology.
‘How did you get in?’
‘Your locks are very flimsy. It would be safer to have them changed.’
Ignoring that, she sat up further. The evening before had been like a small window into the life of a man for whom violence was a common theme and she could scarcely believe that he was here. ‘Who are you?’
‘Aurelian de la Tomber. My friends call me Lian.’
‘And am I that? A friend?’
‘You tried to help me a few hours ago. Why?’
‘Help you?’ She was stalling for time and he knew it.
‘By calling out. By warning me. By involving yourself in something you should not have.’
‘Because you are dangerous?’
‘Completely.’ One word ground out slowly. One word that didn’t seem quite so English now. ‘And you got wounded because of it.’
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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: Dark. Dangerous. Damaged.This man will protect her.After years of an unhappy and bitter marriage, cautious Lady Violet Addington is intrigued by the Comte de Beaumont. His air of danger, mysterious scars and pure sexuality pose a temptation that’s hard to resist. Threatened by her late husband’s enemies, she makes a daring proposition: in exchange for the Comte’s protection, she’ll join him in his bed!