Читать книгу Regency Society - Хелен Диксон, Ann Lethbridge, Хелен Диксон - Страница 10

She felt the bud of excitement, the near promise of something she had never known. Breathing in, she whispered a name.

‘Taris.’

His name.

The answering curse pulled her fully awake, his face close, the darkness of it lightened by the line of his teeth as he spoke.

‘Beatrice-Maude? Is there a name that you are called other than that? It is long, after all, and I thought—’

‘Bea.’ She broke into his words with a whisper. ‘My mother always called me Bea.’

‘Bea,’ he repeated, turning the name over on his tongue and she felt his breath against her face as he said it. So close, so very close. He held his hand across her waist when she tried to pull back.

‘Bea as in Bea-witching?’

His fingers trailed down her cheek, warm and real.

‘Or Bea as in Bea-utiful?’

She tensed, waiting for his laugh, but it did not come.

‘Hardly that, sir.’ She felt the heavy thrump of her heartbeat in her throat. Was he jesting with her? Was he a man who lied in order to receive what he wanted, who thought such untruthful inanities the desperate fodder expected by very plain women? She tried to turn from him to find a distance, the sheer necessity of emotional survival paramount.

‘What is it? What is wrong?’ A thread of some uncertainty in his voice was the only thing that held her in place. If she had heard condescension or falsity she would have stood, denying his suggestion of more, even knowing that she might never in her whole life be offered anything as remotely tempting.

Again.

‘I should rather honesty, sir.’

‘Sir?’ The word ended in a laugh. ‘Surely “sir” is too formal for the position we now find ourselves in?’ He did not take back his compliments and another bark of laughter left her dazed.

‘Are you a celibate widow, Mrs Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke?’

She started to nod and then changed her mind, not sure of exactly what he alluded to.

‘Then I suppose there is another question I must ask of you. Are you a woman who would say nay to the chance of sharing more than just warmth together here in the midst of a storm?’

His voice was silken smooth, a tone in it that she could not quite fathom.

Her brows knitted together. ‘I don’t understand.’

He pushed inwards and the hardness of his sex made everything crystal clear.

A dalliance. A tryst. One stolen and forbidden night. For twelve years she had wondered what it would be like to lie with a man who was not greedy or selfish. A man who might consider her needs as well as his own. Always lovemaking had hurt her; he had hurt her when she had tried to take her pleasure in the act. Frankwell Bassingstoke and his angry punitive hands.

What would Taris Wellingham’s touch be like, his slender fingers finding places she had only ever dreamed about?

Lord, but to dare to take the chance of one offered providence and the end of it come morning.

No strings attached, no empty unfilled promises to lie awake and worry over come the weeks and months that followed. Only these hours, the darkness sheltering anything she did not wish him to see. And then an ending.

Twenty-eight and finally free. The heady promise of it was as exhilarating as it was unexpected.

‘You mean this for just one night only?’

She needed to understand the parameters of such a request, for if he said he wanted more she would know that he lied and know also that she should not want it.

‘Yes.’

Freedom. Impunity. Self-government and her own reign.

Words that had been the antithesis of all she had been for the past twelve years and words that she vowed would shape her life for all of those still to come.

Her husband’s face hovered above her, his heavy frown and sanctimonious nature everything that she had hated. At sixteen she had not been old enough to recognise the faults and flaws of a man who would become her husband, but at twenty-eight she certainly did.

He had been a bully, an oppressive domineering tyrant and with his bent for religious righteousness she had never quite been able to counter any of it.

She shook her head hard. Nay, all that was over. Now she would do only as she wanted so long as it did not harm any other.

‘Are you married?’

Her question was blurted out. If he said that he was, she would not touch him.

‘No.’

Permission granted. Placing her hand flat on his chest, her forefinger found his nipple. With deliberation she lent down and wet it with her tongue, blowing on the cold as she caressed it into rigidity.

When he stretched out and groaned she felt the control of a woman with power. Feminine power, the feeling unlike any she had ever experienced.

She did not feel guilty as Frankwell had said that she must, she did not feel sullied or soiled or befouled. Nay, she felt the sheer and utter wonder of it, the bewildering rarity of rightness.

Here. With Taris Wellingham. For this one storm-snowed freezing night.

‘Thank you.’ The words slipped out without recognition as to what she had said. A beholden contentment that broke through all that she had believed of herself or all that a husband steeped in damning religion had believed. In just one touch Frankwell’s hold on the tenure of her moral pureness was gone, replaced simply by comprehension and relief.

She smiled as his fingers began to unlace her bodice and the thin lawn fell away.

‘Thank you?’

The restraint that Taris was trying to hold in check broke, the swollen want between them demanding nothing hidden or reserved. Running his fingers down the curve of her arm, he gathered the ties on her lacy chemise and unravelled them, her face tipping up to his own.

He imagined her eyes, surprise and lust in equal measure; he imagined her mouth, the feel of her lips full and tender. When his hands cupped her breasts and held the flesh in his palms, he took a shaky breath out, for this woman did not wait for him to do all the work. No, already her fingers skimmed the waistband of his trousers, slipping into the skin that lay underneath and feeling his erection with as much care and vigilance as he was giving to her.

A balanced taking.

No missish virgin or paid whore. No money between them or commitment sought. Only feelings.

‘Ahhh, Beatrice-Maude,’ he whispered as she pushed the material covering him downwards and her fingers came to other places, more hidden. No green or frightened girl either.

Equal measure!

Touch for touch! Stopping only as his mouth fastened upon her nipple and tasted, the sweet sound of bliss in her voice as she expelled her breath and enjoyed.

The dampness of her skin, and her stark utter heat. The way her hips rocked against his own, asking, wanting, needing more.

His head rose to her mouth, and his fingers felt the way, her chin, her nose, the lay of her eyes and her forehead. No colour but shape, and crowned with a pile of darkened curls. That much at least he could see!

‘Let me take you, sweetheart. Let me take you further.’ His voice did not seem like his own.

‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘Much further…’

Her heavy breasts swayed as he brought her up with him, the fall of her legs opening beneath her chemise. His hand crept under it to her stockings, which he removed, and then to her drawers, lacy pieces of nothing, the unsewn seam leaving easy access.

‘Now,’ she cried and not quietly either. ‘Right now.’ The sweat between them built, the cold of this barn a far-off thought, no time for careful restraint or the foreplay that he was more used to. No time for any of it as he lifted her on to him and drove home, again and again and again, a life-filled, raw loving that was all that was left to seek release.

Which they did!

She had died and gone to heaven! She swore she had. She swore that if her life were to end now, this very, very minute she would leave a happy woman. A fulfilled woman. A woman who finally knew what it was novels spoke of in their flurry of adjectives and superlatives.

This. Feeling.

Spent and replete and waves of ecstasy still sweeping across her. And tears when she began to cry.

Not quietly either. But loudly. Loud tears of wonderment and relief. She just could not stop them.

‘Did I hurt you? Are you hurt?’

She waved away his worry and tried to smile.

‘No. It was wonderful. So wonderful.’ Bruised with happiness and finality. Understanding what it was she had not experienced before.

He lay back against the scratchy grey blanket in the year’s new hay and began to laugh.

‘You are crying…because it was wonderful?’

She nodded, the sniffs now lessened as she sought for her chemise balled beside them in order to blow her nose.

‘I didn’t know…’ no, she could tell him none of her past for she did not want him feeling sorry for her ‘…that a hay barn could be such a sensual place.’

Before her he lay like a prince devoid of clothes and inhibitions. A Greek god fallen into her lap by the will of a Lord who had finally answered her daily prayers.

A whole twelve years of them to be precise, and not more than a month after the death of Frankwell Bassingstoke!

Perhaps that was all the time needed for a powerful deity to recognise the sacrifice she had made to care for her given husband, to obey him, to yield to the orders he had been so fond of giving.

Perhaps Taris Wellingham had been sent in recompense, the gift of this night easily making up for the hardship of her past decade.

His finger traced the upward turn of her lips.

‘You are a puzzle, Mrs Bassingstoke,’ he said, his voice rich with the rounded vowels of a well-to-do upbringing. ‘And one that I cannot, for the life of me, quite fathom.’

She stayed silent, enjoying his touch as he splayed open her palm and drew a spiral inside before tracing upwards to the sensitive folds of her neck and the outline of her lips.

When his hand cupped the back of her nape and he pulled her down across him she went willingly, his mouth taking what she offered in a hard twist of desire. Seeking. Finding. The taste of him masculine and fierce, though for the first time she was frightened, frightened of the need that welled in her, wanting, wishing this was real and binding her to eternity.

‘No.’ She pulled back and he did not stop her, did not hurt her in his insistence or his demand. Actions so unlike Frankwell that her fear subsided.

‘I should not exact anything you do not wish to offer.’

Quiet words from an honourable man, his need felt easily against her stomach, yet still he gave her the choice.

Her head dipped down and she ran her tongue across his lips, her fingers splayed against his chest as she held him still.

As if sensing her need for control, he remained motionless even as her touch cupped the full hardness of him.

‘My turn now,’ she whispered and stroked his warmth, teasing as he writhed. ‘Not yet,’ she added as he moved up against her. ‘Or yet,’ she repeated as she sat astride him and guided the fullness to a place that was only hers to offer. Home. Replete. Abundant. ‘But now.’

The feel of him made her tip back her head and cry out his name, no longer quiet as her voice broke against the wind and the rain and the wild sound of trees. The storm of sex was now inside her too, reaching, reaching and breaking languid sweet in her belly, her fingers and toes stretched tight against the ripples, urging them on for longer, unfastened by any ties of right or wrong.

Only feeling.

Only them.

When the last of the contractions had ceased she lay against him, joined by flesh and the slick wetness of their lovemaking. His hand claimed her, lying over her bottom, skin to skin, the cold air diminishing their heat. The length of her tresses was bound in his other fist, fettered in nakedness, lost in the glory.

‘Bea?’ Whispered.

‘Yes.’ Whispered back.

‘Bea-yond anything.’

Her laughter took his body from her own.

This was what she had missed all of her life. Just this. No meanness in it or bad temper. No righteous lecture on the innate evil of all women’s nature.

Beyond. Anything.

When his fingers crept into the space his body had just left, she opened her legs wide and all that was wonderful before began again.

She was asleep. Catching dreams from the early dawn. He did not wish to wake her, but he had to, for the winds had fallen and the sky was lightening. At least that much he could see and feel. They would be here soon. Everybody. The world. Reality.

The sun and the light and the damming affliction of his soul.

He would not be able to see her. He did not know the lay of this barn, the traps and the pitfalls. And she would know all of what he wasn’t, so carefully hidden in the dark.

His breathing shallowed and the fear that he had lived with for three years thickened. This time it did matter. Mrs Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke and her generous soft body even now in sleep turned towards him and wanting. Again.

He could not take her. He could not risk it with the new day dawning over a weakening storm. The blood that ran to the place between his legs did not listen to his head, however.

Once more, please the Lord, time for just once more.

She was wet and willing and pliable and, seeking entry with his hands, he knew the second she awakened, bearing down upon him as she guided him in.

The dawn was now well and truly broken and Taris dressed with haste before walking carefully around the shelter and marking its shape. Thirty yards long and twenty across, the haystack in the corner reaching out a considerable distance. The rough-sawn timber the barn was built with left a splinter in his palm and, sucking it hard, he saw the movements of Beatrice-Maude dressing. He hoped that she had tidied her hair and removed the traces of straw from her clothes that he had felt when he had brushed against them. He did not move back towards her, however, but turned to the open end of the building, tilting his head so that he could hear the sounds from further off.

They were coming.

People were coming.

Binding his hair into a tight queue, he stood with his face against the sky and waited, the hat that he had borrowed from the younger man in the carriage pulled down across his forehead, shading his eyes from other prying ones.

‘A rescue party will be here in five minutes,’ he warned, his voice distant. He could not help it. This was a place he had no knowledge of and the daylight was upon them. If he walked towards her, he might trip on a misplaced object and his brother had described to him in detail the opaque clouds in his left eye.

He did not wish for Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke to see that. He did not want her to know that he was a man who functioned best only in the darkness, a man who depended on his trusted servants and the familiar shorelines of his home. Risk free and easy.

‘You can hear them?’ she asked and he merely nodded. ‘Well, I can make out nothing at all and I always thought myself rather accomplished on hearing things that others could not.’

She sounded nervous and a little desperate, the higher tones of a frantic embarrassment clearly audible.

Why?

She was a widow after all and far from her first flush of youth and the night they had spent together had been completely consensual.

Perhaps it was the sheer worry of having others come to judge her in the predicament she now found herself in, for co-habiting overnight with a man would be considered racy even in his circle of friends and Mrs Bassingstoke sounded more like someone at home in the country.

His fist beat against his thigh as he pondered options. ‘I will disclose our sleeping arrangements to no one, Mrs Bassingstoke. Perhaps that will put your mind at rest.’

‘Indeed, Mr Wellingham.’ He was bothered by the worry in her words. Hardly above a whisper.

‘And if you could be so good as to fashion a nest in the hay that would only leave room for one person, then that should help this charade further.’

He listened as she did as he had suggested before sliding down to sit against the wall. Two people sheltering at either end of the barn and fully clothed! He hated the small catch he could hear in her voice as she began to talk again.

‘Are you based in London, sir?’

He shook his head. ‘More often than not I am away from it,’ he returned.

‘I see.’ He heard the deep intake of breath as she contemplated his answer. ‘So if by chance I should catch sight of you in the streets…?’

‘Your reputation would stay safer should you ignore me altogether.’

‘Ignore you altogether.’

Echoed. Lonely. Taris wished he might take his words back and replace them with other, softer words, words that did not decimate any contact with such a final thrust. But there was nothing he could do, not here, caught at the mercy of everyone, a man who was not able to even find his way to the edge of a small barn without falling.

His rejoinder cut into the quick of Bea’s self-esteem. Of course he would not wish for a plain woman of little attraction to be vying for his attention. Questions would be asked, after all, and she was hardly the sort who would be able to shrug them off with an inconsequential ease.

Ever since waking this morning he had barely glanced her way. Once had been enough, probably, to determine her mousy-coloured hair and her unremarkable eyes, let alone anose that was hardly retroussé and a chin that was much more defiant than was deemed fashionable.

Plain!

She had never felt the condition with such an agony and the ache of rejection was wretched. Taking a breath, she tried to exhale in a calm and dignified manner. Frankwell might have robbed her of youth, but a will that had been long bent was again firming, and the gift of independence was something that she could cling to. She had both gold and land and the means to be beholden to no one. Ever again! It was at least a start.

Swallowing, she stood, the group of people coming on horseback now visible, the men they had spoken to last night joined by a good many others, society folk, their dress rich and ornate.

When they finally came within ten yards of the barn the most beautiful woman Beatrice had ever seen in her life slid from her steed and ran.

Taris. Taris. Oh, thank God.’ Her eyes were flooded with tears and the chignon in its net had slipped, allowing a halo of blonde silken curls to fall in riotous abandon down to her shoulders as she flung herself into his opened arms.

‘My God, we thought we…had lost you…we thought you had been swept away in the storm or buried beneath the pile of snow and the hailstones…have you ever seen such hailstones…?’

The tirade stopped only as turquoise eyes came level with Bea’s, interest stamped across uncertainty.

Taris Wellingham turned finally in her direction, his amber gaze running quickly over her as though only just remembering that she was indeed still here. ‘Emerald Wellingham, meet Mrs Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke.’

Emerald Wellingham?

He was married? My God, he had lied to her, lied about everything…

‘She is my sister-in-law.’

Relief made the world bend in a strange way and Bea placed her hand against the wall to steady herself. Taris Wellingham neither came forwards nor commented on her instability and the callous indifference in his eyes confirmed her deductions. She meant nothing to him. She was just a warm and docile body with whom a freezing night had been passed more quickly. But at least he was not married!

She felt the turquoise gaze of the newcomer take in her dishevelled clothes and the hay that was stuck to them, summing up her character in the clues that lay all around.

A plain woman who would take the chance of an unexpected night with a man who looked as beautiful as this one did.

Shame battled with anger and both were over-taken by surprise as another man with a look of menacing danger joined them. Beatrice noticed he had a rather pronounced limp.

‘We travelled up from London at first light when you failed to come to Park Avenue. Emerald had a feeling about it all and would not be fobbed off with any excuse.’

‘It was the storms that made me uneasy, Taris, though Asher said I should not be concerned…’

Asher and Taris Wellingham? The names were suddenly horrifyingly familiar to Beatrice, for she had read of them across the years, two brothers who had ruled the ton with their wealth and escapades.

Falder Castle was their seat and they were the direct descendants of the first Duke of Carisbrook and if memory served her well Taris Wellingham had recently acquired extensive properties in Kent. Her cheeks burned with the growing realisation of how far she had trespassed into a world she knew nothing of and all she wanted was to be gone from this place, removed to one of the carriages that she could see now pulling up to the barn, further faces turned towards her, questions in their eyes.

‘The weather will be upon us in the next few moments, my lord, if we do not hurry from here.’ A tall thin man had come to the side of Taris Wellingham and she was bemused by the way he threaded his arm through that of his master.

The woman Emerald seemed as protective, her hand coming into his on the other side as they turned for the coach. She was amazed that Taris Wellingham allowed them to shepherd him in such a manner and was about to say something when his brother gave an order to the servant next to her.

‘See to the woman, Forbes.’ The young servant nodded even as the Wellinghams disappeared from view.

She could not believe it. He would not even tarry to say goodbye after all that they had shared?

The sound of a door shutting and a call to the horses answered her query. Then the beat of hooves and a quickening pace, the contraption lost to the whiteness of the landscape and the newly falling snow.

Gone.

Finished.

‘If you would come this way, miss, the others are in the coach…’

‘Others?’

There was a shout of recognition from the old woman and her son she had met the night before as she scrambled up the steps and into the shelter of the vehicle. She was pleased to find no sign of the one who had been killed in the accident. Or the driver.

‘Mr Brown was taken on to London an hour or so ago and the other went to Brentwood to the church, I would guess, until his family have been notified to collect him.’ The younger man was full of chatter, his mother less talkative after such a long and harrowing night.

‘We spent the night at a farmhouse further north and were picked up just a little time ago. He’s brother to a Duke, you know, the man we all rode with, and he has a wealth of land in Kent.’

Bea nodded, pleased when the carriage was spurred on, the droning sound of miles being eaten up as they travelled south sending the others to sleep.

Lord Taris Wellingham, brother to the Duke of Carisbrook.

She turned the names on her tongue, grand names, names that were known in all the four corners of this country, the lineage of the dukedom reaching down through a thousand years of privilege and entitlement.

Taris Wellingham.

She remembered his profile turned against the snow, strong and proud, a man who might not understand how easily he intimidated others with his effortless leadership and control.

Control over the reactions of her body too, every bit as persuasive yet infinitely gentle.

‘Enough,’ she whispered into the gathering greyness of the morning and, pulling the collar of her cloak around her eyes, she was glad to hide her tears from a world that she no longer understood.

Taris felt his sister-in-law’s gaze on him even as he turned to the window, looking out.

Lord, he was a coward and a faint-heart and as the miles between them grew he understood something he had never in his life before experienced.

A woman had bettered him, had made him feel a cad of the very first order, a man who would not own up to either circumstance or reality, but hid in a world that was only deception.

‘So if by chance I should catch sight of you in the streets…?’

‘Your reputation would stay safer should you ignore me altogether.’

He took in a breath and held it, hating the tightness he could feel in his throat, loathing the way he still did not say anything.

Turn around. Turn around and go back.

He should say it, should shout it, but with the world only a grey sludge he found that he just could not.

Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke had seen him at his best. The best that he used to be, before…before he had become dependent on everyone! He wanted her to remember him like that, a man in charge of his life and his actions.

From best to worst, Bates’s hand threaded through his own and Emerald’s on the other side, leading him out through the space to his carriage. He hoped she had not seen the coat of arms emblazoned on the side or heard Bates calling him ‘my lord’. He hoped she might have thought him ill or cold or disorientated. Certainly he hoped that she had not seen him trip as they had rounded the wall of the barn, his feet catching a ditch that he had had no notion was there.

Anger consumed him. And regret. For three years this blindness had been taking his sight day by day and piece by piece. At first it had been just his central vision, but now it was all the light on the periphery too; a creeping silent thief with total blackness as the end point of a journey he had no wish to be making.

A sadness that had been a constant companion of his recent months gathered with biting force, pushing him back in his seat so that his fists almost shook with the sheer and utter wrath of it all.

He had never accepted it, never come to the place where acquiescence might have softened anguish and allowed a healing.

No, he had never come to that!

‘Why the hell you insist on these public carriage excursions eludes me, Taris, when you have a bevy of your own conveyances ready and willing to take you anywhere?’ Asher’s voice sounded wearied and the truth of the query added to Taris’s own frustration. This was the first time alone on the road that he had indeed felt sightless, the struggle of coping more overwhelming than it had ever seemed before. He was pleased when his brother took his criticism no further and Emerald spoke instead.

‘Your companion sounds interesting?’

‘She was.’

‘She looked worried, though. I wondered if you had noticed?’

‘Yes.’

‘I also saw she wore a wedding ring?’

‘He’s tired, Emmie. Leave him to rest.’ Asher’s voice wound its way around protection with its particular undercurrent of guilt. Suddenly Taris had had enough.

‘Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke is a widow from Brampton. She is turned twenty-eight. She appreciates honesty and she hates her name.’

‘A comprehensive list.’ Emerald’s voice faltered as Asher began to laugh, and the quick thud of his leg against the side of the coach told Taris of a well-directed kick.

‘I thought she seemed…strong.’

‘Indeed, she was that.’

‘Any woman bold enough to leave the safety of a carriage and venture into a snow-whitened night would win my favour.’

‘What does she look like?’ Taris had not meant to ask this, so baldly, so very unmindful, and the silence in the carriage was complete until Emerald began to speak again.

‘Her hair is the colour of chestnuts ripe in autumn and her eyes hold the hue of wet leaves in the shadows beside a forest stream.’

He stayed silent, hoping that she might carry on, liking the way that she brought Beatrice-Maude to life for him in that peculiar way she had of using words.

‘She isn’t very tall, but she is very thin. Between her eyes is the line of a woman who has worried a lot. The dimples in her cheeks are the prettiest I have ever seen on anyone.’

Taris nodded, remembering the contours of them, remembering how she had taken his fingers into her mouth, licking them in the way of one versed in the sensual arts. Remembering other things too. Her smell. Her softness. The whisper of his name against his ear before she had turned into his arms and pressed the swollen flesh of her breasts against him.

‘God!’ Said without thought.

‘What?’ Asher’s voice was loud, near, edged with perplexity.

Searching around for an excuse, he found one in the missing timepiece at his waist. ‘I think I left my watch back under the hay. It was poking against me in the night.’

‘Grandpa’s fob? You still wear that even though you can’t read the numbers?’ Asher swore as he registered what it was he had implied.

’Sound measures time as well, brother, and when you stop feeling guilty for my poor eyesight then both of us may sleep all the easier.’

Closing his eyes, Taris liked the ease of not having to try to decipher shapes, though a vision rose in his memory of chestnut curls, leaf-green eyes and smiling dimpled cheeks. And bravery despite heavily chattering teeth!

Beatrice saw Taris Wellingham the following week in Regent Street where she had gone to do some shopping. He was in the passenger seat of an impressive-looking phaeton, a young woman beside him tooling the horses with a confidence that was daunting.

Drawing back against the shop window, she hoped that the overhanging roof might shelter her from his glance should he happen to look her way and her heartbeat was so violent she saw the material in the bodice of her gown rise up and down.

Goodness, would she faint? Already dizziness made her world spin and the maid at her side carrying an assortment of other parcels she had procured looked at her in alarm.

‘Are you quite well, ma’am?’

‘Certainly, Sarah.’ The quiver in her voice was unsettling.

‘There is a teahouse just a few shops on if you should care to sit down.’

Across the girl’s shoulder Taris Wellingham came closer, his face now easily visible and a top hat that was the height of fashion perched upon his head. The woman beside him was laughing as she urged her horses on and the ordinary folk on the street stopped what they did and watched.

Watched beauty and wealth and privilege. Watched people who had never needed to struggle or count their pennies or wonder where their next meal might come from. Watched a vibrant and beautiful woman handling a set of highly strung greys, which were probably worth their weight in gold, and a man who might let her do so, a smile of pride on his face as she deftly guided them through a busy city through way.

Bea felt an anger she rarely gave way to as Taris Wellingham’s eyes passed right across her own with no acknowledgement or recognition in them.

Just an ill-dressed stranger on a crowded London street watching for a second the passing of the very, very rich. And then dismissed.

Nothing left of breath and touch and the whispered delights shared in a barn outside Maldon. Nothing left of holding the centre of him within her, deep and safe, the snow outside erasing everything that could lead others to them, time skewered only by feelings and trust and the hard burn of an endless want.

Gone! Finished!

She turned her head away and marched into the first shop with an open door, the stocked shelves of a milliner’s wares blurring before her eyes as she pretended an exaggerated and determined interest in procuring a hat.

There was no sense in any of this, of course. Had Taris Wellingham not already told her that she should ignore him should she see him in London, that the tryst they had shared was nothing more to him than an interlude in one moment of need? The wedding ring on the third finger of her left hand glinted in the refracted light of a lamp set beside the counter.

Frankwell laughing from the place his soul had been consigned to. Not heaven, she hoped, the religious icon on the wall above the milliner making her start. Would her own actions outside Maldon banish her soul from any hope of an everlasting happiness? Given that she had in all of her twenty-eight years seldom experienced the emotion, the thought made her maudlin, the enticing promise of a better place after such sacrifice the one constant hope in her unending subservience in Ipswich.

Perhaps she was being punished for that very acquiescence, a woman who had been given a brain to think with and who had rarely used it. Was still not using it, was not taking the chances that were suddenly hers to seize, but was hiding away in the shadow of a fear that made everything seem dangerous.

‘Is there anything in particular you wish to look at, madam?’ the shopkeeper asked, as Bea still did not speak. The silence in the street registered in the back of her mind, any possibility of a further re-encounter diminishing with each passing second.

She made herself look at a hat she had admired on the nearest shelf, touching the soft fabric carefully. The bright green felt was a colour that she had seldom worn, Frankwell’s distaste of anything ’showy’ in the early years of her marriage mirrored across all of the last.

The very thought of her unquestioned obedience made her try it on, and for the first time ever in her life she actually liked the face of the woman reflected in the mirror. The colour matched her eyes and the tone of her skin, the sallowness of her often-favoured beige or brown lightened by the tint of green.

‘I think this colour suits you very well, madam, as would this one.’

A dark red hat replaced the green and the transformation was just as unbelievable.

‘I have always worn the shades of colour that are in this gown,’ she explained and the woman shook her head forcibly.

‘Those tones would not highlight the colour of your eyes, or enhance the cream in your skin.’

She hurried to lift down a creation in beige from a top shelf and brought it back.

‘See, madam. This is the colour you have preferred and you can see how little it favours you.’

Beatrice’s mouth fell open. Lord. Was it that easy to look more presentable? She could not believe it.

‘I have a sister who is just beginning as a modiste in London, madam. If you should wish to consult her for your gowns I am sure she would be very obliging. She is both reasonable and skilled.’

Sarah’s head nodded up and down beside her, a wide smile on her face.

Perhaps it was time for a change. A time to look at the things she had always enjoyed in her life and to try to incorporate them in the next part of it.

Books. Ideas. Discussions.

These were the things she had longed for most in the silent big house in Ipswich. When she had tried to speak to Frankwell about her own desires, his set opinions had always overridden her own and his anger had made her wary about disagreeing.

But now? Now that she had the money, time and inclination to follow her own dreams, the colour of a hat that actually suited her took on an importance that even yesterday would have been ridiculous. But here in the aftermath of a galling indifference the worm of something else turned inside her.

Freedom might be possible.

Freedom to do exactly as she pleased and to live her life in a way that would suit her, with no regard to others’ opinions.

The thought was heady and thrilling, a mandate to be only as she determined was right for her.

‘I will take both hats, please,’ she said, pulling out a purse that was filled with money, ‘and I should very much like to meet your sister.’

Taris placed his hand across the reins, feeling the pressure.

‘Ease up a little on the right, Lucy, for there is a slight pull.’

He knew in the breeze on his face the moment his sister re-aligned the horses and felt a tug of pride.

‘You have been practising while I have been away?’

Laughter greeted his question. ‘If that is your way of telling me I have improved, brother, then so be it.’

‘You have improved.’ The words came readily and he felt his sister lay her hand across his own.

‘From you that means a lot. All my life I have been in the shadow of my big brothers and it is good to finally cast one of my own. I appreciate the loan of your team in my quest to master this horsemanship, by the way, and if there is ever anything that you would like in return…’

He shook his head. ‘Become the Original you are destined to be, Lucinda, and that will be payment enough.’

‘Whomever you finally marry will be a lucky lady, Taris, because you have never allowed yourself to define others in the way the ton demands. With you I always feel that I could be…anything.’

The wind took his laughter and threw it across the street and in the corner of his vision he could just make out the forms of people watching them.

Women by the looks with their gowns and hats, and the sound of bells pealing out across the afternoon.

Two ‘clock. By five he would be on the road south, leaving the traffic and the noise of London behind him. He closed his eyes briefly and imagined the promise of Beaconsmeade and the warm comfort of his home.

He would take his own carriage for the ride down, however, for his recent poor experience with the public transport system allayed the delight he so often felt in mixing with the ordinary folk.

A gentler vision of well-rounded breasts and long dark curls made his fingers clasp with more fervour on to the silver head of his cane. Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke!

They had both agreed to the limitation of just one night and he had heard the sound of relief in her voice when he had not demanded different. Perhaps the state of widowhood was more promising than that of Holy Matrimony with its sanctions and its rules. As a man he saw the strictures that a woman was placed under when she married and if she had any land at all…?

No, he could not now search for Bea or betray such a trust. He had no earthly reason for doing so and she did not seem the type of woman who might welcome a dalliance. Besides, a wife was the very last thing he needed with his receding sight and his blurring vision.

Whomever you finally marry will be a lucky lady…

‘Your horses are attracting a lot of attention, Taris. Why, nearly everyone is watching their excellence.’

‘Well, Lucy, one more round and then home; I have much to do before I depart for Kent.’

‘Ash asked you to stay longer.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Or won’t.’

Both of them laughed as they careered around the corner and into the pathways of Hyde Park.