Читать книгу Regency Society - Хелен Диксон, Ann Lethbridge, Хелен Диксон - Страница 44

She woke up in his bed. A blanket had been pulled over her and a pillow tucked beneath her head. It was still dark, though a small candle on the mantel had burnt down almost to the plate, making her calculate that many hours had passed.

She had told him!

Her hand went to her mouth and she held it there. The evening had begun with seduction in mind and ended in her being asleep, alone and dressed upon his bed and confessing a confidence that she had told no one before. She smiled, for the relief of sharing her secret had eased the burden in a way she could never have imagined.

Footsteps coming towards the room had her sitting up and Cristo appeared a second or so later with a tray. A teapot and two cups sat to one side of a jug of milk.

He had pulled on his shirt, but it was unbuttoned and like her he wore no shoes at all.

‘I thought you might be thirsty.’

A flower sat alongside the cups, newly picked, the dew on it magnifying the red.

He handed the perfect bloom to her, candlelight on the bronze of his chest, each muscle well defined.

‘It was by itself amongst the weeds when I stepped outside the kitchen door to take in some air. It reminded me of you.’

Smiling, she took his gift and noticed that all of the thorns had been taken off the smooth green stem. When she bent her head to the petals the perfume was of a soft freshness.

Placing the tray on the table, he drew forth a chair from under the window. His knees framed hers now and he looked as if he was searching for just the right thing to say.

‘I own land next to Falder. On it stands a manor house named Graveson Manor and it overlooks Return Home Bay. It is beautiful land, Eleanor, with the sea rolling in and the green of fields and trees.’ His left hand raked through his untidy blond hair, pushing it back.

The very words made the world a wondrous place, though she sobered when she thought of the path that he was leading her down.

‘I could not be your mistress.’

The shock in his dark brown eyes was easily seen. ‘It is not as a concubine I want you, Eleanor, but as a wife.’

Her mouth simply dropped open. ‘You are asking me to marry you?’

‘I am. I hope the groom you had in mind will bow out gracefully.’

She began to laugh. ‘It was you I was thinking of. No one else.’

He joined in her humour by smiling broadly. ‘I cannot believe that something is finally easy for us. You will marry me and become my wife?’

When she nodded again he stripped the gold ring from his little finger and reached forwards. ‘I know it is old-fashioned, but it was the only thing of Alice’s that I have. She took it off her finger the night before I left England all those years ago and made me promise it would go to the woman I married.’

‘You never wore this in Paris?’

‘It was too special. All the others were for show and for the part I was playing of a dissolute and unrestrained lord.’

Joy welled inside her. Special. Her finger ran across the red in the ruby and around the band of gold.

‘We will be married with all the family present, because I need to do this properly. As properly as everything so far between us has not been. I cannot wait a year, Eleanor, for your mourning period to be over, so perhaps we could repair to the Continent. Florencia will have a family with cousins and aunts and uncles.’

Her euphoria died down a little. No mention of love, but all of duty.

As he picked up on her uncertainty he dropped her hand, one eye on the door and the other on his watch. He wanted to be gone, from the room, from her and from the promise he had just made. She could see it so very plainly in his face.

Her fingers closed around the golden ring as she wondered if he might ask her to rescind her promise. But he was a Wellingham and responsibility sat on his shoulder as a heavy load. He would do his best by her.

When he leant down and kissed her on the forehead, she was almost reminded of Martin.

‘Thank you, Eleanor. You will not regret this decision.’

He had handled that as badly as he had ever handled anything in his life, he thought, as he regained his upstairs chamber, but the raging lust in him was a terrible reminder of how he had hurt her last time. This time he wanted everything perfect. Not rushed or illegal or sordid. Eleanor deserved the very best from him and he was going to give it to her, no expense spared. If he had stayed for even a moment longer with the promises between them, he doubted he could have remained so controlled.

Closing his eyes, he felt the line of his jaw tremble with desperation, his open hands balanced against the wall behind him.

He loved her. He loved her bravery and her honesty and the way she had held him as she cried her heart out. Him, the man who had been the cause of everything in her life that had been difficult.

Forgiveness. He deserved none of it and she might still refuse him. A lump formed in his throat.

If he lost her … He shook his head.

If he even touched her … He shook it again, not trusting the need that he was consumed with.

A board on the stairwell creaked and he swallowed back pity. The material at his groin strained tight as Eleanor came into the room.

With her cheeks blushing pink he thought he had never seen her look more beautiful and the danger of his wretched urgency mounted.

‘You should return to your bedroom, Eleanor.’ He grimaced at the harshness in his tone, but it was all he could do to stand there and not ravish her as every single particle in his body wanted to.

She held her palm out towards him, the gold of Alice’s ring glinting in what little there was left of the firelight.

‘I have endured one marriage that was not a love match. I do not think that I could endure another one.’ Her voice trembled, but she went on. ‘Especially when I know that my heart would be completely broken.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I love you, Cristo. I have loved you from our first night together and through all our years of separation. It has only ever been you.’

‘Lord.’ He stepped forwards. ‘There aren’t many things I’ve done right in my life, sweetheart, but having your love is one of them.’ He didn’t move a muscle but, looking into her eyes, he kept talking so that she might see his honesty.

‘“I brought a heart into the room But from the room I carried none with me.”’

‘John Donne?’

When he nodded Eleanor smiled. ‘So it was not only for Florencia’s sake that you wished for us to be betrothed.’

‘You thought that?’

‘You left so quickly.’

He grimaced. ‘I didn’t trust what I might do if I stayed.’

Walking straight into his arms. she turned her face up to his. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you, too. Tout se pardonne quand on aime.’

Where there is love there is forgiveness.

She found him in the silence, the strength of him and the gentleness, a man fully aroused, but trying to show his patience and temperance.

‘There are only a few hours left until the dawn, Cristo. Why waste them?’

‘You are saying that you should not wish to?’

‘I am.’

He pushed down the sleeves on her gown and undid the buttons left at the back. When the blue silk pooled at her feet she was full of neither shyness nor regret.

‘I thought you would want everything perfect after the last time.’

‘It is,’ she replied. ‘It is perfect because I have you.’

Much later they lay naked against each other, a blanket pulled across them against the gathering dawn and Cristo’s fingers tracing shapes of a heart across her back.

‘I think Martin felt the kind of hatred for you that he had never felt about anyone before.’ Her hand laid out flat against his chest, her fingers splayed across his heart. ‘He was a good man who made a bad choice, but I think had he known what I truly thought about you he would have tried to mend it.’

‘You do?’ She could hear the doubt in his voice.

He brought her close and she could feel his tongue against her shoulder and then her neck, the flare of affection almost making her forget how to breathe, but she had another question to ask him.

‘Who were the people who kidnapped us?’

He took a moment to answer. ‘Colleagues from Paris.’

‘Colleagues?’

‘I worked as a gatherer of information for England and the Foreign Office and Beraud worked for the Secret Police in France. Sometimes his loyalties incorporated the selling of secrets, for substantial amounts of cash, you understand.’

‘You are saying that he would betray his own country?’

‘All patriots have their price, and a gambling addiction could not have been easy to manage on the wages Fouche offered.’

‘Did you have a price?’

He merely shook his head.

‘How did they know about us?’

‘By chance. He must have seen us together in London and saw a way to make some money on the side.’

‘And Milne?’

‘Is completely trustworthy.’

‘Are there others who might harm us?’

‘If there are, I will make certain that they never come close enough.’

The amber in his eyes darkened and there was a menace in his voice that she absolutely believed. The recognition of an agent of death was chilling.

‘But your work with the Foreign Office is finished?’

‘It was completed when I left Paris and I have had no contact since. With you there is something returning that I have not felt in a very long while.’

‘What?’

‘Joy.’

She laughed.

‘There. That is the joy I speak of.’

She laughed again, and the release of gaiety felt like an opiate.

With Cristo and Florencia as her family and the memory of Paris between them, Eleanor felt she could do anything, be anyone, the reckless force of her youth returning in a great and wonderful measure.

‘I love you so much, Cristo, that I am sometimes scared because it seems too perfect.’

‘After all we have been through perhaps perfect is what we deserve.’

Leaning over, he rifled through a pocket in his jacket and, when he opened his palm, her grandfather’s lost medallion lay upon it.

‘You kept it?’

The gilded upstairs room in the Château Giraudon seemed close as he wound her hair around his finger. ‘It was all that I had left of you. If only I had been wiser then—’

She stopped him simply by slipping the chain around his neck and the warmth between them grew. ‘Now is what we do have, Cristo.’ The gold glimmered warm in the light.

‘I love you, my Eleanor, and I will never let you go.’

‘Promise.’

‘I do.’

In the early light of dawn they spoke again of the past.

‘I always wondered what was in the letter you brought to Paris from your grandfather,’ he said, looking at the sky outside. ‘When you left I tossed the sheets from the bed into the fire and the message was lost completely.’

‘I never read it, but I presumed it to be about my Uncle Nigel. My uncle had written a confession in the family Bible, you see, all about his part in my brother’s death, though I don’t think he meant to kill him. He took to the bottle straight after and Grandfather was probably trying to make amends.’

‘And because of it I harmed you.’

‘Found me.’ She turned to watch him. ‘Besides, you had to run from England for a mistake that was not in any way your fault.’

‘I was always running from mistakes as a youth. The only damn thing I have ever done right is to find you.’

She ran her fingers along the side of his cheek, liking the way he leaned into her touch, his hair silver against her hand.

‘You look like an angel, Cristo.’

At that he did laugh. ‘And one with very impure thoughts.’

‘My angel,’ she whispered as his mouth came down full against her own.