Читать книгу Society's Beauties: Mistress at Midnight / Scars of Betrayal - Sophia James - Страница 14

Mrs Aurelia St Harlow stood before him, a swathe of scarlet silk in her hands and wearing the same black dress Stephen had seen her in every time he’d met her.

‘You?’ Her voice could not have been more shocked, her mismatched eyes widened and fearful. ‘What are you doing here?’

Hawkhurst had to smile at that because the question was exactly the one he was about to ask her and because there was no earthly reason why a well-to-do lady should be lurking in the run-down buildings on the back streets of the Limestone Hole warehouses.

Save one.

‘You work here?’ Everything had just got a whole lot harder and the mission he had been sent on by the Service was in danger of being compromised entirely. His glance took in the bolts of fabric and the squares of colours and designs that littered a large wooden table in the middle of the room. Ledgers were piled up five high in a bookcase beside it and further off in one corner a dog stood chained to the wall, his teeth bared in grisly defiance.

‘Down, Caesar!’ The animal crouched uncertainly at her command, flecks of spittle around its jawline. Stephen got the feeling that if it could forsake its chains it would be at his throat in an instant; much like its mistress if the look on Aurelia St Harlow’s face was anything to go by.

‘A nice pet,’ he drawled and stayed where he was.

‘Protection,’ she returned, the anger in her eyes boding badly. She neither asked him inside nor shut the door to keep him out.

An impasse. The sky solved the situation by suddenly opening, rain scudding in the wind towards them across the line of brick buildings drenching everything, and she allowed him through. The dog rose again on its haunches at his movement forwards, a low growl filling the room.

‘He is not used to visitors.’

‘I will stand by the door, then.’

‘It might be wise.’ When she smiled briefly the lines of worry melted into radiance and he drew in breath. God, Aurelia St Harlow’s beauty held a sensuality that always surprised him and, doffing his hat, he placed it in front of his tight trousers, the effect she had on his anatomy singular and strong. Irritation mounted.

‘I cannot remember my cousin delving into silks.’

‘That is because he didn’t.’

‘You are saying this is your doing?’

‘My father’s family have manufactured silk buttons for a hundred years. It is in the Beauchamp blood.’

‘And he approves?’

The quick tilt of her head worried him. She looked momentarily disappointed.

‘Women these days are less likely to seek authorisation from the men around them, Lord Hawkhurst, for there is a new movement afoot that allows for women’s emancipation. My late husband would have been more than horrified at any such thought, but there it is; I can work in any field of industry that I am competent in and no one can stop me.’

‘Indeed?’ The idea was beginning to occur to him that she was the most fearless female he had ever met. He could not even begin to imagine ladies such as Elizabeth Berkeley and her ilk secreting themselves in such a dangerous part of London with an animal who probably had feral wolf in its bloodlines.

A grimmer thought also surfaced.

Could she be the one sending information to France through the textile channels from England? His agent had been most specific that this office was the one from which the package of coded information had first come. He changed his tack entirely.

‘Cassandra Lindsay was impressed by Leonora. She imagines her youngest brother to be in love.’

‘Are you warning me, my lord?’

Hawkhurst felt a glimmer of respect for a woman who picked up so very quickly on the things said beneath other words. ‘The marriage of your sister into a family of great note is something you have your heart set on. Nathaniel, however, would not thank me if there were secrets in the Beauchamp household that would cause even the slightest consternation to his wife. Or to his name.’

‘There are not.’

Her scent filled the room, the particular aroma of violets and freshness.

‘Yet I am trying to understand why a lady of means might wish to spend her days in a dusty warehouse sorting silks.’

Colouring, she looked away, guilt marking the movement.

His cousin’s widow had French blood, giving her the will to help a country that was her mother’s. She had told him her mother’s nationality when he had first met her. The money in the business of secrets could also be substantial. Charles’s estate had been sizeable as had her father’s family’s, but perhaps there was more at stake than riches. English society had in effect thrown her out on her head at the unexplained death of her husband and revenge was sweet in anyone’s language.

Ice formed in his veins.

‘It is most unusual for a woman of society to be involved in such endeavours.’

‘Oh, one gets tired of tapestry and crossstitch, my lord, and as I always liked design I thought to try my hand at something more challenging.’

‘You did not think to do this in a more conducive setting.’ He looked pointedly at the dog.

‘I am quite safe, Lord Hawkhurst, despite all you might think.’

‘Do you work here alone?’

‘No. There are two of us. My partner in the business, Mr Kerslake, has just left.’ A blush darkened her cheeks.

‘Kerslake is the man I spoke to earlier, I presume?’ She nodded at his question and remained silent as he remembered the fellow. Ambitious. Good looking.

Damn. Perhaps there was more than a working relationship between them, ensconced as they were in a room far from the watchful eyes of others.

Her hair was uncovered today and the red in it was astonishing. He wanted to cross the space between them and hold the colour to the light, a flame of scarlet much the same shade as the silk trailing from her fingers. Here in the docklands, she was as far from the woman he had kissed as she could be, independence and the uncompromising strategies of business guarding any softer words.

She wanted him gone, too. He could see this from the way she tapped her foot against the floor, like a musician might measure the time in a song until it was finished.

‘I would prefer it, my lord, if you could keep the knowledge of my small concern here to yourself.’ She breathed out a deep sigh to punctuate her dilemma, her brow heavily creased and her shoulder drooping.

‘And why should I do that, Mrs St Harlow?’

‘Society finds unconventional women…perturbing. And it has been my experience that what they don’t understand they generally also do not like.’ The tone of her voice mimicked that of Elizabeth’s friends, breathless and wavering. He laughed, the sound filling the room around them and the vulnerable and dejected air of a second ago disappeared into plain anger as her eyes flinted.

Hawkhurst swore under his breath. A self-effacing timid demeanour did not suit Aurelia St Harlow at all, this Boadicea of the Victorian drawing rooms who fought for an advantageous alliance for her younger sister despite a reputation that would have kept others as far from any public communion as they could go.

‘I like you better when you do not simper, Mrs St Harlow.’

A half smile crept up on to full rounded lips. One small curl had escaped the confines of her tightly bound hair and fell across her throat on to the generous curve of her bosom. He drew his eyes back to her face, feeling like he had as a green boy, caught in the act of ogling. But she was not yet finished with plying her sister’s case. This time there was no tone of supplication evident at all.

‘Lady Lindsay is more than willing to consider the match and any intervention from you could only harm a relationship which both my sister and Mr Northrup wish to pursue.’

‘The dubious woes of star-crossed lovers are hardly my concern!’ He hated the cynicism he could hear so plainly, but he was a man who did not like the unexplained, and so far everything about Mrs St Harlow confused him.

She worked in a warehouse and lived in one of the most expensive town houses in Mayfair, a residence well furnished and appointed according to Cassie Lindsay; yet her hands were marked with the vestiges of a labour that had nothing at all to do with her confessed design work on light silk.

‘I saw you the other day in the park with your father. The greys were very fine.’

‘The enjoyment of good horseflesh is one of Papa’s passions.’

She took a breath and held it, her fingers laced together in a tight white line. At breaking point, he deduced, the pulse of a vein in her throat denoting tension.

‘Indeed, he looked most amused by the conversation. Almost too amused, were I to place a point upon it.’

‘I do not know what you mean, my lord.’

‘Are the Beauchamp properties entailed?’

The very blood simply went from her face, one moment flushed and the next pale.

‘Did Cousin James send you here?’

He laughed at that. ‘Nothing so prosaic, I am afraid, though I am guessing that this man is the one your father’s title and lands will pass to when he dies or if he is no longer capable of performing his expected duties.’

To that she made no response.

‘Charles was a wealthy man and a generous one by all accounts. Surely, as his wife, you did very well on his death?’

Again she remained quiet.

‘I can hear it from you, Aurelia, or I can instruct my lawyers to look into my cousin’s accounts. I would prefer it if you told me.’

After a few seconds she began to speak, softly at first, but then gaining in volume. ‘My husband’s estate was mortgaged up to the hilt. I have been trying to pay back the creditors I personally took food and services from ever since he died.’

Suddenly he understood. ‘With the money gained from silk?’ Lord, why had he not guessed? She had worn the same serviceable dress nearly every time he had met her and the gifts of jewellery from Charles which Nat had spoken of were never anywhere in sight. Today, even the pendant he had seen about her neck every other time he had met her was gone. Unwillingly, he supposed. Her fingers had crept to her throat on several occasions during the conversation, dropping to her sides when they discovered the loss. Had she pawned the piece for quick cash?

‘There are two mills in Macclesfield and the warehouse here in Park Street. The trade is beginning to be profitable and will continue to stay so if I can only…’ She petered out, the words simply stopping on her tongue.

‘Keep your father’s state of health a secret?’

The shock in her eyes was underlined by fear as she stepped back. He had the feeling that she might have been planning to simply walk out of the door, but had then thought better of it, choosing instead to defend herself with words.

‘A lord contemplating jumping from a cliff to solve the problems of the world that ailed him might be perceived by any business partners as a risk.’

‘Touché!’

He tried to keep his tone light, an airy unconcern visible, but underneath another truth rose into life. She would sacrifice herself for her father and for her family and if anyone got in her way…?

‘You would spread such a lie?’

‘It depends on whether you interpret my father’s sickness as influenza or dementia.’

An ultimatum of protection. There was some damned fine sense of poignancy in such a stance and in his line of business it had been a while since he had met another who might do the same.

She knew she had made a mistake as soon as he drew back, but there was nothing she could do about any of it. He would hate her now, that much at least was obvious, the lighter play between them dissolved in the message of her threat.

Ruin me and I will ruin you!

She loathed herself for even thinking to use such a warning and yet the faces of those she supported came to mind: Papa, Leonora, Harriet and Prudence, and John with his wife Mary.

And in Paris…Aurelia shook her head. No, she would not dwell on this now, a man who seemed to read her very mind standing before her.

Twenty-six and forever adrift from society.

‘If it is money you need…’

She broke into his words even before he had finished them, unwilling to hear the offer. ‘I need only your confidence, Lord Hawkhurst.’ The dog growled at her tone.

‘Then you have it.’ His words were clipped short and he was gone even before she had time to answer. As the door shut behind him, Aurelia closed her eyes. He had looked at her as if she were…unknown, the undercurrents between them disappearing into simple loathing. The ache of it stabbed quick for in the nights after everyone had found their beds and the moon was high she had dreamed there might be something finer, something real and right and true. As she shook her head hard, the betrayal of hope was a timely reminder of why she had not sought out the company of others in the years since Charles’s accident.

The shaped sharp end of the oak branch had pointed upwards, all the intentions of death in its careful placement. The brush before the jump had been so precisely angled, hiding everything, and she had been most vigilant in shielding John from the heavy hand of the law when it was determined he was the last person to be seen in the vicinity. The questions had come, of course, but the true answers had been lost in the interim, clues to the truth gone for ever and only conjecture left.

Sitting at the table, she unlocked a drawer at the very bottom of her desk and drew out a pouch of leather wrapped in silk. She knew that Lord Hawkhurst had not been here for a casual or idle chat; she had seen it in his stance and heard it in all the things he had not said.

‘Ahh, mon Dieu, qu’est-ce que je fais maintenant?’

Oh, my God, what should I do now?

Drawing out the newest missive from Paris, Aurelia understood the need to be even more careful than she usually was when she passed the letter on.

She remembered Sylvienne’s wide and frightened eyes when they had last met in Paris, the furtive looks across her shoulder as her mother had explained she did not feel safe.

Freddy Delsarte had been there, of course, his own brand of cunning gleaming in his eyes, the secrets of the daughter of a well-respected and wealthy English gentleman pointing to a lucrative blackmail.

Another responsibility. A further problem. Aurelia felt as though she was a tightrope walker poised on a thin rope above chaos and despair.