Читать книгу Mistress at Midnight - Sophia James - Страница 9

London

‘She’s a lovely girl from a good family, Hawk. Safe. Pretty. Well thought of.’

There was something in the way Lucas Clairmont listed the attributes of Lady Elizabeth Berkeley that made him feel uneasy.

‘You said you needed to settle down, for God’s sake, and that you wanted to be a thousand miles away from the intrigues of Europe. As the only daughter of a respectable and aristocratic family, she certainly fits that bill.’

Finishing the drink he was holding, Stephen poured himself another before phrasing a question that had been worrying him.

‘When you met Lillian, Luc, how did she make you feel?’

‘My wife knocked me sideways. She took the ground from underneath my feet in the first glance and I hated her for it, whilst wanting her as I had never wanted another woman in my life.’

‘I see.’ The heart fell out of his argument. ‘Elizabeth is more like a gentle wind or a quiet presence. When I kissed her once upon the hand she felt like a glass doll, ready to shatter into pieces should I take it further.’

Silence greeted this confession. Damn, Stephen thought, he should have said nothing, should have kept his mouth shut so that uncertainty did not escape to make him question an amiable and advantageous union. He was no longer young and Elizabeth Berkeley was the closest to coming near to what he thought he needed in a woman.

‘There are different kinds of attractions, I suppose,’ Luc finally replied. ‘You seemed happy enough with the arrangements last week. What’s changed that?’

‘Nothing.’ The room closed in on Hawk as he thought of his encounter at Taylor’s Gap, fiery silk running through his fingers like living flame.

Elizabeth did not question him. She accepted all that he had been with a gentle grace. She saw only the goodness in people, their conviviality and well-mannered ways—a paragon of docility and charm.

Unease made him dizzy, the black holes of his life filling with empty nothingness. What might a woman such as that see inside him when the shutters fell away? Nay, he would never allow them to.

‘I have it on good authority that her family expect you to offer for her. If you have any doubts…?’

‘I do not.’

Damn it, he liked Elizabeth. He liked her composure and her contentment. He liked her dimples, her sunny nature and her pale blue eyes that were always smiling. He needed peace and serenity and she would give him this, a sop against the chaos that had begun to consume him. He filled up his third glass.

‘You drink more than you ever have done, Hawk. Nat is as worried about you as I am.’

Smiling, the stretch of pretence felt tight around the edges of his mouth. Lucas Clairmont and Nathaniel Lindsay had been his best friends since childhood and each had had their demons.

‘I remember saying the same to you not so long ago.’

‘If you want to talk about it…’

‘There is nothing to say. I am about to be betrothed to a woman who is as beautiful as she is good natured. I like her family and I like her disposition. She will give me heirs and I in turn will give her the security of the Atherton wealth and title.’

‘Then it sounds like a sterling arrangement for you both. A marriage of much convenience.’ The hollow ring of censure worried him.

‘I am tired, Luc, tired of all that I have been. “A sterling arrangement”, as you put it, might not be such a bad thing. Hemmed in by domesticity, I shall be happy.’

He picked at the superfine of his breeches as he spoke and crossed his legs. His boots reflected the chandelier, its many tiers of light spilling down into the room, everything bright upon the surface.

‘Alexander Shavvon said you are doing more than reading codes for the Home Office?’

‘Shavvon could never keep his mouth shut.’

‘Ten years is too long to endure in service. Nat did five and nearly lost his soul. He swears that death stains everyone in the end whether they think it does or not.’ The condemnation in his friend’s words wasn’t gentle, though Hawk knew the warning was given with the very best of intentions.

I kill people, Stephen thought as he opened his hand to the light. It shook now, all of the time, the tremors of memory translated into The flesh. I take policy and make it personal again and again in the dark corruption of power. The black of night, the flame edge of gunpowder and the red crawl of blood. Those are my colours now.

He wanted to tell Luc this, as a purge or as an atonement, but the words buried in secrecy would not form; the consequence of a life depending on camouflage, he supposed, and ceased to try to find an explanation.

Shadows, veils and mirrors. He could barely recognise the man he had become. Certainly, he did not defend the Realm with the cloak of justice firmly fixed across his shoulders any more; a score of innocent lives had seen to that particular loss as well as a hundred others who had no notion of such a word.

Aye, he needed the fresh, uncomplicated innocence of Elizabeth Berkeley like a man lost in the desert needed water.

‘I am fine, Luc. I have a party about to begin in less than an hour and the promise of the company of a group of people around me whom I enjoy.’

‘A happy man, then?’

‘Indeed.’

Lucas nodded and leant forwards, his glass balanced on his knee. ‘Lilly wants you at Fairley for Hope’s twelfth birthday celebration. She says for me to tell you that were she not quite so pregnant she would be down herself to oversee your choice of a wife.’

Luc’s words relaxed the tension markedly as both laughed, and when the clock at the end of the room boomed out the hour of eight they stood.

‘Let the night begin,’ Lucas said as Stephen finished what was left of his brandy and his man knocked on the door to tell them the first of the evening’s guests would be arriving imminently.

Elizabeth Berkeley and her parents came in the second wave of company. Lady Berkeley looked like an older version of her offspring and for a moment Stephen could see just exactly how her daughter would age: the small lines around her mouth, the droop of skin above her eyes, the social ease with which she sailed into any occasion.

His glance went to Elizabeth dressed in lemon silk and lace. ‘It is so lovely to be here, my lord,’ she said in a lilting whisper, placing one hand on his arm. Her nails were long and polished to a sheen.

A sudden flash of other fingers with nails bitten almost to the quick worried him, for he still wore their trails down his neck, hidden carefully under the folds of collar and tie.

Shaking away memory, he settled back into the moment as the Berkeleys moved on in the line of greeting and the next visitors came forth to be welcomed.

She was suddenly there beside him, the very last of the evening’s guests, her hair wound up in an unflattering fashion, the black bombazine gown she wore unembellished and prim.

‘Mrs Aurelia St Harlow and her sister Miss Leonora Beauchamp.’

A wave of hush covered the room at the name, all eyes turning to the staircase. Aurelia was Charles St Harlow’s widow? God, but she was brave.

‘How on earth could she even think to come out in society, still?’

‘It was she who killed him, of course.’

‘Has the strumpet no shame at all?’

Threads of conversation reached Hawk even as she gave him her hand.

‘I thank you for the kind invitation, my lord,’ she said, her glance nowhere near meeting his own, ‘and would like to introduce to you my sister Miss Leonora Beauchamp.’

The chit was charming, young and well mannered, but Hawk smiled only cursorily before turning back to the other.

‘St Harlow was my cousin.’

For the first time, she looked at him directly, her eyes red rimmed from lack of sleep or from poorly placed cosmetics, he could not tell. She wore glasses that were so thick they distorted the shape of her face.

‘We are almost family, then.’ The smile accompanying the statement was hard.

He thought the sister might have turned away, but Aurelia held her there before him, her force of will biting through the atmosphere in the room, a small island of challenge and defiance.

Finally she leaned forwards and whispered, ‘I gave you the exacted payment for the promise of this evening, my lord, and Leonora is not at fault here. Two dances and we will leave.’

‘I am not sure, Lia. Perhaps we should go now.’ The beginning of tears shone in the younger girl’s frightened eyes.

‘Do not cry, Leonora. It is me whom they despise. They will love you if you only let them.’ Turning back, Stephen saw that Aurelia’s hand shook before she buried it into the matt blackness of the wool in her skirt, but she did not give an inch. He had to admire such a resolute feistiness.

‘If one beards the lion in his den, one must be brave.’ Hawk related this to Miss Leonora Beauchamp and was glad when she smiled because the relief in Aurelia St Harlow’s eyes was fathomless, hollow pools of mismatched colour focused upon him.

Years of deception flooded in. An unashamed façade undermined the certainty of others. If Aurelia St Harlow could brazen it out for an hour or more here, he doubted the rumours swirling around her would be quite as damning.

Lord. The promise of a dance with the sister had placed him in a position of difficulty, too. Charles had been one of the last living Hawkhursts, and the closest in blood to him save his uncle, but he had barely known him.

He saw Elizabeth with her family watching, her lips pinched in that particular way she had of showing worry. Guileless. He saw Luc observing him, too, the frown of anger on his brow as pronounced as those of many others. But even this could not make him withdraw his promise and order them gone.

His uncle next to him solved the whole thing entirely as he reached out and took the hand of the one woman in the world he should not have.

‘I remember you, Mrs St Harlow. You are Charles’s wife.’ The use of the present tense made those within hearing press forwards. It was Hawk’s experience that no one loved a scandal played out publicly more than the ton. ‘I liked you right from the start, you see, but you got sadder. She needs to smile more, Stephen. Ask her to dance with you.’

Tragedy, farce and comedy now. The orchestra positioned only a few yards away from them looked at Hawk with expectation on hearing his uncle’s loud command and the faces of those below were a mixture of indignation and shock.

He could do nothing less than consign Miss Leonora Beauchamp into the capable and kind hands of Cassandra Lindsay and offer Aurelia St Harlow the chance of a waltz.

The dance of love, he thought as he led her to the floor, and wondered why such a notion did not seem as ridiculous as he knew it should have. He hoped his right leg would stand up to the exercise, for of late the old wound had been playing up again.

When he placed his hands about her he felt her stiffen. ‘It is my sister whom I would prefer to be where I stand, my lord, for if you adhere to the promised two dances I have just wasted half of them.’

He could not help but smile at such a comment. In response he tightened his grip and felt the full front of her generous bosom. When he looked down he saw she squinted behind thick spectacles.

‘Glasses are supposed to cure poor eyesight, Mrs St Harlow, not cause it,’ he said softly.

‘Things to hide behind have their uses, however, my lord.’ He noticed her straining away and gave her the distance because just the feel of her in his arms had begun to make his blood beat thicker. Across the room Elizabeth Berkeley and her parents followed them intently. ‘You see, at a soirée such as this one it is preferable to be virtually invisible to those who might wish me ill.’

‘They wish you ill because your husband’s death was not one that made any sense. The fact that you were the only person there when it happened made you…culpable.’

‘A court of law proved I had no hand in anything untoward, my lord. It is not my problem that the ton at large refuses to believe these documented facts.’

‘Charles was an expert horseman.’

‘Who fell at a hedge.’

‘One does not generally end up with a sharpened stake embedded through the heart after such an encounter.’

‘I am not here to argue my husband’s unfortunate and early demise with you, my lord.’

The lack of any true feeling made Hawk pause, though his anger was softened a little when he felt the rapidity of her heartbeat beneath his fingers. She was good at hiding things, he thought. A spy’s trait, that.

‘Then why exactly are you here?’

‘I have three younger sisters with little chance of an advantageous alliance unless they are out and about in society. As you can guess from my reception here tonight, we seldom receive any invitations. I am trying to remedy such a difficulty.’

‘So you stalk the peerage in the hope of finding them in compromising positions and then inveigle a card requesting your company at their next social gathering?’

She laughed unexpectedly, the sound running through his bones into the empty darkness of his heart, and the room around them fell away into the windy barrenness of Taylor’s Gap.

Was she a sorceress with her bright red hair and her different eyes? Had she bewitched his cousin in the very same manner? He wished the music might end, allowing him the ease of escape, but the orchestra was in full flight with no chance of a quick finale and to order it otherwise would only incite comment.

Aurelia St Harlow continued as if he had not insulted her at all. ‘I had no knowledge of you being at Taylor’s Gap, Lord Hawk. It was on a whim that I walked in your direction to admire the view and by a trick of coincidence found you there.’

‘Fortuitous, then?’

‘You speak of our kiss?’

He could barely believe that she would mention such a thing here in the crowded room of the ton at play and looked to see that none close had heard her question.

‘There are ears everywhere in a gathering such as this one, Mrs St Harlow, and it is prudent to protect a reputation.’

She shook her head and looked away. ‘Oh, mine is lost completely already, my lord. I doubt anything else I do could lower it further.’

Again he smiled, the freedom inherent in such a thought enlivening. ‘How old are you?’ Said before he could think, said from the very depths of interest.

‘Twenty-six. An old maid. A woman on the shelf of life and happy for it.’ Her eyes strayed to a set of females of a similar age sitting against one wall. ‘I used to pity them until I realised how very liberated they actually were.’

His fingers tightened about hers, gloved tonight in a strange hue of grey. He wished he might have felt her skin beneath, the warmth of it and the smoothness.

‘My uncle seems more than taken with you and that is saying something. He seldom has time for anyone in society.’

For the first time that evening, genuine warmth entered her eyes. ‘I always liked him, too. He showed me around the gardens at the Atherton country seat once and I helped him collect the eggs from the henhouses.’

‘Most people ridicule him.’

‘Most people loathe me so perhaps the thread in common allows us communion.’

‘I do not loathe you, Aurelia.’

She tripped as he said it and fell up against him, the red in her face climbing into beetroot, though the dance music chose that particular point to end and he shepherded her back to her sister.