A Proposition For The Comte

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

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?