A Secret Consequence For The Viscount

Her writing was precise and evenly sloped, and she had not used her married surname. He could smell a perfume on the paper that made him bring the sheet to his nose and breath in. Violets.

A mantel clock above the fireplace told him it was already fifteen minutes before the hour she had stated. Pulling his coat from the one bag he had brought as luggage from the Americas, he let himself quietly out of the room.

* * *

Ten minutes later he saw her coming through the drifts of dirty snow, a small figure wrapped in a thick shawl that fell almost to her knees. The moon was out and the wind had dropped and in the silence all about it was as if they were the only two people left in the world.

Her face was flushed from cold as she came in, shutting the glass door behind her. In here the chill was lessened, whether from the abundance of green plant life or just good building practice, he knew not which. When she spoke though he could see a cloud of mist after each word.

‘Thank you for coming.’

‘You thought I would not?’

She ignored that and rushed on. ‘I was more than surprised to see you tonight. I don’t know why you would wish for all those years of silence and no contact whatsoever, but—’

‘It was not intentional, Lady Eleanor. My memory was lost.’

Her eyes widened at this truth and she swallowed, hard.

‘I must have been hit over the head, as there was a sizeable lump there for a good time afterwards. As a result of the injury my memory was compromised.’

She now looked plainly shocked. ‘How much of it exactly? How much did you lose?’

‘Everything that happened to me before I disappeared was gone for many years. A month ago I retrieved most of my history but still...there are patches.’

‘Patches?’

‘The week before my disappearance and a few days after have gone entirely. I cannot seem to remember any of it.’

She turned at that, away from the moonlight so that all her face was in shadow. She seemed slighter than she had done a few hours earlier. Her hands trembled as she caught them together before her.

‘Everything?’

‘I am hoping it will come back, but...’ He stopped, because he could not know if this was a permanent state or a temporary one.

‘How was your cheek scarred?’

‘Someone wants me dead. They have tried three times to kill me now and I doubt that will cease until I identify the perpetrators.’

‘Why? Why should you be such a target?’

‘I have lived in the shadows for a long time, even before I left England, and have any number of enemies. Some I can identify, but others I can’t.’

‘A lonely place to be in.’

‘And a dangerous one.’

‘You are different now, Lord Bromley.’ She gave him those words quietly. ‘More distant. A harder man. Almost unrecognisable.’

He laughed, the sound discordant, but here in the night there was a sense of honesty he had not felt in a long, long time. Even his friends had tiptoed around his new reality and tried to find the similarities with what had been before. Lady Eleanor did not attempt to be diplomatic at all as she had asked of his cheek and his circumstances and there was freedom in such truth.

He felt a pull towards her that was stronger than anything he had ever known before and stiffened, cursing beneath his breath. She was Jacob’s younger sister and he could offer her nothing. He needed to be careful.

‘I am less whole, I think.’ His good hand gestured at his face. ‘Less trusting.’

‘Like me,’ she returned in a whisper. ‘Just the same.’

And when her blue eyes met his, he saw the tears that streamed down her cheeks, sorrow, anger and grief written all over her face.

He touched her then. He took her hand into his own to try to give the coldness some warmth. A small hand with bitten-down nails. There was a ring on the third finger, encrusted diamonds in gold.

‘Was he a good man, your husband?’

‘I thought so.’

‘Then I am sorry for it.’

At that she snatched her fingers from his grasp and turned. She was gone before he could say another word, a shadow against the hedgerows, small and alone.

Why had she asked him here? What had she said that could not have been discussed in the breakfast salon in the morning? Why had she risked such a meeting in the very dead of night just to ask of his health?

Nothing made any sense.

* * *

Everything was now dangerous.

Nicholas being here, the desperate people who were chasing him, the new man he had become at the expense of the one he had been.

She barely recognised him inside or out. He looked different and he sounded different. Bigger. More menacing. Distant. And yet...when he had taken her hand into his she had felt the giddy rush of want and desire.

‘Nicholas.’ She whispered his name into the night as she sat by the fire.

‘Amnesia.’ She breathed the word quietly, hating the sound of it.

Lucy had been her priority for all the years of their apartness. She had risked her social standing, her family’s acceptance and her future for her daughter and if there was even a slight chance that Nicholas could place her in danger then Eleanor was not prepared to take it.

He had said the perpetrators had attacked him three times already and had looked as though he expected a fourth or a fifth or a sixth. What was it she had heard him say to her brother just a few hours ago as she had over-listened to their conversation in the library?

‘But it is dangerous, Jake. If anything were to happen to you or your family...’

If she told him the truth about that week before he disappeared, would he want to be back in their lives? Did she want to risk telling him of their closeness, knowing so little about him? He was a stranger to her now, so perhaps she should wait to discover what kind of man he was before revealing a secret so huge it would change all their lives for ever.

These thoughts tumbled around and around in her mind, going this way and that. If he had just looked at her for a second as he used to, she knew she would have capitulated and let him know everything. But this new Nicholas was altered and aloof, the indifference in his eyes crushing.

Lucy was now her priority. As a mother she needed to make decisions that would protect her child. She had not told another soul about her relationship with Nicholas. Jacob had been distraught from the loss of his friend and she thought he might not cope with another heartbreak and scandal. She had never seen her brother so broken.

And so she had told her family nothing of the father and lover and instead, with their help, had removed to Scotland and away from prying eyes.

Goodness, those years had been hard, she thought, and shook her head. She had been so lonely she might have simply died, there in Edinburgh in the house Jacob had set her up in waiting until she could return to Millbrook for the birth of her child. A terrible secret, a dreadful scandal and all the hope of what could have been disappeared as completely as Nicholas Bartlett had.

Blighted by her own stupidity, she’d lived in sadness until the first look at the face of her daughter had banished any regret.

On her return she found Jacob had concocted a story of a husband who had died and that she was now a grieving young widow with a small child in tow. She had become Eleanor Robertson at the stroke of a pen, the name being a common and unremarkable one, though she never thought of herself as such and used Huntingdon when signing letters to anyone she knew well. Oh, granted, she realised that many people did not believe such a fabrication, but nobody made a fuss of it either. She was a duke’s daughter with land and money of her own and in the very few times she’d returned to the city she found the few friends she still did have to be generally accepting of her circumstances.

A fragile existence that only took the renewed appearance of Nicholas Bartlett to break it down completely. But this missing week seemed well established in his mind and he himself had said it had been a month since any recall had returned.

Which meant no other memories had crept back in. She did not know enough about the state of amnesia to have a certainty of anything, but tomorrow she would go to Lackington, Allen & Co. and look up the files under the medical section of the library. Knowledge would aid her.

Perhaps she could help him redefine his memory. But should she? Would her presence at his side, even in that capacity, put her own self into danger?

She needed to wait, she thought. She needed to see just how the next few days turned out in order to make an informed decision about her and Lucy’s future.

He did not wear his crested ring any more. He did not smile as he used to. She wondered if he was financially strapped with his hair and his clothes and his scuffed old boots. There had been talk of his inheritances passing on to his uncle given the number of years of his being away. Perhaps being presumed dead even negated legal rights to property?

Many had thought him dead, after all. She had heard it in the drawing rooms of society and in the quieter salons of the ton. The dashing and dissolute young Viscount Bromley’s disappearance was mourned by myriad feminine hearts and the gold coins he had lost in the seedier halls of London’s gambling scene had only added to his allure. He was now touted as a legend whose deeds had only been enhanced by the mystery surrounding him.

Eleanor could not even imagine him in society looking like he did now. No one would recognise him. People would pity him. The scar at his cheek, the injured hand and the uncertainty. He would be crucified within the hallowed snobbery of the ton!

How could she protect him?

By staying in London and being there to pick up the pieces, perhaps? By sending Lucy home to Millbrook House with her nanny and maids tomorrow until she was certain which way the dice tumbled?

Oh, God, now she was thinking at the opposite spectrum of what she had started to decide. Stay away from Nicholas entirely or try to protect him? Which was it to be? Which should it be?

Underneath her thoughts a small flame flared, then took and filled her whole body with gladness. These arguments were all academic because now he was alive to her again. Nicholas Bartlett, Viscount Bromley, was not dead. He was here and breathing, the past covering him like a dull shroud, but nevertheless still quick.

Everything was possible whilst life bloomed and her brother and his friends would not desert him. She knew that from what Jacob had said. Placing her hands together she prayed.

‘Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you...’ Thessalonians again. She murmured the scripture into the silence with an emotion that she found both comforting and worrying.

Tonight she would dream of him just as she had done a thousand times since he had disappeared, his arms around her body and his warm lips covering her own.

But this time it would be different for he was no longer just a ghost.

* * *

Frederick’s carriage collected him the next morning well before the luncheon and when he arrived at the home of the Challengers in St James’s Square, Nick understood just how happy his friend was these days.

Georgiana, Fred’s wife, was gracious and welcoming even with the house in an uproar as it made itself ready for the evening’s entertainment.

‘It is a pleasure to meet you, Lord Bromley.’ A real smile touched her blue eyes and although she did not look at his scar, she did not look away from it either. ‘I have heard much about you for Frederick has spoken of you so very often.’

‘I hope he concentrated on my good qualities rather than the bad ones.’ He tried to keep his tone light.

‘The wildness of youth is never easy, I fear, and often misrepresented, but rest assured my husband has missed you.’

In such wisdom Nick detected that Georgiana’s life might have had its own complexities and he wondered about her story.

* * *

Half an hour later when he and Fred were alone in the library and a drink had been poured, Nick put his head back against the leather rest of a large wing chair and took in breath.

‘Your wife has the knack of making this all look easy,’ he said finally. ‘A house of things being both interesting and alive, but without the chaos of your upbringing? Where did you meet her?’

‘I first saw her at Vitium et Virtus late one night when she was auctioning off her virginity to the highest bidder, wearing nothing more than a silk concoction that was barely decent.’

Nick laughed at that and liked the sound of it. ‘And I gather that the winner of such an unusual prize was yourself?’

‘Fortunately.’

They both took a drink and listened to the low rumbling noise of the busy house.

‘Georgie was promised in marriage to Sir Nash Bowles and doing her level best to get out of it. It was the only plan she could think of. Unwise but spectacularly successful.’ Frederick’s laugh was deep.

‘Bowles was there? At the club?’

‘He was.’ Fred had sobered now at mention of that name, the good humour of a second ago fading markedly.

‘One of the last things I remember is warning him to never darken its door again, but he obviously returned.’

‘My wife sees him as perverted and cruel.’

‘And I would agree with her.’

‘Well, the one thing I do thank him for is his threats to unmask her completely. It was only because she thought she might be shunned as a pariah when the ton got wind of her improper plan that she agreed to marry me.’

‘A wise choice.’ Nick lifted his glass and finished the brandy before placing it down on the table beside him and refusing Frederick’s offer of another. ‘The world you all live in has changed a lot since I have been gone.’

‘And you have changed in appearance since last night. Jacob’s barber is a magician, by the way.’

‘The bath helped, too. The Westmoor physician also came this morning to see to my hand. He says he expects it to heal completely if I am careful.’

‘Knife wounds can be difficult things.’

‘The blade hit the bone at the back of the wrist, but at least it did not break.’

‘Which explains the sling. If you don’t want to be thrown into society so quickly by coming tonight, Nick, I will understand. After the army it was hard for me to fit straight back in.’

‘Because you felt different? Out of place?’

‘Yes, and because I had seen things that no one else could even imagine.’

Frederick was quiet then and Nicholas was glad of it.

‘I had thought to go to ground, but if I don’t come tonight it will only get harder. Better to get it over and done with. I saw Lady Eleanor yesterday, too, by the way.’ He tried to keep interest out of his words though he was not certain he had succeeded as Frederick looked up. ‘What is her story?’

‘Jake is very tight lipped about his sister, but from what I can gather the man she married was from a well-thought-of family in Edinburgh. The Robertsons.’

‘Was it the family of the Robertson boy we knew at school, then?’

‘No, by all accounts he was not related to them. Douglas Robertson, Eleanor’s husband, was killed falling off a horse, apparently in some hunting accident, and when Eleanor found out she was pregnant she came home to Millbrook to have her baby daughter, Lucy. And to grieve.’

Lucy. Nick stored the name inside him and thought how hard a path that must have been for a sheltered duke’s daughter with all the promise in the world.

A bit like him, perhaps, although his promise had been dimming even before his absence from England. His uncle had encouraged him into the profligate and debauched underworld of the ton and he had gone in to welcome the inherent risks with his eyes wide open.

‘Do you ever think, Fred, that maybe we were fools back then, playing so hard and fast?’

‘I think you and Oliver were the ones who were the worst of us although you held the biggest share in Vitium et Virtus and gambled away the most money.’

‘It was fun until it wasn’t,’ he returned and stood to look out of the window. ‘I will go up to Bromworth House tomorrow and see my uncle.’

‘Take my carriage.’

‘Oliver offered me the use of his yesterday.’

‘Will you live there this time, do you think? Put down roots and stay?’

Nicholas shrugged his shoulders because he truly did not know.

‘My advice would be to find a wife like mine, Nick. A woman who can be the better half of you, for without Georgiana at my side I’d still be lost.’

As I am, Nicholas thought, and felt the shiver of ghosts walk down his spine.

Frederick leant forward, swirling the brandy around in his glass. ‘We can move the club on into other hands, younger ones. It’s probably past time.’

‘Do you have anyone in mind?’

‘Half the upcoming bucks of the ton would jump to it in a second, but it has to be the right people. A group of friends like us maybe, people who could work together.’ He smiled, his brown eyes soft. ‘For so long we all feared you were dead, Nick. For so long we talked of you with sorrow and regret even as we relived your wildest exploits. It is good to have you back again and in one piece.’

‘Well, perhaps not quite one piece, Frederick.’ That truth settled between them.

‘The bits will come back to you, but give it time and don’t force it. One day you will rise in the morning and realise life is easier and that the demons that once threatened to engulf you are more distant.’

‘Less insistent?’

‘Then you will also understand that life carries on, different from before maybe but still valuable, and that there are people in the world who never stopped loving you. Myself included.’

Frederick waited until he nodded before carrying on.

‘But enough of this maudlin emotion and confession, for I think we now need to get down to this afternoon’s business and find you some more appropriate clothes to wear.’

Thus the mundane allowed an end to the extraordinary truths of the conversation.

* * *

Nicholas could not remember ever taking this long to dress, but the Challenger valet was both insistent and persuasive and, although he had no clothes of his own to speak of, the man soon conjured up an array of cast-offs that fitted him well.

‘Just a slight tuck here, my lord.’ His grip was firm on the side seam of the jacket. ‘You don’t quite have the girth of Major Challenger. The trousers have been lengthened, but a good steam has taken care of any tell-tale signs of alteration. They give a fine impression of being your own clothes, Lord Bromley. Tailored to perfection if I might say so myself.’

‘Thank you.’ He gave this quietly. It had been years since he had had a servant fuss over him in such a way and it made him feel strangely odd. He had never given those who worked for the Bromley estate much thought before, but now he did. He hoped his uncle had treated them well and that there might be a few familiar faces at the Manor when he went up there on the morrow.

The luxury of London unsettled him and he fought for a touchstone. He wondered if Eleanor Huntingdon might come to Frederick’s soirée with her brother. He would like to see her dressed in finery with her hair arranged to show off the colour of it. He would like to dance with her. He would like to have her near.

Frederick came into the room he had been assigned just as the valet had finished the last stitch and broken off the thread, smoothing down the fabric.

‘A fine job, Masters. The Viscount looks as though he should fit in nicely.’

When the man collected all the assorted spools and left, Fred poured them each some wine in ornate cut-crystal glasses.

‘For fortification,’ he said and raised the tipple. ‘Most of those present tonight are friends and acquaintances, but there are always the certain few outsiders who might want to rock the boat.’

‘Are you warning me, Fred?’

‘You’ve been away a long time and stories have formed around your disappearance that have no bearing on the truth.’

‘For that I am glad.’

‘But a word of advice. If you do not wish to be the continued censure of the gossipmongers perhaps you could think of a reason for your injuries that may be more palatable. An army wound? The sanctity of government violence goes a long way in suppressing criticism, I have always found. The Seminole Wars, perhaps? The time frame would fit.’

‘You have thought about this already?’

When Frederick began to laugh he did, too.

‘The legends that abound about you as the reckless and dissolute Viscount Bromley are also a protection. No one will know quite who you are.’

‘Including me.’ He said the words quietly and finished his drink.

Frederick’s frown was deep. ‘You can’t do this alone any more, Nick. You have to let us all help you.’

‘You are already doing that and I will be fine.’

Chapter Four

Eleanor had dressed as carefully as she ever had, her maids watching her with puzzlement on both their faces. Usually she barely cared. Normally if she went out it was only with much chagrin that she suffered even an hour of the business of ‘getting ready’.

Today she had spent most of the afternoon changing her mind from this dress to that one, from a formal hair style to a far less structured one. Even her shoes had been swapped from one pair to the next.

And now with only a few moments before she needed to go downstairs and join her brother and sister-in-law she was still unsure. Was the gold of her gown a little gaudy? Did her hair, set into up-pulled ringlets, look contrived? Was the diamond choker at her throat too much of a statement for a woman of her age?

She looked away from her reflection and breathed in deeply. No more. No other changes. She was exhausted by her uncertainty.

Jacob smiled as he saw her descending the staircase.

‘I have not seen you look quite as beautiful for a very long time, Ellie.’

Rose beside him looked as pleased as her brother did. ‘It is going to be so lovely to have you with us at Frederick and Georgiana’s, Eleanor. I wish you were with us more often in London.’ Her sister-in-law was in blue tonight and her fairness made her look like an angel. Every time Eleanor saw Rose she could understand exactly what her brother had seen in her as a choice of wife. She was kind and quiet, a woman who did not push herself forward, but waited for others to come to her.

With a laugh Eleanor took the offered hand and felt immeasurably more confident, an emotion she would need if she were to be any help to Nicholas Bartlett.

‘Nick has gone on already,’ Jacob said. ‘Frederick had a set of clothes that he needed to see if he fitted and he wanted Nicholas to meet Georgiana before this evening’s function.’

‘I am sure the Viscount will look well in anything he chooses. From all the accounts I have heard from my maid this morning as I was dressing he is a most handsome man.’

Rose’s statement was firm and Eleanor glanced at her. She herself had not seen Nicholas Bartlett in the house all day as he had left in the mid-morning for the Challengers. She hoped he had found a barber at least to shave off his beard.

Her nerves started to make her worried again. If people were rude or worse to him she could not quite think what she would do. Her brother would hardly tolerate such behaviour, of course, but still there was a difference between being accepted for who you were and being gossiped about behind raised fans and turned heads.

‘I hope Lord Bromley will enjoy himself,’ she finally said and left it at that.

It was only a short ride from Chelsea to St James’s Square and the rain and wind had held off enough to allow them a quiet passage into the house. After the death of her brother and father the family had been largely in mourning so it felt good to be able to go out again. The Challenger soirée would have a lot of people who were known to them attending, but it was not as formal as some of the grander balls.