Regency Society
Taris Wellingham knew most of the names without any formal introduction and the ones that he didn’t had him tilting his head in a gesture that prompted those on the end of it to supply their identities and thus solving the problem altogether. Standing with him, Bea realised his expertise at managing in his world, and also the exertion that it must take to get it right. He always faced full on to the speaker, she noticed, as though sound needed to have some sort of perspective, the tone enhanced perhaps by an equal volume?
He also made it a point to introduce her to everyone. A man who would shelter her and guard her against a careless remark or a wayward observation, and indeed by halfway through the night she thought that the plan of protection was working very well.
Until Lady Arabella Fisher approached them with a number of her friends.
Close up the girl exuded an arrogance that was less observable from further away; a beauty who would take umbrage at not being the most lauded or most visible female in the room because so many people had told her of her charms.
‘Lord Wellingham,’ she said, her tone honey silken and sensual. ‘I did not see you at the Charltons’ place last evening?’
Beatrice was amazed at the way Lady Arabella used her body as a weapon to gain his attention, but with the expected social distance of a foot or so she was also aware as to how much of what Lady Arabella did was lost on him. Still, her voice was lethal in its own right and it was directed straight at Taris Wellingham.
‘That is because I was at Mrs Bassingstoke’s discussion group, mulling over the problems of the world.’
Lady Arabella frowned and the other young woman near her did the same. ‘I cannot believe you would miss the fun at the Charltons’ in the pursuit of that bluestocking’s dusty old group.’
‘That bluestocking, as you call her, is right here beside me. Mrs Beatrice Bassingstoke, might I present Lady Arabella Fisher, the Countess of Griffin’s daughter. Though perhaps there is no necessity for the introduction—it seems she knows you already.’
To give her her due, the girl looked highly embarrassed.
‘I do beg your pardon, Mrs Bassingstoke. My manners were most rude. It is just that worrying endlessly about the cares of the world are such a burden and you can never change them anyway.’
The others around her looked every bit in agreement. Carefree and jaunty, they were all that Beatrice at eighteen had not been and for a second she was…envious. No other word for it. Envious of the years they had been allowed to just grow up. Slowly. Their rough edges polished by love rather than by anger, their mistakes sniggered over in each other’s company at night and all the choices of the world before them.
Not stupid, really, but just young. Not mean, either, but arrogant in a way that young girls perhaps should be arrogant, a buttress against hardships that would come later. Something to look back upon with fondness!
‘Will you dance, my lord?’ Lady Arabella’s question was hopeful. ‘The orchestra here is very skilled.’ Feeling the fingers beneath hers tense in alarm, Bea leapt in unbidden.
‘Lord Wellingham is recuperating from a tumble he had from a horse,’ she heard her voice saying. My God, she never lied like this, but the force of protection was stronger than the need for truth and she was glad when Taris nodded.
The irritated glance from Lady Arabella was directed straight at her as she continued. ‘I have always been extremely afraid of horses for the exact same reason. Why, when I was a child, many years ago, of course, I remember my mother saying to me that it was most important to stay in a place where a steed may see you and…’
Lady Arabella listened to the pointless monologue for all of five minutes before breaking in when Bea deliberately took an overlong breath.
‘I think that we really must go and find some supper now, Mrs Bassingstoke. I do hope that you will excuse us.’
Smiling sweetly, Bea watched as the young girls left. Vacuous chatter was such an effective tool to use!
‘You are as formidable here as you are in your own salon, Bea. Do I now have to limp all night?’
‘I am sorry, I should not have—’
He stopped her simply by holding up his hand.
‘How close is the person nearest to us?’
‘A few yards away.’
‘If we were alone, I would kiss you.’
‘And I would kiss you back.’ Two could play at this game and she saw the pulse in his throat quicken.
‘Hard?’ His word was hoarse and an explosion of lust blossomed deep in her stomach. ‘So hard that I would have to beg you to stop…’
‘Beg her to stop what?’ Asher Wellingham came to stand next to them and Bea bit back horror. How much had he heard?
‘Beg her to stop worrying about the repercussions of Lucinda’s gossip.’ She had to give it to Taris Wellingham, he thought quickly on his feet.
Asher swore quietly. ‘Our sister has no idea of the hurt she can cause and one day—’
‘I am certain that your brother is overstating my concern, your Grace.’
‘And understating my own,’ Taris added, a wicked smile on his face.
The double entendre was deliberate and Bea was glad that she had dropped her arm in the surprise of having the Duke overhear them.
Because at that moment in a ballroom overflowing with people and under a ceiling alight with hundreds of candles she was bathed in a feeling she had never felt before.
Exhilarated.
Powerful.
Exalted.
Not herself. Not plain and ordinary Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke, but a woman who might attract a man such as Taris Wellingham. And keep him!
Now, clothed in gold she felt like a beautiful butterfly released from a drab and never-ending cocoon, a woman who could spar with words and be admired for it instead of hit, and one whose opinions were listened to instead of being shouted down.
When Emerald came and claimed her company she could only watch as Taris Wellingham walked with his brother towards the supper room, the pressing crowd swallowing them up before they were even ten yards away.
All Taris wanted to do was to go home and make love to Beatrice. But he had promised himself distance and honour and all of the noble attributes of a man who might care about the future of a woman who intrigued him.
The sound of gossip made him maudlin, and he longed to be in the country again. He had stayed in London this time longer than he had for all of the past eight years. Seven days tomorrow and still he had not instructed his valet to pack.
Asher guided him towards the top of the room, where the smell of supper was stronger. ‘Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke is the most original woman here, apart from Emerald, and even then I should say they are about equal in novelty.’ His voice was measured as he carried on. ‘And the fact that you have been reduced to begging for a kiss in a crowded ballroom suggests a relationship different from the one you have implied…’
‘You are an inveterate spy, Ashe.’
‘With good reason to be so. My sources say that the Henshaw carriage was dispatched at five this morning to pick you up when you failed to return home.’
‘Jack told you that?’
‘He didn’t have to. The Henshaw driver is my valet’s brother.’
‘I see.’
‘Emerald too has been pestering me to ask you what your intentions are as far as Mrs Bassingstoke is concerned.’
‘She knows about the conveyance?’
‘No. It was the waltz the other night I think that piqued her curiosity.’
‘Such a simple mistake,’ Taris returned, irony in his words.
‘Of course, if others find out about your midnight rambles…’
‘They won’t. There will be no more risks.’
‘This from a man who made love with words not less than two moments ago?’
‘Your penchant for nuance is legendary, Asher, as is your proclivity to exaggerate.’
‘You would say it is all a lie, then?’
Taris was careful in his reply. ‘I would say that I am nearing thirty-two, Ashe, and have no need to answer to anyone but myself.’
His brother laughed. ‘Ahh, that is what they all say, Taris, before they fall.’
‘Implying…?’
‘It would take a braver fellow than myself to explain it to you.’
‘Then don’t.’
Silence ruled for a moment until Asher spoke again.
‘Your lady has been conversing with the Duchess of Castleton for a significant time, and if Anna Bellhaven deigns to give anyone an audience for more than a minute it is generally a highly regarded stamp of approval.’
‘The plan is a success, then?’
‘Exactly.’
‘In that case I shall leave for Kent in the next day or two.’
‘Perhaps you might take her with you?’
‘The Duchess of Castleton? Why on earth would I wish to do that?’ His deliberate misconception had his brother slapping him across the shoulder.
‘One day soon, Taris, you will wake up with a ring on your finger and a brood of children and the knowledge that you are in the only place that you want to be.’
‘Mrs Bassingstoke is a barren widow. Hard to raise a brood given that fact.’
The peal of deep laughter was distinctly unsettling and he just wished that Bea might return to stand beside him and make everything simple.
Beatrice watched Taris Wellingham from her place beside the Duchess of Castleton and the Duchess of Carisbrook.
His left hand splayed across the smooth marble on the pillar and his right held the cane. Tonight he did not wear his glasses and a lock of dark hair fell across his forehead, highlighting the amber in his eyes.
Rakish. Dashing. A man who had absolutely no idea of how appealing he looked! But it wasn’t only his body that she found attractive. No, she loved the depth and breadth of his mind, with his wide-ranging opinions on anything and everything.
She wondered what his library looked like. What books he read? What had formed his ideas when he was young? She also wondered how a man raised as an aristocrat could consider other less popular ideas that encompassed a change in the perception of how society would be moulded over the next hundred years.
When the dancing began she hoped that he might ask her again. But of course he could not, given the excuse she had dredged up for Lady Arabella Fisher only a few minutes prior. She smiled, thinking it ironic that by helping him she had denied herself the chance to be once again in Taris Wellingham’s arms.
The carriage ride home was full of Emerald’s chatter with her husband adding his say on the highlights of the evening. Taris remained silent, lost in his own thoughts, Bea imagined, though when they reached her town house he got to his feet and helped her down the two small steps.
‘I am certain that Lucy’s indiscreet chatter will have been put to rest.’ The wind snatched away his words even as he turned against its force, inadvertently shielding her reply from the ears of the others.
‘Thank you for making certain that my reputation remained safe.’ Bea could not think of even one other thing to utter. Her reputation? Last night’s loving lay between them like an unspoken shout.
‘Come in. Hold me. Lie down beside me and show me heaven. Again.’
Not quite what one could say to a man who looked almost desperate to be gone, and a plethora of other transports wending their way home behind him, the occupants craning their necks to watch the antics around the Wellingham conveyance.
Manners. Protocol. Exemplars and precedents. The world here was full of what was expected and what was acceptable and walking into the private residence on the arms of even a plain-looking widow in the wee hours of the morning was patently not one of these things.
‘Goodbye.’ His farewell contained no notion of intimacy, though he waited as two of her servants came to escort her in.
When she reached her front door and looked back she saw that the horses had already been called to walk on.
Chapter Eleven
‘’Tis only a hand cream that I have a need of, Elspeth. I should not wish to take up too much of your time.’
‘Oh, Beatrice, it is lovely just to be walking on such a fine day. Besides, we promised ourselves an outing at the new tea shop last time we ventured out this way.’
Bea laughed. She felt surprisingly relaxed after the party last night at the Cannons’. Perhaps she had come to terms with the fact that at least in friendship she would be able to see Taris Wellingham; besides, there was little use dwelling on the sort of happy endings that she knew, for her at least, would never come to pass.
‘Shall we go to the apothecary first and then—?’
Her words were snatched into a scream as a heavy shape from behind connected with the small of her back and pushed her forwards. Her arms came out to try to break the fall, but the heels of her boots had tangled with the hem of her skirt and she could not keep her balance. Tipping towards the road, the clatter of horses and the shout of a driver alerted her to the presence of danger even before she felt it, and she attempted to twist and roll away from the flailing hooves.
The wheels missed her face by a whisker, though her wrist and head hit the cobbles with a whacking crunch and the pain that radiated outwards made her feel nauseous, a receding blackness pushing away light. As she struggled to catch her breath, the shaking that she was engulfed in left her dizzy.
‘Sit still, ma’am.’ Sarah’s voice was so insistent that she did as she said, Elspeth’s sobbing behind making her wonder whether the accident was even worse than she had thought it. Wriggling her feet in her boots, she was relieved she could feel pain, for it meant that she was not paralysed.
The warmth of her maid’s hand came across her own. ‘I do not think anything is broken, ma’am. I think if you tried to sit up.’
Another man had now joined them and another. When Bea did as Sarah had directed and sat upright, she saw a whole group of people now ringed them. The back of her head throbbed in agony and the blood on her grazed arms soaked into her sleeves.
‘Wh…whathappened?’ She was still shaking and her heartbeat was so fast she wondered if she might have an apoplexy and simply expire, here on this road, with the thin spring sun on her now hatless head.
‘I think somebody pushed you, though I cannot be sure.’
‘Can you lift m…me up?’
The two men who had knelt down beside her now took her arms on each side and carefully helped her to stand. The weight hurt her ankle and she pressed her knuckles into the skirt of her gown.
‘This shopkeeper says that you can lie down to rest in his back parlour and wait for the physician to come.’
Beatrice nodded her head, regretting the motion as soon as she did so. To get away from all the stares of a growing audience would be most appreciated.
Suddenly she felt like crying and all she could think about was that she wanted Taris Wellingham, wanted his confidence and his arms about her, wanted the feeling of safety he gave her, and his reason and his careful logic. When she was inside the parlour she would send a missive to his town house and ask him to come to her, for suddenly she did not care who might see them together, who might gossip about it or wonder. The tears she had tried to hold in fell in big drops down her cheeks.
All she wanted was Taris Wellingham to come!
The note arrived as he was about to sit down for a late lunch. Bates at his side read it out.
‘It is from Mrs Bassingstoke, my lord, and there is an address in Regent Street. It says, “I have been in an accident. Hurt. I need you.”’
Taris came up from his seat before the missive was even finished and called out for his butler.
‘Morton. Get Berry to bring the carriage around immediately. I need to be in Regent Street.’
‘But, my lord…your lunch.’ Bates’s voice petered out as Taris picked up his cane and strode from the room.
The shop was tiny but warm, and the blanket the wife of the furniture maker had placed over her knees was welcomed. Her hat sat on the table, a for-lornly crushed shape with no hope of resurrection. The wheels had run straight over the feathers, the shopkeeper had said, and Beatrice was acutely aware that her head had only been inches away from being in exactly the same condition.
Lord, how fragile life was. A second earlier, an inch further, a grander coach or a faster conveyance and the whole outcome could have been so much different. Elspeth was still wailing noisily and she wished she would just stop, for her headache was worse.
A constable spoke to those who had witnessed her fall and Bea held her arms against her bodice, the throbbing ache easing only when she raised them up.
She felt dislocated and scared, the memory of the hooves and the horses and the violent push leaving her nervous that someone else might try to hurt her, and her shaking had not abated in the least.
A louder chatter had her looking up as Lord Wellingham walked into the shop. He came straight over to her, his hand resting on the sofa as he knelt, his cape falling into a ring of fine black wool.
‘Are you all right, Beatrice?’
She could not answer, could not say even yes as a wave of relief washed across her. When his fingers came into contact with hers, she knew he could feel the terrible shaking.
‘Where are you hurt?’
Because sound was such a part of how he viewed his world, she tried her hardest to answer him.
‘M…my head hit the g…ground and Elspeth said the c…carriage came very close.’
He turned at that. ‘Surely a doctor has been summoned?’ Hard. Harsh. Impatient. ‘Why is he not here?’
Watching the autocratic and imperious way he addressed the room, Bea understood power in a way she had not before. It was in bearing and expectation and in the sheer essence of history.
‘He has been called, sir,’ someone answered from behind.
‘Then call him again. Bates?’ His man stood next to him. Bea had not seen him when Taris Wellingham had first arrived in the room, but of course someone would be there to help him with the lay of the land. ‘Send Liam for my physician and make sure he knows the gravity of the situation.’
As the man hurried off with his orders Bea, feared that Taris might go too and she clung to him fervently.
‘Don’t worry, I shall stay here with you,’ he returned, and she felt his breath. Warm and real, no longer just her!
‘You p…promise?’
When he placed their joined fingers against his heart and smiled, she lay back against the cushion and closed her eyes.
He was here! Now she would be safe.
Taris felt the moment that she relaxed, his fingers measuring the beat of her pulse at her wrist and finding it reassuringly steady and strong. The sticky blood he had felt on her arms was mirrored on her forehead and neck when he ran his touch upwards.
Where the hell was the doctor and what the hell had happened? A woman he presumed to be Elspeth Hardy was sobbing incessantly at one end of the room and the quiet questioning of a constable at the other told him that this was no simple accident. When Bates returned and relayed the story of Beatrice being pushed on to the road and of how she had narrowly missed being run over by a carriage, he felt a roiling sense of disbelief.
Who would try to hurt her?
Who had nearly succeeded in killing her? His anger escalated as he felt the remains of a hat on the small table beside the sofa.
Ruined like her head could have so easily been!
MacLaren’s arrival a little time later took his mind from such suppositions. The family doctor had always been the sort who muttered, a trait that Taris had found useful so that he knew exactly where he was in a room.
‘My lord,’ he offered, and Taris felt his arm next to his, the quiet click of a doctor’s tools telling him that he was measuring Beatrice’s vital signs before making a judgement on her condition.
The astringent odour of smelling salts filled the space around them and then Bea’s voice. Confused. Embarrassed. Flustered.
‘I…I…should sit up,’ she said, her fingers creeping back into his hand as she held on tight.
But the doctor wanted her to stay still and through the grey haze Taris could see that he felt around the lump on her head.
‘A nasty accident. Do you remember if you lost consciousness at the time it happened?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Good. Good.’
‘Lord Wellingham, could you lift her and bring her out to the carriage? I think it may be more beneficial to the lady’s healing to treat her at home.’
‘Of course.’ He was certain that the doctor had long since guessed his eyesight to be weakening, but had never in any shape or form alluded to it. Taris was pleased to step forwards and lift Bea in his arms, the presence of Bates making it an easy pathway out to his conveyance.
Bea barely moved, the heat of her body melding into his, the soft abundance of her breasts against his cloak.
When they came to the doorway she curled in against him so it was easier to negotiate the portal and once outside he counted his footfalls to the kerb. His carriage stood where he had left it and, mounting the steps, he sat with Bea in his lap.
The trip home was completed in silence, Beatrice’s friend opposite sharing the seat with the doctor and Bates to his left. The small stern-faced maid named Sarah completed the party.
An hour later he was finally alone with Beatrice.
‘Doctor MacLaren said you were lucky not to have broken anything and that the grazes will feel a lot better by morning.’
‘Thank you for asking him to see to my injuries, my lord.’
He heard the wariness in her tone, but he was in no mood to ignore the larger question. He also wished she might just call him by his Christian name.
‘Who pushed you, Bea? Did you see him?’
He felt her shaking her head. ‘Sarah said he looked like a pauper and that he ran off into the backstreets as soon as I fell.’
‘A paid assailant, then?’
‘I would guess so.’
‘God. Who would hate you enough to do that?’
‘The same person who might have sawn through the axle of the carriage, perhaps?’
Said without any artifice at all and with a great deal of frank openness. Taris stiffened as something began to tug on his mind. A smell. A certain fragrance he had noticed as he had stepped into the town house this evening. Bergamot. Scattered bits and pieces began to fall into place.
‘The man James Radcliff? You said he was a lawyer?’
‘The junior partner in the firm who looked after my husband’s accounts. Why?’
‘Has he been here again today?’
‘No. I have not seen him since yesterday afternoon when you were here with the Duchess of Carisbrook.’
Such a smell would not linger, would not carry in a space for so very long. A sense of danger began to form and Taris felt as he had in Spain all those years ago before charging into battle.
Then, however, he had had all his faculties and the ability to catch sight of the slightest movement from a great distance away.
Could he protect Bea here if the man should choose to play his hand? The knife tucked into the specially made sock in his boot would help, as would the ring he wore. By turning the gold circle he clicked the edges into place and the heavy bauble changed into a lethal collar of diamond spears. Enough to surprise anyone. His cane would do the rest.
He tilted his head to listen and the silence in the house was comforting. At a guess he would say the lawyer had gone, but why had he been here in the first place? And had he come alone?
‘Did Mr Radcliff ask you for anything?’
‘He wanted to see some ledgers that were sent to me. He asked after them.’
‘And where do you keep them?’
‘Well, that is the strange thing—I do not remember having them.’
‘Does your door have a sturdy lock on it?’