Regency Society

Everyone looked. The librarian with his thick spectacles, the two women over by the door, and the group of men who perused the latest daily newssheets! Yet instead of bending to pick up the volumes, he could do nothing save gaze back at her and remember.

Remember the way she had felt beneath him, lying on burgundy velvet as he had teased her into response. Remember her wetness and abandon and seduction.

‘Can I help you, sir?’ The man at the desk was now right beside him. ‘Are you quite well, Lady Dromorne?’

Cristo had to give Eleanor her due as she smiled and turned to the librarian, her voice husky.

‘I am all right, thank you, Mr Jones. This gentleman was just asking me about the lending system here. He is new to London and it seems that he may want to join.’

The librarian’s face brightened considerably.

‘If you will follow me to the desk then, sir, I would be pleased to show you the details.’

Cristo stood, just as Eleanor did, her wedding ring catching the light when she straightened her bonnet. Further and further away from the woman in Paris, the fetters of responsibility and obligation chained across feeling. Married. Happily.

He could do nothing save stand and watch her leave, and the hand with which he had touched her lay fisted tight in the pocket of his jacket, fingers curled around self-reproach.

She should not have gone, should not have met him alone or allowed him to touch her, because now blackmail was the very least of her worries.

Leaning back against the seat beneath the trees in one corner of Hyde Park, she liked the way summer crept into the shadows. Misty almost, overlaid with the dust of sunshine. Her heart beat with a rhythm she had felt only once before and she pressed down hard on the sensation, needing this small time to recover her wits.

Forgotten. Alive. Decadent. Intemperate.

Martin’s age and impotence had been the one reason that she had accepted his proposal of marriage and the core of her contentment with him had been unquestioned until today.

Until Cristo Wellingham’s fingers had unleashed a feeling in her body that was undeniable. Like water to a desert, unfolding into life, again, unbidden, and the crouching chaos ready to strike just as it had before.

Well, she could not let it!

Martin preferred the quiet life and the unexpected was not to be encouraged. ‘A peaceful life is a happy life,’ he was fond of saying, such a sentiment appealing after the débâcle in Paris. Her hands threaded themselves through the supple leather strap of her reticule, tying knots with her fingers. She did not catch the eye of a single person walking by, but sat very still, summoning calm.

‘Lady Dromorne?’ The question came quietly; looking up, Eleanor saw Lady Beatrice-Maude Wellingham had stopped before her.

Smoothing out the crinkles in her gown, Eleanor tucked back her hair before standing. She knew Beatrice-Maude Wellingham only slightly and when the woman dismissed her maid to a respectable distance worry blossomed.

‘How fortunate to find you here, Lady Dromorne, for there is a small matter that I wish to speak to you about that has been rather a worry to me.’

Eleanor indicated the seat next to her and the other sat as she did. ‘I hope, then, that I might be of assistance.’

‘It is a matter pertaining to my brother-in-law, Cristo Wellingham.’

The name lay between them like an unsheathed dagger, sharp and brutal, and Eleanor was lost for a reply.

‘As you may be aware, he has returned home after many years abroad and as a family we would very much like him to stay in England. It is in that respect that I am seeking your counsel.’

‘My counsel?’ The words were choked out, almost inaudible, and Beatrice-Maude Wellingham looked at her strangely.

‘Perhaps this is not a good time to worry you with anything,’ she began. ‘If your health is fragile after the theatre …’

‘No, I am perfectly recovered.’

Eleanor hated the panic she could hear on the edge of denial and the question she could determine in the eyes of the one opposite.

‘Very well. It is just that it has come to my notice that you may have a vested interest in seeing my brother-in-law unsettled here in England.’

‘Your notice?’ Everything she had feared was coming about. Had Cristo Wellingham confided the truth of her predicament to his family?

‘Through various sources, you understand, and most of them quite reliable.’ The woman opposite seemed to have no idea of the horror that was fast consuming Eleanor. ‘I realize, of course, that the whole predicament may be rather difficult for you, but hoped that charity might persuade you to see the facts as we see them.’

‘As you see them?’

‘Many years have since passed and as his crime was only one of passion …’

Only one of passion!

Eleanor had had quite enough and she stood. ‘I am not certain why you have brought this to my attention, Lady Beatrice-Maude, but I would prefer it if you would leave! The truth of my relations with your brother-in-law is something I do not wish to discuss and if he is adamant about ruining my reputation, then rest assured I shall fight him until the very last breath I take. I have my daughter to consider, after all, and any of his defamations of my character will be strongly denied in any forum you might name. I might add that the amount of my husband’s money is endless and dragging any matter through the law courts would be prohibitively expensive.’

‘His defamations?’ Beatrice-Maude looked more than shocked. ‘It was not his defamations I was referring to, Lady Dromorne, but your own. I know that he was involved in the scandal concerning the death of your brother and I thought to smooth the waters, so to speak, and find a resolution to such a loss.’

‘My brother?’ The world turned again ‘You are speaking of Nigel?’

‘Indeed. It was said at the time that Cristo was responsible for the accident.’

‘I see.’ Eleanor swallowed back bile. My God, she had, in her fear, read the whole situation completely wrongly, and given away things that she had admitted to no one else. Her fingers squeezed together. Beatrice-Maude Wellingham was one of the cleverest women in London. The cleverest, were rumour to be believed, and she had just laid the bare facts of the relationship right into her hands.

She hardly knew what to do next; did not trust herself with any other utterance, the horrible realisation of exposing everything a potent reason to keep her mouth firmly closed.

Finally Beatrice-Maude spoke. ‘I think I should probably take my leave.’

‘I think that you probably should.’ Eleanor could no longer cope with pretending manners. Sparring with two Wellinghams in one day was more than enough.

She watched as the older woman turned, though she did not walk away immediately.

‘You may count on my saying nothing of this matter to anyone, Lady Dromorne.’ Her words were softly said, as if she was cognisant of the importance of care.

‘A service that I would thank you for, Lady Beatrice-Maude.’ Eleanor did not stand, but waited till the footsteps receded before looking up. The wind was heightening, buffeting itself against the leaves and sending a few of them scattering in the air.

She held herself tight with silence, the mute reserve helping her to come to terms with the gravity of her mistake.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Could she trust the woman? Would Beatrice-Maude Wellingham be true to her word of maintaining her silence? The thicker tie of blood would make things more difficult and, looking at the family group the other evening, she had detected a strong sense of solidarity. Too strong?

When Martin called her as she arrived home some half an hour later, she pinched colour into her cheeks before walking out to greet him, for none of this could ever be his problem and his health was fragile. Slipping her hand into his, she kissed him on the cheek, leaning against the handles of his chair for balance.

‘When will Florencia be home?’ he asked her. ‘Her governess said that she was not here yet.’

‘Soon, I think. Your sister has taken her out for the afternoon.’

‘You look pale.’

‘I sat in the park on the way home from the reading room and it was a little chilly. Lady Beatrice-Maude Wellingham stopped to ask how we were.’

How easy it was to stretch out the truth when all your life depended on it, Eleanor thought.

His hand squeezed her own. ‘Sometimes I worry that I have made your life very dull, my dear.’

She stopped him simply by raising her hand to his face. The stubble of an eight-hour shadow scratched and she noticed the way his skin had shrunk around the bones of his cheek.

Thinner. Older. More tired.

His fingers interlaced with hers. A good and honourable man, and a long way from the husband that she would have struggled to find had the true enormity of her predicament ever become public. No, she was the most fortunate of women and if the sacrifice of marital intimacy was the payment for respectability, then far be it from her to wish it different.

As he continued to stroke the back of her hand, however, worrying her skin with a dull repetition, she wondered how it was possible for Cristo Wellingham’s simple touch to engender a reaction that had raced through all her body.

‘I would like to hold a party, Taris, to celebrate Cristo’s return.’ Beatrice entwined her feet through those of her husband’s as they lay in bed later that night. His warmth was welcomed.

She felt his chest rise in laughter, the darkness of the room obscuring any expression. ‘I am not certain he would welcome such a thing. I know I should not. Besides, as yet we have no real idea of his motives for returning to England. He may be here to slander the name of Wellingham yet again and will leave as soon as he gets bored by the uneventful routine of everyday life.’

‘He is your brother, Taris. Whatever happens, you will need to mend your fences or face a lifetime of regret.’

‘Asher would rather erect higher barriers and push him out altogether. The sins in his past have not been simple and when he left last time the arguments between our father and Cristo were, at the least, vitriolic. He was a wild youth, I suppose, with few boundaries, though Ashborne always kept a certain distance from him, which probably made matters worse.’

Beatrice broke in with her own understanding of the matter. ‘Yet he is not an evil man, or even a bad one.’

His smile curved into the tips of her fingers. ‘You can tell so quickly?’

‘I was married to a miscreant for years. One gets a feel for them.’

‘Lord, Bea. Sometimes your wit is careless …’

Her laughter drifted across the room. ‘Only with you, Taris,’ she said softly, her nails running across the bare skin of his arm, before she returned to the matter in hand. ‘It could be a weekend house party down at Beaconsmeade. Not a huge affair, but a small one.’

‘Who would you invite?’

Bea felt her heart begin to race a little faster, for deception was something she had always been very bad at. ‘The family, of course, and a few other friends and acquaintances.’

His palm took her wrist, measuring the beat. ‘Acquaintances?’ There was a tone in the word demanding truth.

‘I saw Lady Dromorne today in the park, Taris. Did your brother ever mention her to you?’

Taris pushed back his pillow. ‘Eleanor Westbury? In what way?’

‘Had he been … interested in her at all?’

‘Did she say that he had been?’

‘No.’ Even to her own ears the denial was too quick. Too forced.

‘There was that fracas many years ago with Nigel Bracewell-Lowen that many insisted was a result of Cristo’s antics, though of course such an accusation was never proved. I do not think that she would welcome your invitation. Besides, she is a married woman and Martin Westbury rarely ventures out.’

Bea nodded. Reason pointed to a happy union, but her own intuition was telling her something very different. Lady Dromorne had fainted when she had seen Cristo at the theatre and this afternoon Prudence Tomlinson had mentioned she had seen them touching hands in the public reading room.

Bea had squashed this rumour by swearing her brother-in-law to be at Beaconsmeade for the day and Prue had laughed at her own silly imagination, glad for the chance to clear up such a misunderstanding. Yet the meeting with Eleanor had made Bea curious.

How could Cristo’s revelations be responsible for ruining Eleanor’s reputation? Her mind ran further afield to the age and infirmity of the husband. There was a daughter, too, of about five, if memory served her well. She wondered how such an unwell and aged man had been able to father a child. Another thought charged in over the top of that one and Beatrice took in a breath. What if Martin Westbury was not the true parent of Eleanor’s daughter? Cursing her fertile imagination, she listened again to her husband.

‘If you are bent on repairing the relations between our family, perhaps an invitation to the two younger Westbury nieces might be a better way to do it. They are reputed to be sensible girls. Ask some of the young bucks about Beaconsmeade to even out the numbers.’

Beatrice smiled tightly. Sense told her to leave the matter entirely, yet there was sadness in the pale blue eyes of Eleanor Westbury that was undeniably interlaced with her brother-in-law. The small opportunity to play out the conclusion of something important could not hurt, could it?

She snuggled down into the arms of her husband and pulled the light cover across them, his heavy masculinity treasured and safe.

‘I love you, Taris.’

He laughed as he turned her over, and covered the soft desire in her body with his own particular molten heat.

‘Show me.’

Chapter Seven

The invitation to the Wellinghams’ party in ten days’ time caused a stir in the Dromorne household and for many more reasons than any could have guessed.

The two younger Westbury girls screamed with delighted shock, each imagining the gowns that might catch the fancy and admiration of the enigmatic youngest Wellingham brother.

Martin Westbury, on the other hand, decided that he would simply decline the invite altogether, but was most insistent that his wife take his nieces and sister to the affair as it had been a long while since they had been invited to any soirée of the very first order. Not that Martin ranked things in accordance with such strict and rigid axioms, but his sister’s daughters’ futures had to be considered and another Season in London for the girls was beginning to pall on him with the hustle and bustle social intercourse demanded.

Eleanor was just struck dumb, unable to formulate any real understanding of any of it.

She had expected to be a persona non grata to Lady Beatrice-Maude after her outburst and instead had received one of the most sought-after social cards of the Season. A great dread engulfed her.

‘Sophie and Margaret must go, of course,’ she began, and was surprised when Martin raised his hand.

‘You and Diana will chaperone them, Lainie. It is only right and proper.’

‘I am quite happy to let Diana go in my stead. Besides, I could not leave Florencia for so very long.’

But her husband was having none of it.

‘As Florencia has her beloved governess and I have been feeling considerably better of late, I am certain this would be a good change for all of us.’ He winked at his sister. ‘To make sure that we live up to the standards required, you shall all go off to the dressmaker and get fitted out for such an occasion.’

Such a proclamation brought renewed shouts of delight, Margaret’s face even teasing a smile from the gloom that had overcome Eleanor, and when Florencia was brought down, Eleanor opened her arms to her daughter, enjoying her soft warmth.

‘Did you have a lovely time yesterday, Florencia?’ Margaret asked the question with a smile.

‘We saw some puppies. They licked my hands and followed me. Could we bring one home, Mama, even just for a little while?’ The silver in her hair was caught by the light from the window.

‘You know that Papa would get iller if a pet came home, darling.’

‘We could keep one outside, though? Aunt Diana’s friend said that it could be.’

‘It might get rather cold in the winter when you are warmly tucked up in your bed.’

Eleanor wished Martin would help her out on this, but his earlier forcefulness was gone, replaced instead by the more normal air of exhaustion. Even the scrambled eggs seemed too much bother for him to eat this morning. A pang of worry shot through her, her own concerns seeming selfish in the face of his sickness.

‘Should I ask the doctor to come and see you again, Martin? He is most happy to be called at any time.’

Her husband shook his head and closed his eyes, momentarily looking so washed out that a flurry of alarm made Eleanor start. When Florencia glanced up from her lap, she ordered herself to be calm. The doctor had assured them that his condition was stable and that the deterioration Eleanor could so plainly see had tapered off. She wanted to seek a second opinion, but Martin would have none of it, insisting on his satisfaction with such a prognosis.

Hugging Florencia tighter, she wondered if his condition would continue to worsen. In the breakfast room, with the happy talk of new gowns and the sun slanting through the French doors from the outside courtyard, such a thought was unsettling; an interloping truth that she wanted to ignore until she no longer could. The scent of summer roses in a large blue vase filled the air.

Taking a breath, she gathered her strength and joined in the conversation Margaret and Sophie were having on the dressmaker of their choice and on the weekend’s entertainment.

‘They say that Beaconsmeade is a beautiful old house and that Lord Taris Wellingham keeps his best horses at stud there.’ Sophie seemed full of information that Eleanor had not a notion of.

‘Perhaps there will be a chance to ride, then, for Cristo Wellingham is reported to be keen on the sport. I will put in my riding habit.’

Margaret’s hopes had Sophie giggling, though the youthful exuberance of the girls gave Eleanor a sharp pang of loss.

When had she ever been truly young? Pregnant at eighteen and a wife before twenty! And now with her twenty-fourth birthday on the horizon she felt old before her time. Stolen kisses would never be for her, the flirtatious dance of the fan in a crowded ballroom only a figment of imagination and fantasy, like some chapter of one of the romantic books she sometimes borrowed from the reading room.

Beaconsmeade suddenly felt like a trap! A terrible mistake that she was being drawn into. If Cristo Wellingham should be caught in the wiles of her beautiful nieces, what would happen then?

A lifetime of trying not to touch him or be alone with him or letting the truth of her lost year become public knowledge, for with a single misplaced glance her whole life could fall to pieces. So very, very easily.

Looking up, she saw Martin watching her in that peculiar way he had of seeing straight through a person.

‘Penny for your thoughts.’ She smiled, but he did not answer, the melancholy that was growing in him with each passing week so much more apparent amongst a roomful of sunshine, roses and hopeful expectations.

The evening fell across the land as Cristo rode down towards the shore, faster than safety might allow him, the breath of his horse caught in mist, white-shadowed warmth amidst all that was cold.

Home at Falder! Finally. He had come alone and late, the knowledge of an empty castle making it easier to journey here. He intended to return to London in the morning, after looking at the Graveson land.

Yet the ocean breathed its welcome, the foam of a fading storm caught in the pebbles and on the wind, tumbling into distance and lost. He laughed at the fragility of all that the sea could throw at him, her tendrils lapping at the feet of his mount as on and on he galloped, the bold speed of Demeter eating up the miles. Falder Castle lay far behind, the numerous turrets caught by the last pink rays of dusk, the new quarter moon hiding behind clouds of high cirrus tinged with red.

The anger in him settled into something more akin to acceptance and the wide-open freedom soothed a fury that had gripped him ever since he had touched Eleanor Westbury’s hand.

She was not for him!

Never for him!

The refrain beat across denial and desire and just plain damned common sense.

He had come home to become the person that he once had been, a son, a brother, a lord. He had not ventured into England to become a home-wrecker or a heartbreaker or a rake. The memory of Paris must be left there, forgotten, buried amongst the necessity of survival and civility. For too many years he had let the other side rule him; whether for the good of mankind or for the good of himself, he had got to the point where he could no longer tell, his forays into the underbelly of greed and falsity the only thing that let him believe anything mattered. Spying for the British had almost cost him his sanity, the company he had kept for years far away from any fellowship he might have enjoyed otherwise. Yet he saw the sacrifice as a penance and the recklessness in him had been tethered instead into the benefit of England’s protection and sovereignty. He was pleased that it had ended, that the Foreign Office had released him from further duties when his file had been closed.

Breathing out hard, he stopped and the light on the calmer waters of the peninsula of Return Home Bay was a perfect reflection of the sky. As unreal as he was, only mirroring what was outside, what was expected, the heavy burden of his name and his heritage finally grounding the fury of all that had happened in his life.

He remembered Nigel’s life-blood ebbing away and his own blood on the deck of the nightmare ship he had taken from London, fleeing from his father’s wrath and banishment! The blood of other souls in Paris was mixed in there, too, politics and persuasion exacting their own biting revenge. Sometimes he had killed innocents and then reasoned the sin gone by patriotic virtue. Sometimes at night he remembered those faces, the last expressions of terror etched for ever into his own regret. He frowned. The retribution of ghosts was surprisingly relentless and his own contrition undeniably growing.

Dismounting, he stooped to pick up a pebble, skipping it across the surface in the way that he had learnt in his youth. Lord, what mistakes he had made!

Time folded back and he was on the front steps of Nigel’s parents’ home, the story of a son’s demise full on his lips. On his lips until the door had been opened and the man who had stood there was the same one who had shot at them unexpectedly from the bridge behind the village cemetery. The recognition had been as fatal as Cristo’s lack of gumption, and though he had thought to run by then it was far, far too late. Nigel’s uncle had told him that he had seen the boys using guns for target practice; when Cristo had argued the point the man had become angry, blaming the alcohol the boys had drunk for skewing his memory. An accident was a thing of chance, after all, the older man had added, and no one needed to be ruined by it.

Cristo had returned to London that very night to tell his father the true version of events, but Ashborne had refused to believe his side of the story and had banished him to France on the next tide, forbidding him to return to England for a very long time. Faced with his father’s rejection, Nigel’s uncle’s slanderous untruths and a reputation that was hardly salubrious, he had boarded the ship, nearly nineteen but with the cares of the world firmly embedded on his shoulders.