Regency Society

Eleanor was in the pulse of the rhythm, in the tension and release as the line he created widened into a broad arch, lilting through the silence, hanging across his heart like a banner.

The muscles in his arms quivered, unused to such an exacting toil, but still he did not stop, could not stop, the stormy third movement taking over from the first. Passion and wild accents reigned now, the ferocity of the sforzando notes and the fortissimo passages unbridled.

Like Heaven and like a home.

Eleanor.

His fingers paused on the keys as her name loosened anger and he knew for certain, in that one small second of silence, that if he ever lost her he would never be found again.

Listening from the hallway outside the room, Eleanor leaned against the wall with an outright astonishment.

He played the piano as skilfully as she had ever heard anyone do so, even without the little finger on his right hand, the flamboyance of his style suiting the piece with an unquestioned exactness. When had he learned? She remembered the piano in his room at the Château Giraudon, but here in England she hadn’t heard even a whisper of his brilliance.

When the last of the notes faded into quiet she walked into the chamber. Cristo sat with his eyes closed and the sun from a wide window on his hair.

‘It is good to play again,’ he began as if he had known she was there outside all along and there was a softness in the tone of his voice that she had not heard before. His glance now took in every part of her.

‘It is a beautiful tune.’

‘Beethoven’s piano Sonata number fourteen in C-sharp minor. Many call it the “Moonlight Sonata” because legend has it he wrote the piece whilst playing for a blind girl at night.’ He hesitated. ‘A compelling anecdote, I would imagine.’

‘In Bath I went to many piano recitals and, even given my untrained ear, yours sounded more skilled than all of them.’

He laughed. ‘Have dinner with me in here and I will play you others.’

Her eyes flickered to the large bed on the far wall, almost on the same proportions as the room, and she blushed.

‘Practice makes perfect,’ he quipped, the edge of a seriousness in his words contradicting humour as he stood.

Eleanor swallowed. When it actually came to it the whole madness of ever imagining she could seduce such a man seemed most unwise. If she had any sense she would scuttle from this room and hide, but the vision of them both on the bed in the moonlight was startling, like the song he played come to life, exotic, unbridled and passionate.

‘I am the father of your daughter …’

And of your son. She almost said it.

‘And a man who would never hurt you! Take a chance, my Eleanor. Take a chance on me and live.’

It was if he had read her mind, the years since she had last truly lived filled with greyness. Only one night five years ago, yet she remembered every second as if it were yesterday.

But seduction was more difficult when words were required and the way he was looking at her indicated a definite need for them. Not yet, she thought. Not yet. Clearing her throat, she began uncertainly.

‘There are towels in the cupboards and the maid will be up with water for a bath should you wish it.’ The domestic details steadied her, made the scene more normal. In the distance she heard Florencia and knew that he had heard her too.

‘Dinner will be at eight in the blue salon.’

Pulling the banter back, he answered promptly, ‘I shall look forward to it.’

She dressed carefully that night in a dark blue gown that she had put aside for exactly this purpose. Seduction was an art form, after all, and a woman of almost twenty-five with only one night of loving behind her needed all the help she could muster.

She did not wear undergarments and the feel of the silk bodice against bare skin was exciting, her womanhood beating in a throb between her legs.

Anticipation.

Even the perfume she dabbed profusely on parts of her body that she had not before added to the tension.

Her hair she wore unadorned, the length of it spilling across her shoulders and down towards her hips, curling in the damp. She had dismissed her lady’s maid for the night to sit in the nursery.

She wished she had the courage to wear nothing. To turn up at the dinner table wearing only stockings and pearls, but a lifetime of caution harboured inside her and she was still not quite certain of his intent.

Could this be just another night for him, just another coupling?

She shook her head firmly, but it was not the action of a woman who would place much weight on warning. No. It was the knowledge of one who finally felt whole and welcomed what might happen next with all her heart and soul.

Cristo Wellingham was the man she had loved from the very first second of meeting him and every other suitor dulled in comparison. In Bath over the last months there had been many who offered more than just a casual friendship, given that Martin never accompanied her to any function whatsoever—men who were honourable and decent and good, but she felt nothing for them. No lack of breath or altered heartbeat. No rush of delight or a thrill of meeting glances. Only one man, even with his distant presence in a house as big as this one, had the ability to affect her.

Tucking back an errant curl, she took one last look in the mirror before she left the room to meet him.

The thin silk of her gown barely covered her and the outline of her nipples could be plainly seen. Beckoning. Cristo felt like simply stepping forwards and ripping the flimsy thing off, but he had travelled that path once before with Eleanor and knew enough to realise this time he needed to leave the power in her hands.

‘My lady.’ Hard to say with any sense of decorum to a woman dressed as she was.

‘My lord.’ Manners simmered above pure sensuality. Her lips were deep cherry red. ‘I have asked the servants to leave our supper out and dismissed them for the night. I hope you don’t mind helping yourself?’

‘Indeed, I do not.’ He felt his manhood rise another notch with the words so artlessly said, and moved to ease the tightness of his breeches.

The cravat at his neck was strangling, the starched collar rough against the skin at his throat. A hundred pounds of material seemed to hang upon his frame when all she wore was the lightest of gossamer silk.

Her feet were bare. He had seen that in the first second of meeting her, peeping out beneath the hem of her skirt. The scent of gardenias and violets was strong on her skin.

‘Florencia …?’

‘Is in her room in bed. My maid is watching over her.’

‘So it is just us?’

The beginning of a smile played around her lips and he looked around the room to gather his wits. A chaise longue in velvet was pushed against the far wall. On the table near the food flowers stood, the urns they were displayed in etched with woodland scenes.

Two heavy carpets lay on the floor, a pile of cushions heaped next to them. Almost accidentally. In the grate at the far end of the room a fire blazed.

‘Would you like some wine?’ She gestured to a bottle and glasses and he nodded, feeling like a man who had strayed into a pleasure dome, the woman before him a culmination of every young boy’s fantasy.

‘How much would you like?’

At her words he removed the glass from her fingers, placing it on a table behind her. Up this close he was taller than she remembered him and a lot bigger; the boy she had known in Paris replaced by the man.

‘I want as much as you would give me, Eleanor.’ His voice broke on her name and he gathered her close, warm breath against her cheeks and the glorious brown of his eyes locked into hers.

‘Ma chérie,’ he said as his lips came down and his hands threaded through her hair, the lover suddenly there again, gentle but firm. She could not have pulled away even had she wanted to.

But she didn’t want to.

Opening her mouth easily, he came inside, his tongue finding hers as he slanted his head. Heat and breath and anger mixed with want and love and regret; a recipe matured by time and by memory.

She was eighteen again, and shameless, her need wild beneath cold clear silk and the sharp edge of discovery.

This time she had lured him to her. The power of it was exhilarating, yet still she pulled back and placed her hands upon his chest.

‘Not yet, monseigneur.’ Muscles bunched along the line of his jaw, but he let her go. A gentleman who would not coerce a lady. Smiling, she looked down and saw how very much he wanted her.

‘For I wish to undress you first.’

She was a hundred times more experienced than she had been when he had taken her last and more lethal than any courtesan he’d had the pleasure of since. The regret that it had not been him to teach her surfaced as he stood perfectly still, feeling her fingers at his neck unlacing the cravat, her skin playing havoc against his own. He seldom allowed anyone dominion over his body, but he made himself relax. Beneath his shirt were the scars endured at eighteen, scars he had never willingly shown anyone before, stigma drawn in the opaque ridges of flesh. When her hands began to peel back the linen he froze.

‘I generally like to keep it on.’

‘Because of the marks upon your back?’

He was irritated by the shame that surfaced, over a decade ago and still having the power to hurt. He was also surprised she had remembered at all.

‘You have a good memory.’ He tried to keep the tone as light as he could, airy, inconsequential and nonchalant.

‘As I have only ever lain with one man it is not a thing easily forgotten.’

‘One?’ He could not understand what she was telling him.

‘Martin was impotent.’

Now he did.

‘Lord.’ The blue in her eyes had darkened, bruised with truth. ‘Lord,’ he repeated again. ‘So it has only been me?’

‘It was why I was out on the town so much in Bath, for he suddenly seemed to want a closer relationship in other ways and I could not give it to him. By staying out late it meant he was always asleep in his room when I returned.’

The world he lived in reshaped into something unrecognisable. Just him. Just her. Throwing off his shirt, he turned so that she could see the marks.

‘After Nigel I took passage on a ship run by a captain who thought hurting others was fun. It was a full month before I escaped and for a long time after that …’ He stopped because he could not go on.

‘You trusted no one?’ Eleanor’s words were whispered, an understanding in them that made him want to weep.

‘If I could go back, I would have trusted you.’

She smiled. ‘And if I could go back, I would have knocked on the door of the Château Giraudon and taken up your offer of protection.’

‘Over five years …’ Three words steeped in remorse.

‘But not a day more.’

Her certainty was like a balm and he reached forwards to trace the shape of her cheek before venturing lower, the skin on her neck and the full abundance of breast barely covered in fabric.

Her head fell back and she closed her eyes and he watched her as he found one nipple and turned it between his fingers. Dark blue silk fell away as he cradled the flesh and leant down to suckle.

Relief flooded into the parts of her body that had laid so dormant, his lips and tongue weaving magic.

When she felt the silk tumble from her shoulders she just stood there, in the room with the firelight and candlelight and perfume, a woman who wanted all that would come next and be damned for any consequence. She held his head, the thick glossiness of his hair twisted in her fingers, so that pain lingered in pleasure in the same measure as it rested in his pull on her nipple.

Not quite easy.

Not quite amenable.

No bedroom. No certain privacy. A risk. A gamble. His caresses made her limbs fluid and warm.

She wanted Cristo Wellingham to bury himself inside her with an urgency that was frightening, so when he lifted his head and smiled she was flustered by his restraint.

‘Now. Take me now.’

‘And have years of waiting to be finished in a few minutes? I think not, my lovely Eleanor.’ His teeth were white. ‘Your very first time was a rushed affair, but I swear, sweetheart, this time will not be.’

Placing her forefinger in his mouth, he rolled it on his tongue, in and out, spread across wetness, deep and deeper. The room tilted as his free hand found the fabric of her skirt, bunching it up around her bottom before entering the hidden folds. One finger and then two, the penetration the same as those at her mouth.

Her breath simply ceased. She swore it did, the cold silk, the moonlight on the carpet, the spills of ecstasy linked by feeling at both ends of her body.

Until he stopped.

‘Not yet, my love. Not yet.’

Leading her to the chaise longue, he sat her down, the midnight silk beneath her breasts. When her nipples tightened in the cool air he handed her a glass of wine.

Red like blood. Symbolic somehow. Stained in the burst of grape and in the momentary release of perfection.

The outline of his manhood was fierce in its shape behind tight breeches and she could barely believe that this was not a dream, that it was real and that he had called her his sweetheart.

When her more usual prudence deserted her completely, she reached forwards to lay her hands upon his groin.

He groaned and the smile on his face was pained. Perhaps he would not enjoy that caress, she thought, her fingers dropping back into her lap.

‘Martin Westbury must have had ice in his veins to be impotent with you.’

She shook her head. ‘When he found me in Aix I was very ill. He saved my life by taking me to Italy. After that it was hard to leave him.’

‘Ill …?’

‘From childbirth.’ She turned her face away so that he might not see what was in her expression, but he was adept at picking up the nuances and turned it back.

‘You are not telling me everything.’

She breathed in once and then twice, and his fingers found her own, like a lifeline in a swirling sea, she was to think later, though when she did not speak he began with a story.

‘My mother was Sylvienne de Caviglione. She met my father a month before she was to be married off in an effort to secure a political alliance. Sylvienne had hoped for a younger husband and Ashborne was a long way from home and lonely. When the result of their indiscretion was known she was sent to the country. I arrived eight and a half months later and my entry into the world was her exit from it. I tell you this, Eleanor, because I do not want any more secrets between us and I can see them in your eyes.’

‘Yet you grew up a Wellingham at Falder?’

‘My French grandfather had as little use for a bastard as he did for a dead daughter. He sent me to England as fast as he could, though his wife harboured her own measure of guilt and left me her family château in Paris when her husband died. I had killed their only daughter, you see …’

‘You blame yourself for your mother’s death?’

‘She was young and it was a difficult birth.’ Fury underlined each word.

‘Mothers die in birth as easily as children do.’ Eleanor held her other hand rigidly against her side, gripped into a fist.

Now. Now. Tell him now.

She made herself unclench her fingers one by one by one. ‘There is a story that says the stars house the souls of the ones who have departed, and that at night, between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice, in the cluster known as the Pleiades, you can see them, and speak to them.’

‘Pleiades?’

‘The seven stars that sit in the constellation of Taurus.’

She looked across to the window, but only out of habit, for the time of the year was far too early. Still out of caution she did not tell him, did not speak of the times when she had watched month by month for something meant only for her.

‘Paris watches me from there.’

Tears welled in her eyes unbidden. Her son. Their son. Missing, and so very far from home. It was good to say his name out loud and to someone who might have loved him as much as she did.

Something was wrong. Something hidden and important. Paris? The city? Why would she cry for that? A name, then?

‘Paris?’ He repeated the word and she looked up and nodded. ‘Who is Paris, Eleanor?’

The darkness in her blue eyes was like a blanket of dull pain, stale grief and anger. ‘Our Paris. Our son. He lies in Aix in the cemetery under a marker of white stone.’

The truth of what she said made his heart stop and the pit of his stomach lurch.

‘Another child? There was another child?’

She nodded. ‘Florencia had a twin. A brother.’ Tears ran down her cheeks like two rivers, but she did nothing to dash them away. ‘You were not there, so I called him Paris. It was all I could think of to link him with you.’

‘God, Eleanor.’ He pulled her to him, as if in the embrace he might take some of her hurt, some of the suffering as he imagined how it must have been. Eighteen and alone in a foreign land with one living baby and one dead one!

‘He w-was too tiny. He w-was much t-too tiny. He would n-not have lived here, either, I d-do not th-think.’

Cristo nodded his head in agreement, not trusting himself to speak.

‘And it w-was too soon for them to c-come. Not quite eight months. Florencia was b-bigger. I wanted Paris to live, but h-he didn’t.’

The sobs increased, but her head was now nodding up and down, the arms that held him tightening.

In the firelight and in a strange house, miles from London, it seemed as if it were only them left in the whole wide world as she cried out her many years of silence.

Chapter Nineteen

She woke up in his bed. A blanket had been pulled over her and a pillow tucked beneath her head. It was still dark, though a small candle on the mantel had burnt down almost to the plate, making her calculate that many hours had passed.

She had told him!

Her hand went to her mouth and she held it there. The evening had begun with seduction in mind and ended in her being asleep, alone and dressed upon his bed and confessing a confidence that she had told no one before. She smiled, for the relief of sharing her secret had eased the burden in a way she could never have imagined.

Footsteps coming towards the room had her sitting up and Cristo appeared a second or so later with a tray. A teapot and two cups sat to one side of a jug of milk.

He had pulled on his shirt, but it was unbuttoned and like her he wore no shoes at all.

‘I thought you might be thirsty.’

A flower sat alongside the cups, newly picked, the dew on it magnifying the red.

He handed the perfect bloom to her, candlelight on the bronze of his chest, each muscle well defined.

‘It was by itself amongst the weeds when I stepped outside the kitchen door to take in some air. It reminded me of you.’

Smiling, she took his gift and noticed that all of the thorns had been taken off the smooth green stem. When she bent her head to the petals the perfume was of a soft freshness.

Placing the tray on the table, he drew forth a chair from under the window. His knees framed hers now and he looked as if he was searching for just the right thing to say.

‘I own land next to Falder. On it stands a manor house named Graveson Manor and it overlooks Return Home Bay. It is beautiful land, Eleanor, with the sea rolling in and the green of fields and trees.’ His left hand raked through his untidy blond hair, pushing it back.

The very words made the world a wondrous place, though she sobered when she thought of the path that he was leading her down.

‘I could not be your mistress.’

The shock in his dark brown eyes was easily seen. ‘It is not as a concubine I want you, Eleanor, but as a wife.’

Her mouth simply dropped open. ‘You are asking me to marry you?’

‘I am. I hope the groom you had in mind will bow out gracefully.’

She began to laugh. ‘It was you I was thinking of. No one else.’

He joined in her humour by smiling broadly. ‘I cannot believe that something is finally easy for us. You will marry me and become my wife?’

When she nodded again he stripped the gold ring from his little finger and reached forwards. ‘I know it is old-fashioned, but it was the only thing of Alice’s that I have. She took it off her finger the night before I left England all those years ago and made me promise it would go to the woman I married.’

‘You never wore this in Paris?’

‘It was too special. All the others were for show and for the part I was playing of a dissolute and unrestrained lord.’

Joy welled inside her. Special. Her finger ran across the red in the ruby and around the band of gold.

‘We will be married with all the family present, because I need to do this properly. As properly as everything so far between us has not been. I cannot wait a year, Eleanor, for your mourning period to be over, so perhaps we could repair to the Continent. Florencia will have a family with cousins and aunts and uncles.’

Her euphoria died down a little. No mention of love, but all of duty.

As he picked up on her uncertainty he dropped her hand, one eye on the door and the other on his watch. He wanted to be gone, from the room, from her and from the promise he had just made. She could see it so very plainly in his face.

Her fingers closed around the golden ring as she wondered if he might ask her to rescind her promise. But he was a Wellingham and responsibility sat on his shoulder as a heavy load. He would do his best by her.

When he leant down and kissed her on the forehead, she was almost reminded of Martin.

‘Thank you, Eleanor. You will not regret this decision.’

He had handled that as badly as he had ever handled anything in his life, he thought, as he regained his upstairs chamber, but the raging lust in him was a terrible reminder of how he had hurt her last time. This time he wanted everything perfect. Not rushed or illegal or sordid. Eleanor deserved the very best from him and he was going to give it to her, no expense spared. If he had stayed for even a moment longer with the promises between them, he doubted he could have remained so controlled.

Closing his eyes, he felt the line of his jaw tremble with desperation, his open hands balanced against the wall behind him.

He loved her. He loved her bravery and her honesty and the way she had held him as she cried her heart out. Him, the man who had been the cause of everything in her life that had been difficult.

Forgiveness. He deserved none of it and she might still refuse him. A lump formed in his throat.

If he lost her … He shook his head.

If he even touched her … He shook it again, not trusting the need that he was consumed with.

A board on the stairwell creaked and he swallowed back pity. The material at his groin strained tight as Eleanor came into the room.

With her cheeks blushing pink he thought he had never seen her look more beautiful and the danger of his wretched urgency mounted.

‘You should return to your bedroom, Eleanor.’ He grimaced at the harshness in his tone, but it was all he could do to stand there and not ravish her as every single particle in his body wanted to.

She held her palm out towards him, the gold of Alice’s ring glinting in what little there was left of the firelight.

‘I have endured one marriage that was not a love match. I do not think that I could endure another one.’ Her voice trembled, but she went on. ‘Especially when I know that my heart would be completely broken.’

‘I don’t understand.’