One Illicit Night Read online

  ‘You are young, my dear, and it is important that you enjoy these sorts of things. I know Diana will be lost without you if you don’t attend, for she has made the fact known to me. Besides, I thought you admired the Wellingham women!’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Then what keeps you from going? I know the dresses are finished and the girls have said how lovely yours looked.’

  Eleanor’s glance went to the wardrobe where her new gowns were shrouded in calico. Shoes and cloaks and bags and hats were in the boxes beneath them. All readied for the carriage ride south into Kent.

  She wanted to say that she was afraid. She wanted to shout it out so that he might actually hear her. Afraid of herself and of her reactions! Afraid others might notice or that Cristo Wellingham himself might notice or that the feelings she held deep inside her would never be returned as he made a play for one of the other younger and prettier girls present.

  But she could say none of this because to voice even a little of it would be to betray Martin altogether, and he had no idea at all that Cristo Wellingham was the Frenchman who had taken her into his bed in Paris. So she stayed silent, smiling as he took her hand and turned it palm upwards.

  ‘I want you to go and enjoy this chance, Eleanor. I want you to be happy again.’

  That threw her. ‘I am not sad.’

  ‘Preoccupied, then. Lately you have been different.’

  The truth settled around them. His truth and her own at odds, but she could not hurt him with the kindness in his eyes and the history between them.

  ‘Perhaps we should go away, Martin, far from London, to the hills up north or to the sea on the south coast. The change of air could be good for you after all…’

  He stopped her before she went any further. ‘I doubt that I could manage a big shift of circumstance and I enjoy watching the traffic go by from my upstairs bedroom. It always makes me feel a part of the world.’

  ‘Of course.’ The chance to simply decamp from the city was not an option and so she nodded, knowing that in her capitulation she was risking everything and equally as determined not to.

  Beaconsmeade was a large Palladian-style country house situated on rising ground with lawns stretching up to it and parkland as far as the eye could see below.

  The party was in full swing when they arrived as a number of other carriages had come at the same time as they had.

  With servants and horses and people and luggage the circular drive was awash with movement and Eleanor did not see Beatrice-Maude Wellingham until the very last moment.

  ‘I am so pleased that you could come,’ the older woman said as she took her hand in her own. Looking about quickly to see if any other Wellinghams were in close proximity, she relaxed when she saw that they were not.

  ‘I have placed you on the second floor in the blue suite of rooms. The girls are in the larger dark blue room and their mother in the smaller one with an adjoining door. You will have the light blue room a little farther down the corridor. I hope this will be to your liking.’

  ‘Oh, I am certain it will all be lovely,’ Eleanor replied, wishing as she said it that she might have been allotted a shared room with her sister-in-law as a further safety.

  ‘The Duke and Duchess of Carisbrook will be coming presently, but Cristo cannot be down until the morning. Lady Lucinda has arrived already with the Henshaws and the Beauchamps.’

  ‘A full house, then,’ Diana chirped in, standing at Eleanor’s elbow now with glitter-bright excitement in her eyes.

  Beatrice-Maude smiled. ‘We will have some of the local families here, too, and their offspring for the evening meal. I am certain your daughters will enjoy their company.’

  Sophie and Margaret nodded politely and Eleanor could almost read their thoughts as they did so. It was not the local boys that the girls had set their hearts on at all, but Cristo Wellingham with his silvered hair and secrets. She had been regaled all the way down with his wealth and his prowess at fighting and the chateau that he was reputed to own in Paris.

  Eleanor had longed to ask how they had found out these things, but didn’t because any interest might be misinterpreted and she had no desire for her nieces to perceive a curiosity they would question.

  Even now Sophie risked good manners and broached a topic of her own.

  ‘Will Lord Cristo be coming alone, madam?’

  ‘He will, Miss Cameron, although I am not certain whether he will spend the night here or not.’

  Better and better, Eleanor thought and smiled properly for the first time in days. Twelve hours at most to be in his company and then that would be the end of it. Apart from a few moments of polite and general conversation what really could go wrong? A clap of thunder and the beginning of a shower of rain sent them hurrying inside.

  She should never have got on this stupid horse, she thought the next day as it again took the lead and tried to head into the thinning forest away from the track.

  ‘Keep up, Eleanor,’ Diana called from in front. ‘Use the whip and then it won’t tarry.’

  All morning she had been struggling with the steed, and though the whole party had made great allowances for her and had slowed their pace considerably, the beautiful wide tracks in the forest had become too much of a temptation and they had gone ahead to wait for her at the end of the pathway.

  The skin beneath the gloves on Eleanor’s hands was beginning to ache with the constant tugging and the rain threatening yesterday was again in sight, bands of dark grey clouds looming overhead.

  Suddenly she had just had enough, and, dismounting, she determined to lead her horse on foot.

  ‘You go on, Diana.’ Her shout made Diana stop, caught between the outlines of her disappearing daughters and Eleanor’s distress.

  ‘Should I stay with you?’

  ‘No. Sophie and Margaret may need you and I think I have had enough of riding. Besides, I can see the house from here so shall make my own way back.’ The countryside of Kent was beautiful and in the places where the trees did not stand she saw fields in the distance and the house of Beaconsmeade on the ridge behind.

  There was a short silence and then acquiescence.

  ‘Well, if you are certain…’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I’ll send back a servant to accompany you when I catch them up.’

  When Eleanor nodded Diana used her whip hard against the flanks of her mount and was gone, the noises of the small forest closing in again around her.

  Silence in a natural way. She felt elated by her solitude, something she rarely had in London. Removing her hat, she loosened her hair so that it fell in waves down her back, the length of it almost touching her waist.

  Cristo Wellingham had not come. She had thought he would be there in the morning when she had gone down for breakfast, but he had been delayed and was not now expected to arrive till well after luncheon.

  Her eyes went to the watch in her pocket. The servant that Diana had spoken of had not appeared and she wondered why. Almost twelve o’clock now. If she tarried a little and explored a few of the paths that went off this one, she might be away for a while longer. Her thoughts calculated how long she could be away without raising any alarm and she decided thirty minutes or so might not go amiss. The path to her left looked fairly robust and flat and the trees around it thinner than any of the other tracks. If she turned off here?

  Marking her exit with a stone she gathered a few of the wildflowers around it and placed them on the top. When she returned to this point she would know to proceed left. Glancing up and down the well-used track once more just to see that no servant had been sent back to help her, she walked into the dimness, leading the horse, and her shape was lost in the shadows.

  ‘She said she would go directly back and I watched her turn for Beaconsmeade.’

  Lady Diana Cameron, Westbury’s sister, was speaking and the shrill panic in her voice was easily heard. Outside the weather was worsening and the clouds threatening all morning had finally bro
ken into rain.

  Cristo stepped into the pandemonium, having set foot in Beaconsmeade only ten minutes prior.

  ‘Lady Dromorne has not been seen since she turned back from our ride at around twelve o’clock. Her sister-in-law was certain that she said she was returning here and the house was able to be seen from the track.’ Beatrice looked a little harried as the parlour clock struck three.

  ‘Have people been sent out to look for her?’ Cristo felt his own sense of alarm as they nodded.

  ‘Asher went out an hour ago with some servants but hasn’t returned, though I am certain he will find her.’

  ‘I’ll take Demeter and see if I can be of some use.’ The property was new to him, too, so he asked for directions that would lead him to the area used for the morning’s ride.

  Half an hour later Cristo found a rock that had been newly overturned on the edge of a small track leading farther into the forest. When he dismounted he noticed a few wilting flowers lying on the side of it, the wind having pushed them there out of the way.

  Kneeling, he looked for other things. A broken twig and grass that was worn.

  Here. She had left the track here. Setting the stone in the middle of the trail as a message to alert the others, he turned his horse into the shadows.

  She should never have thought of such an idea, because with all the turns in the pathway she was now well and truly lost and the horse had dug in its feet and refused to move another inch. Goodness, it was already nearly four o’clock and Diana must be frantic by now.

  ‘Stupid horse,’ she said to him as she sat on a log near a small stream. ‘Stupid, stupid horse.’ The words brought his head up and he looked directly at her, interest written in his soft brown eyes; because of that she laughed, feeling vaguely mean about growling at an animal who just wanted an easy life.

  If she left him here and walked on alone would he be all right? Would he follow? She decided to try it, disappearing around a corner and waiting to see if the steed would move.

  He didn’t.

  Returning, she grabbed at his reins and tried again to drag him.

  ‘You cannot possibly wish to stay here all by yourself and, besides, it is about to rain.’ As she said it the clouds burst open, sending a downpour across the small glade and pinning her curls to her head and clothes.

  ‘Now look what has happened,’ she continued, ‘and it is all your fault. Come on. We have to get home before it becomes dark.’

  A noise a little way away made her stiffen. Something was coming their way. Some forest predator? Finding a substantial piece of wood near her feet, she lifted it and went to stand at the head of the stubborn horse.

  ‘It will be perfectly all right. Don’t you worry, I will make certain that nothing eats you.’

  She hated the tremble she could hear in her voice and the ache of fright banding her stomach.

  It was coming closer through the trees, she determined, along the path she had turned off a moment or so back. Her fingers tightened about the wood.

  She was talking to the horse? Telling him it was all his fault and that she would allow nothing to eat him, a stick in her hand of such old timber that it would break into pieces at the very first contact.

  If he wasn’t so angry he might have smiled, but the afternoon was darkening with rain, and Eleanor Westbury was hardly wearing anything to warm her save a thin jacket and a piece of lace around her neck. Her hair was everywhere and very wet. If he had not found her, what then…? The very thought of it made him scowl as he strode into the clearing.

  Cristo Wellingham was here? In the glade far from anyone with the fading light about them and anger in his eyes. She did not lower the piece of wood, but held it as a barrier between them.

  ‘People in trouble generally don’t hit their rescuers.’

  His eyes were amber brittle as she tried to stop the shaking that had overcome her.

  ‘Your sister-in-law is, as we speak, imagining you to be in all sorts of trouble.’ His glance took in her sorry-looking mount with a singular understanding of its intractability.

  ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘The stone and some flowers! At least you thought to do that.’

  ‘You walked in?’

  ‘No. My bay is tethered a few minutes back. I heard your voice and followed the sound.’

  He came forwards, but did not stop when he reached her, leaning down instead to check the saddle of her horse.

  ‘This is the problem,’ he said after a moment, disengaging a sprig of prickles. ‘They sometimes get burred on the skin and hurt with any movement or pressure.’

  Straightening, he removed his hat and dusted it against the pale brown of his riding breeches. He was dressed today as an English country gentleman and Eleanor wondered if he would ever stop surprising her. Silence was punctuated only by the call of birds settling in the trees and by the trill of the river water a few yards away.

  ‘I arrived at Beaconsmeade as the rescue parties were being dispatched,’ he said finally. ‘I am glad it was me who found you.’

  The last words were said in a different tone from the others and the skin on her arms rose in response. Pure and utter awareness, no pretence in any of it.

  ‘Glad?’

  ‘It gives us some time to talk.’

  ‘Talk?’ The heat in her was fiery red and she wondered if he could see the blush of it in her face.

  ‘Unless you would want more.’ He reached out as though to touch her and she stepped back. Not trusting his touch. Not trusting him.

  Today he wore a ring on his little finger, the man in Paris creeping back in slow measures here. ‘Honour Baxter said that you had a daughter.’

  ‘I do.’ She made herself look at him, straight in the eye, as though they spoke of the weather or the lie of the land or some other insignificant thing. Only bravado and confidence would throw him off track.

  ‘Could I meet her?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She is almost five and I hear that she is a fair child with dark eyes.’

  ‘And you think because of it she could be yours?’ She laughed. ‘My mother was a beauty of some note and her colouring was the same.’

  ‘Your husband looks too ill to father a child.’

  ‘Now, perhaps, that might be the case. But back then…’

  The ending was left unsaid.

  ‘Honour says the child is named Florencia?’

  ‘Martin and I lived in Florence for a good few years before coming back to England. It was in compliment to the city that she was named such.’ Pushing the boundaries further, she dredged up sympathy. ‘I am very sorry if you are disappointed or if you had imagined…’

  Shrugging the sentiment away, he was closer now, so close she could feel the breath of him against her face when he spoke. Yet still he did not touch.

  ‘Is your husband kind, Eleanor?’

  Martin’s name here under a canopy of trees, here in the wind as the day turned into dusk and the leaves rustled.

  ‘Of course.’

  He smiled at that, the corners of his eyes creasing and showing up the depth of colour in his skin. Not a man who was trapped indoors, nor a man whose muscles and bone were wasting daily. She shook the thought away and concentrated on other things.

  ‘In Paris I was a fool to let you go so easily.’ The velvet in his eyes was lighter against the low sun, the colour of dark brandy with fire behind it.

  Tears were close. She could feel them pooling, at the waste of it all and at the yearning that she could no longer deny.

  She knew she should turn away this moment, now, or at the very least direct the conversation into a more indifferent topic. She should stake her claim on being a sensible woman, a prudent woman, a woman who had no thought for the passion consuming her.

  But when he reached out she let him touch her and when he brought her knuckles to his lips and kissed the back of them she felt his tongue like the sharp blade of a razor drawing her blood into shivers.

>   ‘Do you feel that?’ The question was fierce. ‘Do you, Eleanor. Feel that?’

  ‘No.’ She could not let him speak any longer, could not allow him to say the words that marked a truth.

  ‘No?’ He laid his other hand across the jutting flesh of her bosom, feeling the beat of her heart. The rain wet his hand as she looked down, cold against warmth. She almost expected to see steam.

  ‘Eleanor. Whatever this is…?’

  ‘Is between us,’ she finished and laid a finger on his lips against further words, tracing the line of them, carefully. She felt in his constraint a terrible desperation.

  ‘I failed you once and I should not have….’

  Once! Her other hand was held rigidly against her side, gripped into a fist as she thought of the tiny grave at the chapel in Aix-en-Provence planted with spring bulbs because they were all she could leave untended.

  Not now. Not now. The guilt that rode her dreams nightly opened into full bloom, reaching down into the very core of her heart. Swallowing, she made herself relax as puzzlement crept into his eyes.

  ‘I would not hurt you, Eleanor.’

  She blanched at the pitch of need so clearly heard and the distance that held them apart lessened. Closer and closer as his hands tightened on her shoulders, drawing her in. Six inches and then her breasts flattened against his chest, finding home.

  No child. No husband. Only him. Only him with his silvered wet hair and his magical mouth and his hand around her head tilting her into more, their breath heavy and torrid as she matched his desire with her own.

  Mine. Again. Amongst the trees and the oncoming darkness and the call of the birds as they settled for the night, watching. Watching a dam break in the circle of flesh, tipping into utter need, his grip tightening in her hair as an anchor, no breath or ease or quiet exploration. Only five years of apartness and ten thousand hours of regret. Only the sweet rush of his breath and the clamp of passion that knotted her body from tip to toe into some other unknown force, giving back all that she was getting, opening to him so that he could come in, deeper, closer, the feel of him against her body so very, very right.