One Illicit Night Read online

  ‘The Benetts have asked us to a dinner party this evening, and were most hopeful that we should be able to come.’

  Martin took a sip of tea. ‘If you should like to go…’

  ‘I should.’ The words sounded desperate even to her ears.

  ‘Then perhaps we could manage it for a little while.’

  Florencia clapped her hands and looked up, her eyes as wide as saucers. ‘What shall you wear, Mama?’

  ‘You might like to help me choose, my darling,’ Her daughter’s returned smile made the day bearable again.

  ‘It seems the Dromornes are often out and about in Bath, Cristo. They were more circumspect here from what I remember, though the husband’s ailment appears much recovered.’

  Jack Henshaw, Asher’s oldest friend, placed The Times down on the mahogany table and downed the last of the brandy in his glass. ‘She is cutting quite a figure in the city, according to the article. An Original, the writer supposes, and all the women copying her style.’ He frowned as memory was sifted. ‘I recall her being quite staid in her taste. A young woman dressed as a rather older one, do you not agree?’

  Cristo shook his head and declared no opinion whatsoever, but sat perfectly still as Jack droned on.

  ‘It says that Lady Dromorne rarely misses the chance to socialise and that she has begun to take up the habit of leaving every party awfully late.’

  ‘And her husband?’

  ‘Is home in bed waiting, perhaps. A man of singular trust and devotion, poor fool him.’

  ‘You are implying her to be loose?’

  Jack smiled and his eyes met Cristo’s through the glasses he had begun to wear whilst reading.

  ‘Your tone is more than impartial, Cris.’

  ‘And your hearing is as poor as your eyesight, Jack.’

  ‘Eleanor Westbury is described as the most beautiful woman to ever grace Bath.’ Again his brow crinkled. ‘Per haps the air there suits her constitution well. It has been a good while, after all, since they departed this place and settled in the country.’

  Nine months, two weeks and three days, Cristo thought, and hated himself for the counting, though the appearance of Taris and Asher at the club allowed the subject of the Dromornes to at least be dropped.

  Or so he had thought until Asher raised their name again.

  ‘There has been an accident, Cris. In Bath.’

  His heart stopped. He swore it did and swore, too, that all the blood from his face drained into pale.

  ‘Eleanor or Florencia?’ He could not be careful with their names, not when they could already be lost to him.

  ‘Martin Westbury. He was hit by a carriage as he crossed the street in his chair yesterday. He was killed instantly.’

  ‘Lord.’ Jack gestured to the waiter to bring a bottle and more glasses. ‘So the illness that he suffered from for all those years didn’t kill him after all? What irony is there in that?’

  Taris answered directly. ‘The chance of a quick death as opposed to a lingering one. I think he could count himself fortunate.’

  ‘Was anyone else hurt?’ Cristo had found his voice again.

  ‘No. It seems his servant jumped well out of the way.’

  ‘A loyal subject.’ Jack laughed, though Taris was not quite finished speaking.

  ‘Would it be wise to go and give our condolences, do you think? The Dromorne family is repairing back here to London as we speak.’

  ‘Why the hell would we want to do that, Taris? The woman almost killed Cristo.’ Asher’s question was harsh, his expression puzzled.

  ‘Beatrice felt it the right thing to do when she heard the news. She said Cris would probably feel the same.’

  ‘Yes. I’d like to go.’ Cristo was infinitely grateful for the suggestion.

  ‘Then we will go together.’ Ashe laid his hand on his shoulder. Martin Westbury was dead and Eleanor was alone and yet all Cristo could feel was numbness.

  Eleanor had dressed Florencia in her black dress and tied the ribbon at her waist, placing the satin so that it hung in two long strips down to the hem. Her own gown held not a hint of any colour save for darkness, the black bombazine wrapped around her figure in the most sombre of shades.

  Dead. Martin. Not of illness or of lack of breath, but of an accident. She wished she could have had one chance to say goodbye. Another thought, however, lurked in the background of the more charitable ones.

  Relief.

  Pushing the word down, she turned to the bishop who had come to the house to give his sincere condolences on the loss of her spouse. He also assured her that a marriage of tenderness and love in this earthly realm, such as theirs had indeed been, would one day be repeated in the celestial one if only she was patient.

  ‘I will certainly remember the thought, Bishop Pilkington,’ she returned and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, her tears those for the man who had found her in the chapel alone in Aix-en-Provence and taken her and her newly born daughter to Florence. With love.

  ‘There have been a great many people who have come to pay your husband their last respects over the past few days.’

  Eleanor nodded, Martin’s standing in the community of the ton had always been substantial and his wealth cemented his position.

  ‘I noticed the Carisbrook conveyances pulling up as I arrived here.’

  Eleanor dropped the Bible she held and it fell to the ground with a loud bang. When she made no move to bend and pick it up a maidservant hovering in the shadows bobbed down to retrieve it.

  ‘Thank you.’ The tremble in her voice was obvious and the bishop reached out for her hand and held it within his own.

  ‘God sends us these trials in life, my dear, but he also sends us the wherewithal to rise above them and create a new journey.’

  The Carisbrook conveyances? Cristo Wellingham. Had he married? Had he come to mock her? Had he brought his family to demand the return of her daughter now that her husband was gone?

  Another thought also struck her and she unfastened the piece of black silk around her neck, bending to her daughter and winding the fabric around her hair to hide the silver.

  ‘It is good manners to cover our hair when we have lost somebody very dear,’ she explained as Florencia reached up to see just what her mother had fashioned.

  ‘Like your one, Mama?’

  The veil was pulled down and the lace let through only imprints of what was beside her. Still, with a thick barrier between herself and the man who had never contacted her again, she allowed herself to be lead from the small parlour out into the larger one across the hall, her daughter’s hand firmly kept within her own.

  Cristo looked up and Eleanor was there, a veil pulled across her face, hiding everything. Florencia stood next to her, black silk strangely placed around her head, small sprigs of silver escaping the concoction. She looked taller than when he had last seen her, a gold chain with a locket at her neck lending her the air of an older girl.

  Eleanor Westbury, on the other hand, had lost weight and a waist that had always been small was now worryingly thin. The chestnut of her hair beneath the veil was highlighted by the darkness of her clothes.

  Beatrice next to him laid her hand across his arm, just for a moment, and Emerald on her other side caught his eyes, the turquoise in them, as she observed Florencia, holding an unnerving knowledge.

  He looked away. The room was dressed with white lilies and new spring roses. A family banner in purple wool was draped over a large portrait of the Earl of Dromorne set up on a plinth by the window.

  Cristo imagined the soul of Westbury castigating him from Heaven, a ghoulish form of sullen morality.

  Distance, it might say, and the keeping of a promise, the spectre questioning his very right to be in the house.

  Reaching down for the headrest of the sofa in front of him, he held on as if it were a lifeline in a rapidly sinking ship.

  A man of the church he recognised as Bishop Pilkington was making much of his departure, his monol
ogue a solemn and depressing piece reminding those in the room of the impermanence of life and of the coming of death.

  ‘Everyone here will die,’ he began and caught Cristo’s eye with an added fervour. ‘Every single one of us here will die just as this man has and be welcomed into the kingdom of our Lord.’

  Now Cristo knew why he seldom ventured into a religious institution or sought out the company of those within it. He coughed to clear his throat and Eleanor turned, her head angled. Listening. He saw the shape of her right ear adorned with a single perfect pearl. Lust shot through his body like a spear, unexpectedly brutal.

  Shifting, he caught Asher’s eye and looked away just as quickly, the tenure of his breath shaky. Reciting the conjugations of verbs in Latin helped to calm him. His mind ran across sequences determining pattern as his daughter shifted in her seat, one hand reaching for an itch on her neck. He watched her fingers and her nails and a bruise that sat at the base of her thumb. A small injury. Another moment lost to him. He wished he might have reached forwards and touched her, held his hand across her own and felt her warmth.

  But of course he could do nothing of the sort. He was a stranger and a man whom she had seen only once in the heart of chaos. He dropped his gaze as she looked at him and sat perfectly still.

  ‘Stop fiddling, Florencia.’ Eleanor whispered the words and felt Cristo Wellingham there like an ache that had no ending. Just to the left of her. Five feet away. If she closed her eyes she might smell him, the scent of man and strength and warmness. She hoped he did not see the racing pulse in her throat or the tremor in her jaw. Her eyes rested on Martin’s portrait and on the flowers and the crest and the small likeness of Heaven that her daughter had placed there on the plinth. Hidden beneath the lilies. A drawing of the sun and puppies and all the bon-bons in the world. Given that Martin had hated animals and any thing very sweet, that left only the sun to see him on his way.

  The Dromorne villa in Florence had been drowned in summer when she had arrived there, grey with fatigue and heartsick. Her tiny son had gone and Italy was a place too far for his soul to find her, but she remembered the warmth as she had stepped from the carriage into the light. She had done little else that long and hot summer save sleep and eat.

  The Bishop at her side spoke again of the circle of life and the acceptance of death and the solace that one could find in the eternal love of God. In the rush of memory the reality of it all became focused and Eleanor felt the tears well behind her eyes for a husband who had been a good man and a friend.

  She was crying. Cristo could see the tears mopped up by a kerchief that looked suspiciously masculine. He saw the way her hands shook and saw the tremors in her throat as she swallowed back grief and tried to find strength.

  Asher was speaking now as the Carisbrook representative and Cristo simply listened. The sun slanted in through the window, covering everything with a strange light, and the Bishop, noticing it, relegated such a shimmer to the way of our Lord and the golden glow of redemption.

  A letter of sorts stuck out on one corner of a substantial array of flowers and Cristo determined the end of a rainbow drawn across it.

  Florencia’s handiwork, perhaps? He wished that he might have seen more of the final goodbye to the only father she had ever known; as Eleanor stood, their eyes caught, hers plainly visible through a lacy veil.

  Shock and want spread across something he could only explain as utter helplessness and his fists clenched at the material in his jacket so that he would not reach out. His breath shook with relief as she turned.

  Florencia’s dark eyes were staring at the floor and for that at least he was glad. On her feet she wore little black boots with three buttons on each side of the opening. The right one was scuffed at the toes.

  And then it was time to go, time to step forwards and offer individual sympathies. Cristo was pleased Bea and Taris went before him with Ashe and Emerald behind, for sandwiched between Wellinghams he felt a little less visible. The day outside through the glass at the window was cold but blue. The leaves on the trees that lined the driveway were beginning to bud, light green against the limbs of winter.

  He would come to give his condolences and she would have to touch him. He would come with his public face and his private thoughts, a man with a lot of reasons to keep the distance he so obviously sought.

  Did his promise to stay away from her still exist now that Martin was gone? With Florencia’s name secured for eternity would he wish for any more contact between them?

  Another more worrying thought also occurred. Would Florencia recognise him as the one who had come into the warehouse to save them?

  Beatrice-Maude came first and Eleanor felt indifference in the way she clasped her hands.

  ‘I am sorry for your loss, Lady Dromorne.’ Only that. She passed by as quickly as was considered proper and her husband lingered for a second or so longer. Then Cristo was there, his hand held awkwardly.

  ‘Please accept my condolences.’

  Her fingertips rested in his, the gloves they both wore a barrier to everything. He had not so much as raised his eyes to see her, his hair the colour of a spider web in the light.

  Just this second.

  Just this chance.

  Her fingers clamped over his in a motion all of their own, desperate, reckless, melded into a knowledge that should she not try here, she might lose him for ever.

  ‘Please…?’

  She could not say more for her throat had closed up into thickness and the words just would not come. Beside her one of Martin’s cousins coughed.

  Releasing his hand, she felt him slip away, from her, the side of his face and then the back of his head, his gloved hand reaching out to the next person in the line and the same words upon his tongue.

  ‘Please accept my condolences.’

  The air was so thin she could barely find breath, only him, here and then gone, only his touch through two layers of fabric and every single part of her longing for more.

  Her fingers burned anger into his soul. More than nine months had passed since they had last seen each other and the time for an apology for her lack of contact was far and away over.

  Even a letter might have sufficed.

  He pushed the thought aside and concentrated on other things. The gilded carved cornices in the ceilings and the tall windows with their elaborate heavy curtains.

  ‘We need not stay longer.’ Asher turned to him, concern and worry written on his face, though Emerald had hung back and was now speaking with Eleanor.

  ‘I should not wish to listen to the Bishop Pilkington every Sunday,’ Beatrice said as they reached the carriage and Taris laughed.

  ‘Fundamentalism has a form of judgement, Bea, that is often fashioned in a wavering zeal. He sounded young. Young enough to be saved by his vacillating faith, would you say?’

  ‘Hell would have to freeze over first,’ Ashe cut in, ‘and I for one can’t wait for a drink.’

  Eleanor saw that the Wellinghams were laughing, their happiness in her unending sorrow almost a sacrilege.

  ‘A very dear friend of mine has a house in High Wycombe that you would be most welcome to use. It is small, you understand, but very beautiful. A sanctuary, if you like.’ Emerald Wellingham held her hand in a way that was endearing.

  ‘Thank you for the kind offer, but—’

  ‘Being alone in the city, Lady Dromorne, is very different to being alone in the country. Just remember that. Besides, no one would question your business there. I would make very sure of it.’ Turquoise eyes bore into hers and Eleanor got the impression she was trying to say something completely different. ‘If you should change your mind, I would be happy to hear from you and remember that things are not always exactly as they seem.’

  Eleanor could not quite determine the Duchess of Carisbrook’s motive in the warning. All the rest of the family had passed her by with only the most cursory of greetings, but this woman was almost ardent in her advice. Disengaging her hand,
she stepped back.

  ‘I thank you again, your Grace.’

  ‘Emmie. It is how my friends call me.’

  Eleanor stayed silent.

  ‘My son Ashton is just a little older than your daughter and we have puppies at the town house at the moment. Perhaps your little girl might like to come and play with them?’

  Eleanor smiled. It was hard to remain distant under such an onslaught of friendliness.

  ‘Puppies?’ Florencia pushed herself forwards. ‘I love puppies.’

  ‘Do you indeed, my dear? Then it is settled. Your mother must bring you to visit before they grow too large and you miss them altogether.’

  ‘Can we, Mama? Please can we?’

  In the face of all the sadness and tears Eleanor found herself nodding her head and arranging a date and time for the following week. Even though they were in mourning it would be a quick and private visit and it would be nice to see laughter again on her daughter’s face.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Dressed in unending black, Eleanor exited the conveyance that had been sent by Emerald Wellingham to pick them up. The previous week had been difficult for the timing for her leaving the Dromorne properties was tighter than she had hoped, as Martin’s cousin wished to inhabit the family seats before the end of July.

  Oh, granted, Martin had left her with enough money to procure another property, but the speed of change was unsettling, all the decisions she needed to make alone daunting and dispiriting.

  It was as if the black of her clothes had leaked into her blood, despair and dullness leaving their mark upon her. Taking in a breath, she admonished herself. She had options and possibilities and Florencia, far from being depressed by losing the only man she had known as a father, seemed barely perturbed by his absence.

  Eleanor frowned. They had not been as close as she might have hoped. Perhaps Martin’s illness had precluded a lot of the joy she had seen in him in Italy, though if she was truthful even there he had been more of a safe man than a happy one.