One Illicit Night Page 17

  ‘Hello.’ He brought out the squirming puppy and held it towards her. She took it immediately, cuddling it in the way only small children can, his pink tongue licking her chin.

  When she laughed he saw a child so like him that there could be no possible question of her parentage.

  ‘I love animals.’

  He smiled. ‘And what else do you love?’

  ‘I am learning to play the piano.’

  ‘Perhaps one day you might play it to me?’ He thought of his own Stein sitting at Graveson. It had been so long since he had played anything at all.

  Eleanor saw that Florencia was unusually brave, this notice from a stranger overcoming her more normal shyness. Her feet scuffed the ground as the puppy jiggled and she saw Cristo take in the movement, the hunger in his eyes poignant. I have missed years, his expression said, and I am not going to miss another moment.

  ‘You could show Lord Cristo some of your drawings,’ she suggested. The bag Florencia often carried with her lay on the brick steps four feet away and she hurried to get it.

  ‘There is a seat just here.’ Eleanor indicated an old bench. ‘If you sat on his knee, it might be easier for you both to see, darling.’

  Keep it light and easy and natural, Eleanor thought, her hand trembling as she handed her daughter the book. She was pleased when Florencia did as she was asked and stood before him and the look of wonder on Cristo’s face as he touched his child so carefully brought mistiness to her eyes. She made much of doing up the buckle of the bag as he made room for Florencia and the puppy on his lap.

  ‘This is our house,’ her daughter said after a moment, ‘and this is Papa. He is in Heaven because he likes being there now. This is Sophie in her yellow gown and Margaret in her blue one. They don’t live with us any more but they used to. And this is my dog.’

  Eleanor craned her neck forward. A black-and-white dog who looked a lot like Patch gambolled on the page.

  ‘The dog she imagines, I’m afraid, as Martin was allergic to any pet hair.’

  ‘And is this you next to your mama? The beautiful girl with the princess locks?’

  Florencia laughed and suddenly reached out to his hair, her small fingers threading through the colour. ‘Your hair is exactly the same as mine,’ she said before returning to the book and flicking the page.

  Over their daughter’s head Cristo’s eyes met hers, a scar she had not seen before marking the skin beneath the left one. The fight on the docks had scarred him and she wished she might have touched it, wished she might have simply leant over and run her finger across the sharp angles in his cheek. But she sat there, listening to the explanations of each page and the interested comments that followed them until the book was finished, a chronicle of everyday life explained away in ink.

  ‘There is a stretch of grass just through those trees. I saw it in the carriage as we came in. Would you ladies like a walk?’

  The question was addressed to Eleanor, but it was Florencia who answered.

  ‘Oh, yes, please, Mama. Please let us have a walk. I could take Patch.’

  Eleanor weighed up her options.

  ‘Very well, but just for a few moments.’ She hated that part in her voice that sounded so stern and tight.

  Cristo felt his daughter’s hand creep into his own as they made their way through the hedge and into the open ground.

  Florencia was small and fragile like Eleanor, but that was where any similarity ended. Her hair and her eyes and the shape of her face were exactly his own and she played the piano as he did. A great weight of love tugged his heart into a different beat and he wished that they might have been truly a family taking in the air before going back home.

  When Florencia skipped off to pick a bunch of daisies Eleanor was quick to use the moment.

  ‘I did not ever think that you would travel to High Wycombe.’

  ‘Indeed, Lady Dromorne, I may not have if I had known you to be here. In London when you did not return to help me I promised to forget you. But Emerald asked me to look at the property for her—a ruse on her part to get us together, no doubt.’

  ‘I could not come—’

  He broke in. ‘Or write or send a messenger? It was only that I needed, Eleanor, and instead there was nothing.’

  ‘I could do none of these things you speak of because Diana, Martin’s sister, kidnapped me and took me up north. She fed me laudanum until a servant who had a brother in our London town house got word to Martin. By then you were free of all charges.’

  ‘Diana kidnapped you?’ He could barely take in the truth of what she told him. ‘Why would she do that?’

  ‘For her daughters’ sake, after I told her that you were Florencia’s father. She wanted the family reputation protected against scandal, you see, and thought that was the way to do it.’

  ‘Lord, you could have died. Where the hell is she now?’

  ‘In Scotland. She has promised not to return to London for a very long time.’

  The silence between them grew; clearing her throat, Eleanor began uncertainly. ‘I realise that Martin came to see you and you made it very clear to him that you did not wish for any further communication between us.’

  ‘Your husband told you that?’

  ‘He did. I understand how very easily I could be an embarrassment to your family, but…’

  The words were whipped from her as eyes of ice bored into her own.

  ‘I never gave Martin Westbury such a message. Dromorne said that you blamed me for everything and that you would not risk the life of Florencia again after the debacle at the docks. He said that you wished me dead with all of your heart. I took that as the truth and withdrew.’

  Eleanor shook her head. ‘Martin told you that?’ The sheer enormity of such a betrayal was impossible to contemplate. ‘I cannot believe that of him…’

  ‘He forbade me visit Bath under oath for as long as you resided there and said you never wanted to set eyes on me again. Given the events that had unfolded with Beraud, I assented. You appeared to enjoy a social life that kept you out till all hours, according to the newssheets, and never once tried to regain contact. It was hard to believe otherwise.’

  ‘He used us both, then.’

  As she spoke he saw the girl on the bed at the Chateau Giraudon, her eyes full of hurt and despair, though when Patch gambolled back to jump at her skirts with his long black-and-white ears blowing in the wind her expression changed.

  ‘The dog was a lovely gift, but we cannot possible accept it, for a cousin of Martin’s will take over the Dromorne properties and I have yet to find a new home.’

  ‘Then he can stay with me until you are ready for him.’

  She shook her head. ‘If the world sees you together with Florencia…’

  He stopped her by placing his finger on her lower lip, the wind catching at her hair and throwing the length of chestnut back across her shoulders. For a moment he felt he could not breath with the sheer desire he felt for her, the bodice of her gown tight across breasts he had once fondled and suckled. The ache in his groin had him bring his coat farther across his thighs. God, he was becoming erect in the middle of the day with his daughter not ten feet from them. It was Eleanor who looked away first.

  ‘If people talk of the likeness between you, it will be difficult for all of us.’

  He laughed and wished that he hadn’t as the line between her eyes deepened.

  ‘You worry too much, Eleanor, and I think already it may be too late for that. Did you think to hide her for ever?’

  ‘No. But I don’t want her hurt.’

  ‘I promise that she will not be.’

  When he hesitated on the path she did the same, the distance between them lessened by the action. Reaching out his hand, he took her gloveless fingers into his own.

  ‘When was she born?’

  Eleanor took in a breath. She had known, of course, that he would ask, that the facts hidden would soon not be and that a father had as much right as a mother
to all the small details of childhood.

  ‘On July the first in 1826 in Aix-en-Provence. I travelled there after Paris. After that I went to Florence. Martin had offered help and I took hold of such a chance.’

  ‘Because you could not come to me.’

  Not a question, but a rebuke. Of himself. Of his part in all that had happened. For the first time she thought of how young they both had been.

  ‘I needed a safe place, Cristo.’

  He glanced up at the use of his name. ‘And if you had returned, I would have given you one.’

  But she did not let him off so lightly. ‘A mansion that was renowned for its debauchery and its licentiousness and a kitchen whose food was counted by the number of brandy bottles lining its shelves? I think in truth that there are better homes for a little girl to be raised in.’

  ‘I’ll sell the Chateau Giraudon and buy a place in London for you. I have other money, too.’

  ‘No, she stays a Westbury until…’

  Until you marry me.

  Lord, she had so very nearly said it. Her hand came to her mouth and she was silent, though the determination that had kept her going all the way up here and through all the days of waiting for him to follow, began to gel.

  The sheer negligence of care made her dizzy.

  ‘Until?’ His eyes were as dark as she had ever seen them, the pupils lost in ebony.

  ‘Until I marry again.’

  ‘You have someone in mind?’

  ‘Indeed, I do.’

  ‘That would be a mistake.’ The words were ground out before he knew it, his hands at his side clenched into fists. Westbury had been dead for less than a month and already she was lining up a successor? The papers from Bath suddenly came to mind. An Original. The toast of society. He wanted to throw her across his back and take her up to bed, now, without words, their bodies melded into one and for ever joined. He wanted to stay here in this ramshackle house in the little village of High Wycombe, away from everyone and everything.

  But he could see in her eyes a misgiving that would need a more careful diplomacy. Changing tack, he came in from another angle.

  ‘Emerald no doubt sent us on such a wild goose chase for a purpose.’

  Eleanor blushed and he stepped back.

  ‘Not both of us, then?’ He swore beneath his breath at the duplicity.

  Eyes the colour of an afternoon summer sky met his. ‘The Duchess had guessed about your relationship with Florencia. When she suggested we should at least talk, I could hardly refuse to do so.’

  ‘My town house in London would have been a lot closer.’

  ‘And a lot easier to leave.’

  ‘My carriage is here.’

  ‘Actually it isn’t quite where you might think it, though of course I shall ask for it to be returned—’

  He didn’t let her finish.

  ‘For a woman who has an intended groom waiting in the wings, you are astoundingly careless.’

  ‘A groom?’

  ‘The man you have just told me you have in mind to marry. Do you not think he would take offence at our being alone here?’

  Surprisingly she smiled and the dimples in her cheeks were deep. Lord. The broadsheets of Bath had not understated her beauty one little bit. In London she had been swathed in pastels, caution and sorrow. Here, in the open air with her hair down and the generous spill of her bosom over a simple gown of mourning, she was unforgettable.

  Cursing, he looked away, though not before he had seen a flicker of satisfaction on her face. The world spun into another angle as he mulled upon it. Could she have meant him to stay here for more than just talk? The magnitude of the plan hardly indicated fainthearted trepidation after all and any woman must have realised the danger inherent in such a proposition.

  Alone, together, with the past between them and the present strewn across a need that had never settled.

  He wanted her with a plain and utter hunger. Still, there were questions that he needed answers to; seeing that Florencia was a good distance away playing with Patch, he took his chance.

  ‘If I am alone with you in the house tonight, Eleanor, I doubt that I would have the temperance to sleep in a separate bed.’

  ‘Is that a warning, my lord?’

  ‘No, ma cherie. It’s a certainty.’

  Florencia’s cry brought their attention to her.

  ‘Look, Mama. Patch is chasing his tail.’

  ‘Just as I am chasing mine,’ he murmured to himself and was again confused by Eleanor’s returning smile as she slipped from his side to view the puppy’s antics with their daughter.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The room the housekeeper showed him to overlooked the front of the house and was larger than any bedchamber he had ever been in. Divided into two separate spaces, he was interested to see the shape of a piano beneath a large dustsheet. Pulling it aside, he ascertained the instrument to be a Broadwood and his curiosity quickened. It had been an age since he had sat at a piano and played. Positioning the stool, he placed his fingers over the chords before letting them sink into the keys.

  Like coming home. Almost sacrosanct.

  As he closed his eyes the first movement of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ spilled into the room, the waves of tension building and resolving. All the broken cords of his life were in that tune, the hell ship, his father’s distance and the loneliness that had kept him bound in France.

  His fingers found notes that had never left him. In Paris he had only ever heard the mistakes, but this afternoon in the sunlight under a clear blue sky he heard the music, peaceful, meditative, the harmony and feelings speaking to him.

  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 Chateau 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. I
f 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?