A Proposition for the Comte Read online

  She had finally got her life back on track and she did not wish to derail her newly found contentment. Better to forget him. Better still, maybe, to have never stopped and picked him up in the first place, but she could not quite make herself believe in this line of reasoning. The snow outside today was thick and the temperatures had plummeted. If he had been left all night out in such conditions she doubted he would have been alive come the morning.

  * * *

  Later that evening, sitting with Amaryllis in the downstairs parlour, Violet tried to concentrate on the piece of embroidery she was doing of a rural scene with a thatched cottage near a river, the garden full of summer flowers before it. The fire was bright and warm, the embers sending out a good deal of heat. Outside she could hear the occasional carriage passing, their noise muffled by at least four inches of newly fallen snow. Usually she loved this kind of quiet end to a winter day, with the darkness complete and a project in hand. Tonight, however, she was feeling restless and agitated.

  ‘My lady’s maid said that the marketplace was full of gossip this morning.’ There was a certain tone to Amara’s words that made her look up.

  ‘Gossip?’ Violet was not one to enjoy the whispers of tittle-tattle, but after her badly broken sleep she could not help but ask.

  ‘It is being said that there was a fight last night in a boarding house in Brompton Place that left a man dead. A gentleman, too, by the sounds. Seems the man had his throat cut. Brutally.’

  The hint of question in her sister-in-law’s voice demanded an answer.

  ‘And you think the stranger we brought home may have had something to do with this?’

  ‘Well, we did find him at one end of Brompton Place and there was blood on his clothes, Violet. He also carried multiple weapons. God, he might have done away with us all in our beds had he the inclination for it and then where would we have been?’

  Violet stopped the tirade as soon as she could. ‘Did anyone in the marketplace have an idea of the dead man’s name or occupation?’

  ‘I do not think so. It is understood that he was from the city and that he had a gun found beside him and a full purse in his pocket.’

  ‘It was not taken by whoever had killed him?’

  ‘That’s the way of it. It was violence the murderer was after, not the money, it seems. I suppose there are men here like that, men who live in the underbelly of London and in places we would have no knowledge of. Maybe he wanted to silence the other so that what was known between them should never be allowed to escape and it is a secret so terrible there will be repercussions everywhere.’

  ‘I think you have been reading too many books, Amara. Perhaps it was simply an argument that got out of hand.’

  A sniffle alerted her to stronger feelings. ‘I feel scared, Violet, for an incident like this brings everything that much closer. What if they find out about us? What then? This could all happen again if we are not cautious.’

  ‘It won’t, I promise you. They will never find out.’

  ‘I cannot pretend to be as brave as you are. I wish I could be, but I can’t.’

  ‘We are here in London, Amaryllis, and it has been over fifteen months since Harland died. We are safe.’

  Violet laid the embroidery in her lap, all the neat and ordered rows of stitchery so contrary to the thoughts she was having. Did Amara hold the right of it? Had she fallen headlong into a world of disorder and tumult by rescuing a man she knew nothing at all about?

  I will not forget it.

  His note came to mind, too. Words of gratitude or of threat?

  She had promised herself at the graveside of her late husband to be circumspect and prudent for that was the way that safety dwelled. And now look. Here she was wondering if the locks on her doors would be strong enough and if the stranger who knew exactly the layout of her house might be back.

  Her contentment fell into disarray like a house built of cards, each argument falling on to the other until there was nothing left at all to find a truth with.

  Stupid. Stupid, she chastised herself, her heart racing. She had been here before, in a position of weakness and vulnerability, a place she had promised never to be again. The worry inside knocked her off balance.

  Swallowing hard, she made herself smile. It never paid to let anyone know your true feelings, for then control would be gone and this charade was all she had left of herself.

  ‘I am sure the constable will find the culprit, Amara, and that shall be the very last we hear of it.’

  ‘You do not think we ought to say anything about the one who was here last night? His wounds? The blood?’

  ‘No, I don’t think we should.’ These words came with all the conviction she could muster and she was glad to see her sister-in-law nod in agreement.

  He was most memorable. He would stand out in a crowd. The scar, the golden eyes, his beauty and his tallness. All the pieces of a man who was not in any way ordinary and so easy to find if someone was looking.

  Danger balanced on the edge of a precipice, the beginnings of the consequences of her lies, the start of all that might come next? Another thought also occurred to her.

  ‘Are the clothes the stranger wore last night still in the laundry?’

  ‘No. They were dried early before the kitchen fire and the downstairs maid has ironed them.’

  ‘Can you find them for me, Amara? Perhaps they might tell us things.’

  ‘Things we may not wish to know?’

  When Violet failed to answer, her sister-in-law stood and took her leave.

  Why should she want to understand more about the stranger by gathering clues from his laundered garments? Could knowing more hurt her? With Harland she remembered sifting through his lies and truths and feeling sullied, a sort of panicked dirtiness inherent in every new thing she discovered about him.

  * * *

  When Amaryllis returned, she handed the items over with a heavy frown. ‘If one made it one’s business never to look into the hidden affairs of others, oblivion would be the result, Violet. Perhaps the curious hold a curse that trips them up repeatedly. I think we ought to donate these garments to charity and forget that we ever met this man. He is gone and it is for the best. For what it is worth, the butler said he had the look of duplicity about him and, of all the things in the world, we do not need that again.’

  Then, after uttering a quick goodnight, her sister-in-law was gone, the door closed behind her. Violet was pleased to be alone with what was left of the man she’d found on the street, the fine linen of his shirtsleeves edged in silver and the breeches of a good quality serge. Lifting the material to her face, she breathed in, but the smell of him had disappeared. Only lye soap and fire smoke remained.

  ‘Who are you?’ she whispered into the night. ‘And where are you now?’

  The booming of a clock out in the hallway was her answer. He had faded into the teeming thousands who called London their home, lost in the melee of survival and danger. He would not be back.

  Placing the garments on the small table beside her, she determined not to think of him again.

  Chapter Two

  Aurelian de la Tomber, Eighth Comte de Beaumont and heir to the Dukedom of Lorraine-Lillebonne, lay in a gilded bathtub in his rented town house on Portman Square, trying to block out the throbbing pain in his side.

  The man who had jumped out at him in the darkness of the boarding house had meant business and it was only a last-second intuition that had made him duck to the left and catch a bullet in his arm rather than the full force of it through his chest. He’d slit his assailant’s throat without blinking, his training homing in to demand full retribution. The fellow had gone down without a word, dead before he hit the floor, a fact that Lian deemed a shame given it would have been useful to have known who’d been sent to kill him.

  The man’s clothes had held some clue for they wer
e the garments of a gentleman. Lian had found a purse full of gold when he had rifled through the jacket in the few moments he’d had before the alarm was raised and footsteps were heard. The chain about his neck had sported a St Christopher medallion. A travelling man, perhaps, or a superstitious one? The medallion had looked like a bauble of good quality silver.

  He should have known it might come to this when he’d left France, for greed was a powerful deterrent to telling the truth and the monies sent by the supporters of Napoleon to those who might help them in England had been substantial.

  What he had not expected was her. Lady Addington with her red hair and kind eyes, blessed with the sort of light shimmering all around that could expose every single demon within him.

  He raised one hand and saw it shake, a froth of fine lavender soap across his skin. He’d been noticing these tremors more and more of late, just another side effect of the life he had lived.

  ‘Dieu, aidez-moi.’

  He remembered he’d sworn in French last night, too, a mistake that came from blood loss and dizziness. He seldom made such errors and cursed anew, the shifting exhaustion he’d felt for months lessening his usual caution.

  Who the hell could have known that he was here in London on the sort of business that usually stayed secret and unheralded? What had happened after he had left the boarding house on Brompton Place?

  He could remember very little of the previous night’s attack, save for speaking to Lady Addington in a bedchamber when he’d been cleaned up and the doctor had left. The swelling in his side was greater this morning, the tight heat releasing into a throbbing ache. There were slight memories of sleet and cold and the sound of a carriage coming on as he fell, but that was about the most of it.

  Would Lady Addington talk to the London law-keepers and give them his description? Would there be repercussions that might follow? He had no family here save for his younger sister and his two ageing aunts. A further worry that, for their safety was paramount in everything he did.

  Violet Addington’s freckles had been astonishing and her colouring had held the sort of vivid glowing richness that he could never before remember seeing and now could not forget.

  She’d worn a diamond ring on the third finger of her left hand, but there had been no sign of a husband save for the portrait he’d caught sight of at the bottom of the stairs as he had left, the night light in the hall falling across the face of a man who was imposing and elegant. Her countenance was drawn beside his, a younger, more uncertain version of the woman she’d become.

  Rising from the water, he took a towel from the rack and tied it about his waist, catching his reflection in the full-length mirror. He rarely looked at himself these days, but tonight he did. Tonight the scar on his chin was raised and red in the light and the new wound above his ear ate into the black of his hair. His chest was bandaged, hiding ruin’s pathway across the skin, though the swollen bruising on his arm was visible.

  His life was reflected in the hardness of his eyes and in the deep lines that ran down each side of his face. Every year he’d worked for the Ministère de la Guerre had placed new scars upon him. The sabre cuts across his back, the many small knife wounds that ran over his hands and his lower arms, the missing half-finger resulting from the debacle with Les Chevaliers and his betrayal by Celeste Fournier-Shayborne.

  He knew that the Addington servants must have seen such ruination upon him and wondered just what they might have relayed to their mistress. Or to a master?

  The cross on plaited leather at his neck caught his attention next. Veronique. He’d taken it from her body after he’d pulled her out of the Seine and he’d never removed it. The remnants of lost chances and the aching brokenness of love. The beginning of his indifference, too.

  A clean shirt hid most of the damage as he pulled it on, a pair of breeches following and then his boots. This double game of intelligence was taking his life piece by piece.

  At any moment chaos could consume him. He felt it coming as a bleakness he could not control and then as a shaking that numbed all he knew to be good.

  The images of Paris were there, too, of course, Henri Clarke’s ministère and its constant and brutal violence. There was softness in small snatches at brothels and taverns filled with music, connections of the flesh that held only darkness and brevity.

  Once he had been a good man. He’d believed in justice and equality and fairness. Once he had slumbered from dusk to dawn barely moving, his dreams quiet, graceful things without any of the monsters that now came calling as soon as he shut his eyes.

  In the town house of Lady Addington he had slept the best he had in months. He could barely believe it when the clock in the corridor outside had struck out the hour of six and he had woken.

  Three hours of straight and uninterrupted slumber. It was a record.

  He knew he had to go back into society to complete his mission here, but she would recognise him now, would know his face. Would she be wise enough to keep quiet about their meeting in the middle of a cold London night? He didn’t want her to be implicated. He didn’t want her to be pulled into something he knew could hurt her.

  But if she saw him unbidden? What might happen then? What if her servants talked? Or the driver of the Addington conveyance? Or the doctor with his clumsy hands? Even the plump housekeeper had watched him in a way that made him wonder.

  Hell. He never took these risks at home, never walked through the streets of Paris compromised by mistake. He was getting old and soft, that was the trouble. Thirty-four years were upon him already and, he wondered, would he even manage thirty-five?

  The wound at his side pulled as he turned too fast and he placed his arm hard against the pain, containing it and keeping it in. He’d need to lay low for a week at least to gather strength, but after that he meant to find those who had ordered his demise. Find them and deal with them. He had his leads and his hunches in the art of intelligence had always served him well.

  After his father came to England, they would never return to France. There would be no more favours, no more final turn of the dice for a regime he’d long since stopped believing in. He would live on his estate in the ordered greenness of Sussex.

  Compton Park.

  The remodelling had been finished for a good ten months now and yet he had barely spent a night there. He wanted that to change. He needed a base so that all the parts of him that were compromised did not spin out, never to be regathered again. Lost in artifice and trickery.

  He needed light.

  That thought had him swearing because the only woman he had ever met with a distinct aura of brightness was Lady Addington and she was probably rueing her decision to pick him up off the freezing streets to take him home.

  Such rumination made him feel dizzy and he sat with relief on the leather chair in his dressing room, a drink in hand and trying to regain a balance that could allow his breath to soften.

  He could do nothing yet. He needed to get stronger, needed the weakness that held him captive to dissipate and to lessen. Wisdom came with the knowing of when to wait and when to strike and at this moment he understood that his physical means were restricted.

  Drawing in, he made himself relax, made himself reach for the remembered warmth of a Parisian summer, the music in the streets of Montmartre, the pastries in the small bakeries off St Germaine. The lazy flow of the Seine was there, too, in his mind’s eye, wending its easy way through the city, as were the ancient mellow buildings of the Marais with its hidden spaces and green trees. The history of life wound about his uncertainty, knitting resolve and purpose together.

  His thumb rubbed across the engraving on his ring which evoked the traditions of an ancient and powerful family. Such rituals heartened him and rebuilt the shaken foundations of his hurt.

  Lord, how many are my foes.

  How many rise up against me...

  D
avid’s Prayer of Deliverance had helped him many times and he liked the peace of it. Finishing the entreaty and the last of his drink he leaned back against leather and closed his eyes. To rest, not to sleep. He’d long since given up even the hope of that.

  * * *

  Six nights later Summerley Shayborne, Viscount Luxford, was at his door.

  ‘This is unexpected.’ Aurelian could barely take in his friend’s presence.

  ‘Celeste insisted I come up to see you, Lian. She felt there was something wrong.’

  ‘Has your wife become a clairvoyant now? A woman who might see through space and time?’

  ‘More like a pregnant and anxious worrier. She has constant inklings of imminent danger about those who are close to her and sends me to check.’

  Aurelian smiled. Shay’s wife might have been the reason for the scar on his chin and the missing half-finger but there was a lot of respect between them now. He liked Celeste Shayborne, loved her even, if he were to be honest, like a favoured sister or cousin.

  ‘I am fine.’

  He suddenly remembered uttering those very words when first Violet Addington had leaned over him on the street, the clouds above her filled with snow. A new memory, that. He filed it away to think about later.

  ‘Hawkins said that you were lucky to escape with your life. Your valet said a bullet that went through your arm and side festered and it was only the ministrations and expertise of your old aunt’s physician that stood between you and death.’

  ‘Hawkins talks too much.’

  ‘Your valet is the cousin of mine. He feels he is family and kin looks after its own.’

  Family. Shay had always been like that to him, the brother he’d never had and a friend who through thick and thin had stuck beside him.

  ‘Someone is trying to kill me, Shay.’