One Illicit Night Read online

  She did not introduce herself, but took his hand into her own and held it. The silence lengthened.

  ‘My brother might appreciate his hand back, Emmie.’

  ‘Well, he cannot have it just yet, my love, for I am not quite finished.’ With a jolt Cristo realised that she was reading his palm.

  ‘Long life, great wealth and fine bloodstock?’ he quipped as she remained silent.

  ‘And the unexpected end to a journey,’ she added finally, closing his fingers and letting go.

  ‘She has a great gift for it.’ The dark-haired woman joined them, Taris at her side, one arm threaded through hers. ‘And if I could give you a word of warning, it might be that Emerald’s predictions are never wrong.’

  ‘Indeed, it must take great skill to deduct that I have just travelled back to England.’ The sarcasm in his voice was not becoming, but he had had dealings with others reading his fate and none had come anywhere near close to his demons.

  ‘It is not that journey I am speaking of,’ Asher’s wife added. ‘There is a woman who was important once…?’ Her eyes bored into his and for a moment Cristo felt almost light-headed. He was glad when Lucy pushed between them, voicing her wish to stretch her legs.

  Eleanor thought the play was lovely and yet the feeling of tension seemed magnified with each passing moment of the interval. Standing with Martin’s nieces and his sister Diana, taking in the cooler air of the lobby, the pillar behind her was a welcome place to lean against.

  She felt scared. The word surprised her. Scared? Of what? Inherent suspicions ruffled the hairs on her arms and neck. Margaret beside her suddenly stood on tiptoes, peering towards the other end of the room.

  ‘There he is! I knew that he would come tonight.’

  When Eleanor made no effort to look, Sophie nudged her forcibly. ‘The youngest Wellingham brother, Lainie. The one we told you about.’

  The crowd before them thinned a little as people moved forwards and in the space that was left she saw the back of a tall blond man, his hair caught in a short queue at his nape.

  All breath left her body. There was something about the shape of his head and the colour of his hair and the tall strength of him—something familiar.

  No. No. No. Don’t let it be him!

  He began to turn, smiling at the fair woman on his arm, and his dark eyes came up to her own, falling through the distance to a chateau in Paris, naked, brandy-soused and ruined. The lamplights blurred and the floor, once solid beneath her feet, began to sway, dizzy arcs of denial and horror and something else that she could never have admitted.

  She was glad to feel Diana’s hand beneath her elbow as her knees simply gave way, and the floor was cold beneath her face.

  Stark and utter disbelief kept Cristo still as he tried to make sense of what had just happened. His virgin whore from the Chateau Giraudon was here, dressed in deep blue finery, her hair pinned in a series of elaborate loops and knots, the blonde wig she had worn in Paris hiding a treasure of russet, chestnut and chocolate.

  ‘My God, it is Eleanor Westbury, Emerald.’ Beatrice-Maude’s voice was concerned. ‘She has fainted. Where is her husband?’

  Husband? The world began to get stranger as Cristo stopped the urge to simply move forwards and pick her up in his arms, the paleness in her face obscured now by others who had hurried to her side.

  A sofa behind them proved to be a godsend and a young man Cristo presumed to be the one Beatrice-Maude spoke of bent down and lifted her onto it. Flashes of sapphire blue could be seen between the forms of concerned helpers as a doctor from the crowd kneeled down with a bag of physician’s tools.

  Within a moment Cristo saw consciousness return and she tried to sit up, the uncertainty in her movements as she swiped away her hair transporting him back to his room at the Chateau Giraudon. He swallowed and heard a question directed at him. By Asher’s wife, he determined, and there was more than the normal quotient of curiosity in her voice.

  ‘Pardon?’ He was dazed, caught in the quandary of choice. The woman they named Eleanor Westbury had not tried to find him again with her glance, but had kept her eyes carefully downwards, her small hands wringing the fabric in her copious skirt, and the line of her bodice heaving with breath that was too uncertain.

  The muscles of her femininity coiled around his fingers, the scent of sex and release and want and the naked glory of her body unresisting and easy.

  Shaking with the effort of remaining so still, Cristo was wary as the glance of Emerald Wellingham met his in question.

  ‘Do you know her?’

  He shook his head, not risking speech, and listened as Beatrice-Maude related to Taris exactly what was happening in a low monologue.

  Why would she do that when the scene was right in front of him?

  Another truth hit him as he turned: because his brother could not see any of it. When he looked to Ashe for the clarification of what he suspected, his oldest brother nodded. Almost imperceptibly.

  The world turned on its axis, skewered by time and knowledge, no little truths these. No tiny unimportant discoveries.

  The French whore who had been brought naked and willing to his bed was none other than a married English lady of the very first order and his brother Taris was blind.

  ‘Here is Martin Westbury, the Earl of Dromorne, now.’ Emerald spoke again and with interest Cristo sought out the man she had identified.

  He watched as Eleanor’s husband, old and grey and confined to a chair, was wheeled to her side, watched how her fingers curled into his when he came there, the affection evident in such an action making him turn away.

  ‘That is Lord Dromorne?’ His question was blurted out with little finesse. The man looked as though he should be in a sanatorium somewhere, the colour of his skin a pallid grey.

  Emerald nodded. ‘Yes, and it is rather a love match, for he is very wealthy and simply dotes upon her.’

  So Eleanor Westbury was a woman with a position to keep up in society? A well-heeled and well-brought-up lady, according to all he had heard of her, and one who had no place at all being in the backstreets of Paris’s night-time debauchery.

  He was glad when the chimes sounded for patrons to return to their seats as it gave him a chance of escape and to mull over all that he had learned.

  Would her illness be serious? Had she seen him?

  A thousand questions turned in his head and yet in the midst of shock and disbelief another truth began to fester.

  He wanted to see her again, wanted it with a desperation that made his breath shallow with aching.

  ‘I am all right now. Truly, Martin, I am all right. I do not know what came over me. Perhaps it was the closeness of the air or something that disagreed with me at dinner.’

  Her husband had made so much of her swoon that Eleanor just wished he might take her words as truth and leave the matter alone. The Comte de Caviglione! Cristo Wellingham was the Comte de Caviglione with his velvet bed and his gauze-covered mirrors.

  ‘But you are always so strong. I have never before seen you so much as cry—?’ He stopped.

  Eleanor squeezed his hand as much in gratitude as in shock. Tucked up in her bedroom, with soft down pillows at her back and a fire lit to banish the slight chill of an early summer evening, everything was in its place. Normal. Usual. She did not even dare to think about what might happen tomorrow.

  For tonight she was safe. Home. She pressed down the guilt of five long years.

  Come the morning there might be other topics that raged in the drawing rooms of London’s elite. Stories of ruin and stupidity. Cautionary tales about how the foolish ways of young women could so easily lead to the demise of reputation.

  Letting go of her breath carefully, she answered her husband’s questions in the manner of one who only had small worries to consider and was glad when he finally kissed her on her forehead and left for repose in his own sleeping chamber.

  When the door shut behind him she blew out the candles on her nigh
tstand and slipped out of bed, opening the curtains and the window to let in the moonlight and the breeze. She felt freer in the darkness than she had done all day and was glad for the cool air above the heat of the fire. Martin felt the cold in a way that she never had, immobility adding to the problems he suffered with his circulation.

  Her brow was clammy and sticky, the revelations of the evening leaving peril and fear as a crawling shock across her skin.

  Cristo, the third son of the late Duke of Carisbrook was le Comte de Caviglione?

  Had he seen her? Would he remember? His hair was shorter than it had been in Paris and his clothes were very different. But the sheer force of him was exactly the same: magnetic, dangerous, menacing. He looked like the panther she had seen in onyx a few months before in a little antique shop off Regent Street. Ranging across its territory, marking it out. Fine linen and wool did not disguise any of Cristo Wellingham’s contours or dull the measure in his glance. When her eyes fell on the charcoal portrait next to her bed, the risk of all she loved, all she held dear, was heightened again.

  Florencia: her pale hair silvered and her cheek bones falling in exactly the same line as her father’s.

  A letter came for her the next morning.

  It was not monogrammed, so she was unprepared for the missive. This time, however, she was alone in the quiet of her room, the pile of mail brought in by her maid and deposited in the silver platter on her desk.

  Cristo Wellingham’s handwriting was just as she would have expected it to be, boldly fashioned in capitals and in ink that was the colour of the midnight sky in high summer.

  He wanted to see her when she could find the time. Just that! There was no explanation of why or where or how. Her feeling of dread doubled at the thought of refusal. If she did, what could be the consequences? Would he blackmail her, bully her into paying for his silence, or might he demand some service…again? For the second time in under twelve hours she felt the breathless terror of vulnerability.

  She could, of course, tell no one. Martin hadn’t a notion as to Wellingham’s other identity and no other soul save Isobel, her friend in Paris, knew the real truth about her missing months in France. She shook her head and banished the worry. So far this morning there had not been a whisper about the reasons for her ridiculous faint at the theatre last night.

  This was something that she had to face alone. But where could they safely meet? What possible destination would hide them from others, but be public enough to protect her? She needed an urban location, she knew that, but the parks were too crowded.

  She also needed a destination that she might walk to, for her demands of a carriage made ready for her sole use would only incite curiosity given that she seldom ventured anywhere alone.

  The thought made her start. Once she had been brave and free and adventurous, any challenge taken on with relish and delight. Like the delivery of her grandfather’s letter! She winced at the memory and pushed the thought aside, her eyes straying to the pile of books beside her bed from Hookham’s Lending Library in Bond Street.

  A library. The spacious and elegant area of the place was public enough to be safe without being overfilled and they could repair to the assembly rooms on the first floor if there should happen to be anyone she recognised. There were chairs in the alcoves with wide windows that would protect her privacy without giving up her security. Besides, she walked to the place each week to exchange her books for new ones and she often went alone. It was the one place where she did so.

  But when? Not tomorrow—she could not face Cristo Wellingham quite so soon. Wednesday was the morning she generally chose as her day to visit the reading rooms and if she stuck to routine she would be much safer.

  With a quick scrawl she instructed him on the time and the place and, sealing the letter, put it in her reticule to post.

  Chapter Six

  Cristo sat by the window in a chair allowing him good access to the arrangement of the rooms. Eleanor Westbury was late by about twenty minutes, but he had decided to wait just in case some unforeseen difficulty had waylaid her.

  He was glad that he had when he saw a figure dressed in deep blue hurrying in the door and, when she tipped her face to look around and her visage was seen beneath her ample summer hat, he knew it to be her.

  Standing so that she might see the movement, he waited, though she did not come over immediately, but went to the desk instead and placed a pile of books before a small, efficient-looking man.

  The librarian, Cristo guessed. He saw her speak to him for a few moments before traversing the room, picking one book from this shelf and another from the next. He doubted that she truly wished to read such tomes when he noticed one to be on the progress of the burgeoning railways, a book he had already struggled through a few months before.

  Still, with an armful of reading material, she had given herself an excuse to wend her way towards the chairs at his end of the room, for there were places here to sit undisturbed and make one’s choice as to what to take home.

  ‘Lord Cristo! I do hope that we can make this very quick,’ she said as she finally stood before him.

  Her voice was exactly as he remembered it, though now she spoke in English, the King’s English, each vowel rounded and proper, a thread of irritation easily heard.

  ‘Thank you for coming, Lady Dromorne.’

  Her whole face blushed bright as their eyes caught and he noticed that her hands shook as she sat down and placed the chosen books in her lap.

  ‘I cannot stay very long at all, my lord.’

  ‘Are you recovered from your malade of the other day?’ Damn, he should not have used the French word for illness, he thought, for the frown on her forehead deepened considerably. He regrouped. ‘You look very different…’ Another mistake. He usually prided himself on his tact, and yet here he was like a tongue-tied and obtuse youth.

  Fury marred the blueness of her eyes.

  ‘Different?’ she whispered, the anger in it making her undertone hoarse. ‘If it is the past that you are referring to, I should think that it might be wise to know that I should not hesitate to relate back to your family your own part in our unfortunate meeting, should you choose to be indiscreet, my lord.’

  He ignored her rebuke. ‘Why were you there, then? In Paris, at the Chateau?’ He wanted to add ‘dressed as a whore’, but the rawness of the word in the light of all she had become seemed inappropriate and so he tempered his query.

  She looked around, checking the nearness of any listening ears. ‘I was in the city visiting a good friend and I was at the Chateau Giraudon because of my own foolishness.’

  ‘You came in with the other women there that evening? Women who were prostitutes.’ He could no longer skirt around the issue.

  She nodded. ‘I had heard that the Parisian fashionable set were somewhat…daring in their dress, or their lack of it. I took it to be a truth when we were all bundled inside together. I certainly had no thought to join them.’

  ‘God.’

  ‘The brandy, however, was all my own fault and I have not touched a drop of alcohol since.’

  ‘God,’ he repeated again, and drew his hand through his hair. Not her fault, but his own. He should have seen that she was everything the others were not, should have read the clues with more acumen and aptitude. He was a man paid for uncovering duplicity, after all, and yet he had let himself be duped by a pretty face and an unexpected gift. His conscience pricked sharp. If a man had treated his sister as he had treated Eleanor, he would have killed him.

  Cristo suddenly wished he could have spirited her away to some far-off and unreachable location, and one where he could replace the lines of worry on her forehead with laughter and ease.

  He was surprised how very much he wanted that.

  Yet still there were unanswered questions! ‘There was a letter left in the folds of the bed-coverings that morning when you left. I presume it was your doing?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘Had you re
ad the missive?’

  ‘The envelope was sealed in wax. I would hardly break my dead grandfather’s trust.’

  ‘Your grandfather?’

  ‘I was Eleanor Bracewell-Lowen before marrying Martin Westbury, the Earl of Dromorne. Nigel was my brother.’

  Her short, sharp nod encompassed a wealth of censure and the history between them solidified again. Every time he met this lady his world spun into an unbidden and opposite direction.

  Nigel Bracewell-Lowen’s blood dripping onto his hands as he tried to stem the flow from the wound in his throat, the empty brandy bottle before them denoting another evening of unbridled excess. Wild youth and wilder morals. Consequences had had no credence in the riotous foolhardy waywardness of Cristo’s pubescence. Until Nigel!

  ‘My father killed himself the following year.’ Her voice again, layering guilt. ‘So it is well that you know that you have already taken the full measure of happiness from my family.’

  He shook his head, at a loss for words as he reached out for her hand, and in that second he knew that he had just made the second biggest mistake of his life.

  It was like the newfangled electricity tingling up his arm and pouring into the very depths of his soul, filling it up with need, lust, urgency and spineless warmth.

  Snatching his fingers away, he looked straight at her. The blood had run from her face, the blush now a pale and ghostly white as the books on her lap fell to the floor.

  Everyone looked. The librarian with his thick spectacles, the two women over by the door, and the group of men who perused the latest daily newssheets! Yet instead of bending to pick up the volumes, he could do nothing save gaze back at her and remember.

  Remember the way she had felt beneath him, lying on burgundy velvet as he had teased her into response. Remember her wetness and abandon and seduction.