One Ilicit Night Read online

  Satin skin and warmth, the sounds of winter Paris and its Sunday bells, soft mist across the Seine coating the charcoal branches of elms in greyness. She had a presence he had never quite fathomed. Haunting. Calling. A woman who had stirred his blood in a way no other had ever managed to do before or since.

  Did Martin Westbury now feel the same pleasure? He noticed how the man placed his fingers across her arm in a singular proclamation of ownership, and noticed too the way her fingers curled about his in return. Anger blossomed, though given his own part in the debacle in Paris it was guilt that should have surfaced. He was the one, after all, who had left a young lady ruined in a strange and foreign city, a man who should have behaved differently and more honourably. If he could take it back he would. If he could have the moment again he would have kept her safe and unscathed, a tiny incident that would cause only a ripple in the fabric of Eleanor Dromorne’s life.

  And instead? He did not like to even think of what had happened after she had disembarked from the carriage that he had sent her away in!

  With a sigh he looked up and straight into the eyes of Honour Baxter, the wife of his host.

  ‘She is beautiful, no?’ Her accent was marked, the French slurring the words into a longer version of the English.

  Cristo realised that she spoke of Lady Dromorne and schooled all expression on his face. ‘Indeed.’

  ‘But sad I think, too. A young flower who has not yet had the chance to open.’

  He remained silent.

  ‘I knew her mother, you know. A melancholic woman who was constantly worried about her health. Eleanor was always different, for she was vibrant and alive in a way few other girls her age were. I often wonder just what happened to douse such…passion?’

  Her legs entwined about his own. Her teeth nipping at his throat. Hardly passionless!

  What happened after she had left him and disappeared into a waking day?

  Where had she met Dromorne and why had she married a man old enough to be her father?

  Necessity! The answer came unbidden and rang with the clearness of an unwanted truth.

  Had she rolled the dice and taken her chances? An older man who might not notice a lack of maidenhead and a lie that would suck the living out of anybody. And had.

  Passionless.

  Now?

  Because of him?

  The awful verity of such a thought almost brought him to his knees and the first stab of pain in his head made him worry.

  Lord help her, Eleanor thought, Cristo Wellingham was here, in this room not five yards away and speaking with the host’s wife, Honour Baxter, a Frenchwoman who had made her home in London for many years.

  Her fingers tightened across those of her husband and as he patted her hand she held on, the turquoise stones in her new necklace glinting under a fine chandelier above them, pinning her into the light, like an insect under glass. When Cristo Wellingham’s eyes suddenly found hers she looked away and for the first time in a long while she swore beneath her breath, sheer fury reshaping her more normal carefulness. The skin on her arms rose up into goose-bumps as he came closer and she steeled herself to greet him.

  ‘Lord Cristo. I don’t believe you have met the Earl of Dromorne and his charming young wife, Lady Dromorne.’ Anthony Baxter gave the introductions as Martin held out his hand. Eleanor merely nodded, her title and sex affording her the ability to remain as glacial as she wished.

  ‘My wife was delighted with Lord Cristo’s return from Paris as she now has someone to reminisce on the beauty of a city that has long been in her heart. Have you spent much time there, Lady Dromorne?’

  Eleanor shook her head. ‘No, I am afraid not.’

  ‘Then you must entice your husband there, my dear. It is in the spring when the city is at its most beautiful, would you not agree, my lord?’

  ‘I would beg to differ and say that it is the season of winter that appeals to me the most, sir.’

  Dark eyes bored straight into her own and the room tilted and then straightened, a bend in time that had her leaning against Martin’s chair, the faint echo of bells in her mind and a man who wore too many rings upon his fingers. Embellished. Foreign. The weight of years of adventure scrawled into both his clothes and the furnishings of his room!

  Surreptitiously she glanced at his hands to see them bare. Just another difference. Stripped of gold and silver in London, but with the same sense of recklessness still upon him, simmering in his height and his stance and in the rough beauty of his face.

  ‘Did you live in Paris for long?’ Martin’s question was quietly phrased, his lisp giving the city’s name a burnished edge.

  ‘Too long.’ Cristo Wellingham’s reply held no hint of any such temperance and Eleanor wondered if her husband might have sensed his irony, but it seemed that he had not for his next question was even more to the point.

  ‘I enjoyed the area around the Louvre the most when I was there last. Where did you reside?’

  ‘Near Montmartre.’

  Anthony Baxter coughed, the mention of a name that boasted more than its fair share of the evils of the night heard in the noise. An English gentleman’s way of shelving a topic for a more pleasant one. She wondered at the smile that was momentarily on Lord Cristo’s lips before he had the chance to hide it.

  Neither tame nor amenable, he was a man who ruled a room with a sheer and easy power. The ache in her stomach leapt into fear and she was pleased when Honour Baxter took her by the arm and led her away to admire a recently completed tapestry.

  Mon Dieu, Cristo thought, as the sixth course of the unending dinner was served, the formal English fare of lamb cutlets, chicken patties and lobster rissoles richer than he remembered, and heavy.

  He wished he might have been seated somewhere near Eleanor Westbury but he was not, his place almost as far from hers as could be managed and the table splintering into groups that denied him even the pleasure of hearing her opinions.

  Baxter was a man who took his position as a lay preacher with a depressing seriousness and every word he uttered seemed more and more conservative, the teachings of the Bible translated so literally Cristo could barely bother to listen. He had only deigned to come in the first place because of Honour, a woman whom he admired, with her quick laughter and relaxed ways. He wondered how her marriage had lasted the distance of time and reasoned perhaps opposites did in some way attract.

  Still, the wine was a fine one, though a headache that was familiar had begun to pound, and he switched over to water to try to keep it at bay, alarmed by the tremors he felt in his hand as he lifted the glass to his lips. Beneath the thick layers of English cloth his body prickled with sweat; finishing the water, he poured himself another from the silver jug on the table in front of him and the liquid settled his stomach.

  When the men finally joined the women later in the drawing room he noticed Eleanor alone at the window on the far side of the room. He was very careful not to touch her as he came close.

  ‘I would like to apologise for my words the other day. They were ill put and you were right to chastise me for them.’

  She said nothing, though the flints of ice in her eyes drew back into only blueness. Her hair curled in ringlets around the line of her face.

  ‘You are easily the most beautiful woman in all of London town, though I suppose many have told you such.’

  The line marking the skin between her eyes deepened. ‘Perhaps, my lord, you have consumed too much of the wine the Baxter table is famous for.’

  ‘You think my judgement so askew?’

  Her bottom lip trembled, the fullness of it inviting notice. ‘Askew and imprudent.’ The words were said without any form of artifice and her fingers worried the oversized turquoise stones at her neck.

  ‘Your husband must have surely—’ She did not let him finish.

  ‘My husband has many other more important things to occupy his time and besides, he knows that I do not demand such empty flattery.’

  �
�If it were empty, I should never voice it.’ He reached out for the sill to steady a sudden light-headedness, for the slur in his words was obvious. Lord, this attack was worse than all the others before it in the intensity and speed of its onslaught.

  The pain in his temple blurred his vision, the room falling into a haze of yellow, and making him feel clammy and strange. Still, he had other things to ask her and for the moment they remained alone.

  ‘My sister-in-law said she had seen you in the park the other day?’ He was pleased his voice seemed more or less normal. ‘Lady Beatrice-Maude?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘I had hoped for her confidence.’

  ‘Pardon?’ The topic had got away with him somewhat and he could not discern the connection.

  ‘Lady Beatrice-Maude? Is it on her bidding that you now approach me? Please do disregard anything that she might have inferred from our meeting, for I was not myself that day.’

  He shook his head and tried to get the conversation to make sense. ‘My brother’s wife is usually very circumspect.’

  ‘I made a mistake once and will never do so again.’ Her hand touched his then, almost as a plea, and the world about them simply stopped. He felt as if they could have been anywhere, alone, singled out, adrift from all that held them tethered, floating into a place that was only theirs, his lifeline in a stormy and wind-tossed sea.

  ‘Eleanor.’ He said her name as a lover might, the sweet music of it making him want to repeat it again and again as his fingers tightened about hers. For a moment she allowed such a caress, watching him, the knowledge of their small embrace mirrored in her pale blue gaze, softening with an unexpected yearning before being snatched away. The rounded shape of her derriere was all that was left to him as she rejoined her husband.

  ‘Damn.’ As he shook his head against the growing ache in his temple, the rush of pain made his brow wet and his hands relaxed as swirling lights of dizzy unbalance reached out to claim him.

  Cristo Wellingham was deathly white, the pale set of his more usually bronzed skin visible even from a distance. He was trying to sit up, trying to make sense of what had happened and reclaim a lost control.

  ‘The doctor should be here within a few moments.’ Anthony Baxter’s statement contained more than a measure of worry.

  ‘No need.’ Shakily moving his head from side to side, Cristo Wellingham dislodged the wet cloth draping his forehead as shards of amber caught her glance again, drawing her in like finely-honed magnets, and the guilt and uncertainty that had blossomed in such a startling way when she had touched him a few moments ago returned.

  The blond of his hair was darkened with sweat, the length of it resting upon his opened shirt, the skin of his chest easily seen in the parted fabric.

  ‘I am…sorry.’ He spoke to the room in general as he sat up, one hand on the sill of the window behind and the other on the arm of a sofa next to him. Eleanor knew instantly the effort it was costing him. ‘I suffer from migraines and they recur from time to time. The English weather seems to bring them on.’

  His voice held a note of steel and ice, though the smile that played across his face was there as a foil. A mask, showing only what might be shown at a party, his considerable illness consigned to mere nuisance.

  ‘Does an episode last long?’ Honour Baxter’s question was brittle.

  ‘No.’ He was upright now, the ties of his cravat hanging in long folds against the dark of his jacket. A man who was seldom used to showing weakness in front of anyone, she guessed, and who was trying in the aftermath of exposure to minimise any appearance of blemish. He no longer looked her way as he made a show of thanking his host for the evening whilst apologising for his part in the spoiling of it.

  When Anthony Baxter shook his head in the age-old tradition of a host denying even the hint of difficulty he took his leave, the energy and vitality in the room lessening with his departure and leaving only a dull and awkward silence.

  Eleanor swallowed back all her tumbling thoughts even as her husband began to discuss the turn of events with the two men next to him.

  Cristo Wellingham’s migraine looked more debilitating than she had ever imagined one to be. Why was he not ensconced at Falder with his family if his health was so fragile?

  His solitariness rankled and the wooden handles on her husband’s chair were hard beneath her palms and so different from the living spark of skin she had felt as she had touched his arm. She hated the prick of tears behind her eyes and the empty ache in the back of her throat as she remembered the way his fingers had curled about her own.

  ‘You did not tell us that you suffered so badly from headaches. The drawing rooms of this city were alight last evening with the news of your swoon yesterday at the Baxters’.’ Ashe paced Cristo’s bedroom with a decided purpose. His brother had arrived well before noon, to find him naked in bed, curled on his side, the covers pushed down, to allow the cool air to play across his sweat-covered shoulders. When Cristo turned over, Ashe did not look at all happy.

  ‘I have had them for a long time…’

  ‘Or that your back was riddled with scars. Where did you get them?’

  ‘The boat I took when I left England made a small detour to the south of Spain. It was not a passenger ship, you understand, but a vessel intent on the pillaging of other more innocent sea-farers. I was young and fit and foolish enough to see some celestial justice inherent in robbing from the wealthy to give to the poor.’

  ‘So you did not think to jump ship?’

  ‘I did as soon as I was able, catching a ride from Barcelona to Paris. Ashborne had made it clear that my behaviour was abhorrent to him and I did not think he would have wished for any further plea for help.’

  ‘And what of Taris and me? We heard nothing from you for years when you were in Paris except for a few terse notes demanding we stay out of your life.’

  ‘I had imagined you felt the same way as our father did.’

  ‘But the letters we sent…?’

  ‘Went unopened. I saw no reason to revisit bad memories.’

  ‘God, Cristo! You are twice as stubborn as Taris and that is saying something. I want you to come to Falder to recuperate.’

  Cristo shook his head, the pillows behind him protesting the movement.

  ‘You’re ill, damn it! You need someone to look after you.’

  ‘Milne has done it before.’

  ‘Someone qualified.’

  ‘Experience qualifies him.’

  ‘And any lasting damage? Is that something we might be worried about?’

  ‘If it was, I am certain such an affliction would have shown itself by now.’ Reaching for his gold watch on the bedside table, he checked the time. The disturbances in his vision were much lessened this morning.

  ‘If you would rather I left England altogether…?’

  ‘And go where?’

  ‘Europe. America. The East. The world is a big place when nothing ties you down.’ His easy drawl was so practised he almost believed his own indifference.

  ‘Just roll in and roll out, you mean, after ten years of no contact? I almost believe that you might do it. Well, brother, you have not bargained on the whims of my wife and I tell you now if I don’t bring you home after this Emerald will send Azziz and Toro to get you.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Men from the port of Kingston with rings in their ears and swords in their hands.’ Asher began to smile at his explanation.

  ‘As I remember it, you used to be less happy.’

  Again he smiled.

  ‘I keep hearing rumours that your wife was a pirate.’

  ‘And you believe them?’

  ‘Her minions fit the description.’

  ‘Then it must be true.’

  Cristo saw how he turned the golden ring on the third finger of his left hand with infinite care.

  ‘When I left you had just married Melanie.’

  ‘When you left you still had ten fingers on your hands and a hide
on your back that was untarnished.’

  ‘Things change.’

  ‘And change again.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Second chances, Cristy.’

  His old name. His nickname. He shook his head before he knew that he had and watched Ashe cross to the bed and sit down.

  ‘Falder offers redemption to wearied souls and from what I can see your soul is indeed wearied. Come home and heal.’

  Cristo swallowed. Home in the company of his family? The secrets he needed hidden were so much more easily exposed there. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Then you will be nursed in London by Emerald, Lucinda and Beatrice-Maude.’

  ‘No…’

  ‘Starting today.’

  The pounding in his temple stopped him from arguing further and as he lay back against his pillows he knew that he was defeated. Closing his eyes, he slept.

  Chapter Nine

  Eleanor visited Cristo Wellingham on the second afternoon of his confinement. She had slept so badly for the past two nights that she had come to the conclusion some sense of resolution needed to be reached between them. He received her in the drawing room, the look on his face one of astonished surprise.

  ‘You have come alone?’

  ‘Indeed I have, my lord. I realise, of course, that such a thing is more than inappropriate, but I find I have reached the very end of my patience.’

  ‘A difficult place to be,’ he returned and gestured her to a sofa in the middle of the room. Today his hair was pulled back into a queue, and the blond looked almost ash. With his jacket cut in the French fashion and braided along one edge, he seemed much less of the English gentleman and far more of the stranger. Sitting in a wing chair opposite, he stretched out his long legs; when he did not speak, Eleanor felt the need to. ‘Are you recovered?’

  ‘Completely.’ His tone was distant, as if any more questions on the state of his health would be unwelcomed. Still, she was not deterred.