like hell and he had barely slept the night before with the pain of it.
Charlotte looked just as he remembered her, silky blonde curls falling down from an intricate hat placed high on her head. Her eyes widened as she saw it was he. Shock, he thought, or pity. These days he tried not to interpret the reaction of others when they perceived his uneven gait.
‘Daniel.’ Her voice was musical and laced with an overtone of gladness. ‘It has been an age since I have seen you and I was hoping you might come to call upon me. I have been back from Edinburgh for almost a sennight and had the pleasure of meeting your mother a few days ago.’
‘She mentioned she had seen you.’
‘Oh.’
The conversation stopped for a second, the thousand things unsaid filling in the spaces of awkwardness.
‘I wrote to you, of course, but you did not answer.’ Her confession made him wary, and as her left hand came up to wipe away an errant curl from her face he saw her fingers were ringless.
He could have said he had not received any missives and, given the vagaries of the postal system, she would have believed him. But he didn’t lie.
‘Marriage requires a certain sense of loyalty, I have always thought, so perhaps any communication between us was not such a good idea.’
Small shadows dulled the blue of her irises. ‘Until a union fails to live up to expectation and the trap of a dreary routine makes one’s mind wander.’
Dangerous ground this. He tried to turn the subject. ‘I heard your husband was well mourned at his funeral.’
‘Death fashions martyrs of us all.’ Her glance was measured. ‘Widowhood has people behaving with a sort of poignant carefulness that is...unending and a whole year of dark clothes and joylessness has left me numb. I want to be normal again. I am young, after all, and most men find me attractive.’
Was this a proposition? The bright gown she wore was low-cut, generous breasts nestling in their beds of silk with only a minimal constraint. As she leaned forward he could not help but look.
The maleness in him rose like a sail in the wind, full of promise and direction, but he had been down this pathway once before and the wreck of memory was potent. He made himself stand still.
‘I have learnt much through the brutal consequences of mistakes, but I am home alone tonight, Daniel. If you came to see me, we might rekindle all that we once had.’
Around them others hurried past, an ordinary morning in London, a slight chill on the air and the calling voices of street vendors.
He felt unbalanced by meeting her, given their last encounter. Betrayal was an emotion that held numerous interpretations and he hadn’t cared enough to hear hers then.
But Charlotte Mackay’s eyes now held a harder edge of knowledge, something war had also stamped on him. No longer simple. Two people ruined by the circumstances of their lives and struggling to hold on to anything at all. The disenchantment made him tired and wary and he was glad to see her mother hurrying towards them from the shop behind, giving no further chance of confidence.
Lady Wesley had changed almost as much as her daughter, the quick nervous laughter alluding to a nature that was teetering on some sort of a breakdown.
‘My lord. I hope your family is all well?’
‘Indeed they are, ma’am.’
‘As you can see, our Charlotte is back and all in one piece from the wilds of Scotland.’
When he failed to speak she placed her arm across her daughter’s. The suspicion that she was trying to transmit some hidden signal was underlined by the whitened skin over her knuckles. Charlotte looked suddenly beaten, the fight and challenge drained away into a vacuous smile of compliance.
Perhaps the Wesley family was as complex and convoluted as his own. Jarring his right foot, he swore to himself as they gave their goodbyes. His balance was worsening with the constant pain and the headache he was often cursed with was a direct result of that.
If the Camerons were to know the extent of his infirmity, would they withdraw their offer? Robert Cameron had told him that his daughter needed a strong husband. A protector. The beat of blood coursing around the bullet in his thigh was more distinct now just as the specialist he had seen last month had predicted it would become. If he left it too much longer, he would be dead.
The choice of the devil.
He had seen men in Spain and Portugal with their limbs severed and their lives shattered. Even now in London the remnants of the ragtag of survivors from the battlements of La Corunna still littered the streets, begging for mercy and succour from those around them.
He couldn’t lose his leg. He wouldn’t. Pride was one thing but so was the fate of his family. Dysfunctional the Montcliffes might be, but as the possessor of the title he had an obligation to honour.
For just a moment he wished he was back in Spain amongst his regiment as they rode east in the late autumn sunshine along the banks of the Tagus. The rhythm of the tapping drums and a valley filled with wildflowers came to mind, the ground soft underfoot and the cheers of the waving Spanish nationals ringing in his ears. A simple and uncomplicated time. A time before the chaos that was to be La Corunna. Even now when he smelt thyme, sage or lavender, such sights and sounds returned to haunt him.
The London damp encroached into his thoughts: the sound of a carriage, the calls of children in the park opposite. His life seemed to have taken a direction he was not certain of any more; too wounded to re-enlist, too encumbered by his family and its problems to simply disappear. And now a further twist—a marriage proposal that held nothing but compromise within it.
He tried to remember Amethyst Cameron’s face exactly and failed in his quest. The dull brown of her hair, the wary anger in her eyes, a voice that was often shrill or scolding. The prospect of marriage to her was not what he had expected from his life, but in the circumstances what else could he do?
His eyes caught the movement of a little girl falling and scuffing her knees. An adult lifted her up and small arms entwined around the woman’s neck, trusting, needing. Daniel imagined fatherhood would be something to be enjoyed, though in truth he had seldom been around any children. He turned away when he saw the woman watching him, uncertain perhaps of his intentions.
He was like a shadow, filled in by flesh and blood, but hurt by the empty spaces in his life. He wanted a wholeness again, a certainty, a resolve. He wanted to laugh as though he meant it and be part of something that was more than the shallow sum of his title.
If he did not marry Amethyst Amelia Cameron, the heritage of the Montcliffe name would be all but gone, a footnote in history, only a bleak reminder of avarice and greed. Centuries of lineage lost in the time it took for the bailiffs to eject the Wyldes from their birthright. The very thought of such a travesty made him hail a cabriolet. He needed to go home and read the small print and conditions of the Cameron proposal. He could not dally any longer.
A sort of calmness descended over the panic. His life and happiness would be forfeited, but there might be some redress in the production of a family. Children had no blame in the affairs of their parents and at thirty-three it was well past time that he produce an heir. An heir who would inherit an estate that was viable and in good health. An estate that would not be lost to the
