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 wellbrought-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 nightstand 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 cheekbones 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
