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 derrière 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
