style="font-size:15px;"> A half-brother. A bastard child. The son of a mother whom he had killed in childbirth and had been sent away summarily, no place in the hearts of her relatives for the reminder of such tragedy!
It was Alice who had saved him. Alice with her kind eyes and an open heart that had never once wavered in its love. And in the end he had failed her as well with his wild anger and bad choices.
He seldom allowed himself the time to wallow in self-pity but tonight, with the circumstances heavily weighed against him, he did. He frowned at the notion of a virtuous withdrawal from London for he knew he would never do it.
Fighting for what he wanted to have and hold was far more his style, but he would need to be careful and prudent.
‘Bide your time,’ he whispered and the candle caught the breath of the words and flickered.
‘I love you,’ he added and this time the flame barely moved.
Eleanor spent the next few days pleading tiredness when anyone suggested an outing. Even the park seemed dangerous, an open space that might bring her face to face with the one man in the world she could no longer even bear to think about.
I love you.
She screwed up her eyes and swore beneath her breath, the silence in the blue drawing room making the memory worse. Why had she said it? Had he heard? Was he laughing with a friend at this very moment somewhere in a club in London as he remembered her ill-advised confession?
Certainly Cristo Wellingham had not contacted her at all and Sophie and Margaret lamented the fact that he was not at the dances that they had chosen to attend. Disappeared. Gone. She hoped with all of her heart that he had said nothing about her to Lady Beatrice-Maude or the Duchess of Carisbrook.
‘You need to get some colour back in your cheeks, Lainie.’ Diana had entered the chamber with her small basket of tapestry threads and a pair of spectacles. ‘We could go shopping if you wish, for I have some colours I need to procure,’ and held up her stitchwork. Eleanor saw the picture to be a Christmas one, a hearth dressed in gold and silver and the full moon in the window to one side.
‘It’s for Geoffrey’s mother,’ Diana said as she saw her looking. ‘She asked me last year if I would do one and I was determined to begin it early. You could all come up to Edinburgh for the Yule season. Martin always loved Scotland.’
‘I am not certain …’
‘Because of his health?’
It was the first time his sister had even mentioned the topic and Eleanor nodded.
‘You need to get out more, Eleanor. At your age I was—’ She stopped. ‘Are you crying?’
‘No. Of course not.’ The tears that welled in her eyes were dashed away on the material of her sleeve as Eleanor turned to the window. ‘It’s just sometimes I think I should be a better wife to your brother.’
‘Nonsense.’ Diana laid down her sewing and came to put her arms around her. ‘He could not have wished for a more caring helpmate. But he is a good thirty years older than you, Lainie, and sometimes that must be difficult.’ She paused briefly. ‘Is it morning sickness, perhaps, that makes you so up and down, for lately you have seemed very emotional?’
For a second Eleanor could not quite work out the change of conversation.
Morning sickness? My God, Diana thought she could be pregnant? She shook her head vigorously, and her sister-in-law retreated a little.
‘It was just after you fainted at the theatre and I thought … But of course not! Martin hardly has enough energy for the daytime, let alone the night. Besides, another child with his problems …’ She let her words tail off.
Another child?
The whitewashed hospital walls with the small effigy of the Mother Mary built into a shelf filled with dried rosemary. Bile rose in her mouth. She had hated the smell of rosemary ever since. Cloying. Smothering. The doctor had been a man of high principle and he had known she was unmarried. As such, he had not even attempted to hide his condemnation when she had delivered a child who had failed to take a breath. Even his words had been ones of blame.
‘Every babe needs a father and this is the Lord’s way of making certain of it. Be thankful for your reprieve.’
Be thankful for your reprieve. The words still had the propensity to make her feel sick. He had smiled as he said it before placing her baby into a basin on the floor and leaving it there. Cold. Untended.
No cuddles or gentleness. No prayer for an innocent soul as it went into Heaven. Eleanor had tried to say the communion herself, but the incantation had been muddled, and the red wash of her own blood had left her mute and terrified.
Paris. Lost in guilt and censure and fear.
‘Lainie? Are you quite all right? I shouldn’t pry, of course, and you have the perfect right to tell me to mind my own business.’
Shaking her head, the anger twisted back into some workable thing. She had had much practice in tethering it, after all, though her ill-advised confession to Cristo in the forest had changed things somewhat and all for the worse.
‘I love you.’
What if she had stayed with Cristo in Paris as his mistress, would her son have lived? If she had gone to him and told him and pleaded her case? Their case. An eighteen-year-old girl in limbo in a land that was not home.
Choices, good and bad, and now other decisions, the stakes rising again because of her daughter!
‘Ever since Beaconsmeade you have been distracted. I should never have left you alone in the woods, of course, and I kick myself for following my daughters.’
‘No. The fault was mine. Exploring the pathway was such a silly idea.’
‘Indeed, it was one I could not for the life of me understand. You are usually such a cautious girl, Lainie, which is probably a characteristic my brother saw in you that appealed the most for, God bless him, he is exactly the same.’
Eleanor led Florencia around the park on her daughter’s tiny pony enjoying the summer day. She had not heard a word from Cristo Wellingham in well over a week and for that she was glad, the respite from the constant fear of seeing him lessening her worry.
‘When I am bigger, Mama, I will buy the very best, best horse and race it around the park.’
Her father’s daughter, for all had heard the rumours that Cristo Wellingham was in town to select prime horseflesh.
‘Not too fast, darling, for there are always people in these places.’ Lord, Eleanor thought grimly. Already I am clipping her wings just as my mother clipped mine.
‘All I want is a pet, Mama. Even just a kitten …’ There was a tone in her voice that was sullen, a tone she had heard more often of late when Florencia
