dark skirts, but Eleanor said nothing, the edges of her lips bound together as though she would not allow even the hint of an answer.
Emerald’s evasive dissembling was suddenly explained. She had set this whole thing up and Asher’s withdrawal from the trip five minutes before departure meant that he was also in on the plot. Lord, when he returned he would strangle them both. He swore he would.
Right now he needed to at least address the worry he saw so prominently in Eleanor’s eyes.
But how?
The wriggling bundle under the jacket of his coat solved the whole problem for, as a small black-and-white head poked out from beneath the lapels of his jacket, he saw in the wide smile on his daughter’s face an absolute delight.
She ran forwards, stopping only a foot or so away from him, the silver in her hair whipped by wind and for the first time ever he heard her speak.
‘Patch? You brought Patch here?’ A small hand reached out to tickle the dog’s nose, wonder in her eyes.
‘Florencia, this is Lord Cristo Wellingham.’
Cristo’s brows were raised, but he did not correct her. Not father, not papa, only a title that a child might or might not remember. The smile looked as fixed on Eleanor’s face as it was on his.
‘Hello.’ He brought out the squirming puppy and held it towards her. She took it immediately, cuddling it in the way only small children can, his pink tongue licking her chin.
When she laughed he saw a child so like him that there could be no possible question of her parentage.
‘I love animals.’
He smiled. ‘And what else do you love?’
‘I am learning to play the piano.’
‘Perhaps one day you might play it to me?’ He thought of his own Stein sitting at Graveson. It had been so long since he had played anything at all.
Eleanor saw that Florencia was unusually brave, this notice from a stranger overcoming her more normal shyness. Her feet scuffed the ground as the puppy jiggled and she saw Cristo take in the movement, the hunger in his eyes poignant. I have missed years, his expression said, and I am not going to miss another moment.
‘You could show Lord Cristo some of your drawings,’ she suggested. The bag Florencia often carried with her lay on the brick steps four feet away and she hurried to get it.
‘There is a seat just here.’ Eleanor indicated an old bench. ‘If you sat on his knee, it might be easier for you both to see, darling.’
Keep it light and easy and natural, Eleanor thought, her hand trembling as she handed her daughter the book. She was pleased when Florencia did as she was asked and stood before him and the look of wonder on Cristo’s face as he touched his child so carefully brought mistiness to her eyes. She made much of doing up the buckle of the bag as he made room for Florencia and the puppy on his lap.
‘This is our house,’ her daughter said after a moment, ‘and this is Papa. He is in Heaven because he likes being there now. This is Sophie in her yellow gown and Margaret in her blue one. They don’t live with us any more but they used to. And this is my dog.’
Eleanor craned her neck forward. A black-and-white dog who looked a lot like Patch gambolled on the page.
‘The dog she imagines, I’m afraid, as Martin was allergic to any pet hair.’
‘And is this you next to your mama? The beautiful girl with the princess locks?’
Florencia laughed and suddenly reached out to his hair, her small fingers threading through the colour. ‘Your hair is exactly the same as mine,’ she said before returning to the book and flicking the page.
Over their daughter’s head Cristo’s eyes met hers, a scar she had not seen before marking the skin beneath the left one. The fight on the docks had scarred him and she wished she might have touched it, wished she might have simply leant over and run her finger across the sharp angles in his cheek. But she sat there, listening to the explanations of each page and the interested comments that followed them until the book was finished, a chronicle of everyday life explained away in ink.
‘There is a stretch of grass just through those trees. I saw it in the carriage as we came in. Would you ladies like a walk?’
The question was addressed to Eleanor, but it was Florencia who answered.
‘Oh, yes, please, Mama. Please let us have a walk. I could take Patch.’
Eleanor weighed up her options.
‘Very well, but just for a few moments.’ She hated that part in her voice that sounded so stern and tight.
Cristo felt his daughter’s hand creep into his own as they made their way through the hedge and into the open ground.
Florencia was small and fragile like Eleanor, but that was where any similarity ended. Her hair and her eyes and the shape of her face were exactly his own and she played the piano as he did. A great weight of love tugged his heart into a different beat and he wished that they might have been truly a family taking in the air before going back home.
When Florencia skipped off to pick a bunch of daisies Eleanor was quick to use the moment.
‘I did not ever think that you would travel to High Wycombe.’
‘Indeed, Lady Dromorne, I may not have if I had known you to be here. In London when you did not return to help me I promised to forget you. But Emerald asked me to look at the property for her—a ruse on her part to get us together, no doubt.’
‘I could not come—’
He broke in. ‘Or write or send a messenger? It was only that I needed, Eleanor, and instead there was nothing.’
‘I could do none of these things you speak of because Diana, Martin’s sister, kidnapped me and took me up north. She fed me laudanum until a servant who had a brother in our London town house got word to Martin. By then you were free of all charges.’
‘Diana kidnapped you?’ He could barely take in the truth of what she told him. ‘Why would she do that?’
‘For her daughters’ sake, after I told her that you were Florencia’s father. She wanted the family reputation protected against scandal, you see, and thought that was the way to do it.’
‘Lord, you could have died. Where the hell is she now?’
‘In Scotland. She has promised not to return to London for a very long time.’
The silence between them grew; clearing her throat, Eleanor began uncertainly. ‘I realise that Martin came to see you and you made it very clear to him that you did not wish for any further communication between us.’
‘Your husband told you that?’
‘He did. I understand how very easily I could be an embarrassment to your family, but …’
The words were whipped from her as eyes of ice bored into her
