I thought the man was dead. Are you saying he could still be alive?’
Her father’s hands came up. ‘I am certain he is not, but we shan’t stay in London to find out. I have ordered the town house to be closed and have put in motion the means to remove us once again back to Kent. We shall leave on Friday.’
Albany Manor. Two days away. The bloom of thankfulness made Flora dizzy.
‘There is something else that I think you should know.’
The tone of his words was gentle.
‘The story of your abduction is all over London this morning. There were people near Mount Street who spoke when they should not have and Milly was not...careful with her own words either.’
‘I see.’
‘Well, perhaps you do not see it all. There will not be a gentleman here in London who would now offer his hand in marriage. Quiet ruination is a completely different thing from this utterly public condemnation and I doubt that we can recover from such a spectacle. If I had more capital behind me or the title was not an entailed one...’ He stopped and took another tack. ‘For the moment I think withdrawal might be our best defence. Your mother has the same thought. The Honourable Timothy Calderwood has sent a message to say he shall not be able to call upon you again, but he is sorry for your trials.’
Sadness welled. She had enjoyed Timothy’s company with his laughter and his conversation. When she had danced with him a few days ago at the Rushton ball he’d intimated that he would like to know her much better and she had smiled back at him as if all her world was right. A kind man. A man of integrity. The first man who had made her feel special.
Her father’s eyebrows raised up.
‘Did your abductor say anything at all about who he was?’
‘He didn’t.’ Florentia wondered if she should mention the name of Acacia Kensington and a man called Thomas. She decided against it, though, reasoning if her kidnapper was identified and still alive he’d be badly hurt and unable to fight off any further recriminations against him. ‘I am sure he imagined I was another and had just realised his mistake when you came and shot him.’
‘And mark my words I would do exactly the same again for I am not sure how you might recover from this travesty.’
‘With fortitude, Papa.’
Her reply made him laugh though there was no humour in it. ‘I wish Bryson was here...’ he said and stopped, realising what he had just uttered.
Her brother stood in the empty space between them. Beautiful funny Bryson with his golden hair and blue eyes and his cleverness. The glue in a family that had come unstuck ever since his passing.
The son. The heir to an entailed property. Florentia’s twin.
She sat down on the nearest seat, trying to find breath. It had been so long since his name had been mentioned out loud even though he was silently present in every moment of every day.
‘I no longer think the fault lay with you, Flora, and am sorry that I once implied it such.’ These were words she had heard before and foolish apologies that she had long since ceased to refute. ‘We will get through this. All of it. There will be an ending to the pain, I promise.’
But there wasn’t. There hadn’t been. There never would be.
The nausea she had felt in the carriage returned and she forced it down. She hadn’t been able to eat anything and although she felt hungry she just could not swallow even the smallest morsel of food. A new symptom that. Perhaps she was going mad in truth. The completion of a process that had started as she had sat there with her brother dying in her arms and both their clothes splashed in red.
Her fault. Her dare. Her imprudence. She began to shake in earnest.
‘Shall I fetch Mama, Flora?’
‘No.’ She shook her head hard and the memory shattered.
* * *
The ache was lessened now, the burn and throbbing of it where his neck met the collar bone. Tommy was beside him.
‘Here, take this. It will help.’
Bitter like almonds. James screwed his face up at the taste, but after a few moments he started to feel as if he was floating, as if the land was somehow below him and he was flying through the clouds on a murmur.
He liked the sensation. He liked the freedom though his head still throbbed with each beat of his heart, leaving him squinting his eyes against the light.
‘What happened?’
‘You were shot.’ His cousin lent closer, eyes shadowed. ‘It was the wrong woman, Winter. You got the wrong damn woman.’
The red dress. The dogs. The breathlessness. It all came back in a fractured whirl.
‘Is she safe? The girl I took?’
A curse and the shifting of light was his response, quiet between them until his cousin spoke again. ‘She’s fine. It’s you we are worried about.’
‘I...won’t...die.’ He managed to get the words out one by one.
‘Why the hell do you think you won’t, when you’ve lost so much blood?’
‘Because...need...to say...sorry.’
‘Her father shot you by all accounts, for God’s sake. Point blank and without dialogue.’
‘Deserved...it.’
Then the dark came and he slipped away from the hurting light.
Albany Manor, Kent—April 1816
‘Come to London with me, Flora. I am tired of you never being there and that ridiculous scandal from years ago is old news now. No one will remember it, I promise. There are far worse wrongdoings in society catching people’s imaginations. Your downfall is barely recalled.’
Her sister, Maria, had always been difficult to say no to, Florentia thought, as she finished the final touches of a painting depicting the faces of three men caught in dark light at a dinner table.
‘Roy will be there, too, and his mother. We will have a number of people all about us at every important social occasion. It won’t be like the last time at all, I promise.’
The last time.
Three years ago when Florentia had finally decided to step again into society the whole thing had been a disaster. No one had wanted to talk to her, though Timothy Calderwood to his credit had made an effort to try and converse before his new wife had pulled him away. The memory of it stung. She had felt like an outcast and even Maria’s marriage to one of the ton’s favourite sons, Lord Warrenden, had not softened her dislike of social occasions.
Shaking away the
