‘I’m calling on her on Monday. Perhaps you might accompany me?’
A furore at the other end of the room caught their attention and Lord Gabriel Hughes, the fourth Earl of Wesley, strode in, a tall stranger hanging on his shoulder and pushed off with a nonchalance that was surprising.
‘London is not as it was, my lords. Nordmeyer insists that I insulted his sister and wants to call me out for it.’
‘And did you insult her?’
‘She sent me a note arranging a meeting and he found it. I hardly think that was my fault.’
‘But you would have met her if the letter had arrived?’
‘Undoubtedly.’
Laughter was as good a medicine as any, Daniel thought as Gabe ordered a drink. A few years ago he and Gabriel Hughes had been good friends, but he hadn’t seen much of him lately. Charlotte’s influence, perhaps. The women in the family had always been surprisingly persuasive.
‘I hear you were the one who bought the pair of greys showing at Tattersall’s a few weeks back, Montcliffe. Richard Tattersall had designs to procure them himself, but it seems you beat him to it with an irrefusable offer.’
Daniel wondered where this story had originated. Robert Cameron, perhaps, for the man was as wily as he was rich.
‘The Montcliffe coffers must be in good shape, then, for they would have not come cheap,’ Gabriel remarked. An undercurrent of question lay in the words. ‘And speaking of good shape, my sister is home again and had hoped that you might call upon her?’
‘I saw her today. In Regent Street.’
‘How did she appear to you?’ The heavy frown on Gabriel’s forehead was worrying.
‘In good health. Your mother was with her.’
‘She seldom allows Charlotte out of her sight. I think she is worried that grief might get the better of her.’
‘Grief for the death of her husband?’
The short bark of laughter was disconcerting. ‘She realised that Spenser Mackay was a mistake before she had even come within a cooee of the Borderlands.’
‘Another man, then?’ Lucien joined in the conversation now.
But as if realising he had said too much, Gabriel Hughes gestured to the waiter and ordered another drink.
‘I propose a toast to our bachelorhood, gentlemen, and long may it last.’ As Lucien lifted his glass Daniel caught his eyes and the deep humour obvious in the blue depths was disconcerting.
Daniel Wylde and she were in bed at Dunstan House, candlelight covering their bodies and her hair to the waist.
‘Love me for ever, my beautiful Amethyst,’ he said as he brought his lips down upon her own, hard and slanted, desire moulding her body into his, asking for all that she knew he would give her. His fingers framed her face, tilting her into the caress, building the connection. ‘Love me as I love you, my darling, never let us be apart.’
And then she was awake in her own chamber at Grosvenor Square, the moon high outside. Alone. The dream of Lord Montcliffe dissolved into a formless want and the need that she had no hope in wishing for dissipated. He would not love her like that, he could not.
Pushing back the covers, she stood and lit a candle before crossing to the bookshelves on one side of the room.
Here behind a row of burgundy leather tomes she found what she had hidden. Her diary. A narrative of Gerald Whitely and their time together, every emotion she had felt for him penned in black and white. And in red, too, her blood smeared across one page mixed in troth with his. A small cut below the nail of her thumb. Sometimes she felt it with the pad of her opposing finger. He had laughed at the time and told her she was being melodramatic. Then he had stopped laughing altogether. The small book fell open at one of the pages.
I hate him. I hate everything about him. I hate his drunkenness and his anger. I hate it that I was stupid enough to become his wife. I think Papa suspects that there is something wrong between us and I hate that, too.
As she riffled through to the end of the book, there seemed to be a myriad of variations on that theme and she remembered again exactly what hopelessness felt like.
After his death she had not trusted anyone except for her father. After Gerald the world of possibility and expectation had shrunk into a formless mist, her big mistake relegated to that part of her mind which refused to be hurt again, but even thirteen months later the horror had left an indelible mark.
The business of making money had been healing, saving her from the ignominy of venturing back into the pursuit of another mate. Oh, she had gone to Gerald’s funeral and attended his grave, placing flowers and small offerings because it was expected. She had also worn her mourning garb for the obligatory year because she could have not borne the questions that might have occurred otherwise. Even in death she had not betrayed him.
A single tear dropped upon the sheet below, blurring the careful writing.
A blemished bride. Then and now. Granted, she came to this next union with a dowry that was substantial and with the means to save a family on the brink of devastation. It must count for something.
But the kiss Daniel Wylde and she had shared was worrying because in it were the seeds of her own destruction.
Not like Gerald Whitely. Not like him at all.
The voyeur inside her who had been watching others for years was threatened, the safe distance she had fostered shattered by a hope she had never known, for when Lord Montcliffe had taken her hand and then her lips something in her had risen and his gold-green eyes had known it had.
Looking back, she could not understand just what had led her into the mistake of marrying Whitely in the first place. Loneliness, perhaps, or the fact that the years were rushing by. Certainly it had not been a blinding love or even a distilled version of affection. No, she had married Gerald because no one else had ever given her a second look and she was starting to feel as if spinsterhood was just around a very close corner.
Her father’s respect for his business acumen might have also made a difference. Amythest wanted to marry a man whom Robert would regard with fondness and Gerald had arrived at the warehouse with glowing references and a comforting confidence. A man who at first brought her flowers and pretty handkerchiefs and professed that he had never in his whole life seen anyone as beautiful as she was.
When the nasty side of him had surfaced a month or so before their marriage she should have cut her losses and run. Her father would have understood and there was no one else whose opinion she cared much about. Yet still she had persisted in believing that she could calm Gerald’s anger and gently soothe all the problems he seemed to have with others.
Marriage had changed that. The admonishments had been verbal at first, just small criticisms of her dress and her hair. Then he had used his fists.
Fear had held her rigid and distant, the shame and the anger at her stupidity buried under a carefully constructed outer mask. She could not believe that she had been so gullible and foolish as to imagine a wonderful life with a man she had barely known. When he had died sixteen months later Amethyst had not seen him for a good handful of weeks before that and her heartfelt relief added to the guilt of everything.
* * *
Four mornings after the kiss she had shared with Lord Montcliffe she felt full of anxiety. Her intended was waiting downstairs in the Blue Salon and he had brought a friend with him. To see what trap the Earl had tumbled into, she supposed, the sour taste of trade balanced by a wife who was at least wealthy enough to save