‘Enough,’ she whispered into the gathering greyness of the morning and, pulling the collar of her cloak around her eyes, she was glad to hide her tears from a world that she no longer understood.
Taris felt his sister-in-law’s gaze on him even as he turned to the window, looking out.
Lord, he was a coward and a faint-heart and as the miles between them grew he understood something he had never in his life before experienced.
A woman had bettered him, had made him feel a cad of the very first order, a man who would not own up to either circumstance or reality, but hid in a world that was only deception.
‘So if by chance I should catch sight of you in the streets…?’
‘Your reputation would stay safer should you ignore me altogether.’
He took in a breath and held it, hating the tightness he could feel in his throat, loathing the way he still did not say anything.
Turn around. Turn around and go back.
He should say it, should shout it, but with the world only a grey sludge he found that he just could not.
Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke had seen him at his best. The best that he used to be, before…before he had become dependent on everyone! He wanted her to remember him like that, a man in charge of his life and his actions.
From best to worst, Bates’s hand threaded through his own and Emerald’s on the other side, leading him out through the space to his carriage. He hoped she had not seen the coat of arms emblazoned on the side or heard Bates calling him ‘my lord’. He hoped she might have thought him ill or cold or disorientated. Certainly he hoped that she had not seen him trip as they had rounded the wall of the barn, his feet catching a ditch that he had had no notion was there.
Anger consumed him. And regret. For three years this blindness had been taking his sight day by day and piece by piece. At first it had been just his central vision, but now it was all the light on the periphery too; a creeping silent thief with total blackness as the end point of a journey he had no wish to be making.
A sadness that had been a constant companion of his recent months gathered with biting force, pushing him back in his seat so that his fists almost shook with the sheer and utter wrath of it all.
He had never accepted it, never come to the place where acquiescence might have softened anguish and allowed a healing.
No, he had never come to that!
‘Why the hell you insist on these public carriage excursions eludes me, Taris, when you have a bevy of your own conveyances ready and willing to take you anywhere?’ Asher’s voice sounded wearied and the truth of the query added to Taris’s own frustration. This was the first time alone on the road that he had indeed felt sightless, the struggle of coping more overwhelming than it had ever seemed before. He was pleased when his brother took his criticism no further and Emerald spoke instead.
‘Your companion sounds interesting?’
‘She was.’
‘She looked worried, though. I wondered if you had noticed?’
‘Yes.’
‘I also saw she wore a wedding ring?’
‘He’s tired, Emmie. Leave him to rest.’ Asher’s voice wound its way around protection with its particular undercurrent of guilt. Suddenly Taris had had enough.
‘Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke is a widow from Brampton. She is turned twenty-eight. She appreciates honesty and she hates her name.’
‘A comprehensive list.’ Emerald’s voice faltered as Asher began to laugh, and the quick thud of his leg against the side of the coach told Taris of a well-directed kick.
‘I thought she seemed…strong.’
‘Indeed, she was that.’
‘Any woman bold enough to leave the safety of a carriage and venture into a snow-whitened night would win my favour.’
‘What does she look like?’ Taris had not meant to ask this, so baldly, so very unmindful, and the silence in the carriage was complete until Emerald began to speak again.
‘Her hair is the colour of chestnuts ripe in autumn and her eyes hold the hue of wet leaves in the shadows beside a forest stream.’
He stayed silent, hoping that she might carry on, liking the way that she brought Beatrice-Maude to life for him in that peculiar way she had of using words.
‘She isn’t very tall, but she is very thin. Between her eyes is the line of a woman who has worried a lot. The dimples in her cheeks are the prettiest I have ever seen on anyone.’
Taris nodded, remembering the contours of them, remembering how she had taken his fingers into her mouth, licking them in the way of one versed in the sensual arts. Remembering other things too. Her smell. Her softness. The whisper of his name against his ear before she had turned into his arms and pressed the swollen flesh of her breasts against him.
‘God!’ Said without thought.
‘What?’ Asher’s voice was loud, near, edged with perplexity.
Searching around for an excuse, he found one in the missing timepiece at his waist. ‘I think I left my watch back under the hay. It was poking against me in the night.’
‘Grandpa’s fob? You still wear that even though you can’t read the numbers?’ Asher swore as he registered what it was he had implied.
’Sound measures time as well, brother, and when you stop feeling guilty for my poor eyesight then both of us may sleep all the easier.’
Closing his eyes, Taris liked the ease of not having to try to decipher shapes, though a vision rose in his memory of chestnut curls, leaf-green eyes and smiling dimpled cheeks. And bravery despite heavily chattering teeth!
Beatrice saw Taris Wellingham the following week in Regent Street where she had gone to do some shopping. He was in the passenger seat of an impressive-looking phaeton, a young woman beside him tooling the horses with a confidence that was daunting.
Drawing back against the shop window, she hoped that the overhanging roof might shelter her from his glance should he happen to look her way and her heartbeat was so violent she saw the material in the bodice of her gown rise up and down.
Goodness, would she faint? Already dizziness made her world spin and the maid at her side carrying an assortment of other parcels she had procured looked at her in alarm.
‘Are you quite well, ma’am?’
‘Certainly, Sarah.’ The quiver in her voice was unsettling.
‘There is a teahouse just a few shops on if you should care to sit down.’
Across the girl’s shoulder Taris Wellingham came closer, his face now easily visible and a top hat that was the height of fashion perched upon his head. The woman beside him was laughing as she urged her horses on and the ordinary folk on the street stopped what they did and watched.
Watched beauty and wealth and privilege. Watched people who had never needed to struggle or count their pennies or wonder where their next meal might come from. Watched a vibrant and beautiful woman handling a set of highly strung greys, which were probably worth their weight in gold, and a man who might let her do so, a smile of pride on his face as she deftly guided them through a busy city through way.
Bea felt an anger she rarely gave way to as Taris Wellingham’s eyes passed right across her own with no acknowledgement or recognition in them.
Just an ill-dressed stranger on a crowded London street watching for a second the passing of the very, very rich. And then dismissed.
Nothing left of breath and touch and the whispered delights shared in a barn outside Maldon. Nothing left of holding the centre of him within her, deep and safe,