He tried not to remember that night in the snow, tried not to wonder what had happened to Beatrice-Maude. It was better she slipped into the delight of memory, a favoured recollection when everything else had faded.
Lord. He had not had a woman apart from her in over two years, the sheer difficulty of arranging it all and appearing ‘sighted’ too impossible to contemplate. Easier to lie in bed and just remember, he decided, for the number of people who actually knew his vision to be so poor could still be counted upon one hand.
Asher. Emerald. Lucy, Jack and Bates. A profound sense of shame and inadequacy rubbed up against anger. Five people were all that he wanted knowing of it too. Just them. He did not wish to walk into a room and feel that others judged him on what he could not see. He had always been a physical person, a fine shot, a good horseman, a man who had used his world from one wide edge of it to the other.
To be reduced to dependence and vulnerability would be…He could not even find a word for what he thought, could not dredge from the sheer and utter terror of his situation a phrase to encapsulate the horror.
He tried to keep his forays into society at a minimum and he hated the busy rush of cities. Tomorrow, however, he had an appointment with his lawyer and needed to be there early. He preferred Beaconsmeade and the rolling greenness of the Kentish countryside, places he could walk and work and where the air smelt clean and breathable and infinitely less defiled.
Listening to the horses’ hooves on the first paved stones of the town, he counted the corners.
Fifteen.
The Carisbrook town house should almost be in sight now. Securing his cane, he prepared for the carriage to stop. Bates at his side was doing the same.
‘You have no plans at all for this evening, sir. I did not accept the Claridges’ invite as you instructed me to, though your brother wrote to inquire whether you would be there.’
‘He is almost as reclusive as I am and he only wants to know of my absence to make sure of his own.’
‘There is, however, a ball at the Rutledge mansion tomorrow evening at which you are expected to appear.’
Taris frowned, trying to understand why his presence should be in any way necessary.
‘The Earl of Rutledge is a supporter of the Old Soldiers’ Fund, a charity of which you are the principal patron, sir. I did remind you last week of the affair.’
‘I see. Could I not just pledge a great deal of money—?’
‘The Duke of Carisbrook put your name forward to speak, sir.’
Damn, Taris thought. Asher and his efforts to get him out and about! Sometimes he could happily strangle his brother for his meddling, born out of guilt.
‘Very well, then.’ Acquiescence was easier than the alternative of making a fuss and he made himself dwell on other things. It would be good to see Ruby, Ashton and Ianthe, for it had been all of a month since he had seen his nieces and nephew. He hoped Emerald’s man Azziz would also be down from Falder, for he enjoyed a game of chess.
Family. How it wound around isolation with determination and resilience, the irritations of prying a small price to pay for all that was offered.
As the horses prepared to stop he readied himself to alight. There were many things he could still do and the familiarity of the town house made it possible for him to enter it without assistance.
Morton, the family butler, was the first to greet him, taking his hat and cloak at the door.
‘Welcome back, my lord. We heard that the weather in the south has been kind the past month.’
‘Indeed it has, Morton. Perhaps I might persuade you to have a sojourn at Beaconsmeade…’
The servant laughed. This discussion was one they had had for years, the head butler not a man with any love for country air.
The sound of voices from the downstairs salon stopped him in his tracks, and as he made his way from the lobby he tilted his head. Not just any voice! He felt the tension in him fist, hard-stroked against disbelief.
Mrs Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke was here! Here. Ten yards away, her honeyed husky voice with the slight soft lisp, speaking with his sister-in-law. His fingers tightened across his cane and he wished he had not left his hat with Morton. Concentrate, he admonished himself, as he counted the steps into the room.
Beatrice lifted the cup of tea to her lips and sipped, refusing the offer of sweet cakes from the maid as she did so.
Emerald Wellingham opposite her was charming, but there was an undercurrent of something she could not quite understand. A slight anxiety, if she had to name it, and a decided watchfulness.
‘Your soirees are gaining the favour of all of society here in London. It seems that we have been bereft of fine debate in our town for far too long.’
‘Debate or controversy, your Grace? There are some who might say such opinions serve to alienate reason.’
‘But I am not one of them, Mrs Bassingstoke. And please do call me Emerald.’
Beatrice nodded. ‘You have a beautiful name. My first name merely makes people grimace. Beatrice-Maude. The names of my two grandmothers lumped together, I am afraid, and hardly charming like your own.’
‘Can they be shortened?’
This was the second Wellingham to ask her such a thing! She felt the sheer weight of it as an ache.
As in Bea-yond. As in Bea-utiful or Bea-witching! She had never said her name since without remembering…
‘Bea?’
The voice from behind made her start. His voice. Here? The tea that she had been holding spilt down the front of her dark burgundy gown as she turned, feeling the Duchess’s gaze on her own.
Taris Wellingham came forward with the movement of a man who had had too much to drink, catching the edge of the partly opened door with his shoulder and jerking back and around to lose his footing and fall heavily against the solid mahogany side cabinet. As he flailed to find a true direction his head tilted as if listening and his eyes looked strangely disorientated.
Swearing, he began to search the floor with his hands and Bea was instantly taken back to the days before her husband’s turn. The days when Frankwell had imbibed too much whisky and had come home in exactly the same fashion.
Hollowness consumed her, and the impact of everything made her shake. The way he held himself against the line of the door to steady his balance, all expression on his face devoid of warmth even as he hoisted himself up, the beginning of a bruise that would show full dark upon his cheek on the morrow matching the tendrils of his hair loosened from the queue at his nape.
Years of living with a difficult man tumbled down on Beatrice-Maude in that one small isolated moment. Long years of anguish and guilt, her unpredictable sham of a marriage wrung into one dreadful feeling.
Panic!
To get away. To run from one who had caught at fancy and hope and imagination, yet was blighted with the same curse her husband had been dammed with.
She needed to escape, to be back again in the world of freedom and ideas that had just opened up to her, her autonomy and lack of restraint so far from the endless dread of hurt inflicted by a brandy-loosened temper.
‘I must go.’ Setting down her cup with a rattle, she hated the sound of alarm so easily heard in her voice.
‘Perhaps you do not remember my brother-in-law…’
‘Of course I do.’
Pushing past them both, Beatrice-Maude did not stop even to retrieve her cloak from the astonished servant at the front door. Outside she took a breath of cold air and simply ran, for the corner, for her home, for the safety of her rooms away from