He reached forwards to take a vibrant red curl with his finger, the silk of it falling across his palm. ‘Then I must thank you for tending to the Hawkhurst family name as Charles so obviously did not.’
When she nodded he simply left because he did not wish to tell her more and because every part of him wanted to. Gathering his wits about him, he stepped into the light of the ballroom and made his way through the crowded salons to the front portico.
Aurelia closed her eyes and tried to find her composure. She had told him exactly what she said she wouldn’t and yet relief was the only emotion she could truly identify. Her fingers strayed to her pendant, liking the familiar feel of it.
She had been amazed that he had even remembered the piece, let alone tracked it down and repossessed it. For her.
At the sound of a door opening she took in breath. Had he returned?
‘I saw Stephen leave,’ Cassandra Lindsay said, ‘and he did not look happy. My guess is that you do not, either.’ Aurelia saw a question in the other woman’s eyes as she turned.
‘Nathaniel and I have known Hawk for ever. He is a fine friend and a good man, though for the past six months he has been… . melancholic and pensive.’ She stopped and placed her palms across the stone on the top of the terrace wall. Like an anchor. Or a prayer.
Aurelia waited. Sometimes people needed to find their thoughts without interruption.
‘We wondered if it was his search for a wife that was making him maudlin. Elizabeth Berkeley is a lovely girl, but she is hardly…strong.’
The word surprised Aurelia. ‘Perhaps strength is not what he needs. Perhaps simple, honest and uncomplicated would chase away the demons?’
Cassandra laughed. ‘That is what he thinks he needs, but I have had this conversation with my husband many times over and we have come to the conclusion that he needs a woman who can bring him to life again…one who could save him from himself, one who might be able to endure the barriers that he will undoubtedly erect.’
The cliff on Taylor’s Gap came to Aurelia’s mind. Perhaps he would have pushed further had she not been there?
‘Espionage is not an occupation that would leave one much joy, I suspect.’
‘You know what he does?’ Surprise tempered Cassandra Lindsay’s words.
‘I have heard rumours.’
Lady Lindsay nodded. ‘His brother was killed in France on a mission and Hawk thinks it was his fault that it happened—a personal revenge, if you like, and one that has eaten at his soul. He has seen things that it would be better for a man not to have and without family around him save for Alfred…’ She stopped and laid her hand upon Aurelia’s. ‘Loneliness and responsibility make poor bedfellows. I think you might know that every bit as well as he does, as by all accounts you have had your own battles in life.’ She took in a deep breath. ‘When I first met Nathaniel I had been a prisoner in France for near on ten months. It was not an easy detention and there were things that happened…things I thought would make Nathaniel seek another more wholesome woman if he knew the truth of it all. I tried to turn him away. I was damaged and I felt I would damage anyone else around me if I let them get close. I ran away on my wedding night to give him the chance of release, but he came after me. He saved me.’ She looked Aurelia straight in the eye before she continued. ‘If Hawk and you could save each other, any risk might be worth it.’
Then she was gone, sailing back through the door with the grace she’d had coming through it, the honesty and candour left behind her allowing hope. Cassandra Lindsay had not been untouched or unblemished and yet she had risen above adversity and found her place in the world beside a man who would protect her.
Could she do the same?
Her arms curled momentarily around her body and she took in a deep breath before replacing her mask and following Lady Lindsay back into the ballroom.
The anger he was consumed with was nothing like the regrets he now harboured as he thought back to the scene of a few hours ago. Lord, Aurelia had been crucified for the boorish behaviour of her husband and because of it not a word of his cousin’s deviousness had ever been uttered.
Unlike her, he cared for little and loved even less. Alfred was in his seventies and might not last for too much longer and when he was gone…there would be nothing of family or blood left. The last Hawkhurst. The final member of a cursed line blotted out by circumstance and sickness and betrayal.
And now even the hope of a faultless, blameless innocent fiancée was lost because he recognised finally what he should have always known. He would ruin Elizabeth Berkeley as surely as she would ruin him, like an apple with one small black spot of rottenness, growing, spreading, consuming flesh that was uncontaminated and pure.
He remembered Aurelia St Harlow’s expression on the terrace as she had looked at him, a sort of hope in her eyes. He had wanted to carry her off then and there and bring her home to strip away the emerald gown, claiming all that he could not, spilling his seed into the centre of her womanhood and hoping for…what? A child? An heir? An ending to all the solitude? Even knowing it was wrong, he could not stop the coursing hunger and his cock rose rigid.
His. She would be his. There was no longer any question of it for nothing would stop him. Not duty. Not King. Not country. Not even treason.
‘God help us.’ He whispered the words into the darkness and closed his eyes against utter need.
The man stepped out in front of her as she fumbled with the keys on the heavy lock on the Park Street doorway.
‘You are Mrs St Harlow?’ The question was in French.
When she nodded he simply handed her over a letter.
‘She said I was to come back for your answer after you had had a day to look at it. She said you would give me a reply.’
With that he left. Looking around to see if anyone else was about and hoping the rapid beat of her heart might begin to slow, Aurelia let herself in, the unmarked white envelope clutched in her fingers.
She? Could he mean her mother?
Caesar stirred from sleep, stretching and yawning as she untied him and took him outside. Briefly. She wanted to open the note before Kerslake arrived and as an added precaution she snapped the lock behind her when she re-entered the office.
A necklace she recognised as one of her mother’s lay wrapped inside a letter. She instantly knew Sylvienne’s hand.
Lia
I am ill. Sell this necklace, for I have the need of a maid to help me through this ague. My friend will bring the money back to me and can be trusted.
Grasping the table for balance, Aurelia sat, her fingers straying to the chipped and worn beads of the cut-glass bauble. As cheap and worthless as the life her mother now lived.
She had met Sylvienne again four years ago in Paris on a visit, the untarnished beauty she had once been renowned for slipping into something less attractive, the liberal lifestyle so appealing when she had left England now futile and wretched.
Aurelia, just out of a marriage that smacked of the same sort of despair she saw her mother consumed by, had been desperate to help. Women survived in the only way they knew how and with the roles reversed between them, she felt the need to parent Sylvienne. Even then she had been uneasy with the sort of people her mama had been reduced to dealing with, the crammed and squalid conditions of her rented apartment a far cry from her life in London. No wonder she had become ill. But how ill?
She