This morning a Frenchman had been apprehended outside her warehouse by one of Shavvon’s men after he had picked up a package she had given him. Money and silk and a letter to her mother that alluded to more of the same coming the following week.
God. He pushed his hair back and watched her from the old leather wingchair. A deliberate distance. A difficult reminder of all that he had tried to withdraw from.
Deceit. On mismatched eyes and a face that looked as though it belonged to an angel.
He had argued with Shavvon that the contents of the package were nothing like those found in the heavier silk cargo. As a result he had been charged with the task of being Mrs St Harlow’s personal minder—a grim and startling assignment given all that he was thinking.
He had hoped his ball could have been the beginning of a new and more innocent life after the fright he had given himself at Taylor’s Gap. And instead, here he was pining for a woman who had more secrets in her eyes than any other he had ever known.
But she fitted here, laughing between Lilly and Cassie and allowing his uncle to hold her hand for an inordinate amount of time after she had given him the present of a ring: a colourful glass ring with the engraving of a dragon through the amber and another on the metal in the band.
Alfred loved her. His friends loved her. He noticed how she thanked each servant every time they offered her something to eat or drink.
Even the damn cat, who more usually scurried away at any slight noise, had sidled up against her on the sofa, purring as her fingers ran through his coat.
The laughter closed in about him, removing such introspection and drawing him out.
‘We met at Taylor’s Gap,’ Aurelia was saying.
‘What were you doing down that way, Hawk?’ Nat asked the question, a frown on his brow.
Thinking about ending it all, he might have said, but he stayed silent, waiting for her reply.
‘He was watching the view—’ the edges of her mouth lifted up ‘—and I was inveigling Lord Hawkhurst into giving my family invitations to his ball.’
‘How did you inveigle?’ Nat asked this, a wry smile on his face and when Aurelia blushed, Hawkhurst stepped in.
‘I was down that way to look over Cloverton’s matching greys. The ones you had told me of, Nat.’
‘And did they measure up?’
He was pleased with the change of topic. ‘They are being delivered next week to Hawthorn Castle. You can come down and see what you think.’
Dinner was a beautiful meal, the French chef presenting two main courses of seafood and chicken along with vegetables, savouries, creamy sauces and a selection of cakes.
Aurelia had been placed next to Lillian and Lucas Clairmont and as far away from Lord Hawkhurst as the table might allow, though looking up once or twice, she found his gaze upon her.
Lillian spoke of her children and of a manor house that they were trying to modernise.
‘Hope embroidered the neckline of my dress,’ she said, holding her chest forwards so that it might be viewed properly. ‘She is twelve and our oldest.’
‘You must have been awfully young, then, when you had her.’ Aurelia could not help the comment for Lillian Clairmont barely looked any older than she was.
‘Oh, Hope and Charity came to us in a more roundabout fashion. They were always meant to be ours, but it took them a while to find us.’
‘Sometimes that happens to people. Take Nat, for example. I found him again in the most unlikely of places.’ Cassandra laughed as she spoke.
‘Where?’ Aurelia began to smile.
‘In the bedroom of a run-down boarding house in London. Spying on me.’
‘Protecting you, more like.’ Nathaniel Lindsay, across the other side of the table, was adamant in his understanding of the situation.
‘By insisting that I remove my clothes?’
At Cassie’s interjection everyone began to laugh.
It felt so good to be accepted by a company of people who did not judge and who all had their strange quirks and peculiarities. Hawkhurst, however, seemed to remain outside the hilarity, an observer rather than a participant.
Aurelia wanted to sit beside him and take his hand and make him smile as a way of thanking him for asking her tonight. With delicious food in her stomach, a warm cat snuggling across her feet and a group of interesting and genuine people around her, she could not remember ever feeling quite as relaxed.
Much later, after the best evening of her life, she stood with Stephen Hawkhurst and listened to the departing carriages of his friends. Alfred had sought his repose a good few hours earlier and so they were left alone, a dozen candles on a sideboard and not a servant in sight.
Hawkhurst’s hand came forwards. ‘Stay the night, Aurelia. With me.’
No artifice or pretence. No chance to misunderstand just exactly what he was asking. Just them in a shaded corner of his house, the midnight closing in and the promise of all that had begun at Taylor’s Gap sharp upon the air.
She had dreamt of this, imagined such words in her bedroom late at night, the emptiness inside her calling to be assuaged. But now…now that he had said all that she hoped for, what could it mean?
‘If others knew?’ She shook her head.
‘They won’t.’
‘Just us, then?’ Barely spoken, soft with desire. ‘A secret?’ The words were out, falling into permission. Her sisters never waited up for her and, if she returned before daylight, only John would know of her absence and he was more than loyal.
At eighteen she had never had a chance, but at twenty-six she did and every fibre of her being wanted to know what it would be like to feel the things that poetry and prose wrote of, the ache that lovers died for, the completeness that overrode armies and philosophers and kings.
If she started this in the way she meant to go on, would there be hope for them beyond the call of duty, diplomacy and expedience? She had made so many mistakes that she was frozen with the fear of making another one and yet…for the first time in her life she knew those things society decreed wrong would be so very right for her.
With a trembling breath she made her glance meet his, and a belief in herself, badly battered by Charles, began to reform.
Aurelia’s mismatched eyes were so damned fine and she had painted her nails red, the colour of lust and of the roses in a vase to one end of the mantel, overblown and wilting.
The heat of her was beguiling, her lips full and beckoning. He had promised to take nothing and yet here she was offering him everything, his blood thundering as if she were naked.
When she lifted her hand to wipe away a tendril of hair he saw she shook, a beam of sudden moonlight at the window turning her hair to scarlet.
The tie at his throat felt too tight and the waistcoat, jacket and trousers heavy against a rising want.
There were so many other things he needed to know about her, but his mind could only concentrate on her form and her smell and on the dimples in her cheeks which deepened with the smallest of movements. He wanted to touch her, wanted to run his hands across the curves and the softness until he knew each and every contour of her body. But she stopped him with more words.
‘I am not quite as practised in the sensual arts as you might imagine, Lord Hawkhurst.’
Her admission took him from his reveries with a startling quickness.
‘Charles and I were…distant, you see.’