Taris placed his hand across the reins, feeling the pressure.
‘Ease up a little on the right, Lucy, for there is a slight pull.’
He knew in the breeze on his face the moment his sister re-aligned the horses and felt a tug of pride.
‘You have been practising while I have been away?’
Laughter greeted his question. ‘If that is your way of telling me I have improved, brother, then so be it.’
‘You have improved.’ The words came readily and he felt his sister lay her hand across his own.
‘From you that means a lot. All my life I have been in the shadow of my big brothers and it is good to finally cast one of my own. I appreciate the loan of your team in my quest to master this horsemanship, by the way, and if there is ever anything that you would like in return…’
He shook his head. ‘Become the Original you are destined to be, Lucinda, and that will be payment enough.’
‘Whomever you finally marry will be a lucky lady, Taris, because you have never allowed yourself to define others in the way the ton demands. With you I always feel that I could be…anything.’
The wind took his laughter and threw it across the street and in the corner of his vision he could just make out the forms of people watching them.
Women by the looks with their gowns and hats, and the sound of bells pealing out across the afternoon.
Two ‘clock. By five he would be on the road south, leaving the traffic and the noise of London behind him. He closed his eyes briefly and imagined the promise of Beaconsmeade and the warm comfort of his home.
He would take his own carriage for the ride down, however, for his recent poor experience with the public transport system allayed the delight he so often felt in mixing with the ordinary folk.
A gentler vision of well-rounded breasts and long dark curls made his fingers clasp with more fervour on to the silver head of his cane. Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke!
They had both agreed to the limitation of just one night and he had heard the sound of relief in her voice when he had not demanded different. Perhaps the state of widowhood was more promising than that of Holy Matrimony with its sanctions and its rules. As a man he saw the strictures that a woman was placed under when she married and if she had any land at all…?
No, he could not now search for Bea or betray such a trust. He had no earthly reason for doing so and she did not seem the type of woman who might welcome a dalliance. Besides, a wife was the very last thing he needed with his receding sight and his blurring vision.
Whomever you finally marry will be a lucky lady…
‘Your horses are attracting a lot of attention, Taris. Why, nearly everyone is watching their excellence.’
‘Well, Lucy, one more round and then home; I have much to do before I depart for Kent.’
‘Ash asked you to stay longer.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Or won’t.’
Both of them laughed as they careered around the corner and into the pathways of Hyde Park.
Chapter Four
Beatrice tucked her hair behind her ears and surveyed her downstairs salon, bedecked with books on each available surface. Her weekly book discussions were becoming…fashionable, attended by people from every walk of life, a crush that was the talk of the town.
How she loved London, loved its rush and bustle and the way the fabric of life here was so entwined with good debate and politics and culture. No one expected things of her or corrected her. If she wished to spend an evening reading in bed she could. If she wished to go out to a play she could. London with its diversity of intellectual pursuits set her free in a way that she had never been before and she relished such liberty.
Her clothes were nothing at all like the ones she would have worn three months ago either, those shabby country garments that spoke of a life tempered by ill health and routine long gone, and the highly coloured velvets she had replaced them with as unusual as they were practical.
Unconventional.
Original.
Incomparable.
Words that were increasingly being used to describe her in the local papers and broadsheets.
She liked the sound of them, the very choice such description engendered. No expectation or cloying pragmatic sensibleness that had been the hallmark of her years with Frankwell.
She did not think of him now as the man who had hurt her, the image of an angry bully replaced by the child who had lingered longer. Hopeful and dependent.
When he had died she had laid him in his coffin with an armful of Michaelmas daisies because they had been his favourite and the church had rung with the sounds of children’s songs, the same tunes that he himself had sung in his final moments of life on this earth.
Sorrow had been leached though here in London, her life filling with new friends and new experiences. How fortunate she had been to have the Hardy sisters as neighbours, for within a week of arriving here their wide group of acquaintances had become her friends as well, their social standing making her own acceptance into society seamless. When they had taken her under their wing and encouraged her dream of having such a forum in her own salon she could barely believe the speed with which the whole idea had taken shape. Sometimes when she looked in the mirror and saw the way she smiled she could not remember the sombre woman who had fled Ipswich in a snowstorm.
Breathing out, she tried to stop the name that would come to her mind next. No, she would not think of him, of that night, of the way that he had left without even once glancing back; when her friend Elspeth Hardy came into the room with another pile of papers in her hands, Bea was glad of the interruption.
‘We have nowhere at all to put those, Elspeth. Perhaps if you could take them back upstairs we may discuss the contents next week.’
‘But they talk of the habit of wife selling, a topic that has been raised before—I wondered if they might add to the discussion?’
Bea screwed up her nose. ‘I have read many accounts of such a practice, and have become increasingly of the view that the intention of these bargains is a way in which a woman can move on with her life, both parties having agreed to the proceedings.’
‘ You are not against them? I cannot believe it of you!’
Beatrice laughed. ‘Often the purchaser is a lover. Would you not countenance such a path, given the impossibly difficult and expensive alternative of filing for a separation through church or court?’
‘I do not know. Perhaps you might be right…’
‘We will think about it later, for tonight I have prepared a talk on the ills of piracy and the human cost to such a vocation.’
‘Piracy! A topic that should appeal to the growing number of men now attending! Have you not noticed that, Bea? Over the last month we have had an almost equal composition of the sexes, which is…encouraging to say the least.’
Beatrice nodded and sought out the trays to set. The new financial independence that she had inherited on the death of her husband was sometimes bemusing and she still liked to do as much around the home as she had when her situation had been less flush.
Tonight, though, she felt nervous for some reason, her heartbeat heightened and her hands clumsy. When she dropped a cup it shattered on the parquet floor and as she bent to pick up the shards of china one cut deep into her forefinger.
The blood welled