Laughing, Emerald wound her fingers through his. ‘Has your brother said anything else about that night to you? It’s just that I do not think it was quite as innocent as he might insist it was.’
‘I doubt Taris would be pleased to have you question him, Emmie. Certainly he has shied well away from the topic with me.’
‘Mrs Bassingstoke blushed bright red when I mentioned your brother and this from a woman who had just stood in front of a roomful of strangers espousing theories that excused those guilty of piracy as needy and forgotten members of the communities they had been hounded out of.’
‘A fairly radical point of view, then.’
‘Exactly!’
‘Every woman Taris meets finds him attractive. Perhaps your answer lies in that.’
‘And they last but a moment when he realises that beauty is so…transient and he is too clever to be long amused with a siren who has little to say.’
‘You speak as though the combination of beauty and brains is impossible, yet I have achieved it in you.’
She threw the pillow behind her at him and he caught it, a look in his eyes that told her discussing anything would soon come to an end.
‘Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke has a quiet comeliness that is apparent when you talk to her. She is possibly the cleverest woman I have ever had the pleasure to encounter, but there is also something hidden about her…’
‘Which you should well recognize, given all the secrets you kept buried from me.’
‘I invited her here tomorrow, for afternoon tea.’
‘God!’ He sat up. ‘Taris will be back from Beaconsmeade about then!’
Emerald merely smiled.
‘If this backfires on you, I won’t be pulled into being the cavalry…’ Tweaking a long golden curl, he pulled her down across him. ‘But enough of subterfuge. Show me lust and passion, my beautiful pirate.’
When she started to laugh he simply removed the sheet and placed his hand in a place that took away mirth.
‘Love me, Emerald,’ he whispered.
‘I do.’ Two little words that fell into the heart of everything!
Chapter Five
Taris arrived back in London in the early afternoon and he was worried. A report on the carriage accident had come to him a few weeks back and it was not as simple as he may have thought it.
The axle had been cut, sawed through to within an inch of the circumference, the shearing off of the wheel a deliberate and callous action from someone who wanted to create mayhem. Well, he had. One man was dead and the driver’s fingers would never be right again, banishing the man and his family to penury for the rest of his life.
Well, not quite, his thoughts so akin to high drama that they made him smile. He had offered the man both a job and a cottage at Beaconsmeade, the substantial property he had inherited from his uncle three years ago.
Who the hell did the person responsible want to harm? Was it him? He sifted through memory. In his life there had been many things he had done that might invite such an action. Yet why now and why there in the middle of a county he seldom visited? Who else, then, could have been the target? Not the innocuous and timid mother and son, he decided, or the sensible and level-headed Mrs Bassingstoke. Perhaps the perpetrator had achieved his goal, then, with the demise of the snoring gentleman? He ran his fingers across his eyes and felt the beginning of an ache that was familiar around his left temple.
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