A violent blush of red had Bea turning away. She felt her fingers shake as she reached for the collar of her dress, pulling the light wool from her throat to allow the slight feel of air against her skin.
His hand on her breast and his tongue tracing the shape of her nipple before pressing closer…
‘Are you well, Beatrice? You seem somewhat distracted this morning.’
With an effort Bea pulled herself together.
‘Your very liberal opinions are sometimes distracting—I was not born into a family such as your own with the penchant for expressing ideas that are…so radical.’ When she saw the slight frown on her friend’s face she hurried on to allay any worry. ‘That is not a criticism of you, Elspeth, for I wish with all my heart that I could throw caution to the wind in the way that you so effortlessly seem to.’ She was horrified as tears came behind her eyes, and the bone-deep desire in her breast for something more surfaced.
Taris Wellingham. He had sent no card this morning, just as he had not tried to approach her after the waltz they had shared. Perhaps his eyesight was such that he could not find her, though she suppressed that excuse; if the servant had sought her out before, then he certainly could do so again.
No! She tried to push the desire she felt for him beneath the easier banner of sense. Of course he would not be searching her out. She was a woman who had broken every rule of good sense after all. First with the easy giving of her body in the night-snowed barn and then again yesterday at the small park when she had failed to offer any support after his unexpected and genuine confession.
The heavy ring of her doorbell brought her from her reveries to find Elspeth had left. She listened to the sound of the visitor’s voice with growing concern. A young woman’s voice. But not one she recognized.
When the maid brought in her card, Bea was surprised. Lady Lucinda Wellingham! Bea indicated that she would receive her and sat down to wait, not wanting to appear quite as flustered as she felt upon hearing the name.
‘Mrs Bassingstoke?’ The same woman tooling the horses in Regent Street all those weeks ago came into her room. Not daintily either, but with a decided purpose. Bea noticed she did not wear gloves and that the hat she had donned barely covered her silky blonde hair.
Beautiful. Like all the Wellinghams were beautiful, though her fair hair and blue eyes were not mirrored in either of her brothers.
‘You are Mrs Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke, are you not?’ she asked, a heavy frown easily seen between her brows.
‘I am,’ Bea returned and stood, though she was nowhere near as tall as this newcomer and wished suddenly that she had kept her seat.
‘The same Mrs Bassingstoke involved in an accident with my brother Taris between Ipswich and London?’
‘The very same.’
‘Then I am pleased to meet you.’ Her wide smile was both puzzling and welcome. ‘Very pleased to meet you, in fact—I am Lady Lucinda Wellingham, Taris’s only sister. Might I sit down?’
‘Of course.’
She sat on the sofa less than a foot away and left very little room between them, though when Bea hesitated she carried on in a whirl of words. ‘I heard from my sister-in-law that you would be speaking this week on the property rights of women.’
‘An inflammatory subject that I hope I will handle sensitively,’ Bea returned, not at all certain of the position Taris’s sister was approaching the argument from. ‘I should not wish to run foul of your family.’
‘Oh, I rather think it is too late for that—you have already.’
Tardon?’
Lady Lucinda’s hand swatted the air in front of her as though any problems would be easily solved. ‘Asher seems to think you should be hanged, drawn and quartered for your outlandish opinions.’ Her giggle softened the sentiment.
‘And your other brother?’
‘Oh, Taris holds all thoughts of you very close to his chest, Mrs Bassingstoke. The incident you were both involved in outside Maldon was, after all, fairly unusual, and he seldom courts gossip in any form.’
‘I see.’ A man who was careful, then? Careful to live his life within the boundaries of what was expected, the tittle-tattle of society dangerous to a man who would hide his lack of sight from everyone. Even from his sister? For in every conversation Beatrice had had in which Taris Wellingham was the subject, not once had she heard a whisper of what he could or could not see.
‘ Our family has had its fair share of tragedy, Mrs Bassingstoke, but then I would guess you are no stranger to such a thing either…’ Her glance flickered to the ring on her marriage finger.
‘No. I suppose that is true.’
‘If I might give you a piece of advice then…’ the younger woman suddenly whispered and leant forwards so that her voice did not travel ‘…my brother is a man who would be well worth pursuing.’
‘Oh, I doubt that I would interest him, my lady,’ Bea began, hating the telling blush that crept up her cheeks.
‘Ahh, you might be surprised in that, for I have never seen him ask a woman to dance in years and certainly not a waltz.’
Shrewdness was evident in her eyes and because of it Bea was inclined to answer defensively. She did not wish Taris’s sister to relay any tale back of a perceived interest.
‘I have only recently been made a widow, Lady Lucinda, and as I am well over twenty-eight…’
‘You had no children from your first marriage?’ Lucinda Wellingham clamped her hand across her mouth even as she asked the question. ‘I am sorry; of course that was very rude of me to ask.’
The blood pumped in Beatrice’s temples as she was taken back to the house in Ipswich, the voice of her husband reverberating loudly.
‘I am trapped in a lacklustre pointless marriage to an uninspiring and barren wife, and all you can do is apologise?’ His fist had connected with the side of her head before she could answer and knocked her from her chair ‘You cannot even give me an heir. Beatrice-Maude, you cannot even give me that when God knows I have given you everything…‘
Everything? A broken arm and a broken nose and a hundred bruises hidden beneath the folds of her gown…
‘Are you quite all right, Mrs Bassingstoke?’ Lucinda Wellingham’s worried countenance came through the haze, bringing Bea back to this time, this place, the wheezing in her breath worse now than she had ever heard it.
Panicked, she tried to stand and could not, collapsing against the sofa, a sheen of sweat marking her face and her hands shaking.
Barren Beatrice.
Broken Beatrice.
Such a long, long way from Bea-utiful and Bea-witching Beatrice.
‘Should I call someone to help you?’
‘No…Please do not do that…I…shall be all right.’ Clearing her throat, she made herself sit up, made herself face the woman opposite, the curiosity imprinted in the watching light eyes persuading her against her better judgement to try and explain.
‘I could not have children, Lady Lucinda, and it was a great loss…’
‘I am so sorry; of course, with your husband now gone to his Maker a child might have been such a comfort. A memory, so to speak, of all the good times, a child formed in the mould of a man you had loved.’
Stifling a smile at such a sentiment, Bea began to feel immeasurably better. She had never met a woman who seemed so able at putting her foot in her mouth. A memory? Of love?