Anger consumed him. And regret. For three years this blindness had been taking his sight day by day and piece by piece. At first it had been just his central vision, but now it was all the light on the periphery too; a creeping silent thief with total blackness as the end point of a journey he had no wish to be making.
A sadness that had been a constant companion of his recent months gathered with biting force, pushing him back in his seat so that his fists almost shook with the sheer and utter wrath of it all.
He had never accepted it, never come to the place where acquiescence might have softened anguish and allowed a healing.
No, he had never come to that!
‘Why the hell you insist on these public carriage excursions eludes me, Taris, when you have a bevy of your own conveyances ready and willing to take you anywhere?’ Asher’s voice sounded wearied and the truth of the query added to Taris’s own frustration. This was the first time alone on the road that he had indeed felt sightless, the struggle of coping more overwhelming than it had ever seemed before. He was pleased when his brother took his criticism no further and Emerald spoke instead.
‘Your companion sounds interesting?’
‘She was.’
‘She looked worried, though. I wondered if you had noticed?’
‘Yes.’
‘I also saw she wore a wedding ring?’
‘He’s tired, Emmie. Leave him to rest.’ Asher’s voice wound its way around protection with its particular undercurrent of guilt. Suddenly Taris had had enough.
‘Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke is a widow from Brampton. She is turned twenty-eight. She appreciates honesty and she hates her name.’
‘A comprehensive list.’ Emerald’s voice faltered as Asher began to laugh, and the quick thud of his leg against the side of the coach told Taris of a well-directed kick.
‘I thought she seemed…strong.’
‘Indeed, she was that.’
‘Any woman bold enough to leave the safety of a carriage and venture into a snow-whitened night would win my favour.’
‘What does she look like?’ Taris had not meant to ask this, so baldly, so very unmindful, and the silence in the carriage was complete until Emerald began to speak again.
‘Her hair is the colour of chestnuts ripe in autumn and her eyes hold the hue of wet leaves in the shadows beside a forest stream.’
He stayed silent, hoping that she might carry on, liking the way that she brought Beatrice-Maude to life for him in that peculiar way she had of using words.
‘She isn’t very tall, but she is very thin. Between her eyes is the line of a woman who has worried a lot. The dimples in her cheeks are the prettiest I have ever seen on anyone.’
Taris nodded, remembering the contours of them, remembering how she had taken his fingers into her mouth, licking them in the way of one versed in the sensual arts. Remembering other things too. Her smell. Her softness. The whisper of his name against his ear before she had turned into his arms and pressed the swollen flesh of her breasts against him.
‘God!’ Said without thought.
‘What?’ Asher’s voice was loud, near, edged with perplexity.
Searching around for an excuse, he found one in the missing timepiece at his waist. ‘I think I left my watch back under the hay. It was poking against me in the night.’
‘Grandpa’s fob? You still wear that even though you can’t read the numbers?’ Asher swore as he registered what it was he had implied.
’Sound measures time as well, brother, and when you stop feeling guilty for my poor eyesight then both of us may sleep all the easier.’
Closing his eyes, Taris liked the ease of not having to try to decipher shapes, though a vision rose in his memory of chestnut curls, leaf-green eyes and smiling dimpled cheeks. And bravery despite heavily chattering teeth!
Beatrice saw Taris Wellingham the following week in Regent Street where she had gone to do some shopping. He was in the passenger seat of an impressive-looking phaeton, a young woman beside him tooling the horses with a confidence that was daunting.
Drawing back against the shop window, she hoped that the overhanging roof might shelter her from his glance should he happen to look her way and her heartbeat was so violent she saw the material in the bodice of her gown rise up and down.
Goodness, would she faint? Already dizziness made her world spin and the maid at her side carrying an assortment of other parcels she had procured looked at her in alarm.
‘Are you quite well, ma’am?’
‘Certainly, Sarah.’ The quiver in her voice was unsettling.
‘There is a teahouse just a few shops on if you should care to sit down.’
Across the girl’s shoulder Taris Wellingham came closer, his face now easily visible and a top hat that was the height of fashion perched upon his head. The woman beside him was laughing as she urged her horses on and the ordinary folk on the street stopped what they did and watched.
Watched beauty and wealth and privilege. Watched people who had never needed to struggle or count their pennies or wonder where their next meal might come from. Watched a vibrant and beautiful woman handling a set of highly strung greys, which were probably worth their weight in gold, and a man who might let her do so, a smile of pride on his face as she deftly guided them through a busy city through way.
Bea felt an anger she rarely gave way to as Taris Wellingham’s eyes passed right across her own with no acknowledgement or recognition in them.
Just an ill-dressed stranger on a crowded London street watching for a second the passing of the very, very rich. And then dismissed.
Nothing left of breath and touch and the whispered delights shared in a barn outside Maldon. Nothing left of holding the centre of him within her, deep and safe, the snow outside erasing everything that could lead others to them, time skewered only by feelings and trust and the hard burn of an endless want.
Gone! Finished!
She turned her head away and marched into the first shop with an open door, the stocked shelves of a milliner’s wares blurring before her eyes as she pretended an exaggerated and determined interest in procuring a hat.
There was no sense in any of this, of course. Had Taris Wellingham not already told her that she should ignore him should she see him in London, that the tryst they had shared was nothing more to him than an interlude in one moment of need? The wedding ring on the third finger of her left hand glinted in the refracted light of a lamp set beside the counter.
Frankwell laughing from the place his soul had been consigned to. Not heaven, she hoped, the religious icon on the wall above the milliner making her start. Would her own actions outside Maldon banish her soul from any hope of an everlasting happiness? Given that she had in all of her twenty-eight years seldom experienced the emotion, the thought made her maudlin, the enticing promise of a better place after such sacrifice the one constant hope in her unending subservience in Ipswich.
Perhaps she was being punished for that very acquiescence, a woman who had been given a brain to think with and who had rarely used it. Was still not using it, was not taking the chances that were suddenly hers to seize, but was hiding away in the shadow of a fear that made everything seem dangerous.
‘Is there anything in particular you wish to look at, madam?’ the shopkeeper asked, as Bea still did not speak. The silence in the street registered in the back of her mind, any possibility of a further re-encounter diminishing with each passing second.
She made herself look at a hat she