‘You are beginning to sound just like my brother.’
‘And your week is beginning to ring with the dubious clanging of firsts, my friend.’
‘How so?’ Finishing his brandy, Taris knew exactly what was coming.
‘The first waltz, the first concession of an argument you could have won had you truly wanted to…’
‘You read too much into these actions.’
‘Do I, indeed? Your Mrs Bassingstoke is coming towards us, by the way, and she looks like a cat who just swallowed the cream. Perhaps your reasoning in playing the “honourably beaten” was sounder than I gave it credit for, after all.’
Taris shoved his glass into Jack’s hand. ‘Get me another drink, will you?’
‘I will do so only because I detect your desire to be alone with the clever widow,’ he returned, laughter imbued in his retort.
‘Lord Henshaw looks as though he is enjoying our soiree,’ Beatrice said less than a few seconds later. ‘I hope that you are too?’
‘The debate is all that I imagined it to be.’
Her answer was worried. ‘I think our discussions go better when the opinion for and against them is more evenly divided.’
He laughed. ‘You won the argument, Bea.’
‘But not well. I think you gave up on me for some reason.’
He felt her hand on his arm, the pounding awareness between them blotting out all other noise.
‘Could I speak to you alone? After this is over?’
‘Yes.’ She gave her promise easily and as the world and its noise and need cascaded again on to them she was claimed in speech by another before disappearing into the crowded room.
Taris Wellingham had spoken carefully and well in the debate, she thought. A man who was confident in his ability to woo a crowd and gracious in defeat.
He was nobody’s man save his own, the one concession to his limited sight an opened hand that lay on the wall behind. He always did that, always created an anchor to the environment around him. The fence at the park, the ledge of the window in the carriage, his foot against the edge of the ditch in the snow outside Maldon.
A small habit that would be unremarkable without the knowledge that she had of how little he could really see. She watched him now from the other side of the room, watched his ease in a setting that was eminently foreign to him. The signet ring on his little finger glinted in the light as he pushed his dark hair back, his eyes creasing at the corners when he smiled.
Taris Wellingham was a man who might trace his ancestry back through all the years of history and yet he had conceded the argument to her with grace. She wondered suddenly whether he had done so by choice, as there had been a tone in his words denoting empathy that she found disconcerting.
The quick flash of her husband ‘correcting’ yet another opinion came to mind and she pushed it back, all the laughter and discourse in this room as far from the big Ipswich house as she could ever be.
Lifting her glass of punch to her lips, she dragged her eyes away from the enigmatic and mercurial Lord Wellingham and wished the hour before everybody would leave away.
Everyone was gone. Almost everyone, she amended and looked again to see that Taris still sat on the blue sofa in her salon.
‘I could stay if you want…?’ Elspeth was uncertain as she gazed towards the room.
‘I am a twenty-eight-year-old widow, Elspeth, and sense is my middle name.’
‘Still, a man like that could—’
She did not let her finish. ‘Look at me, Elspeth. A man like that is here merely to speak to me and I am very happy to listen.’
‘You are not as plain as you might say, Beatrice, and sometimes when you argue a point so very cleverly every male in the room looks at you in the way of men who are wanting much more than just words.’
‘A sentiment I shall receive as a compliment. But you forget I have no wish to take any such flattery further.’
‘Very well, then. But I shall be back in the morning to make certain that…’
‘And I shall look forward to the company.’
Bea was pleased when her friend finally allowed her to shepherd her out; turning, she walked into the salon, shutting the door against the bustling of servants clearing away the last of the plates and the glasses in the dining room.
‘Thank you for allowing me to talk to you privately,’ he said and waited as she sat next to him.
‘If this is about my conversation with your sister…’
He raised his right hand and she came to a stop. ‘Did Mr Bassingstoke ever “correct” you, Beatrice?’
Her world spun in a receding dizzy arc as she clutched at the arm on her end of the sofa. Had he seen the movement? For the first time since knowing of his blindness she was glad of it.
‘All my arguments were purely theoretical, my lord,’ she returned, her voice sounding almost normal, ‘and I could easily take umbrage should you think a man might rule me like that.’
‘A lack of sight has some benefits, Mrs Bassingstoke. One of them is the ability to determine the cadence of untruth.’
She was silent.
‘At Maldon you limited our liaison to just one night. I would like to negotiate for another.’
‘One night…?’ Her voice was squeaky.
‘More if you are offering.’ His smile made his eyes dance and the glasses gave him a rakish appearance. His cane lay untouched against his thigh as if, for the moment, he was comfortable and relaxed. Still, he looked much too big for her small salon, a tiger readied to pounce, the amber in his irises predatory. She could not move, could not rise and say nay to any of it, could not remember the promise that she had made to herself of ‘never again’.
The clock on the mantel chimed the hour like a harbinger.
Ding…say yes!
Dong…say no!
Outside she could determine the muffled clatter of a carriage winding home in the lateness.
Ten o’clock. On a Wednesday. Already some lights in the street were out and the transport that had brought him to her door was departed. At his request?
Who indeed might know if she were again to say yes? And freedom was found not only in the choice of a good book and a night alone. Another few moments and the maids would be finished. Easy to dismiss them to their beds and then to go to hers. With him. The very idea of it made her heart beat faster.
‘I am not the kind of woman to depend on this sort of arrangement, my lord. The freedom I spoke of today is important to me.’
‘I am not looking to shackle you into something you might live to regret.’
At that small set-down she reddened. Of course he would not be interested in a more lasting relationship. Still, she could not quite let it lie.
‘Why are you here, then?’
‘Because I like you.’
She sat speechless, for such a simple and uncomplicated reason negated all the more tangled arguments that spun around in her head.
He liked her? No expectation for anything different, no change or carefulness involved in maintaining a facade that might keep him happy? The admission was suddenly as freeing as the way he had conceded his argument on property rights, his lack of malice so unlike her dead husband that it had made her almost