‘The pirate? I am beginning to think that your family has as many secrets as I do.’
‘Which is why I tell them to you in the first place. Were you a woman without any past, I could not say a word.’
‘I would always take care of any confidences, no matter what.’
He smiled. ‘I know.’
Lord, Taris thought as he dressed that evening for the Davis country ball. He should tell Bea of his feelings for her, but something stopped him.
His blindness, if the truth were to be told and a dependence that he found repugnant, for the dream had been coming more frequently lately. The dream of the darkness without even a hint of light, lost in eternal black. The weariness and worry of it left him on edge but the child they had conceived together was also growing and the words that Beatrice had given him in the light of day as they made love demanded a response. From him.
Could he tell her everything?
Tell her of his fear and abhorrence of dependence and of pity. Tell her that his relationships with others were harder to maintain now with the sludge thicker, and negotiating a room full of people almost impossible without help.
Her help. He liked the feel of her arm against his, guiding him, lightly. He liked the way she stayed with him and talked, her easy conversation allowing him time to adjust and to avoid the pitfalls that he so often encountered.
He seldom took risks and yet today he had known that the door was unlocked. Anyone might have walked in. His fists tightened at his side as he realised what was happening to him.
Bea was making him live again. Live again even with the fear of tripping up, of being exposed, of having others seeing him in a compromised position.
He swallowed and swallowed again. If he lost her…No, he shook his head. He would not lose her, ever, and tonight when they were home from the party he swore that he would make her understand exactly what she meant to him and why.
Chapter Fifteen
Taris led Beatrice into the Davis soiree, his hand across her own.
‘I seldom attended these sort of outings until recently,’ he said to her as they came into the ballroom.
She smiled. ‘What has changed your mind, my lord?’
‘ You by my side.’ His eyes softened as he said it.
‘A lovely compliment,’ she returned.
‘Oh, I have many more, Beatrice-Maude. Later tonight, if you would let me, I could share them with you.’
‘Later tonight?’ she queried with a laugh. ‘Is that a promise?’
‘Indeed.’ The humour in his voice was easily heard. ‘And may I say that you look very beautiful this evening.’
‘You can see me?’
‘Imagination has its advantages.’
‘Such as?’
‘In my mind you are wearing the gown drenched in perfume that I found you in after returning from London.’
‘Rather revealing at a country ball?’
‘And your hair is down, floating in curls around your shoulders like the sirens on the rocks at Li Galli.’
‘If you heard me sing you might choose another analogy, my lord.’
‘Boudicca, then, of the Iceni, leading the Ancient Britons against the Romans?’
‘With poor Nero and his legions such an easy target!’
When they had both stopped laughing, she brought her fingers along the edge of his cheek.
‘Taris?’
He was very still and in the amber of his eyes she determined a vulnerability that she had never seen there before.
‘Yes?’
‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’
‘For making me believe that I am nearly beautiful.’
‘Ahh, Beatrice,’ he returned and held her closer, ’to me you are very much more than that.’
An hour or so later Taris sensed that something was not right. He felt it in the air around him, and in the tension inside him.
Leaving Bea with Emerald and Ashe, he went with Bates on the pretence of retrieving his glasses from his cape.
Normally he would have simply sent his servant, but tonight the prickling sense of unease that he so often had had in his years as an intelligence officer under Wellington was strong, and he needed the silence to listen. As he sifted his way through the crowds, the intuition that had saved him on the Continent was heightened here and intense.
As they gained the entrance hall he heard a muffled thump followed by a distinct groan. Bates drew away, his footsteps easily heard on the marbled flooring, and then another noise followed the first.
‘Bates?’ When his servant did not answer, Taris released the diamond points of his ring before unshackling the handle of his cane.
‘Bates?’ He tried again, feeling a shadow on his skin and a bristling sense of danger. Reaching out, he tried to fend off whatever was coming at him and the glancing angle of a hard wooden object skimmed the flesh on his forearm in a heavy well-aimed blow; a baton if he should make a guess, but his initial twist had been enough to escape the worst of the jolt. The scent of bergamot was strong.
Radcliff! He was here? Raising his sword, Taris slashed before him, but all that was left was air.
Panic settled across calmness as he crouched to his servant on the floor at his feet. Another man lay beside him. Both were out cold, but still breathing.
God. Now the clerk would be after Bea!
Standing, he made for the noise in the room he had just left, running full into a door left half-open. On the rebound his fingers glanced across a pillar he had felt a few moments earlier and, gaining direction, he continued on, the feel of the wall against his palm and then the door. The warmth generated by a great amount of people led him onwards, and in the sludge of grey he determined shapes.
Someone swore at him as he bumped against a hand holding a glass, but he strode past, calling Beatrice’s name as he went. Not softly either. Another person’s foot almost tripped him up and he struggled to keep his balance, slamming into a plant that he had not seen and knocking it over.
No longer careful or camouflaged.
Years of restraint were lost in that one single moment of imagining her being hurt and as people came within his sphere he made no attempt at apology, their loud exclamations ignored completely as he made his way further inside.
‘Beatrice?’ Nothing else mattered now save finding out where she was, though without Bates at his side Taris had little idea of where that might be or of the objects in his way. A chair stopped his progress and he turned to the left.
‘Beatrice-Maude?’ His voice was louder, the cadence hardly recognisable, and the band that had been playing at this end of the room wound down into silence as he continued to shout. His breath came in thick bands of fear and he widened his eyes in an attempt to see something more.
Ghosts of grey blurred into blackness, ephemeral and unrecognisable, the darker shadows of walls giving him at least a clue of the boundaries in the room. Beyond that, bands of sombre murkiness lingered, the detail of the chamber completely lost.
‘Beatrice? Where are you?’ His unsheathed silver blade caused those around him to scatter.
‘Wellingham has a sword. He’s gone bloody mad.’
The