‘Then perhaps we could manage it for a little while.’
Florencia clapped her hands and looked up, her eyes as wide as saucers. ‘What shall you wear, Mama?’
‘You might like to help me choose, my darling,’ Her daughter’s returned smile made the day bearable again.
‘It seems the Dromornes are often out and about in Bath, Cristo. They were more circumspect here from what I remember, though the husband’s ailment appears much recovered.’
Jack Henshaw, Asher’s oldest friend, placed The Times down on the mahogany table and downed the last of the brandy in his glass. ‘She is cutting quite a figure in the city, according to the article. An Original, the writer supposes, and all the women copying her style.’ He frowned as memory was sifted. ‘I recall her being quite staid in her taste. A young woman dressed as a rather older one, do you not agree?’
Cristo shook his head and declared no opinion whatsoever, but sat perfectly still as Jack droned on.
‘It says that Lady Dromorne rarely misses the chance to socialise and that she has begun to take up the habit of leaving every party awfully late.’
‘And her husband?’
‘Is home in bed waiting, perhaps. A man of singular trust and devotion, poor fool him.’
‘You are implying her to be loose?’
Jack smiled and his eyes met Cristo’s through the glasses he had begun to wear whilst reading.
‘Your tone is more than impartial, Cris.’
‘And your hearing is as poor as your eyesight, Jack.’
‘Eleanor Westbury is described as the most beautiful woman to ever grace Bath.’ Again his brow crinkled. ‘Perhaps the air there suits her constitution well. It has been a good while, after all, since they departed this place and settled in the country.’
Nine months, two weeks and three days, Cristo thought, and hated himself for the counting, though the appearance of Taris and Asher at the club allowed the subject of the Dromornes to at least be dropped.
Or so he had thought until Asher raised their name again.
‘There has been an accident, Cris. In Bath.’
His heart stopped. He swore it did and swore, too, that all the blood from his face drained into pale.
‘Eleanor or Florencia?’ He could not be careful with their names, not when they could already be lost to him.
‘Martin Westbury. He was hit by a carriage as he crossed the street in his chair yesterday. He was killed instantly.’
‘Lord.’ Jack gestured to the waiter to bring a bottle and more glasses. ‘So the illness that he suffered from for all those years didn’t kill him after all? What irony is there in that?’
Taris answered directly. ‘The chance of a quick death as opposed to a lingering one. I think he could count himself fortunate.’
‘Was anyone else hurt?’ Cristo had found his voice again.
‘No. It seems his servant jumped well out of the way.’
‘A loyal subject.’ Jack laughed, though Taris was not quite finished speaking.
‘Would it be wise to go and give our condolences, do you think? The Dromorne family is repairing back here to London as we speak.’
‘Why the hell would we want to do that, Taris? The woman almost killed Cristo.’ Asher’s question was harsh, his expression puzzled.
‘Beatrice felt it the right thing to do when she heard the news. She said Cris would probably feel the same.’
‘Yes. I’d like to go.’ Cristo was infinitely grateful for the suggestion.
‘Then we will go together.’ Ashe laid his hand on his shoulder. Martin Westbury was dead and Eleanor was alone and yet all Cristo could feel was numbness.
Eleanor had dressed Florencia in her black dress and tied the ribbon at her waist, placing the satin so that it hung in two long strips down to the hem. Her own gown held not a hint of any colour save for darkness, the black bombazine wrapped around her figure in the most sombre of shades.
Dead. Martin. Not of illness or of lack of breath, but of an accident. She wished she could have had one chance to say goodbye. Another thought, however, lurked in the background of the more charitable ones.
Relief.
Pushing the word down, she turned to the bishop who had come to the house to give his sincere condolences on the loss of her spouse. He also assured her that a marriage of tenderness and love in this earthly realm, such as theirs had indeed been, would one day be repeated in the celestial one if only she was patient.
‘I will certainly remember the thought, Bishop Pilkington,’ she returned and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, her tears those for the man who had found her in the chapel alone in Aix-en-Provence and taken her and her newly born daughter to Florence. With love.
‘There have been a great many people who have come to pay your husband their last respects over the past few days.’
Eleanor nodded, Martin’s standing in the community of the ton had always been substantial and his wealth cemented his position.
‘I noticed the Carisbrook conveyances pulling up as I arrived here.’
Eleanor dropped the Bible she held and it fell to the ground with a loud bang. When she made no move to bend and pick it up a maidservant hovering in the shadows bobbed down to retrieve it.
‘Thank you.’ The tremble in her voice was obvious and the bishop reached out for her hand and held it within his own.
‘God sends us these trials in life, my dear, but he also sends us the wherewithal to rise above them and create a new journey.’
The Carisbrook conveyances? Cristo Wellingham. Had he married? Had he come to mock her? Had he brought his family to demand the return of her daughter now that her husband was gone?
Another thought also struck her and she unfastened the piece of black silk around her neck, bending to her daughter and winding the fabric around her hair to hide the silver.
‘It is good manners to cover our hair when we have lost somebody very dear,’ she explained as Florencia reached up to see just what her mother had fashioned.
‘Like your one, Mama?’
The veil was pulled down and the lace let through only imprints of what was beside her. Still, with a thick barrier between herself and the man who had never contacted her again, she allowed herself to be lead from the small parlour out into the larger one across the hall, her daughter’s hand firmly kept within her own.
Cristo looked up and Eleanor was there, a veil pulled across her face, hiding everything. Florencia stood next to her, black silk strangely placed around her head, small sprigs of silver escaping the concoction. She looked taller than when he had last seen her, a gold chain with a locket at her neck lending her the air of an older girl.
Eleanor Westbury, on the other hand, had lost weight and a waist that had always been small was now worryingly thin. The chestnut of her hair beneath the veil was highlighted by the darkness of her clothes.
Beatrice next to him laid her hand across his arm, just for a moment, and Emerald on her other side caught his eyes, the turquoise in them, as she observed Florencia, holding an unnerving knowledge.
He looked away. The room was dressed with white lilies and new spring roses. A family banner in purple wool was draped over a large portrait of the Earl of Dromorne set up on a plinth by the window.
Cristo imagined the soul of Westbury castigating him from Heaven, a ghoulish form