Florencia laughed and suddenly reached out to his hair, her small fingers threading through the colour. ‘Your hair is exactly the same as mine,’ she said before returning to the book and flicking the page.
Over their daughter’s head Cristo’s eyes met hers, a scar she had not seen before marking the skin beneath the left one. The fight on the docks had scarred him and she wished she might have touched it, wished she might have simply leant over and run her finger across the sharp angles in his cheek. But she sat there, listening to the explanations of each page and the interested comments that followed them until the book was finished, a chronicle of everyday life explained away in ink.
‘There is a stretch of grass just through those trees. I saw it in the carriage as we came in. Would you ladies like a walk?’
The question was addressed to Eleanor, but it was Florencia who answered.
‘Oh, yes, please, Mama. Please let us have a walk. I could take Patch.’
Eleanor weighed up her options.
‘Very well, but just for a few moments.’ She hated that part in her voice that sounded so stern and tight.
Cristo felt his daughter’s hand creep into his own as they made their way through the hedge and into the open ground.
Florencia was small and fragile like Eleanor, but that was where any similarity ended. Her hair and her eyes and the shape of her face were exactly his own and she played the piano as he did. A great weight of love tugged his heart into a different beat and he wished that they might have been truly a family taking in the air before going back home.
When Florencia skipped off to pick a bunch of daisies Eleanor was quick to use the moment.
‘I did not ever think that you would travel to High Wycombe.’
‘Indeed, Lady Dromorne, I may not have if I had known you to be here. In London when you did not return to help me I promised to forget you. But Emerald asked me to look at the property for her—a ruse on her part to get us together, no doubt.’
‘I could not come—’
He broke in. ‘Or write or send a messenger? It was only that I needed, Eleanor, and instead there was nothing.’
‘I could do none of these things you speak of because Diana, Martin’s sister, kidnapped me and took me up north. She fed me laudanum until a servant who had a brother in our London town house got word to Martin. By then you were free of all charges.’
‘Diana kidnapped you?’ He could barely take in the truth of what she told him. ‘Why would she do that?’
‘For her daughters’ sake, after I told her that you were Florencia’s father. She wanted the family reputation protected against scandal, you see, and thought that was the way to do it.’
‘Lord, you could have died. Where the hell is she now?’
‘In Scotland. She has promised not to return to London for a very long time.’
The silence between them grew; clearing her throat, Eleanor began uncertainly. ‘I realise that Martin came to see you and you made it very clear to him that you did not wish for any further communication between us.’
‘Your husband told you that?’
‘He did. I understand how very easily I could be an embarrassment to your family, but …’
The words were whipped from her as eyes of ice bored into her own.
‘I never gave Martin Westbury such a message. Dromorne said that you blamed me for everything and that you would not risk the life of Florencia again after the débâcle at the docks. He said that you wished me dead with all of your heart. I took that as the truth and withdrew.’
Eleanor shook her head. ‘Martin told you that?’ The sheer enormity of such a betrayal was impossible to contemplate. ‘I cannot believe that of him …’
‘He forbade me visit Bath under oath for as long as you resided there and said you never wanted to set eyes on me again. Given the events that had unfolded with Beraud, I assented. You appeared to enjoy a social life that kept you out till all hours, according to the newssheets, and never once tried to regain contact. It was hard to believe otherwise.’
‘He used us both, then.’
As she spoke he saw the girl on the bed at the Château Giraudon, her eyes full of hurt and despair, though when Patch gambolled back to jump at her skirts with his long black-and-white ears blowing in the wind her expression changed.
‘The dog was a lovely gift, but we cannot possible accept it, for a cousin of Martin’s will take over the Dromorne properties and I have yet to find a new home.’
‘Then he can stay with me until you are ready for him.’
She shook her head. ‘If the world sees you together with Florencia …’
He stopped her by placing his finger on her lower lip, the wind catching at her hair and throwing the length of chestnut back across her shoulders. For a moment he felt he could not breath with the sheer desire he felt for her, the bodice of her gown tight across breasts he had once fondled and suckled. The ache in his groin had him bring his coat farther across his thighs. God, he was becoming erect in the middle of the day with his daughter not ten feet from them. It was Eleanor who looked away first.
‘If people talk of the likeness between you, it will be difficult for all of us.’
He laughed and wished that he hadn’t as the line between her eyes deepened.
‘You worry too much, Eleanor, and I think already it may be too late for that. Did you think to hide her for ever?’
‘No. But I don’t want her hurt.’
‘I promise that she will not be.’
When he hesitated on the path she did the same, the distance between them lessened by the action. Reaching out his hand, he took her gloveless fingers into his own.
‘When was she born?’
Eleanor took in a breath. She had known, of course, that he would ask, that the facts hidden would soon not be and that a father had as much right as a mother to all the small details of childhood.
‘On July the first in 1826 in Aix-en-Provence. I travelled there after Paris. After that I went to Florence. Martin had offered help and I took hold of such a chance.’
‘Because you could not come to me.’
Not a question, but a rebuke. Of himself. Of his part in all that had happened. For the first time she thought of how young they both had been.
‘I needed a safe place, Cristo.’
He glanced up at the use of his name. ‘And if you had returned, I would have given you one.’
But she did not let him off so lightly. ‘A mansion that was renowned for its debauchery and its licentiousness and a kitchen whose food was counted by the number of brandy bottles lining its shelves? I think in truth that there are better homes for a little girl to be raised in.’
‘I’ll sell the Château Giraudon and buy a place in London for you. I have other money, too.’
‘No, she stays a Westbury until …’
Until you marry me.
Lord, she had so very nearly said it. Her hand came to her mouth and she was silent, though the determination that had kept her going all the way up here and through all the days of waiting for him to follow, began to gel.
The sheer negligence of care made her dizzy. ‘Until?’ His eyes were as dark as she had ever seen them, the pupils lost in ebony.
‘Until I marry again.’
‘You have someone in mind?’
‘Indeed,