Regency Society. Ann Lethbridge

      ‘Shh, it may not be as bad as you think.’

      ‘I…am…sorry,’ she said, when the tempest seemed past. ‘Rudeness is something that should never be excused and your mother will not be thanking me for my strong opinion at the table.’

      ‘You think you were being rude to offer an opinion? My God, Beatrice, if you cannot say what you think, how could you live?’

      When she burst into tears again Taris knew that he had said the wrong thing.

      ‘I did…didn’t live,’ she whispered after a few more moments. ‘I was always…scared…of him.’

      ‘Your husband?’

      She nodded and her whole body shook. ‘He would hit me if I did not say the right thing.’

      ‘God.’ He pulled her closer.

      ‘He would hit me and hit me and hit me.’

      Her heart raced at twice the normal pace and made Taris want to find the dead man and strangle him anew.

      ‘I have never told anyone that. Not anyone,’ she repeated.

      ‘Then I thank you for telling me,’ he replied, liking the way her fingers buried themselves beneath his jacket as though his warmth was her sanctuary.

      ‘But I won’t be that way again,’ she vowed a few moments later when she had collected herself. ‘If I think something is wrong, I will always say it.’

      ‘Good for you.’

      A teary half-laugh ensued. ‘And I will read books in bed till after midnight should I wish to.’

      ‘Would you read them to me?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘In bed, you say?’

      She laughed again. ‘Thank you for bringing me to your family home.’

      ‘Falder has a legend that insists those who love the place will always return.’

      Return!

      Bea smiled into the superfine of his well-cut jacket. Taris’s voice was soft and his hands were gentle, the firelight on his hair showing up the darkness.

      A good man. A strong man. A man who walked his world with the certainty of one who was both moral and ethical.

      She loved him. She did. She loved Taris Wellingham with an ache. The realisation hit her like a lightning strike.

      My Lord, she had fallen in love. Hopelessly! Desperately! Completely! And she dared not tell him any of it.

      Tell him and risk the end of a friendship.

      Tell him and see pity where respect now stood.

      Tell him and know that he would never love her back.

      Her stomach heaved in a new bout of rising nausea and she swallowed heavily.

      She needed time to regroup, to understand the implications of what was happening between them and to protect herself.

      ‘I would like to rest now…’ She left the ending unfinished and saw the flick of uncertainty as he realised she wanted him gone.

      But he went. Without anger or shouted words or recriminations. A different man completely to Frankwell.

      Taris walked around the gardens, not trusting himself on a steed at this time of night. He would have liked to have saddled up Thunder and run across Falder with the wind in his face and the stars at his back just like he used to. He would have liked to gallop to the highest hill above Fleetness Point and shout at the sky. Shout with anger and pain and agony, not for himself but for Bea. For a younger Bea. Trapped. Fearful. Silent.

      But tonight he could only walk fast around his mother’s garden, the fence along the edge keeping him to a pathway, coriander, rosemary and thyme pungent when his cane brushed the heads of the cuttings his mother had nurtured.

      Behind him he heard footsteps.

      ‘You look like a man who is wrestling with demons.’

      Ashe’s voice.

      Taris shook his head. ‘Not demons, but truth.’

      ‘An even trickier adversary.’

      The wind in the elm trees on the ridges wailed across silence.

      ‘Emerald thinks that Mrs Bassingstoke might be with child. Could it be yours?’

      Taris looked up, trying in the greyness to see anything of his brother’s face and failing. He remained silent as Ashe kept talking. ‘Beatrice reminds me of Emerald. She has the same steely determination and the same vulnerability.’

      ‘Her husband hurt her badly.’ Taris hadn’t meant to say it but the secret was too new and too raw to keep in.

      ‘Hell.’ His brother’s shock underlined his own, making him feel better.

      ‘She spent twelve years married to a bully. Now all she wants is independence.’

      ‘A difficult ask.’

      ‘I know.’

      ‘Tread carefully, then, for I like her and Emerald is determined she wants to keep her.’

      Taris knocked on Bea’s door and she answered it very quickly. He felt the heat of her room against his face and smelt violets.

      ‘May I come in?’

      ‘Yes.’ No hesitation in her assent. He heard the rustle of her nightwear as he followed her inside. Satin, probably. He wished he might have been able to run his hands across the garment and know. But he stood still instead.

      ‘We need to talk, Beatrice-Maude.’

      ‘Because you would like me gone?’ Fear threaded her reply.

      ‘Gone? Lord, Bea.’ He reached out, palm up, and was pleased when he felt her fingers steal into his. A contact. Drawing her closer, he could feel the satin was cool and her hair tickled against the bare skin on his hand. Long and heavy, she had let it down for slumber. The thought made him take in a sharp breath and he scarcely knew how to start.

      ‘When we made love at Maldon, Beatrice, I did not protect you against the possibility of a baby.’

      ‘With my history it does not matter.’

      He smiled into her hair and wished that he could look into her eyes. Really look.

      ‘I think that it might have mattered…’

      She pulled back, but he did not let her go.

      ‘Marry me.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘No?’

      ‘I cannot marry you.’ Her voice was shaky. ‘Last time I married a man who did not love me I learnt the mistake of that.’

      The air around them was charged with question.

      ‘Love?’

      The way he said it was like a dagger to Bea’s heart. Love was not something to be considered or questioned. Love was simply a knowledge, unconscious and untempered.

      She felt the nails of her fingers dig into the skin on her forearm.

       Love me. Love me. Love me.

      But as the silence lengthened she knew that he would not say it, could not say it.

      ‘I have enough money to disappear, to make a new life. You need not feel hemmed in by a simple mistake.’

      ‘Mistake?’ he countered. ‘You think this child is a mistake?’

      ‘This child?’

      ‘Our child.’ His hand fell to her stomach. ‘You must have known.’

      Bea