Regency Society. Ann Lethbridge

it again. ‘No, that can’t be. I am barren.’

      ‘With your husband that might have been the case, but with me…’

      ‘Pregnant?’ She could not go on. The word quivering between them like a barely believable truth!

      ‘Ahh, sweetheart.’ He stood, not touching, but only a breath away. ‘You did not know?’ Gentle sorrow tempered his question. ‘I thought that you must have known.’

      ‘I thought I was ill.’ Tears blurred her eyes, but she willed them back. ‘I would not hold you to any promises.’

      ‘It is too late for that, I think, with a new life growing.’

      His finger ran up her arm and then across her cheek and settled on the soft skin of her forehead. ‘Where in all of this lies the place for compromise? Is it here?’ His hand fell lower. ‘Or here?’ he questioned, as the beat of her heart began to thud. ‘Anything could be possible…’

      She should have said nay. Should have loosed his hold and stepped back. Should have said that the joining of their flesh was only a fleeting thing, ephemeral and unimportant. But she could not say that and mean it, as his warmth spread across her, increasing her desire, and the man who was the Lord of Darkness lifted her in his arms and took her to bed.

      He was not there when she woke, the warmth in the sheets long gone. So she lay with her hands across her stomach, trying in the silence to listen, to understand and believe that another soul lay within her, waiting for its own chance at life.

      A child. A Wellingham child. A child conceived on a snowy night when the old fetters of restraint had been washed away and freedom left in its place. She smiled and wondered if tears were the preserve of impending motherhood as a warm wetness ran down her cheeks.

      Victory.

      Finally.

      And so unexpected.

      Joy juxtaposed with worry. Would Taris now feel bound to her in a way he might not have otherwise?

      She shook away the idea as nonsense. A family. Home. Unity. Love. She could not turn away from this astonishing second chance.

      When she came downstairs after eleven o’clock she learnt that Taris had taken the carriage for Ipswich and would not be back again until the morrow.

      Emerald had given her the news as she sat at her own breakfast.

      ‘Perhaps he had some business that could not wait to be attended to?’

      ‘Perhaps.’ The poached eggs on toast that she had selected were suddenly very hard to swallow.

      ‘May I offer you a piece of advice, Beatrice?’ Emerald’s look was measured. She waited until Bea nodded.

      ‘The Wellingham men are hard to catch, but very easy to keep. Once they love, they love well.’

      ‘Taris does not love me. He has never said it.’

      She blurted the truth out like a green girl, though Emerald’s smile unnerved her.

      ‘Taris was an intelligence officer under Wellington. For years he scouted across Northern France and Spain under the guise of one from those climes and never once was he unmasked. Did you know that he speaks fluent Spanish and French and was one of the finest marksmen the army had ever seen?’ Stopping, she took a sip of strong black tea. ‘When he came to the Caribbean to rescue my husband from the clutches of a pirate colony…’ Emerald noted Bea’s surprise at this revelation ‘…he was the only man to have ever discovered their lair and the only man to leave it on his terms. The bullet hit him as he dragged Asher out into the sea and to safety.’

      ‘A bullet?’

      ‘His sight was damaged when he saved my husband and because of that I owe him everything!’ She leaned forwards. ‘Give him a chance to know what it is he thinks. Give him the same knowledge that I had to give to Ashe.’

      ‘The knowledge?’

      That he cannot live without you.’

      Bea pulled back. ‘I do not think…’

      Emerald’s fingers covered her own.

      ‘Taris has a need to understand that the man he is now is the one you want, not the one he once was. He needs to redefine himself and only you can help him do that.’

      ‘By loving him?’ Finally Beatrice saw where she was going with her argument.

      ‘Exactly.’

       Chapter Fourteen

      The talk with Emerald turned her sadness into something different altogether.

      Challenge now fired her imagination and the new ruthless single-mindedness was as freeing as it was unexpected. By the next evening she was watching for Taris to return to Falder, the plan in her mind fully formed.

      She had borrowed from Emerald a nightgown of lace and silk and the violet attar she wore had been sprinkled liberally over it. Around her bed candles fluttered, the scent of flowers vivid in the wax.

      Now she had a need of only the man himself, though as the hours raced on into night she began to think that he might not come at all.

      Bates had assured him that the light was still showing beneath Beatrice’s door, though Taris knew the hour to be past twelve. Thanking his man, he waited as his footsteps receded and lent against the wall to mull over his options, for his talk with the solicitor had confirmed his own suspicions.

      He had spent the day in Ipswich after contacting Beatrice’s lawyer, Robert Nelson, and the man had had a story to tell that had been entirely different from the one James Radcliff had told.

      ‘I trusted the young man and all I was repaid with were lies. If I were to see the scoundrel again, I’d have a few choice words to blister his ears with before I set the police upon him, I can tell you that, for it seems that he had been siphoning off rightful money for all of the three years he was in my employment and withholding funds from Mrs Bassingstoke with her husband so dreadfully ill.’

      ‘And the ledgers you talk of. Where are they now?’

      ‘Not here. I have looked high and low for them—if we can lay our hands on them the proof will be irrefutable.’

      Suddenly things began to make more sense to Taris. ‘Did Radcliff know that he was under suspicion?’

      The man nodded.

      ‘Lord.’ If Radcliff had thought the books were with Bea in the carriage he might have sawn through the axle in an attempt to reclaim them. The accident in Regent Street could have been his doing too, for the scent of the man had been in the house when they had returned. Perhaps he had paid an urchin to create an incident, giving him the time he needed to visit her house. Without the ledgers any case would be far harder to prove and paper was easily destroyed. Danger began to mount, for time would only sharpen a man’s desire for what it was he sought, especially one with blood on his hands and a future that was at best uncertain.

      Returning to Falder to see if Bea stayed safe was suddenly vitally important, for if there was any risk to her at all…

      The memory of her refusal of marriage still rankled and the walls he had put up against a world that was becoming increasingly darker seemed more of a prison now than a fortress. Isolation and exile had their drawbacks and his inability to be honest was one of them. Still, years of coming to terms with his loss of sight could not be easily translated into acceptance and it had been a long time since he had ever let the more frivolous emotions of love and trust take over from caution and denial.

      He wanted back what he had been and knew that he could never have it. He doubted he could hit a target now at ten yards, let alone a hundred, and even the smallest trip to town involved the eyes of his man Bates. Always dependent, never alone.

      He laid his hands