Regency Society. Ann Lethbridge

tonight.’

      When Eleanor made no effort to look, Sophie nudged her forcibly. ‘The youngest Wellingham brother, Lainie. The one we told you about.’

      The crowd before them thinned a little as people moved forwards and in the space that was left she saw the back of a tall blond man, his hair caught in a short queue at his nape.

      All breath left her body. There was something about the shape of his head and the colour of his hair and the tall strength of him—something familiar.

       No. No. No. Don’t let it be him!

      He began to turn, smiling at the fair woman on his arm, and his dark eyes came up to her own, falling through the distance to a château in Paris, naked, brandy-soused and ruined. The lamplights blurred and the floor, once solid beneath her feet, began to sway, dizzy arcs of denial and horror and something else that she could never have admitted.

      She was glad to feel Diana’s hand beneath her elbow as her knees simply gave way, and the floor was cold beneath her face.

      Stark and utter disbelief kept Cristo still as he tried to make sense of what had just happened. His virgin whore from the Château Giraudon was here, dressed in deep blue finery, her hair pinned in a series of elaborate loops and knots, the blonde wig she had worn in Paris hiding a treasure of russet, chestnut and chocolate.

      ‘My God, it is Eleanor Westbury, Emerald.’ Beatrice-Maude’s voice was concerned. ‘She has fainted. Where is her husband?’

      Husband? The world began to get stranger as Cristo stopped the urge to simply move forwards and pick her up in his arms, the paleness in her face obscured now by others who had hurried to her side.

      A sofa behind them proved to be a godsend and a young man Cristo presumed to be the one Beatrice-Maude spoke of bent down and lifted her onto it. Flashes of sapphire blue could be seen between the forms of concerned helpers as a doctor from the crowd kneeled down with a bag of physician’s tools.

      Within a moment Cristo saw consciousness return and she tried to sit up, the uncertainty in her movements as she swiped away her hair transporting him back to his room at the Château Giraudon. He swallowed and heard a question directed at him. By Asher’s wife, he determined, and there was more than the normal quotient of curiosity in her voice.

      ‘Pardon?’ He was dazed, caught in the quandary of choice. The woman they named Eleanor Westbury had not tried to find him again with her glance, but had kept her eyes carefully downwards, her small hands wringing the fabric in her copious skirt, and the line of her bodice heaving with breath that was too uncertain.

      The muscles of her femininity coiled around his fingers, the scent of sex and release and want and the naked glory of her body unresisting and easy.

      Shaking with the effort of remaining so still, Cristo was wary as the glance of Emerald Wellingham met his in question.

      ‘Do you know her?’

      He shook his head, not risking speech, and listened as Beatrice-Maude related to Taris exactly what was happening in a low monologue.

      Why would she do that when the scene was right in front of him?

      Another truth hit him as he turned: because his brother could not see any of it. When he looked to Ashe for the clarification of what he suspected, his oldest brother nodded. Almost imperceptibly.

      The world turned on its axis, skewered by time and knowledge, no little truths these. No tiny unimportant discoveries.

      The French whore who had been brought naked and willing to his bed was none other than a married English lady of the very first order and his brother Taris was blind.

      ‘Here is Martin Westbury, the Earl of Dromorne, now.’ Emerald spoke again and with interest Cristo sought out the man she had identified.

      He watched as Eleanor’s husband, old and grey and confined to a chair, was wheeled to her side, watched how her fingers curled into his when he came there, the affection evident in such an action making him turn away.

      ‘That is Lord Dromorne?’ His question was blurted out with little finesse. The man looked as though he should be in a sanatorium somewhere, the colour of his skin a pallid grey.

      Emerald nodded. ‘Yes, and it is rather a love match, for he is very wealthy and simply dotes upon her.’

      So Eleanor Westbury was a woman with a position to keep up in society? A well-heeled and wellbrought-up lady, according to all he had heard of her, and one who had no place at all being in the backstreets of Paris’s night-time debauchery.

      He was glad when the chimes sounded for patrons to return to their seats as it gave him a chance of escape and to mull over all that he had learned.

      Would her illness be serious? Had she seen him?

      A thousand questions turned in his head and yet in the midst of shock and disbelief another truth began to fester.

      He wanted to see her again, wanted it with a desperation that made his breath shallow with aching.

      ‘I am all right now. Truly, Martin, I am all right. I do not know what came over me. Perhaps it was the closeness of the air or something that disagreed with me at dinner.’

      Her husband had made so much of her swoon that Eleanor just wished he might take her words as truth and leave the matter alone. The Comte de Caviglione! Cristo Wellingham was the Comte de Caviglione with his velvet bed and his gauze-covered mirrors.

      ‘But you are always so strong. I have never before seen you so much as cry—?’ He stopped.

      Eleanor squeezed his hand as much in gratitude as in shock. Tucked up in her bedroom, with soft down pillows at her back and a fire lit to banish the slight chill of an early summer evening, everything was in its place. Normal. Usual. She did not even dare to think about what might happen tomorrow.

      For tonight she was safe. Home. She pressed down the guilt of five long years.

      Come the morning there might be other topics that raged in the drawing rooms of London’s elite. Stories of ruin and stupidity. Cautionary tales about how the foolish ways of young women could so easily lead to the demise of reputation.

      Letting go of her breath carefully, she answered her husband’s questions in the manner of one who only had small worries to consider and was glad when he finally kissed her on her forehead and left for repose in his own sleeping chamber.

      When the door shut behind him she blew out the candles on her nightstand and slipped out of bed, opening the curtains and the window to let in the moonlight and the breeze. She felt freer in the darkness than she had done all day and was glad for the cool air above the heat of the fire. Martin felt the cold in a way that she never had, immobility adding to the problems he suffered with his circulation.

      Her brow was clammy and sticky, the revelations of the evening leaving peril and fear as a crawling shock across her skin.

      Cristo, the third son of the late Duke of Carisbrook was le Comte de Caviglione?

      Had he seen her? Would he remember? His hair was shorter than it had been in Paris and his clothes were very different. But the sheer force of him was exactly the same: magnetic, dangerous, menacing. He looked like the panther she had seen in onyx a few months before in a little antique shop off Regent Street. Ranging across its territory, marking it out. Fine linen and wool did not disguise any of Cristo Wellingham’s contours or dull the measure in his glance. When her eyes fell on the charcoal portrait next to her bed, the risk of all she loved, all she held dear, was heightened again.

      Florencia: her pale hair silvered and her cheekbones falling in exactly the same line as her father’s.

      A letter came for her the next morning.

      It was not monogrammed, so she was unprepared for the missive. This time, however, she was alone in the quiet of her room, the pile of mail brought in by her maid and deposited in the silver platter on her desk.

      Cristo