Regency Society. Ann Lethbridge

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 of sullen morality.

      Distance, it might say, and the keeping of a promise, the spectre questioning his very right to be in the house.

      Reaching down for the headrest of the sofa in front of him, he held on as if it were a lifeline in a rapidly sinking ship.

      A man of the church he recognised as Bishop Pilkington was making much of his departure, his monologue a solemn and depressing piece reminding those in the room of the impermanence of life and of the coming of death.

      ‘Everyone here will die,’ he began and caught Cristo’s eye with an added fervour. ‘Every single one of us here will die just as this man has and be welcomed into the kingdom of our Lord.’

      Now Cristo knew why he seldom ventured into a religious institution or sought out the company of those within it. He coughed to clear his throat and Eleanor turned, her head angled. Listening. He saw the shape of her right ear adorned with a single perfect pearl. Lust shot through his body like a spear, unexpectedly brutal.

      Shifting, he caught Asher’s eye and looked away just as quickly, the tenure of his breath shaky. Reciting the conjugations of verbs in Latin helped to calm him. His mind ran across sequences determining pattern as his daughter shifted in her seat, one hand reaching for an itch on her neck. He watched her fingers and her nails and a bruise that sat at the base of her thumb. A small injury. Another moment lost to him. He wished he might have reached forwards and touched her, held his hand across her own and felt her warmth.

      But of course he could do nothing of the sort. He was a stranger and a man whom she had seen only once in the heart of chaos. He dropped his gaze as she looked at him and sat perfectly still.

      ‘Stop fiddling, Florencia.’ Eleanor whispered the words and felt Cristo Wellingham there like an ache that had no ending. Just to the left of her. Five feet away. If she closed her eyes she might smell him, the scent of man and strength and warmness. She hoped he did not see the racing pulse in her throat or the tremor in her jaw. Her eyes rested on Martin’s portrait and on the flowers and the crest and the small likeness of Heaven that her daughter had placed there on the plinth. Hidden beneath the lilies. A drawing of the sun and puppies and all the bon-bons in the world. Given that Martin had hated animals and anything very sweet, that left only the sun to see him on his way.

      The Dromorne villa in Florence had been drowned in summer when she had arrived there, grey with fatigue and heartsick. Her tiny son had gone and Italy was a place too far for his soul to find her, but she remembered the warmth as she had stepped from the carriage into the light. She had done little else that long and hot summer save sleep and eat.