Regency Society Collection Part 1. Sarah Mallory

      ‘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 Wellingham’s handwriting was just as she would have expected it to be, boldly fashioned in capitals and in ink that was the colour of the midnight sky in high summer.

      He wanted to see her when she could find the time. Just that! There was no explanation of why or where or how. Her feeling of dread doubled at the thought of refusal. If she did, what could be the consequences? Would he blackmail her, bully her into paying for his silence, or might he demand some service … again? For the second time in under twelve hours she felt the breathless terror of vulnerability.

      She could, of course, tell no one. Martin hadn’t a notion as to Wellingham’s other identity and no other soul save Isobel, her friend in Paris, knew the real truth about her missing months in France. She shook her head and banished the worry. So far this morning there had not been a whisper about the reasons for her ridiculous faint at the theatre last night.

      This was something that she had to face alone. But where could they safely meet? What possible destination would hide them from others, but be public enough to protect her? She needed an urban location, she knew that, but the parks were too crowded.

      She also needed a destination that she might walk to, for her demands of a carriage made ready for her sole use would only incite curiosity given that she seldom ventured anywhere alone.

      The thought made her start. Once she had been brave and free and adventurous, any challenge taken on with relish and delight. Like the delivery of her grandfather’s letter! She winced at the memory and pushed the thought aside, her eyes straying to the pile of books beside her bed from Hookham’s Lending Library in Bond Street.

      A library. The spacious and elegant area of the place was public enough to be safe without being overfilled and they could repair to the assembly rooms on the first floor if there should happen to be anyone she recognised. There were chairs in the alcoves with wide windows that would protect her privacy without giving up her security. Besides, she walked to the place each week to exchange her books for new ones and she often went alone. It was the one place where she did so.

      But when? Not tomorrow—she could not face Cristo Wellingham quite so soon. Wednesday was the morning she generally chose as her day to visit the reading rooms and if she stuck to routine she would be much safer.

      With a quick scrawl she instructed him on the time and the place and, sealing the letter, put it in her reticule to post.

      Chapter Six

      Cristo sat by the window in a chair allowing him good access to the arrangement of the rooms. Eleanor Westbury was late by about twenty minutes, but he had decided to wait just in case some unforeseen difficulty had waylaid her.

      He was glad that he had when he saw a figure dressed in deep blue hurrying in the door and, when she tipped her face to look around and her visage was seen beneath her ample summer hat, he knew it to be her.

      Standing so that she might see the movement, he waited, though she did not come over immediately, but went to the desk instead and placed a pile of books before a small, efficient-looking man.

      The librarian, Cristo guessed. He saw her speak to him for a few moments before traversing the room, picking one book from this shelf and another from the next. He doubted that she truly wished to read such tomes when he noticed one to be on the progress of the burgeoning railways, a book he had already struggled through a few months before.

      Still, with an armful of reading material, she had given herself an excuse to wend her way towards the chairs at his end of the room, for there were places here to sit undisturbed and make one’s choice as to what to take home.

      ‘Lord Cristo! I do hope that we can make this very quick,’ she said as she finally stood before him.

      Her voice was exactly as he remembered it, though now she spoke in English, the King’s English, each vowel rounded and proper, a thread of irritation easily heard.

      ‘Thank you for coming, Lady Dromorne.’

      Her whole face blushed bright as their eyes caught and he noticed that her hands shook as she sat down and placed the chosen books in her lap.

      ‘I cannot stay very long at all, my lord.’

      ‘Are you recovered from your malade of the other day?’ Damn, he should not have used the French word for illness, he thought, for the frown on her forehead deepened considerably. He regrouped. ‘You look very different …’ Another mistake. He usually prided himself on his tact, and yet here he was like a tongue-tied and obtuse youth.

      Fury marred the blueness of her eyes.

      ‘Different?’ she whispered, the anger in it making her undertone hoarse. ‘If it is the past that you are referring to, I should think that it might be wise to know that I should not hesitate to relate back to your family your own part in our unfortunate meeting, should you choose to be indiscreet, my lord.’

      He ignored her rebuke. ‘Why were you there, then? In Paris, at the Château?’ He wanted to add ‘dressed as a whore’, but the rawness of the word in the light of all she had become seemed inappropriate and so he tempered his query.

      She looked around, checking the nearness of any listening ears. ‘I was in the city visiting a good friend and I was at the Château Giraudon because of my own foolishness.’

      ‘You