Regency Society Collection Part 1. Sarah Mallory

      She nodded. ‘I had heard that the Parisian fashionable set were somewhat … daring in their dress, or their lack of it. I took it to be a truth when we were all bundled inside together. I certainly had no thought to join them.’

      ‘God.’

      ‘The brandy, however, was all my own fault and I have not touched a drop of alcohol since.’

      ‘God,’ he repeated again, and drew his hand through his hair. Not her fault, but his own. He should have seen that she was everything the others were not, should have read the clues with more acumen and aptitude. He was a man paid for uncovering duplicity, after all, and yet he had let himself be duped by a pretty face and an unexpected gift. His conscience pricked sharp. If a man had treated his sister as he had treated Eleanor, he would have killed him.

      Cristo suddenly wished he could have spirited her away to some far-off and unreachable location, and one where he could replace the lines of worry on her forehead with laughter and ease.

      He was surprised how very much he wanted that.

      Yet still there were unanswered questions! ‘There was a letter left in the folds of the bed-coverings that morning when you left. I presume it was your doing?’

      ‘It was.’

      ‘Had you read the missive?’

      ‘The envelope was sealed in wax. I would hardly break my dead grandfather’s trust.’

      ‘Your grandfather?’

      ‘I was Eleanor Bracewell-Lowen before marrying Martin Westbury, the Earl of Dromorne. Nigel was my brother.’

      Her short, sharp nod encompassed a wealth of censure and the history between them solidified again. Every time he met this lady his world spun into an unbidden and opposite direction.

      Nigel Bracewell-Lowen’s blood dripping onto his hands as he tried to stem the flow from the wound in his throat, the empty brandy bottle before them denoting another evening of unbridled excess. Wild youth and wilder morals. Consequences had had no credence in the riotous foolhardy waywardness of Cristo’s pubescence. Until Nigel!

      ‘My father killed himself the following year.’ Her voice again, layering guilt. ‘So it is well that you know that you have already taken the full measure of happiness from my family.’

      He shook his head, at a loss for words as he reached out for her hand, and in that second he knew that he had just made the second biggest mistake of his life.

      It was like the newfangled electricity tingling up his arm and pouring into the very depths of his soul, filling it up with need, lust, urgency and spineless warmth.

      Snatching his fingers away, he looked straight at her. The blood had run from her face, the blush now a pale and ghostly white as the books on her lap fell to the floor.

      Everyone looked. The librarian with his thick spectacles, the two women over by the door, and the group of men who perused the latest daily newssheets! Yet instead of bending to pick up the volumes, he could do nothing save gaze back at her and remember.

      Remember the way she had felt beneath him, lying on burgundy velvet as he had teased her into response. Remember her wetness and abandon and seduction.

      ‘Can I help you, sir?’ The man at the desk was now right beside him. ‘Are you quite well, Lady Dromorne?’

      Cristo had to give Eleanor her due as she smiled and turned to the librarian, her voice husky.

      ‘I am all right, thank you, Mr Jones. This gentleman was just asking me about the lending system here. He is new to London and it seems that he may want to join.’

      The librarian’s face brightened considerably.

      ‘If you will follow me to the desk then, sir, I would be pleased to show you the details.’

      Cristo stood, just as Eleanor did, her wedding ring catching the light when she straightened her bonnet. Further and further away from the woman in Paris, the fetters of responsibility and obligation chained across feeling. Married. Happily.

      He could do nothing save stand and watch her leave, and the hand with which he had touched her lay fisted tight in the pocket of his jacket, fingers curled around self-reproach.

      She should not have gone, should not have met him alone or allowed him to touch her, because now blackmail was the very least of her worries.

      Leaning back against the seat beneath the trees in one corner of Hyde Park, she liked the way summer crept into the shadows. Misty almost, overlaid with the dust of sunshine. Her heart beat with a rhythm she had felt only once before and she pressed down hard on the sensation, needing this small time to recover her wits.

      Forgotten. Alive. Decadent. Intemperate.

      Martin’s age and impotence had been the one reason that she had accepted his proposal of marriage and the core of her contentment with him had been unquestioned until today.

      Until Cristo Wellingham’s fingers had unleashed a feeling in her body that was undeniable. Like water to a desert, unfolding into life, again, unbidden, and the crouching chaos ready to strike just as it had before.

      Well, she could not let it!

      Martin preferred the quiet life and the unexpected was not to be encouraged. ‘A peaceful life is a happy life,’ he was fond of saying, such a sentiment appealing after the débâcle in Paris. Her hands threaded themselves through the supple leather strap of her reticule, tying knots with her fingers. She did not catch the eye of a single person walking by, but sat very still, summoning calm.

      ‘Lady Dromorne?’ The question came quietly; looking up, Eleanor saw Lady Beatrice-Maude Wellingham had stopped before her.

      Smoothing out the crinkles in her gown, Eleanor tucked back her hair before standing. She knew Beatrice-Maude Wellingham only slightly and when the woman dismissed her maid to a respectable distance worry blossomed.

      ‘How fortunate to find you here, Lady Dromorne, for there is a small matter that I wish to speak to you about that has been rather a worry to me.’

      Eleanor indicated the seat next to her and the other sat as she did. ‘I hope, then, that I might be of assistance.’

      ‘It is a matter pertaining to my brother-in-law, Cristo Wellingham.’

      The name lay between them like an unsheathed dagger, sharp and brutal, and Eleanor was lost for a reply.

      ‘As you may be aware, he has returned home after many years abroad and as a family we would very much like him to stay in England. It is in that respect that I am seeking your counsel.’

      ‘My counsel?’ The words were choked out, almost inaudible, and Beatrice-Maude Wellingham looked at her strangely.

      ‘Perhaps this is not a good time to worry you with anything,’ she began. ‘If your health is fragile after the theatre …’

      ‘No, I am perfectly recovered.’

      Eleanor hated the panic she could hear on the edge of denial and the question she could determine in the eyes of the one opposite.

      ‘Very well. It is just that it has come to my notice that you may have a vested interest in seeing my brother-in-law unsettled here in England.’

      ‘Your notice?’ Everything she had feared was coming about. Had Cristo Wellingham confided the truth of her predicament to his family?

      ‘Through various sources, you understand, and most of them quite reliable.’ The woman opposite seemed to have no idea of the horror that was fast consuming Eleanor. ‘I realize, of course, that the whole predicament may be rather difficult for you, but hoped that charity might persuade you to see the facts as we see them.’

      ‘As you see them?’

      ‘Many years have since passed and as his crime was only one of passion …’