Regency Society Collection Part 1. Sarah Mallory

and the conversation turned to more general things.

      Taris arrived about ten minutes after Honour had departed. His man Bates was with him, though after seeing his master into the room he slipped out of it. His brother had a bright yellow flower threaded through his lapel.

      ‘You look festive?’

      Taris lifted his hand up and smiled. ‘This is the handiwork of my oldest son, who is inclined to mischief. His twin brother enjoys the school lessons and yet all Alfred can think of is to escape his and head for the gardens.’

      ‘Ahh, the danger of comparisons. I never thought that you would make them.’

      ‘When you are a parent you do many things that you had not thought you would. But out of love, you understand. Only out of that.’

      Parenthood! In the light of Honour’s visit the raw nerve of hope was exposed and Cristo was glad that his brother could not read his expression.

      ‘Ashe said that he had been to visit you and so I decided to do the same. He said that you seemed pleased to see him.’

      ‘Sickness has a habit of making one re-evaluate the usefulness of family.’

      ‘So cynical?’ Laughter rang around the room. ‘Our father always swore that you were stubborn.’

      ‘And did he ever tell you why?’ Cristo had suddenly had enough of all the secrecy. ‘Did he ever let you know that I was not entirely a Wellingham?’

      When Taris’s face came up to his own with a slight flush Cristo suddenly knew that he had.

      ‘Alice never blamed him for his indiscretion. She told us that as she took her last breath. She also said that you were a gift she was meant to have. She kept track of you at Giraudon through your man Milne, you realise. The old valet at Falder was his brother and she never let him go.’

      Cristo swore. What other confidences was he destined to hear this morning? A child who might be his? A mother who had never stopped loving him? Two brothers who had known he was not a full-blooded son of Falder and had treated him as one anyway? A feeling he had forgotten he knew was again budding. No longer alone. No longer just him against the world.

      Shared secrets and trust, and beside a brother whose eyes saw what others never did, and with all the unexpected twists and turns Cristo found himself talking.

      ‘When I left England I thought to have seen the last of it.’

      ‘What changed your mind?’

      His hands opened and then he smiled, because of course Taris would not see the gesture. ‘When the wild anger died there was only loneliness to replace it.’

      ‘Beatrice thinks that there might be a woman.’

      ‘She told you that?’

      ‘She thinks the woman to be Martin Westbury’s wife, Lady Eleanor Dromorne?’

      Cristo stayed silent.

      ‘The mistakes of youth can come back to haunt even the most circumspect. The thing that I cannot quite determine is where your shared history took place.’

      ‘I met her in Paris five years ago.’

      ‘Before she was married?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘But you made no effort to take the relationship further?’

      ‘I think it had gone the furthest it could go.’

      A ripe curse greeted this outburst.

      ‘If I could go back I would do things differently. In my defence, I might add that I did not know she was an English lady.’

      ‘Surely you could tell that by her clothes and her accent?’

      ‘She wasn’t wearing any clothes and she was speaking Provençal French.’

      ‘Lord, so that was why she fainted at the theatre? Does Martin Westbury know of any of this?’

      ‘I am certain that he doesn’t. He didn’t seem to want to kill me when we met at the Baxters’.’

      Taris picked the marigold from his buttonhole and the stringent smell of it filled the air as he fiddled with the petals. Bright yellow pollen dusted the back of one hand.

      ‘Everyone has their battles. Martin Westbury, for example, is so ill some say it won’t be long before he loses his fight against whatever it is that ails him. Eleanor Westbury may then need a man who would not disappoint her.’

      ‘I doubt that she would trust me again.’

      ‘Well, that all depends. You can let your past mistakes define you or transform you. A wise man might take the latter option.’

      Cristo breathed out. ‘I thought she was a prostitute brought to my room. With the amount of brandy she had consumed, she could not tell me otherwise and by then I had discovered that she was a virgin.’

      ‘An inauspicious beginning?’ Dark amber eyes looked straight at him and Cristo began to laugh at the absurdity of a word that only Taris might get away with.

      ‘Very.’

      ‘There are rumours you worked for the Foreign Office in Paris?’

      ‘In the capacity of one who would safeguard the interests of England, you understand, for even in peacetime there are those who might undermine the relationship between the two countries. Smitherton sent trainers down to the château I owned in Paris.’

      ‘A difficult job, I should imagine.’

      ‘Sometimes it was.’

      ‘And is it still?’

      ‘No. I have left the service.’

      ‘For retirement into peaceful obscurity?’

      When Cristo laughed Taris joined in and for the first time in a long while the ghosts of past misunderstandings faded.

      Chapter Ten

      Martin still insisted on her going to the Wellinghams’, a weekend house party at Beaconsmeade that would mean them leaving early on Friday evening and returning on Sunday night.

      With the dresses fitted and the girls and Diana excited, Eleanor looked for ways in which she could turn down the invitation without inviting comment.

      Consequently she took to her bed on Thursday afternoon with a stomach ailment that had her refusing the night meal. She did not expect Martin’s visit, however, later that evening and was caught reading a book and eating from a box of chocolates that Florencia had bought for her on a trip into town with Diana a few weeks back.

      ‘For a woman suffering from nausea you look surprisingly well.’ Tonight he looked better than he had in many months.

      She stayed silent.

      ‘Is there some reason that the Beaconsmeade outing is worrying you?’

      She decided to brazen it out. ‘Florencia will miss me—’

      He didn’t let her finish.

      ‘I am here and I have already told you that I should like to have a few days with my daughter for company. It is not often that I see her alone.’

      Eleanor nodded, at a loss now to keep on with her arguments.

      ‘You are young, my dear, and it is important that you enjoy these sorts of things. I know Diana will be lost without you if you don’t attend, for she has made the fact known to me. Besides, I thought you admired the Wellingham women!’

      ‘I do.’

      ‘Then what keeps you from going? I know