Regency Society. Ann LethbridgeЧитать онлайн книгу.
had she met Dromorne and why had she married a man old enough to be her father?
Necessity! The answer came unbidden and rang with the clearness of an unwanted truth.
Had she rolled the dice and taken her chances? An older man who might not notice a lack of maidenhead and a lie that would suck the living out of anybody. And had.
Passionless.
Now?
Because of him?
The awful verity of such a thought almost brought him to his knees and the first stab of pain in his head made him worry.
Lord help her, Eleanor thought, Cristo Wellingham was here, in this room not five yards away and speaking with the host’s wife, Honour Baxter, a Frenchwoman who had made her home in London for many years.
Her fingers tightened across those of her husband and as he patted her hand she held on, the turquoise stones in her new necklace glinting under a fine chandelier above them, pinning her into the light, like an insect under glass. When Cristo Wellingham’s eyes suddenly found hers she looked away and for the first time in a long while she swore beneath her breath, sheer fury reshaping her more normal carefulness. The skin on her arms rose up into goose-bumps as he came closer and she steeled herself to greet him.
‘Lord Cristo. I don’t believe you have met the Earl of Dromorne and his charming young wife, Lady Dromorne.’ Anthony Baxter gave the introductions as Martin held out his hand. Eleanor merely nodded, her title and sex affording her the ability to remain as glacial as she wished.
‘My wife was delighted with Lord Cristo’s return from Paris as she now has someone to reminisce on the beauty of a city that has long been in her heart. Have you spent much time there, Lady Dromorne?’
Eleanor shook her head. ‘No, I am afraid not.’
‘Then you must entice your husband there, my dear. It is in the spring when the city is at its most beautiful, would you not agree, my lord?’
‘I would beg to differ and say that it is the season of winter that appeals to me the most, sir.’
Dark eyes bored straight into her own and the room tilted and then straightened, a bend in time that had her leaning against Martin’s chair, the faint echo of bells in her mind and a man who wore too many rings upon his fingers. Embellished. Foreign. The weight of years of adventure scrawled into both his clothes and the furnishings of his room!
Surreptitiously she glanced at his hands to see them bare. Just another difference. Stripped of gold and silver in London, but with the same sense of recklessness still upon him, simmering in his height and his stance and in the rough beauty of his face.
‘Did you live in Paris for long?’ Martin’s question was quietly phrased, his lisp giving the city’s name a burnished edge.
‘Too long.’ Cristo Wellingham’s reply held no hint of any such temperance and Eleanor wondered if her husband might have sensed his irony, but it seemed that he had not for his next question was even more to the point.
‘I enjoyed the area around the Louvre the most when I was there last. Where did you reside?’
‘Near Montmartre.’
Anthony Baxter coughed, the mention of a name that boasted more than its fair share of the evils of the night heard in the noise. An English gentleman’s way of shelving a topic for a more pleasant one. She wondered at the smile that was momentarily on Lord Cristo’s lips before he had the chance to hide it.
Neither tame nor amenable, he was a man who ruled a room with a sheer and easy power. The ache in her stomach leapt into fear and she was pleased when Honour Baxter took her by the arm and led her away to admire a recently completed tapestry.
Mon Dieu, Cristo thought, as the sixth course of the unending dinner was served, the formal English fare of lamb cutlets, chicken patties and lobster rissoles richer than he remembered, and heavy.
He wished he might have been seated somewhere near Eleanor Westbury but he was not, his place almost as far from hers as could be managed and the table splintering into groups that denied him even the pleasure of hearing her opinions.
Baxter was a man who took his position as a lay preacher with a depressing seriousness and every word he uttered seemed more and more conservative, the teachings of the Bible translated so literally Cristo could barely bother to listen. He had only deigned to come in the first place because of Honour, a woman whom he admired, with her quick laughter and relaxed ways. He wondered how her marriage had lasted the distance of time and reasoned perhaps opposites did in some way attract.
Still, the wine was a fine one, though a headache that was familiar had begun to pound, and he switched over to water to try to keep it at bay, alarmed by the tremors he felt in his hand as he lifted the glass to his lips. Beneath the thick layers of English cloth his body prickled with sweat; finishing the water, he poured himself another from the silver jug on the table in front of him and the liquid settled his stomach.
When the men finally joined the women later in the drawing room he noticed Eleanor alone at the window on the far side of the room. He was very careful not to touch her as he came close.
‘I would like to apologise for my words the other day. They were ill put and you were right to chastise me for them.’
She said nothing, though the flints of ice in her eyes drew back into only blueness. Her hair curled in ringlets around the line of her face.
‘You are easily the most beautiful woman in all of London town, though I suppose many have told you such.’
The line marking the skin between her eyes deepened. ‘Perhaps, my lord, you have consumed too much of the wine the Baxter table is famous for.’
‘You think my judgement so askew?’
Her bottom lip trembled, the fullness of it inviting notice. ‘Askew and imprudent.’ The words were said without any form of artifice and her fingers worried the oversized turquoise stones at her neck.
‘Your husband must have surely—’ She did not let him finish.
‘My husband has many other more important things to occupy his time and besides, he knows that I do not demand such empty flattery.’
‘If it were empty, I should never voice it.’ He reached out for the sill to steady a sudden light-headedness, for the slur in his words was obvious. Lord, this attack was worse than all the others before it in the intensity and speed of its onslaught.
The pain in his temple blurred his vision, the room falling into a haze of yellow, and making him feel clammy and strange. Still, he had other things to ask her and for the moment they remained alone.
‘My sister-in-law said she had seen you in the park the other day?’ He was pleased his voice seemed more or less normal.
‘Lady Beatrice-Maude?’
‘Indeed.’
‘I had hoped for her confidence.’
‘Pardon?’ The topic had got away with him somewhat and he could not discern the connection.
‘Lady Beatrice-Maude? Is it on her bidding that you now approach me? Please do disregard anything that she might have inferred from our meeting, for I was not myself that day.’
He shook his head and tried to get the conversation to make sense. ‘My brother’s wife is usually very circumspect.’
‘I made a mistake once and will never do so again.’ Her hand touched his then, almost as a plea, and the world about them simply stopped. He felt as if they could have been anywhere, alone, singled out, adrift from all that held them tethered, floating into a place that was only theirs, his lifeline in a stormy and wind-tossed sea.
‘Eleanor.’ He said her name as a lover might, the sweet music of it making him want to repeat it again and again as his fingers tightened about hers. For a moment she