Regency Society. Ann LethbridgeЧитать онлайн книгу.
was said their union was such, but in a town that spawned a thousand marriages a year, few were of that ilk.
Regret surfaced in an unexpected deluge as she thought of her own marriage. Martin had protected her, but never touched her. Perhaps it was his illness or his age, or the fact that when he had first met her she had been so very near to death, and a pattern had formed. Eleanor remembered the hospital in Aix and the blood and the tiny twin who had been left in the cemetery of the Chapel de la Francis, his body marked with a simple white stone.
Paris.
She had called him that. A strong name. A warrior’s name. The name of the beautiful Trojan prince who had stolen Helen from Menelaus, and the name of the city in which he had been conceived. The hair on the crown of his tiny head had been pure silver. His father’s son. She had never known the colour of his eyes because it had been a full week until the fever had left her and another two before she could even speak. The anger in her solidified and she hated the thick thump of her grief.
So alone.
If she had been braver she might have saved him … in a bigger city … with better attendants …
Shaking her head, she came back into the moment, leaving behind fury, but the light had gone out of her evening and all she wanted to do was to depart Beaconsmeade and go home to Florencia.
He dreamed that night of the ship he had taken when he left England. The Hell Ship. The Hell Captain. Things done to his body that he had never told anyone, an eighteen-year-old green boy straight out of Cambridge. The sears of whiplashes on his back ached in memory.
The canker of secrecy had eaten him up, piece by piece, catapulting him into the underworld of Paris with an easy transition.
Wrong. It was all wrong.
I love you. Eleanor’s whispered words. The first right thing in his whole damn life.
Feeling the movement of somebody else in the room, he opened his eyes. Ashe sat above him.
Cristo knew he had heard his secrets as he turned away, anger leaving only heartbeat in his ears.
‘Smitherton got to you, didn’t he? At Cambridge? God, and he promised me that he wouldn’t. That’s what you were doing in Paris?’
‘I could have left.’
‘No.’ The word was rough with fury. ‘No one ever leaves until their very soul is gone. It’s the way he works it.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because he got to me first and it was years before I could loosen the grip of it all. Wasted lonely years that taught me only how to hate.’
The light breeze from outside billowed the gauze curtains into a soft cloud, a summer night in the heart of Kent so far from the paths that they both had travelled.
‘Buy the damn Graveson property, Cris, and come home.’ His brother’s hand lay across his arm.
‘My lawyers got it yesterday. That’s why I was late down to Beaconsmeade.’
Laughter lit Asher’s eyes, the amber in them so very like his own. ‘This calls for a toast.’ He filled two glasses with lemonade and handed one over.
‘To family.’
With a headache pounding his temples, Cristo smiled. ‘Everything has a pattern, Ashe. And Graveson is the very first link of the chain.’
An hour later when Asher had left, Cristo sat up on the side of his bed, watching the candle on the side table burn.
I love you.
If he had had even a little bit of decency in him he would pack up his things and return to the Château Giraudon. Away from temptation, delivered from evil.
He could only hurt her. Then he amended. He could only hurt them both with his reappearance and this damnable attraction simmering between them.
I love you.
He had said the words to himself a hundred times. I love you enough to leave my husband? I love you enough to risk my daughter’s name? I love you so much I would throw caution to the wind and follow you to the edge of the world?
Reality stung and the ache in his heart was a signpost to a more virtuous truth. He should leave her to the life she was living and a family who had taken her as one of their own.
His name held only a little of what Martin Dromorne offered her, dogged as it was by scandal and mayhem. Oh, granted his brothers had gone out of their way to make him a son of Falder, but even that truth was cankered.
A half-brother. A bastard child. The son of a mother whom he had killed in childbirth and had been sent away summarily, no place in the hearts of her relatives for the reminder of such tragedy!
It was Alice who had saved him. Alice with her kind eyes and an open heart that had never once wavered in its love. And in the end he had failed her as well with his wild anger and bad choices.
He seldom allowed himself the time to wallow in self-pity but tonight, with the circumstances heavily weighed against him, he did. He frowned at the notion of a virtuous withdrawal from London for he knew he would never do it.
Fighting for what he wanted to have and hold was far more his style, but he would need to be careful and prudent.
‘Bide your time,’ he whispered and the candle caught the breath of the words and flickered.
‘I love you,’ he added and this time the flame barely moved.
Eleanor spent the next few days pleading tiredness when anyone suggested an outing. Even the park seemed dangerous, an open space that might bring her face to face with the one man in the world she could no longer even bear to think about.
I love you.
She screwed up her eyes and swore beneath her breath, the silence in the blue drawing room making the memory worse. Why had she said it? Had he heard? Was he laughing with a friend at this very moment somewhere in a club in London as he remembered her ill-advised confession?
Certainly Cristo Wellingham had not contacted her at all and Sophie and Margaret lamented the fact that he was not at the dances that they had chosen to attend. Disappeared. Gone. She hoped with all of her heart that he had said nothing about her to Lady Beatrice-Maude or the Duchess of Carisbrook.
‘You need to get some colour back in your cheeks, Lainie.’ Diana had entered the chamber with her small basket of tapestry threads and a pair of spectacles. ‘We could go shopping if you wish, for I have some colours I need to procure,’ and held up her stitchwork. Eleanor saw the picture to be a Christmas one, a hearth dressed in gold and silver and the full moon in the window to one side.
‘It’s for Geoffrey’s mother,’ Diana said as she saw her looking. ‘She asked me last year if I would do one and I was determined to begin it early. You could all come up to Edinburgh for the Yule season. Martin always loved Scotland.’
‘I am not certain …’
‘Because of his health?’
It was the first time his sister had even mentioned the topic and Eleanor nodded.
‘You need to get out more, Eleanor. At your age I was—’ She stopped. ‘Are you crying?’
‘No. Of course not.’ The tears that welled in her eyes were dashed away on the material of her sleeve as Eleanor turned to the window. ‘It’s just sometimes I think I should be a better wife to your brother.’
‘Nonsense.’ Diana laid down her sewing and came to put her arms around her. ‘He could not have wished for a more caring helpmate. But he is a good thirty years older than you, Lainie, and sometimes that must be difficult.’ She paused briefly. ‘Is it morning sickness, perhaps, that makes you so up and down, for lately you have seemed very emotional?’
For a second Eleanor could