One Unashamed Night (17 page)

‘May I offer you a piece of advice, Beatrice?’ Emerald’s look was measured. She waited until Bea nodded.

‘The Wellingham men are hard to catch, but very easy to keep. Once they love, they love well.’

‘Taris does not love me. He has never said it.’

She blurted the truth out like a green girl, though Emerald’s smile unnerved her.

‘Taris was an intelligence officer under Wellington. For years he scouted across Northern France and Spain under the guise of one from those climes and never once was he unmasked. Did you know that he speaks fluent Spanish and French and was one of the finest marksmen the army had ever seen?’ Stopping, she took a sip of strong black tea. ‘When he came to the Caribbean to rescue my husband from the clutches of a pirate colony…’ Emerald noted Bea’s surprise at this revelation ‘…he was the only man to have ever discovered their lair and the only man to leave it on his terms. The bullet hit him as he dragged Asher out into the sea and to safety.’

‘A bullet?’

‘His sight was damaged when he saved my husband and because of that I owe him everything!’ She leaned forwards. ‘Give him a chance to know what it is he thinks. Give him the same knowledge that I had to give to Ashe.’

‘The knowledge?’

That he cannot live without you.’

Bea pulled back. ‘I do not think…’

Emerald’s fingers covered her own.

‘Taris has a need to understand that the man he is now is the one you want, not the one he once was. He needs to redefine himself and only you can help him do that.’

‘By loving him?’ Finally Beatrice saw where she was going with her argument.

‘Exactly.’

Chapter Fourteen

T
he talk with Emerald turned her sadness into something different altogether.

Challenge now fired her imagination and the new ruthless single-mindedness was as freeing as it was unexpected. By the next evening she was watching for Taris to return to Falder, the plan in her mind fully formed.

She had borrowed from Emerald a nightgown of lace and silk and the violet attar she wore had been sprinkled liberally over it. Around her bed candles fluttered, the scent of flowers vivid in the wax.

Now she had a need of only the man himself, though as the hours raced on into night she began to think that he might not come at all.

Bates had assured him that the light was still showing beneath Beatrice’s door, though Taris knew the hour to be past twelve. Thanking his man, he waited as his footsteps receded and lent against the wall to mull over his options, for his talk with the solicitor had confirmed his own suspicions.

He had spent the day in Ipswich after contacting Beatrice’s lawyer, Robert Nelson, and the man had had a story to tell that had been entirely different from the one James Radcliff had told.

‘I trusted the young man and all I was repaid with were lies. If I were to see the scoundrel again, I’d have a few choice words to blister his ears with before I set the police upon him, I can tell you that, for it seems that he had been siphoning off rightful money for all of the three years he was in my employment and withholding funds from Mrs Bassingstoke with her husband so dreadfully ill.’

‘And the ledgers you talk of. Where are they now?’

‘Not here. I have looked high and low for them—if we can lay our hands on them the proof will be irrefutable.’

Suddenly things began to make more sense to Taris. ‘Did Radcliff know that he was under suspicion?’

The man nodded.

‘Lord.’ If Radcliff had thought the books were with Bea in the carriage he might have sawn through the axle in an attempt to reclaim them. The accident in Regent Street could have been his doing too, for the scent of the man had been in the house when they had returned. Perhaps he had paid an urchin to create an incident, giving him the time he needed to visit her house. Without the ledgers any case would be far harder to prove and paper was easily destroyed. Danger began to mount, for time would only sharpen a man’s desire for what it was he sought, especially one with blood on his hands and a future that was at best uncertain.

Returning to Falder to see if Bea stayed safe was suddenly vitally important, for if there was any risk to her at all…

The memory of her refusal of marriage still rankled and the walls he had put up against a world that was becoming increasingly darker seemed more of a prison now than a fortress. Isolation and exile had their drawbacks and his inability to be honest was one of them. Still, years of coming to terms with his loss of sight could not be easily translated into acceptance and it had been a long time since he had ever let the more frivolous emotions of love and trust take over from caution and denial.

He wanted back what he had been and knew that he could never have it. He doubted he could hit a target now at ten yards, let alone a hundred, and even the smallest trip to town involved the eyes of his man Bates. Always dependent, never alone.

He laid his hands against Bea’s door. The only place he felt truly himself now was with her, curled beside him in the darkness, feeling the soft truth of comfort and knowing the fineness of her mind and the generosity of her body.

Home.

With Bea.

The thought struck him sharply, piercing all the defences he held in place. No longer just himself.

The smell of violets wafted close as he pushed open the door. And perfumed wax? Candles, he determined, the warmth of flame felt even from this distance. So many?

Beatrice’s soft breathing from the sofa had him turning, puzzlement at her slumber and anger at her forgetfulness in not dousing the wicks. When his fingers touched warmth he wondered what it was that she wore, lace and skin in equal measure along the fine lines of her legs. Like the garments a courtesan might wear in the better establishments off Curzon Street.

He knew the instant she came awake.

‘I fell asleep?’

‘It is well after twelve. Why did you not seek your bed?’

‘I was hoping that you might come.’

He sniffed as she moved, the scent of violets almost overpowering. Much more potent than usual! ‘Did you spill your bottle of perfume?’

‘No?’ The word came back to him as a question.

‘There is strong smell of violets in the room.’ He crossed to the candles. ‘And it is dangerous to leave so many candles alight whilst you slumber, Bea.’

She laughed easily, but ceased the instant his hands covered the full abundance of her breasts. He loved the way she did not pull back.

‘What is it that you are wearing?’

‘A nightdress that Emerald lent me.’ The shyness in her voice was easily heard as she explained. ‘I have been waiting for you to return home.’

Suddenly he understood. ‘This was all for me? The candles, the perfume, waiting up…?’ Taris felt something inside himself that was foreign and unfamiliar and disturbing. Something undeniable. Something so empowering that the very essence of it made him still.

‘Emerald told me a little of your time in the army under Wellington. She said that you were a master of disguise who never once was caught.’

‘That was a long time ago and I was a different man.’

‘Have you forgotten the languages Emerald insists that you speak fluently?’

‘No.’

‘And are you not still involved in the deciphering of ciphers for the British Army?’

He smiled and the amber in his eyes was dancing light. ‘Yes, but if anyone else knew that you knew I’d undoubtedly be instantly dismissed.’

‘You negotiate a world that every other person might simply have given up on, Taris, and that to me is heroic.’

He stayed silent.

‘The lace on this gown is almost silver and I am wearing nothing at all underneath it. My hair is newly washed and scented and the nails on my feet and hands have been very carefully painted. Pink,’ she added, as though the colour might be important to him. ‘And I have done none of this to entice a man whom I pity or patronise. Frankwell abused me for years, you see, and the scars that I bear are the scars of shame and fury. Fury that I did not fight back or seek help or say what it was that was happening to me. Your scars, on the other hand, come from honour and valour and bravery, wounds that tell the story of saving your brother and escaping from a place that no other ever had before. If I could exchange my damage for yours I would, Taris. I would do it in a second.’

Her voice broke on the last words, but she did not let him speak.

‘I would exchange it because you never gave up as I did.’

‘Never gave up.’ The echo of the words nearly broke his heart. For him and for her, two people dealt a hand that was not fair, yet surviving in spite of it. Or perhaps because of it? The question surprised him.

Brave and valiant? In her eyes he was that?

Outside the wind was loud and the first drops of rain had begun to fall. Inside with the fire and the candles and the cobweb nothingness of a gown he had no need for sight to imagine, a new possibility began to dawn on him.

Home and hearth and Beatrice.

His hand stole to the slight swell of her stomach and he felt her quick intake of breath.

And family. His family. Children and laughter. More than one. Many. Running at Beaconsmeade and Falder and knowing the land as well as Ashe and he ever had.

This child will be born in less than five months by my calculations and I should not wish it to be born out of wedlock.’

She did not speak.

‘Would you give me leave to court you, Beatrice-Maude? Court you properly, I mean?’

‘Properly?’

‘Partner you to the country entertainment on offer around Falder? Court you in the way of a beau who has only the very best of intentions?’

In response she entwined her body around his, leaving him with no doubts as to her answer.

All his reserve broke. ‘Love me, Bea,’ he whispered into the long curtain of her hair.

‘I do,’ she replied and his heartbeat surged. Nothing could have stopped them coming together and like dry kindling to a flame they rose before floating down spent, breathless with ecstasy and repletion and release.

‘I love you, Taris.’ Said again as he closed his eyes and slept.

Taris could tell that the gossip of the servants had come to the ears of his brother when he walked into breakfast with Beatrice the next morning.

‘Did you sleep well?’ Humour was apparent in the question and he was certain that Bea had heard it too.

‘Very, thank you.’ Determined that he would not let Ashe have his fun, he helped himself to a generous plate of eggs and bacon and began to speak of the Davis function that they had all promised to attend that evening.

Emerald’s arrival, however, only seemed to add to the tension. The escapade with the nightgown had probably been her suggestion in the first place and as she sat he could tell that the meal was going to be a long one.

‘You arrived back late last night, Taris?’

‘I did.’

‘And you are late rising this morning?’

‘
I
am.’ He stressed the personal pronoun with a telling emphasis.

‘Which is unusual for you?’

‘It is.’

‘Mama thought she heard music coming from Cristo’s room last night. She told me so this morning.’

His sister-in-law could no longer hold in her laughter and it settled around the room. Beneath the table Taris felt Beatrice’s hand steal into his own and she squeezed it before speaking.

‘Where is your brother Cristo?’

Her question was exactly the right one—it drew everyone’s attention into a completely opposite direction.

‘Our brother has lived in Europe for a number of years after deciding that England no longer suited him.’

Asher’s reasoning was not quite the truth, Taris thought, but close enough.

‘He certainly had good taste in books. I have looked over the shelves in his room and have decided that even the public reading rooms in London do not have the breadth of topic his library has.’

‘A characteristic he inherited from our father.’ Taris was careful in his choice of words and when his sister Lucy appeared at the doorway the family was quick to drop the subject altogether.

‘Why did your brother leave Falder?’ Bea asked the question again an hour later when she was alone with Taris.

‘He killed my father.’ The four words were enunciated without emotion.

‘He shot him?’

‘Nothing as dramatic as that. He just decided that the English system of privilege was not for him and left. All might have been more easily forgiven had our father not been in the throes of a severe winter ague. It was the opinion of the physician at the time that Cristo’s disappearance killed him.’

‘Disappearance?’

‘He left no note. It was only later that one did come and by then our father was long dead. When we tried to locate Cristo he had no wish to be found and sent a message to that effect. As the years mounted we decided to respect his wishes.’

‘But your mother…’

‘Still loves him. He played the piano well and every so often she fancies she hears music coming from his room.’ Bea noticed the way he turned from her as he told her, as though perhaps his mother was not the only one who missed a Falder son.

Bending to a drawer in a desk, he brought out a dark blue box and handed it to her. ‘When I inherited my uncle’s estates I also inherited his family jewels. They are kept here as I had no use for them. Is this something you might wish to wear?’

An intricate gold-and-topaz necklace lay in a white satin interior and to each side matching earrings were embedded.

‘Oh, I could not accept such a thing.’

She was speechless and honoured. This was no insignificant piece. If she wore this, everyone would know where it had come from.

‘There are many others should you want to sort through them as I cannot make out any of their forms.’

Carte blanche.
Not a little offer. Still, she would rather have had the words that she had given him so many times last night.

I love you.

In this room with his hair pulled back into a queue he looked like a man who might never give her them back. Not in the daylight, with the voice of sanity and restraint between them and his lack of sight a potent reason for his reticence.

Darkness was their milieu, she decided, when the tendrils of night reduced any difference and the language between their bodies demanded no words.

Lord, even now the memory of it made her blush. As though he felt it too, his hand came against hers in a simple gesture, and the box of jewellery was laid down upon the desk, forgotten.

‘Beatrice?’ A question.

‘Yes.’ An answer.

The heavy slam of his heart was visible in the pulse at his throat. Not as unaffected as she might imagine.

She felt his hand skim across the line of her bottom and lift her skirt. The other one loosened his lacings and tilted her hips, entering slick wet and wanted, his breath against her throat as he pushed in further, no softness at all in it. Sheathed and tight. Full and intimate. Cold oak against the warmth of flesh, and the door unlocked.

Still, she could not pull back as his movements quickened, her hands splayed across the blotter, her head rolling as the same magic took her by surprise.

Anywhere? He could take her anywhere and she would follow? Her whimpers were quietened by his mouth as he covered the gathering waves of release and she was tipped into the place where nothing at all mattered.

He did not let her go when they had finished. Did not move apart or relinquish his tight grasp of her, his breath hoarse and the joining of their bodies tight in want.

‘God.’ Only that above the sound of breath, and the feel of cold air against her bare skin was sinful and exciting. The hot squeeze of his manhood still within her and the daylight exposing everything that night-time never had.