making use of your name. I didn’t think you would ever find out, and that’s the truth of it and, at that particular moment, I desperately needed that dreadful man to believe I had influential friends here.’
‘Well, that’s an improvement on being a last resort, I suppose. But if you didn’t think I’d find out, what d’ye suppose he’ll be doing in the nearest tap-room at this very moment but telling everyone within range that Lady Chester, his very close friend, has an understanding with Sheen’s eldest son? I’m really quite gratified to discover who my next partner is to be before the rest of Richmond does. You must understand my relief, I hope?’
That was a possibility she had not taken time to consider. ‘Would he do that?’ she asked, weakly.
‘Well, I would if I were him. He needs all the clout he can get. Who is he?’
‘A gambler and prime scandalmonger from Buxton. I’m afraid this so-called affection he professes is all in his mind. He was a family friend, my lord, but not any more.’
‘So why let him in?’
‘If I’d thought he would come here to Richmond, I would have told Henry to keep him out, but since he was in, I thought it was best to know exactly what he was up to. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know, as they say. I suspected he’d ask for money. He always needs money. So I gave him some, hoping he’d go away and leave me in peace.’
‘Most people would call that blackmail, Lady Chester. You really are not the most worldy-wise of women, are you? A charming naïvety, I suppose some would call it.’ He glanced at the money bag still on the floor.
Stung by the criticism, even though it was accurate enough, she threw him a glance not intended to alter the rhythm of his heart, which it did. ‘I had a good husband,’ she snapped, ‘who was worldly-wise enough for both of us and I have not acquired the knack of it yet.’
‘Then it’s time you had a replacement, my lady. Indeed, you’ve already set the machinery in motion all on your own. I find your reading of my mind quite uncanny.’
Amelie leapt to her feet, slamming the glass down upon her table so hard that the juice slopped on to her toadstool sketch. ‘I’d rather not stay in here with you any longer, my lord. This is my favourite room, not to be shadowed by argumentative men with silly talk. Two in one morning is more than I can bear.’
Glancing around him again, Lord Elyot could well understand her feelings on the matter, even if the expression of them came close to a set-down. The room was obviously special to her, for not only was her work table spread with paints, papers and sketches, but by his side stood a large oak folio stand holding her unframed watercolour paintings, very like the one he had admired on his first visit. He would much rather have given his sister one of those. Leather-bound volumes lined the walls, botanical journals, poetry, and novels in French and Italian. A portrait of a middle-aged businessman holding a roll of parchment looked down from above the marble chimney-piece. Her father, perhaps? Whoever he was, this conversation would be better continued, he thought, out of the man’s hearing.
‘I agree,’ he said. ‘I have a better idea.’ Before she could object to any plan, he hitched the shawl up around her shoulders and threw the long end over to the back. ‘There’s a decided chill in the air. Come with me.’
Without a murmur of protest she went with him downstairs and out through a back door into the garden, boxed into sections by waist-high hedges and paved pathways. Rose-covered columns supported wooden beams across which blowsy roses drooped their wet rusting petals and, at the far end in the shelter of a tall yew hedge, a curved stone bench waited for them, warmed by the sun.
With some foreboding, Amelie wondered if she would be able to fend off his imminent and no doubt relentless questions, for it was clear he was not going to leave things as they were. Brushing the dust off the bench, he waited for her to sit before taking his place at her side, and she could not hold back a comparison of his tight white breeches with Hurst’s buff pantaloons, a world apart.
He saw what was in her mind. ‘Memories?’ he said, softly.
Beneath the shawl, heat flooded into her neck and she looked away quickly to conceal the reply in her eyes. ‘I have apologised, my lord,’ she said, stiffly. ‘Pray do not retaliate by reminding me of…things…I would rather forget. You cannot know how deeply shamed I am.’
‘So shamed that you thought it a good idea to attach your name to mine? That doesn’t sound like shame to me, my lady.’
‘A temporary device. I’ve tried to explain. What more can I do?’
‘Oh, that’s easily solved,’ he said, smiling. ‘But we’ll discuss those details later, shall we? What I’d like to know is why you were—’
‘Naïve?’
‘…generous enough to lend money to Hurst in the past. I suspect he was lying when he said it was for his sister. Didn’t you?’
‘The story does me no credit, my lord. It happened when I was newly married and very trusting of men. I know better now. He told me his sister was being evicted because she was… well…in a difficult situation. She needed money desperately. I let him have some and he swore he’d repay me. He never did. It was not until after my husband’s death that I discovered Hurst had no sister, that the money was to pay a gambling debt. To Josiah. And since you are about to ask the obvious question, no, Josiah did not know of my loan to Hurst.’
‘Or he would have been angry with you?’
‘For trying to help a woman in distress? No, not for that, though he might have been surprised by the amount I was asked for.’
‘But Hurst can be prosecuted for such a thing. That’s theft, you know. Obtaining money by false pretences. Fraud.’
‘It’s too late for all that. Water under the bridge.’
‘No, it isn’t. You have friends who know the truth of the matter, surely? They’d testify at a trial. And your word is worth something.’
‘His word against mine. I told no one about the loan because the reason for it was confidential. Afterwards, I was not likely to tell anyone how I had been duped by a man like that. I hoped to learn by it, that’s all.’
‘But you haven’t, have you?’
This was getting too close. She must seem not to understand him. ‘Oh, I think I have, my lord. I’ve learnt that it’s best to stay clear of men, for the time being, at least. It’s my niece who needs to get to know them, not I.’
‘You wish to protect Hurst, then?’
‘I wish him to stay well out of my life, sir.’
‘Then the best place for him is behind bars or, believe me, he’ll keep on coming back for more. Unless you can rely on the timely intervention of your future husband, that is.’
‘Please…can we forget that now? I shall manage well enough, I thank you, and I’d be most grateful if you would think no more about the device I used. It was an emergency and I shall never do it again.’
‘You won’t have to. It’ll be all over Richmond by this time tomorrow.’
With any other man of so short an acquaintance, especially one whose compassion was so underdeveloped, she would have asked him to leave her to sort out her problems alone. But having used Lord Elyot’s good name and linked it so firmly with her own, she could not now tell him it was nothing to do with him when it so patently was. And unfortunately he was right about Hurst spilling the news. She’d had enough evidence of the power of his malicious tongue to know that the damage would spread like oil on water. Why this had not occurred to her at the time she would never know, her only excuse being that she was taken unawares.
‘No, you’re mistaken,’ she said, rising. ‘I know him. He’ll leave.’
But the other matter had not been