When her more usual prudence deserted her completely, she reached forwards to lay her hands upon his groin.
He groaned and the smile on his face was pained. Perhaps he would not enjoy that caress, she thought, her fingers dropping back into her lap.
‘Martin Westbury must have had ice in his veins to be impotent with you.’
She shook her head. ‘When he found me in Aix I was very ill. He saved my life by taking me to Italy. After that it was hard to leave him.’
‘Ill …?’
‘From childbirth.’ She turned her face away so that he might not see what was in her expression, but he was adept at picking up the nuances and turned it back.
‘You are not telling me everything.’
She breathed in once and then twice, and his fingers found her own, like a lifeline in a swirling sea, she was to think later, though when she did not speak he began with a story.
‘My mother was Sylvienne de Caviglione. She met my father a month before she was to be married off in an effort to secure a political alliance. Sylvienne had hoped for a younger husband and Ashborne was a long way from home and lonely. When the result of their indiscretion was known she was sent to the country. I arrived eight and a half months later and my entry into the world was her exit from it. I tell you this, Eleanor, because I do not want any more secrets between us and I can see them in your eyes.’
‘Yet you grew up a Wellingham at Falder?’
‘My French grandfather had as little use for a bastard as he did for a dead daughter. He sent me to England as fast as he could, though his wife harboured her own measure of guilt and left me her family château in Paris when her husband died. I had killed their only daughter, you see …’
‘You blame yourself for your mother’s death?’
‘She was young and it was a difficult birth.’ Fury underlined each word.
‘Mothers die in birth as easily as children do.’ Eleanor held her other hand rigidly against her side, gripped into a fist.
Now. Now. Tell him now.
She made herself unclench her fingers one by one by one. ‘There is a story that says the stars house the souls of the ones who have departed, and that at night, between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice, in the cluster known as the Pleiades, you can see them, and speak to them.’
‘Pleiades?’
‘The seven stars that sit in the constellation of Taurus.’
She looked across to the window, but only out of habit, for the time of the year was far too early. Still out of caution she did not tell him, did not speak of the times when she had watched month by month for something meant only for her.
‘Paris watches me from there.’
Tears welled in her eyes unbidden. Her son. Their son. Missing, and so very far from home. It was good to say his name out loud and to someone who might have loved him as much as she did.
Something was wrong. Something hidden and important. Paris? The city? Why would she cry for that? A name, then?
‘Paris?’ He repeated the word and she looked up and nodded. ‘Who is Paris, Eleanor?’
The darkness in her blue eyes was like a blanket of dull pain, stale grief and anger. ‘Our Paris. Our son. He lies in Aix in the cemetery under a marker of white stone.’
The truth of what she said made his heart stop and the pit of his stomach lurch.
‘Another child? There was another child?’
She nodded. ‘Florencia had a twin. A brother.’ Tears ran down her cheeks like two rivers, but she did nothing to dash them away. ‘You were not there, so I called him Paris. It was all I could think of to link him with you.’
‘God, Eleanor.’ He pulled her to him, as if in the embrace he might take some of her hurt, some of the suffering as he imagined how it must have been. Eighteen and alone in a foreign land with one living baby and one dead one!
‘He w-was too tiny. He w-was much t-too tiny. He would n-not have lived here, either, I d-do not th-think.’
Cristo nodded his head in agreement, not trusting himself to speak.
‘And it w-was too soon for them to c-come. Not quite eight months. Florencia was b-bigger. I wanted Paris to live, but h-he didn’t.’
The sobs increased, but her head was now nodding up and down, the arms that held him tightening.
In the firelight and in a strange house, miles from London, it seemed as if it were only them left in the whole wide world as she cried out her many years of silence.
She woke up in his bed. A blanket had been pulled over her and a pillow tucked beneath her head. It was still dark, though a small candle on the mantel had burnt down almost to the plate, making her calculate that many hours had passed.
She had told him!
Her hand went to her mouth and she held it there. The evening had begun with seduction in mind and ended in her being asleep, alone and dressed upon his bed and confessing a confidence that she had told no one before. She smiled, for the relief of sharing her secret had eased the burden in a way she could never have imagined.
Footsteps coming towards the room had her sitting up and Cristo appeared a second or so later with a tray. A teapot and two cups sat to one side of a jug of milk.
He had pulled on his shirt, but it was unbuttoned and like her he wore no shoes at all.
‘I thought you might be thirsty.’
A flower sat alongside the cups, newly picked, the dew on it magnifying the red.
He handed the perfect bloom to her, candlelight on the bronze of his chest, each muscle well defined.
‘It was by itself amongst the weeds when I stepped outside the kitchen door to take in some air. It reminded me of you.’
Smiling, she took his gift and noticed that all of the thorns had been taken off the smooth green stem. When she bent her head to the petals the perfume was of a soft freshness.
Placing the tray on the table, he drew forth a chair from under the window. His knees framed hers now and he looked as if he was searching for just the right thing to say.
‘I own land next to Falder. On it stands a manor house named Graveson Manor and it overlooks Return Home Bay. It is beautiful land, Eleanor, with the sea rolling in and the green of fields and trees.’ His left hand raked through his untidy blond hair, pushing it back.
The very words made the world a wondrous place, though she sobered when she thought of the path that he was leading her down.
‘I could not be your mistress.’
The shock in his dark brown eyes was easily seen. ‘It is not as a concubine I want you, Eleanor, but as a wife.’
Her mouth simply dropped open. ‘You are asking me to marry you?’
‘I am. I hope the groom you had in mind will bow out gracefully.’
She began to laugh. ‘It was you I was thinking of. No one else.’
He joined in her humour by smiling broadly. ‘I cannot believe that something is finally easy for us. You will marry me and become my wife?’
When she nodded again he stripped the gold ring from his little finger and reached forwards. ‘I know it is old-fashioned, but it was the only thing of Alice’s that I have. She took it off her finger the night