‘You have no plans at all for this evening, sir. I did not accept the Claridges’ invite as you instructed me to, though your brother wrote to inquire whether you would be there.’
‘He is almost as reclusive as I am and he only wants to know of my absence to make sure of his own.’
‘There is, however, a ball at the Rutledge mansion tomorrow evening at which you are expected to appear.’
Taris frowned, trying to understand why his presence should be in any way necessary.
‘The Earl of Rutledge is a supporter of the Old Soldiers’ Fund, a charity of which you are the principal patron, sir. I did remind you last week of the affair.’
‘I see. Could I not just pledge a great deal of money—?’
‘The Duke of Carisbrook put your name forward to speak, sir.’
Damn, Taris thought. Asher and his efforts to get him out and about! Sometimes he could happily strangle his brother for his meddling, born out of guilt.
‘Very well, then.’ Acquiescence was easier than the alternative of making a fuss and he made himself dwell on other things. It would be good to see Ruby, Ashton and Ianthe, for it had been all of a month since he had seen his nieces and nephew. He hoped Emerald’s man Azziz would also be down from Falder, for he enjoyed a game of chess.
Family. How it wound around isolation with determination and resilience, the irritations of prying a small price to pay for all that was offered.
As the horses prepared to stop he readied himself to alight. There were many things he could still do and the familiarity of the town house made it possible for him to enter it without assistance.
Morton, the family butler, was the first to greet him, taking his hat and cloak at the door.
‘Welcome back, my lord. We heard that the weather in the south has been kind the past month.’
‘Indeed it has, Morton. Perhaps I might persuade you to have a sojourn at Beaconsmeade…’
The servant laughed. This discussion was one they had had for years, the head butler not a man with any love for country air.
The sound of voices from the downstairs salon stopped him in his tracks, and as he made his way from the lobby he tilted his head. Not just any voice! He felt the tension in him fist, hard-stroked against disbelief.
Mrs Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke was here! Here. Ten yards away, her honeyed husky voice with the slight soft lisp, speaking with his sister-in-law. His fingers tightened across his cane and he wished he had not left his hat with Morton. Concentrate, he admonished himself, as he counted the steps into the room.
Beatrice lifted the cup of tea to her lips and sipped, refusing the offer of sweet cakes from the maid as she did so.
Emerald Wellingham opposite her was charming, but there was an undercurrent of something she could not quite understand. A slight anxiety, if she had to name it, and a decided watchfulness.
‘Your soirees are gaining the favour of all of society here in London. It seems that we have been bereft of fine debate in our town for far too long.’
‘Debate or controversy, your Grace? There are some who might say such opinions serve to alienate reason.’
‘But I am not one of them, Mrs Bassingstoke. And please do call me Emerald.’
Beatrice nodded. ‘You have a beautiful name. My first name merely makes people grimace. Beatrice-Maude. The names of my two grandmothers lumped together, I am afraid, and hardly charming like your own.’
‘Can they be shortened?’
This was the second Wellingham to ask her such a thing! She felt the sheer weight of it as an ache.
As in Bea-yond. As in Bea-utiful or Bea-witching! She had never said her name since without remembering…
‘Bea?’
The voice from behind made her start. His voice. Here? The tea that she had been holding spilt down the front of her dark burgundy gown as she turned, feeling the Duchess’s gaze on her own.
Taris Wellingham came forward with the movement of a man who had had too much to drink, catching the edge of the partly opened door with his shoulder and jerking back and around to lose his footing and fall heavily against the solid mahogany side cabinet. As he flailed to find a true direction his head tilted as if listening and his eyes looked strangely disorientated.
Swearing, he began to search the floor with his hands and Bea was instantly taken back to the days before her husband’s turn. The days when Frankwell had imbibed too much whisky and had come home in exactly the same fashion.
Hollowness consumed her, and the impact of everything made her shake. The way he held himself against the line of the door to steady his balance, all expression on his face devoid of warmth even as he hoisted himself up, the beginning of a bruise that would show full dark upon his cheek on the morrow matching the tendrils of his hair loosened from the queue at his nape.
Years of living with a difficult man tumbled down on Beatrice-Maude in that one small isolated moment. Long years of anguish and guilt, her unpredictable sham of a marriage wrung into one dreadful feeling.
Panic!
To get away. To run from one who had caught at fancy and hope and imagination, yet was blighted with the same curse her husband had been dammed with.
She needed to escape, to be back again in the world of freedom and ideas that had just opened up to her, her autonomy and lack of restraint so far from the endless dread of hurt inflicted by a brandy-loosened temper.
‘I must go.’ Setting down her cup with a rattle, she hated the sound of alarm so easily heard in her voice.
‘Perhaps you do not remember my brother-in-law…’
‘Of course I do.’
Pushing past them both, Beatrice-Maude did not stop even to retrieve her cloak from the astonished servant at the front door. Outside she took a breath of cold air and simply ran, for the corner, for her home, for the safety of her rooms away from anyone, the hat in her hands unfastened and the gloves in her pocket unworn.
‘Well,’ Taris said as the silence inside the town house lengthened, ‘I presume that means she does not favour the nickname Bea.’
Emerald laughed, though there were tears in her voice when she replied, ‘I thought she was a sensible woman. I thought that she had impeccable manners and for the life of me I cannot understand what just happened.’
‘At a guess I would say she saw I lacked sight.’
Silence confirmed his suspicions. Emerald might be able to see what he could not, but he could hear what others never did.
Fear. Abhorrence. And the need for flight.
He made himself smile, made his face carefully bland, the anger that was building hidden behind indifference even as his left cheek throbbed.
‘Mrs Bassingstoke did not know before?’
‘It was night,’ he returned.
‘And you are good in the darkness!’
‘Precisely.’
‘So good that she could spend the whole time with you and never guess?’
‘It seems that is true.’
‘I think I hate her for this.’ Her voice was small, the anger in it formidable. ‘And everything that happened today is my fault. Ashe told me to leave it alone.’
‘But you didn’t?’
‘And now you despise me.’
‘Hardly.’ His left hand went out to feel along the lintel of the door, the shadows in the room long with darkness. For the first time ever he felt…nearly