Mistress at Midnight(10)

Would Stephen Hawkhurst accompany Rodney Northrup? She hoped that he  would not. Please, God, let him not come, she prayed over and over,  jolted from her musings as her sister asked a question.

'Did the invitation to Lady Lindsay's country party include Harriet and me?'

'As you have not even come out yet I should doubt it very much!'

'But we are almost seventeen, Lia. Could we not at least plan a time  when we should be able to accompany you to such things? We could borrow  the older gowns Leonora no longer fits. It won't be expensive.'

The plaintive tone in her voice had Aurelia taking a breath. When would  it ever be easy? The silks were beginning to pay, but their debts were  still substantial.

She should be at the warehouse now, sorting through fabric, but this  visit by Cassandra Lindsay's brother meant that she needed to be at home  today, chaperoning her sisters as there was nobody else to do it.

As she closed her eyes the exhaustion she had felt last night was there  again this morning so, after finishing her father's leftover breakfast,  she poured herself a glass of milk. If she became ill then the whole  game was lost. One mistake and her father's second cousin would be in to  claim Braeburn House, leaving them homeless and penniless.                       
       
           



       

The horror of such a thing happening was not even to be considered and  she stood to help her father back to the library. He did not understand  what he read any more, but he enjoyed holding the books. She would  instruct his maid to keep him there until after the visitors had gone,  influenza giving her a good excuse for his absence.

Rodney Northrup was accompanied by his sister and they arrived well into the afternoon.

They were all in the downstairs salon when they heard the sound of a  carriage stopping. Prudence ran to the window to be roundly growled at  by Leonora who wanted everything to be simply perfect. Harriet rolled  her eyes at Aurelia as they all took their seats again and listened to  the approaching voices.

He was not with them! Relief flooded into Aurelia's whole body.  Hawkhurst had not come with his golden eyes, night-dark hair and  menacing certainty. She unclenched her fists, removed her glasses and  found herself smiling as Cassandra Lindsay and Rodney Northrup were  shown into the room by John.

'I hope we did not keep you waiting at all.'

'You are right on time, Lady Lindsay,' Aurelia returned, her sentiment not echoed in the face of both Prudence and Harriet.

'Oh, please call me Cassie. All of my friends do.'

Without waiting for a reply she clasped Leonora's hands next. 'Rodney  has been most keen to come today, my dear, and with you looking so  pretty in pink I can well see why. Your two sisters mirror you in their  pastel hues.' She waited as Aurelia introduced the twins, their curly  blond hair catching the light from the window.

'I did not realise your sisters were almost all of the same age, Mrs St Harlow.'

'Prudence and Harriet are nearly seventeen. They will come out next  Season.' Aurelia did not quite feel comfortable using Lady Lindsay's  first name and so did not add anything else at all.

'And your father?'

'Is indisposed at the moment with the influenza. He is in bed and has been for the past few days.'

'Then let us hope he makes a good recovery with no lingering bad effects.'

In answer Aurelia smiled, the lies falling bald into the room between  them. It had been so long since any stranger had set foot in Braeburn  House and the need for lies made everything dangerous. Her eyes strayed  to the clock. How long did one of these visits usually last for? She  hoped it might be quick.

'I visited Mrs St Harlow and her sisters yesterday with Rodney, Hawk. Aurelia St Harlow is … unusual.'

Cassie's statement made both men turn from their seats in the corner of the St Auburn library.

'She wore the same dress we saw her in at your ball, which was  interesting, though she had done away with the glasses. Her eyes are the  most surprising of colours. Different shades,' she continued as neither  her husband nor Stephen spoke. 'I wonder why she hides herself beneath  yards and yards of shapeless black bombazine.'

Nat began to smile. 'What are you trying to tell us, Cassie?'

'Secrets linger in Mrs St Harlow's eyes like ghosts and she is careful  with every single thing that she says. Charles, of course, was  difficult, so that may be part of it. But there are other things, as  well. The same servant who greeted us at the carriage after the ball  last night took our coats, provided us with tea and showed us out.'

'You think they are short of money?' Hawkhurst made the observation.

'The house is furnished well and is one of the prettiest properties in  all of Mayfair, so that possibility seems remote. There was an odd sound  whilst we were there, though. A howling if I had to name it. Mrs St  Harlow said that they had just taken over the care of a small puppy and  were trying to train the animal. Her sisters looked less than  comfortable with the explanation, however, and I got the feeling they  were relieved to see us go. Not Leonora, of course. Rodney and she  existed in a space all of their own and I have never seen my brother so  happy.'

'Is it wise to encourage him, do you think?' Nat asked the question.

'You refer to Mrs St Harlow's past, no doubt, and the unfortunate accident at Medlands.'

'It was widely known that they were not happy. Charles had apparently  said something of his wife expressing her desire for his early demise  not long before he died. His friends testified that she harassed and  badgered him all of the time, a woman who was never content with all the  gifts that he was showering upon her. By all accounts from the London  jewellers and suchlike, there were many.'

'Which friends?' Stephen joined in the conversation.

'Freddy Delsarte and his cronies were amongst their number, if I recall.'

'Delsarte waylaid Mrs St Harlow at the ball. She had bruises on her wrist from his grip.'                       
       
           



       

'Perhaps he is another of her disenchanted lovers, then. The parties  they held at Medlands were notorious.' Nat used a tone that was unusual.  Stephen had heard the same cadence when information was being extracted  from a difficult informant, the undercurrents of deception held within.

'I thought it brave of her to even attend, Hawk.' Cassie's voice resonated with a definite query.

'She has three sisters to marry off. That would make a warrior out of  any woman.' Hawkhurst remembered her antics above Taylor's Gap.

'Yet she makes no effort at all to give her side of the story. If she was pardoned by the courts, she must be innocent.'

'Or she had a good lawyer,' Nathaniel interjected and Stephen could hear  his impatience with the whole thing. 'Charles was a man who none of us  liked and Mrs St Harlow is a woman whom society detests. Perhaps they  suited each other entirely.'

'I don't think I detest her,' Cassie interrupted. 'I think, under other  circumstances, we might have been friends. You had a waltz together,  Hawk. What do you make of her character?'

She kisses well and goes to pieces on the smallest of caresses.

He wondered what would be said should he voice such things and remained quiet.

'I barely know her.' Stephen did not wish to be drawn into Cassandra's  wiles by admitting more and when the conversation meandered on to other  topics, he was pleased.

On Monday afternoon, despite willing himself not to, Hawk found himself  in the park watching for the conveyance containing Aurelia St Harlow and  her father. Why he did not just dismiss the woman from his notice was  beyond his understanding but there it was, logic lost beneath a will  that had forgotten what was good for him.

He did not have long to wait before they came, Aurelia in her black  bombazine with a matching hat and her father tucked in beside her in the  open landau. She chatted and laughed, the driver on the front box  dressed in the livery of the stables complex in Davies Mews and the  horses a well-matched pair of greys.

The senior Beauchamp must be a gifted conversationalist, Stephen  thought, as he caught her laughter on the wind, for he had never seen  Aurelia St Harlow look so animated. He hated the way his body responded  to the sound and bit down in irritation.

Below this thought, however, another one less generous tumbled, born  from his years of observing people closely, he supposed, and from a  lifetime of finding the wrong in things.

He could not see her father's lips moving in the spaces when his  daughter did not speak and though he craned forward to watch more  closely as they returned around the path for a second time, he was  beginning to get the feeling that the gaiety of this carriage ride was a  sham.

For whom? His eyes took in various lords and ladies gracing the park,  the busiest time of the day, and although other conveyances slowed down  to speak to those who might hail them, the Beauchamp carriage maintained  a steady speed and a one-sided conversation for three whole passes  around.