Mistress at Midnight(13)

Hawkhurst had to smile at that because the question was exactly the one  he was about to ask her and because there was no earthly reason why a  well-to-do lady should be lurking in the run-down buildings on the back  streets of the Limestone Hole warehouses.

Save one.

'You work here?' Everything had just got a whole lot harder and the  mission he had been sent on by the Service was in danger of being  compromised entirely. His glance took in the bolts of fabric and the  squares of colours and designs that littered a large wooden table in the  middle of the room. Ledgers were piled up five high in a bookcase  beside it and further off in one corner a dog stood chained to the wall,  his teeth bared in grisly defiance.

'Down, Caesar!' The animal crouched uncertainly at her command, flecks  of spittle around its jawline. Stephen got the feeling that if it could  forsake its chains it would be at his throat in an instant; much like  its mistress if the look on Aurelia St Harlow's face was anything to go  by.

'A nice pet,' he drawled and stayed where he was.

'Protection,' she returned, the anger in her eyes boding badly. She neither asked him inside nor shut the door to keep him out.

An impasse. The sky solved the situation by suddenly opening, rain  scudding in the wind towards them across the line of brick buildings  drenching everything, and she allowed him through. The dog rose again on  its haunches at his movement forwards, a low growl filling the room.

'He is not used to visitors.'

'I will stand by the door, then.'

'It might be wise.' When she smiled briefly the lines of worry melted  into radiance and he drew in breath. God, Aurelia St Harlow's beauty  held a sensuality that always surprised him and, doffing his hat, he  placed it in front of his tight trousers, the effect she had on his  anatomy singular and strong. Irritation mounted.

'I cannot remember my cousin delving into silks.'

'That is because he didn't.'

'You are saying this is your doing?'

'My father's family have manufactured silk buttons for a hundred years. It is in the Beauchamp blood.'

'And he approves?'

The quick tilt of her head worried him. She looked momentarily disappointed.

'Women these days are less likely to seek authorisation from the men  around them, Lord Hawkhurst, for there is a new movement afoot that  allows for women's emancipation. My late husband would have been more  than horrified at any such thought, but there it is; I can work in any  field of industry that I am competent in and no one can stop me.'

'Indeed?' The idea was beginning to occur to him that she was the most  fearless female he had ever met. He could not even begin to imagine  ladies such as Elizabeth Berkeley and her ilk secreting themselves in  such a dangerous part of London with an animal who probably had feral  wolf in its bloodlines.

A grimmer thought also surfaced.

Could she be the one sending information to France through the textile  channels from England? His agent had been most specific that this office  was the one from which the package of coded information had first come.  He changed his tack entirely.

'Cassandra Lindsay was impressed by Leonora. She imagines her youngest brother to be in love.'

'Are you warning me, my lord?'

Hawkhurst felt a glimmer of respect for a woman who picked up so very  quickly on the things said beneath other words. 'The marriage of your  sister into a family of great note is something you have your heart set  on. Nathaniel, however, would not thank me if there were secrets in the  Beauchamp household that would cause even the slightest consternation to  his wife. Or to his name.'                       
       
           



       

'There are not.'

Her scent filled the room, the particular aroma of violets and freshness.

'Yet I am trying to understand why a lady of means might wish to spend her days in a dusty warehouse sorting silks.'

Colouring, she looked away, guilt marking the movement.

His cousin's widow had French blood, giving her the will to help a  country that was her mother's. She had told him her mother's nationality  when he had first met her. The money in the business of secrets could  also be substantial. Charles's estate had been sizeable as had her  father's family's, but perhaps there was more at stake than riches.  English society had in effect thrown her out on her head at the  unexplained death of her husband and revenge was sweet in anyone's  language.

Ice formed in his veins.

'It is most unusual for a woman of society to be involved in such endeavours.'

'Oh, one gets tired of tapestry and crossstitch, my lord, and as I  always liked design I thought to try my hand at something more  challenging.'

'You did not think to do this in a more conducive setting.' He looked pointedly at the dog.

'I am quite safe, Lord Hawkhurst, despite all you might think.'

'Do you work here alone?'

'No. There are two of us. My partner in the business, Mr Kerslake, has just left.' A blush darkened her cheeks.

'Kerslake is the man I spoke to earlier, I presume?' She nodded at his  question and remained silent as he remembered the fellow. Ambitious.  Good looking.

Damn. Perhaps there was more than a working relationship between them,  ensconced as they were in a room far from the watchful eyes of others.

Her hair was uncovered today and the red in it was astonishing. He  wanted to cross the space between them and hold the colour to the light,  a flame of scarlet much the same shade as the silk trailing from her  fingers. Here in the docklands, she was as far from the woman he had  kissed as she could be, independence and the uncompromising strategies  of business guarding any softer words.

She wanted him gone, too. He could see this from the way she tapped her  foot against the floor, like a musician might measure the time in a song  until it was finished.

'I would prefer it, my lord, if you could keep the knowledge of my small  concern here to yourself.' She breathed out a deep sigh to punctuate  her dilemma, her brow heavily creased and her shoulder drooping.

'And why should I do that, Mrs St Harlow?'

'Society finds unconventional women … perturbing. And it has been my  experience that what they don't understand they generally also do not  like.' The tone of her voice mimicked that of Elizabeth's friends,  breathless and wavering. He laughed, the sound filling the room around  them and the vulnerable and dejected air of a second ago disappeared  into plain anger as her eyes flinted.

Hawkhurst swore under his breath. A self-effacing timid demeanour did  not suit Aurelia St Harlow at all, this Boadicea of the Victorian  drawing rooms who fought for an advantageous alliance for her younger  sister despite a reputation that would have kept others as far from any  public communion     as they could go.

'I like you better when you do not simper, Mrs St Harlow.'

A half smile crept up on to full rounded lips. One small curl had  escaped the confines of her tightly bound hair and fell across her  throat on to the generous curve of her bosom. He drew his eyes back to  her face, feeling like he had as a green boy, caught in the act of  ogling. But she was not yet finished with plying her sister's case. This  time there was no tone of supplication evident at all.

'Lady Lindsay is more than willing to consider the match and any  intervention from you could only harm a relationship which both my  sister and Mr Northrup wish to pursue.'

'The dubious woes of star-crossed lovers are hardly my concern!' He  hated the cynicism he could hear so plainly, but he was a man who did  not like the unexplained, and so far everything about Mrs St Harlow  confused him.

She worked in a warehouse and lived in one of the most expensive town  houses in Mayfair, a residence well furnished and appointed according to  Cassie Lindsay; yet her hands were marked with the vestiges of a labour  that had nothing at all to do with her confessed design work on light  silk.

'I saw you the other day in the park with your father. The greys were very fine.'

'The enjoyment of good horseflesh is one of Papa's passions.'

She took a breath and held it, her fingers laced together in a tight  white line. At breaking point, he deduced, the pulse of a vein in her  throat denoting tension.

'Indeed, he looked most amused by the conversation. Almost too amused, were I to place a point upon it.'                       
       
           



       

'I do not know what you mean, my lord.'

'Are the Beauchamp properties entailed?'

The very blood simply went from her face, one moment flushed and the next pale.

'Did Cousin James send you here?'

He laughed at that. 'Nothing so prosaic, I am afraid, though I am  guessing that this man is the one your father's title and lands will  pass to when he dies or if he is no longer capable of performing his  expected duties.'

To that she made no response.

'Charles was a wealthy man and a generous one by all accounts. Surely, as his wife, you did very well on his death?'