Mistress at Midnight(14)

Again she remained quiet.

'I can hear it from you, Aurelia, or I can instruct my lawyers to look  into my cousin's accounts. I would prefer it if you told me.'

After a few seconds she began to speak, softly at first, but then  gaining in volume. 'My husband's estate was mortgaged up to the hilt. I  have been trying to pay back the creditors I personally took food and  services from ever since he died.'

Suddenly he understood. 'With the money gained from silk?' Lord, why had  he not guessed? She had worn the same serviceable dress nearly every  time he had met her and the gifts of jewellery from Charles which Nat  had spoken of were never anywhere in sight. Today, even the pendant he  had seen about her neck every other time he had met her was gone.  Unwillingly, he supposed. Her fingers had crept to her throat on several  occasions during the conversation, dropping to her sides when they  discovered the loss. Had she pawned the piece for quick cash?

'There are two mills in Macclesfield and the warehouse here in Park  Street. The trade is beginning to be profitable and will continue to  stay so if I can only … ' She petered out, the words simply stopping on  her tongue.

'Keep your father's state of health a secret?'

The shock in her eyes was underlined by fear as she stepped back. He had  the feeling that she might have been planning to simply walk out of the  door, but had then thought better of it, choosing instead to defend  herself with words.

'A lord contemplating jumping from a cliff to solve the problems of the  world that ailed him might be perceived by any business partners as a  risk.'

'Touché!'

He tried to keep his tone light, an airy unconcern visible, but  underneath another truth rose into life. She would sacrifice herself for  her father and for her family and if anyone got in her way … ?

'You would spread such a lie?'

'It depends on whether you interpret my father's sickness as influenza or dementia.'

An ultimatum of protection. There was some damned fine sense of  poignancy in such a stance and in his line of business it had been a  while since he had met another who might do the same.

She knew she had made a mistake as soon as he drew back, but there was  nothing she could do about any of it. He would hate her now, that much  at least was obvious, the lighter play between them dissolved in the  message of her threat.

Ruin me and I will ruin you!

She loathed herself for even thinking to use such a warning and yet the  faces of those she supported came to mind: Papa, Leonora, Harriet and  Prudence, and John with his wife Mary.

And in Paris … Aurelia shook her head. No, she would not dwell on this  now, a man who seemed to read her very mind standing before her.

Twenty-six and forever adrift from society.

'If it is money you need … '

She broke into his words even before he had finished them, unwilling to  hear the offer. 'I need only your confidence, Lord Hawkhurst.' The dog  growled at her tone.

'Then you have it.' His words were clipped short and he was gone even  before she had time to answer. As the door shut behind him, Aurelia  closed her eyes. He had looked at her as if she were … unknown, the  undercurrents between them disappearing into simple loathing. The ache  of it stabbed quick for in the nights after everyone had found their  beds and the moon was high she had dreamed there might be something  finer, something real and right and true. As she shook her head hard,  the betrayal of hope was a timely reminder of why she had not sought out  the company of others in the years since Charles's accident.

The shaped sharp end of the oak branch had pointed upwards, all the  intentions of death in its careful placement. The brush before the jump  had been so precisely angled, hiding everything, and she had been most  vigilant in shielding John from the heavy hand of the law when it was  determined he was the last person to be seen in the vicinity. The  questions had come, of course, but the true answers had been lost in the  interim, clues to the truth gone for ever and only conjecture left.                       
       
           



       

Sitting at the table, she unlocked a drawer at the very bottom of her  desk and drew out a pouch of leather wrapped in silk. She knew that Lord  Hawkhurst had not been here for a casual or idle chat; she had seen it  in his stance and heard it in all the things he had not said.

'Ahh, mon Dieu, qu'est-ce que je fais maintenant?'

Oh, my God, what should I do now?

Drawing out the newest missive from Paris, Aurelia understood the need  to be even more careful than she usually was when she passed the letter  on.

She remembered Sylvienne's wide and frightened eyes when they had last  met in Paris, the furtive looks across her shoulder as her mother had  explained she did not feel safe.

Freddy Delsarte had been there, of course, his own brand of cunning  gleaming in his eyes, the secrets of the daughter of a well-respected  and wealthy English gentleman pointing to a lucrative blackmail.

Another responsibility. A further problem. Aurelia felt as though she  was a tightrope walker poised on a thin rope above chaos and despair.





Chapter Eight


Aurelia met Stephen Hawkhurst in the library in Bond Street on Tuesday  morning, almost falling over him as she rounded one aisle. His height  and strength in the smallness of Hookham's seemed out of place here, a  warrior amidst the formality of Society's quieter pursuits.

She wished she had worn her light blue dress, as even to her own  uncritical eye the black bombazine did her skin little favour. Pushing  such ridiculous vanity aside, she waited, for after their conversation  at Park Street there could be little he wanted to say to her ever again.

'I hope your father's influenza is abating, Mrs St Harlow.'

So that was how he would play it. She felt her cheeks flush red. 'Indeed  it is, my lord.' Her hands clutched a book of flowers drawn as  lithographs on to thin tissue and further afield she noticed a couple of  women looking their way.

Nay, his way, she amended, their expressions having the same sort of  interest she had perceived on most of the female guests at his ball.

When he beckoned her to follow him towards the end of the room she went  uncertainly, pleased that the onlookers were blocked from her view by a  tall shelf.

'I have been giving the … situation with your father some thought.'

Shaking her head, she turned to leave, but he caught her arm and held it, the grip of his fingers allowing her to go nowhere.

'Could you speak with your cousin and gain his approval in ensuring your  family's living situation is more stable? Surely if such a thing were  to leave you destitute the man might consider such an action.'

'Or he might throw us out tomorrow.'

'He seems reasonable enough.'

'You have checked up on him?' Horror and anger made her voice rise a good few octaves.

'Mr James Beauchamp has a name for being a fair and equitable man.'

'No.'

'He is also a friend of Rodney Northrup's.'

'One can be a respected man or a beloved friend and still have a penchant for that which has never been enjoyed.'

'From where I stand there seems more than enough to share and I am  certain your family would be relieved to see you at home a little more  often.'

'No.' The single word was louder this time as she broke off contact  between them, danger sprouting from such intransigence. Did Lord Stephen  Hawkhurst really expect just to waltz into her life and change it as if  it were a knitting pattern, easy and simple? She knew what would happen  next. Of course she did. If Mr James Beauchamp came to the house in the  guise of a distant cousin inclined to help, everything would change.

They would all have to be grateful to him and the whims of an unmarried  twenty-seven-year-old man might include the wish for a wife. Then  Leonora or Prudence or Harriet would be sacrificed for the greater good  of the family, and each of them would go without a whimper to protect  her. She knew this as truly as she knew the night followed the day  because all year the whispers she heard when the others thought she was  not listening had been about their worries for her.

Aurelia works too hard. If only we could find a way to help her.

Well, the silks were beginning to pay and the new completed designs were  beautiful and different. Another few months and everything would be  possible. the only tripping block stood before her in Hookham's lending  library in the large form of the implacable Lord Stephen Hawkhurst and  he did not look pleased.

'How many other sisters do you have?'

'Two. Prudence and Harriet are twins.'

'Do they look like you?'

'No. They are much prettier, for they favour Leonora and-'

A ripe swear word broke off her sentence.                       
       
           



       

'Charles was a man who appreciated beauty in women. Surely he let you know of the qualities in yourself that he admired?'