Mistress at Midnight(25)

Lady Lindsay nodded. 'His brother was killed in France on a mission and  Hawk thinks it was his fault that it happened-a personal revenge, if you  like, and one that has eaten at his soul. He has seen things that it  would be better for a man not to have and without family around him save  for Alfred … ' She stopped and laid her hand upon Aurelia's. 'Loneliness  and responsibility make poor bedfellows. I think you might know that  every bit as well as he does, as by all accounts you have had your own  battles in life.' She took in a deep breath. 'When I first met Nathaniel  I had been a prisoner in France for near on ten months. It was not an  easy detention and there were things that happened … things I thought  would make Nathaniel seek another more wholesome woman if he knew the  truth of it all. I tried to turn him away. I was damaged and I felt I  would damage anyone else around me if I let them get close. I ran away  on my wedding night to give him the chance of release, but he came after  me. He saved me.' She looked Aurelia straight in the eye before she  continued. 'If Hawk and you could save each other, any risk might be  worth it.'

Then she was gone, sailing back through the door with the grace she'd  had coming through it, the honesty and candour left behind her allowing  hope. Cassandra Lindsay had not been untouched or unblemished and yet  she had risen above adversity and found her place in the world beside a  man who would protect her.                       
       
           



       

Could she do the same?

Her arms curled momentarily around her body and she took in a deep  breath before replacing her mask and following Lady Lindsay back into  the ballroom.

The anger he was consumed with was nothing like the regrets he now  harboured as he thought back to the scene of a few hours ago. Lord,  Aurelia had been crucified for the boorish behaviour of her husband and  because of it not a word of his cousin's deviousness had ever been  uttered.

Unlike her, he cared for little and loved even less. Alfred was in his  seventies and might not last for too much longer and when he was  gone … there would be nothing of family or blood left. The last Hawkhurst.  The final member of a cursed line blotted out by circumstance and  sickness and betrayal.

And now even the hope of a faultless, blameless innocent fiancée was  lost because he recognised finally what he should have always known. He  would ruin Elizabeth Berkeley as surely as she would ruin him, like an  apple with one small black spot of rottenness, growing, spreading,  consuming flesh that was uncontaminated and pure.

He remembered Aurelia St Harlow's expression on the terrace as she had  looked at him, a sort of hope in her eyes. He had wanted to carry her  off then and there and bring her home to strip away the emerald gown,  claiming all that he could not, spilling his seed into the centre of her  womanhood and hoping for … what? A child? An heir? An ending to all the  solitude? Even knowing it was wrong, he could not stop the coursing  hunger and his cock rose rigid.

His. She would be his. There was no longer any question of it for  nothing would stop him. Not duty. Not King. Not country. Not even  treason.

'God help us.' He whispered the words into the darkness and closed his eyes against utter need.





Chapter Eleven


The man stepped out in front of her as she fumbled with the keys on the heavy lock on the Park Street doorway.

'You are Mrs St Harlow?' The question was in French.

When she nodded he simply handed her over a letter.

'She said I was to come back for your answer after you had had a day to look at it. She said you would give me a reply.'

With that he left. Looking around to see if anyone else was about and  hoping the rapid beat of her heart might begin to slow, Aurelia let  herself in, the unmarked white envelope clutched in her fingers.

She? Could he mean her mother?

Caesar stirred from sleep, stretching and yawning as she untied him and  took him outside. Briefly. She wanted to open the note before Kerslake  arrived and as an added precaution she snapped the lock behind her when  she re-entered the office.

A necklace she recognised as one of her mother's lay wrapped inside a letter. She instantly knew Sylvienne's hand.

Lia

I am ill. Sell this necklace, for I have the need of a maid to help me  through this ague. My friend will bring the money back to me and can be  trusted.



Grasping the table for balance, Aurelia sat, her fingers straying to the  chipped and worn beads of the cut-glass bauble. As cheap and worthless  as the life her mother now lived.

She had met Sylvienne again four years ago in Paris on a visit, the  untarnished beauty she had once been renowned for slipping into  something less attractive, the liberal lifestyle so appealing when she  had left England now futile and wretched.

Aurelia, just out of a marriage that smacked of the same sort of despair  she saw her mother consumed by, had been desperate to help. Women  survived in the only way they knew how and with the roles reversed  between them, she felt the need to parent Sylvienne. Even then she had  been uneasy with the sort of people her mama had been reduced to dealing  with, the crammed and squalid conditions of her rented apartment a far  cry from her life in London. No wonder she had become ill. But how ill?

She could not just go to Paris on a whim and leave Papa, not with the  silk business on the verge of a good profit and Leonora needing to be  chaperoned in the company of Rodney Northrup. Perhaps her mother could  be brought to London for some rest and respite? A new worry surfaced.  Sylvienne had said again and again she would never live in England, the  dreary boredom of it sapping her soul.

Closing her eyes, Aurelia took in a deep breath. Outside bells called  true believers to prayer and further afield the shrill blast of a horn  sounded, an outgoing vessel on the morning tide making its way to a  far-off destination with a full cargo and the hopes of pleasant seas.  Ordinary lives. Routine departures. Her own existence seemed beleaguered  by stress and unease.

With a flourish she inked her pen and set to writing, the words coming  quickly as she decided on the course of action that she would follow.  She still had the ruby pin Emily had given her and there were a number  of books in the library that her father might not miss. Quick cash. Her  fingers crept to the pendant at her neck. She could not pawn this, for  Hawkhurst's eyes were everywhere and if he were to find it again … ?                       
       
           



       

Squashing down the rising anger of her thoughts, she locked the envelope  in the bottom drawer of her desk and left the warehouse.

'Kerslake is involved. He has been seen in Delsarte's company and they  look more than chummy. They were at school together, though they were  both expelled for stealing.'

Shavvon looked down at the pile of notes he had on his table and then  back up to Hawk. 'What of the woman, Mrs Aurelia St Harlow? What do we  know of her?'

'Nothing much.' The lies came easily, falling off Stephen's tongue into  the silence of the room. 'She has an old father who is ill and three  younger sisters. The Beauchamp silk mills have been in the family for  years and she is busy running them.'

Hawk had never once in all of the time he had worked for the British  Service omitted a fact that was important to an investigation.  Sometimes, when innocents had perished in the quest for a greater good  he had hardly turned a hair, reasoning that in any conflict those close  to the perpetrators were bound to be damaged and there was little he  could do about it.

Yet here he was protecting a woman who had by her own admission omitted  salient details to the courts of England about the murder of his cousin.  He breathed out in that slow and careful way he had long since  perfected, attracting no unwanted attention.

'You know her personally, don't you? Mrs St Harlow, I mean?'

Caution surfaced. 'Vaguely, sir.'

'You met her in the library at Hookham's in Bond Street and then again  at the Carringtons' ball yesterday. It seems both times you had long  conversations?'

Hawk smiled. He should have realised that he would have been under  observation, as well, for trust was a hard commodity to come by in this  game. 'She was married to my cousin. It would cause more gossip to give  her the cut direct.'

'Then don't. I need you to get closer to the source of these missives  and it seems the Park Street warehouse may lead us right to them.'

Again Shavvon noted something on the book before him, a longer  observation, this time, and underlined it. 'Watch her carefully. I don't  trust her. She has come in front of the courts already and public  opinion of her is unflattering.'

Something inside Hawk was breaking as fast as Shavvon was speaking. This  would be the last time he would work for the British Service. When he  returned he would hand in all correspondence pertaining to intelligence,  all the weapons and the charts of countries long at strife with  England, all the codes and the books of observances made over thirteen  years of spying. It would be finished then, this part of his life, this  wandering nothingness that had left him stranded in a place he no longer  wished to be.