Mistress at Midnight(36)

Aurelia thought of her gown ruined by the shooting. With no other  clothes save a coat in about the same condition she doubted she would be  able to be 'dressed' at all.

She was about to decline the opportunity when a maid sailed through into  the room carrying a dress of pale cream in one arm and the matching  slippers and shawl in the other.

'My husband is always saying that I have far too many clothes so you  would be doing me a great favour if you took a few off my hands. Why,  with a little help we will have you looking most presentable again.'

The kindness in her tone was disarming. 'The doyennes of London society  might warn you away should you ask of my character, Mrs Clairmont, and  believe me there are many who would feel your assistance to be both  unwarranted and unwise.'

Hawkhurst's friend's wife merely laughed. 'Luc taught me to follow my heart and I have quite decided to do just that.'

Thickness obstructed Aurelia's throat as she looked away. Lillian  Clairmont had the same sort of graciousness that Cassandra Lindsay did  and both had been more than kind. She wished that they could have been  good friends, their lives playing out across the years like the  characters in the books she read in her father's library. For ever  linked and loyal. But under the circumstances it was not fiction that  she should be fostering.

'I have a bullet through my arm for a reason and there are things I have done that I should not have.'

'Well, Alfred likes you.'

'Pardon?' Aurelia suddenly couldn't understand quite where this conversation was leading.

'Stephen's uncle. He thinks you are the answer to his prayers and has  been extolling your charms to all and sundry. He says that you think of  everybody save yourself and that it is high time someone took you in  hand and worried for you.'

'Someone?'

'Hawk, I am guessing.' She began to giggle and because the whole thing was just so ridiculous Aurelia did, too.

It felt so good to laugh, to let the worry and fear spill out into  something different altogether here in a beautiful room in the early  afternoon sunshine with a full vase of roses on her mantel.

Orange roses. The way they clashed with the paler hues of the room was surprising.

Lillian surprised her, too, as she leant over and laid her fingers  across the top of her uninjured arm. 'Stephen needs to be happy again  and I think you are just the person to make him so.'

'He thinks I am a traitor.'

'And are you?'

'No.'

'Well, then, make him realise exactly who you are. He has been alone all  of his life and seconded to a job that has taken his soul bit by bit.  He used to laugh more. It would be so good to find him such again.'

The words sobered Aurelia's joy because laughter had been as foreign to  her across the last eight years as it had been to him. Still, she  remembered a time when joy had filled her up with an optimism that  Charles had completely negated.

'Thank you for taking me in and for … ' Her hands shook as she encompassed  the room with a gesture, and to her horror, tears gathered and fell. 'I  do not usually cry,' she managed, as the beautiful Lillian Clairmont  sat on the bed beside her and gathered her in, careful not to touch the  thick bandage.                       
       
           



       

'Then I am glad you feel able to do so with me.'

Her perfume was one of flowers fresh blooming and Aurelia's more normal  reticence was replaced by a want to explain. 'My mother is in Paris and  the man who shot at me was part of a group who had made threats against  her safety. I was trying to save her, but now I think I have made  everything immeasurably worse.'

'Sometimes the way forwards is not as straight and easy as you might  like it to be, but there are those who can help you if you let them.'

'If it is Stephen that you speak of, he has left already and I do not know how to tell him any of it.'

'He has gone to find Delsarte and will be back as soon as he has.'

'Oh.' Aurelia sat up in bed and swung her legs across the side, for a  clean bath and a new gown suddenly seemed like a very good idea.

Delsarte had slid into a hole like the rat that he was and was nowhere  to be found. Hawk hoped he might have left England altogether, though a  feeling down his spine told him he hadn't. But with the rains slanting  in from the north the byways had become quagmires and any tracks able to  be followed had been swallowed up by mud.

Scanning the heavens above him, he rounded the final hills down into  Woodruff Abbey. A storm darkened the sky, a rainbow sliding into the  last prisms of daylight. The house in the folds of ash trees was  beautiful though he wished it might have been Atherton standing there  before him, its gilded cream turrets and thick crenellated walls calling  him home as no other place had ever been able to manage.

It had been so long since he had been back, the memories of a family  taken from him by sickness leaving him unwilling to return; until now,  until this moment, until the vision of Aurelia St Harlow gracing the  gardens and the salons and his bedroom cancelled out everything before  it.

'God.' He whispered the word into the night and urged his mount onwards,  the shadows of the Abbey beckoning. Aurelia's curtains were drawn. He  realised that as he counted the windows along the second floor and above  the portico. Had her wound worsened? Had the fever returned? Had the  doctor's advice been as sage as he hoped it would be? His fingers  tightened on the reins and he frowned at such an unfamiliar anxiety.

It was then that he saw her, walking through the gardens on the western  side of the house, the formal box hedges obscuring her before she came  through the canopied archways of greenness to wait beside the driveway.  She wore a dress of Lilly's, he thought, cream silk bright through the  oncoming darkness. Her hair was almost loose, caught in an untidy knot  at the back of her head so that tendrils fell from it, curling Titian  against pale. Her left arm was held immobile against her chest by a  skilfully fashioned sling, the tie of it made into a bow.

'You are well, Lord Hawkhurst?' Her eyes slid across his body, checking as she asked the question.

'Delsarte eluded me, though I have an idea as to where he will go to  next.' If she felt relief, she did not show it, her face carefully  schooled into a smile that gave away nothing.

'When Lucas Clairmont returned yesterday and you didn't I thought  perhaps … ' For the first time she faltered, stopping as she swallowed  before beginning again. 'I thought you might have gone back to London.'

'But you watched for my return anyway?'

She looked back at the manor house, hesitation taking her away a step  and then bringing her back. 'I should not wish for you to be hurt  because of my actions.'

'The missives you delivered to Touillon were a decoy to the real work  undertaken by Delsarte, the silk samples allowing an easy passage of  intelligence. Kerslake has confessed to everything for the chance of a  pardon.' He hoped she did not understand what these words implied.  'Sometimes it is prudent to sacrifice the freedom of one for the capture  of many.'

'Including me?'

He turned away because he could see in her eyes exactly what he knew would be reflected in his own.

'The people you work for are now looking for me?' She had reasoned it out anyway, the fright on her face escalated to panic.

'There is another way.'

'What way?'

'I can marry you.' He wished he had put more emotion into the words before he said them. 'My family name might see you safe.'

'No.'

'There is no choice, Aurelia, for treason holds a harsh punishment.'

She shook her head hard. 'Marriage to a man with no mind to want you is a similar penance, Lord Hawkhurst.'

'You speak of Charles?'

Caught in stillness the cream of her gown was bathed in a shimmering gold.
                       
       
           



       
Lord Stephen Hawkhurst would marry her because of duty and danger. He  would link his name to hers in protection and shelter only, nothing at  all mentioned of love.

Treason? They could try her for that? They already had the word of  Kerslake, his liberation depending upon the scope of his confession.  Henry wouldn't be kind. She knew it. He would throw her into a light  that would not be flattering because in doing so he heightened his own  chances of deliverance.

She hated the way her heart was beating, all the dreams she had fostered  disappearing in the comprehension of a reality that held no mind for  hope or love. It was worse because of it, this altered understanding-a  proclamation given without any of the intended promise.

'I do not think you understand the gravity of your predicament or the speed with which the British Service might act upon it.'

'But you will tell me?'

'They know where you are and unless we leave immediately I will have no  hope to stop them from transporting you south to face charges. Atherton  is the only option of protection left.'