Mistress at Midnight(39)

           



       

Her husband. Joined by God and by law. Contentment gave way to alarm,  though, as his fingers passed over raised skin at her nape and he pushed  her hair aside.

'What happened here?' It was not the mark a lady should have had, she  knew this, the quick slice of Charles's knife a warning to comply.

'I married your cousin on a whim and he soon regretted it.' She took a  deep breath. 'He was my husband and I had promised before God to obey  him. If I had given him his marriage rights perhaps none of what  happened would have happened. John's daughter might have had her baby  and would still have been alive.'

Hawkhurst shook his head. 'A man who would slice the skin of the neck of  his wife is an unbalanced and dangerous one, Aurelia. You were wise to  stay clear of him and there is no shame in protecting yourself.'

She smiled at that. 'As you protected your brother?'

Shock ran through him. 'Who told you?'

'Lillian did. She said the scar on your thigh was from your effort to  save your brother when he was caught in the crossfire of war.'

'It was a fumbled effort. He died in my arms.'

Lord, he could give out advice, but he could not receive it. The irony  of that made him smile and when she began again to talk he made himself  listen.

'Both of us have been scarred by death then, it seems, and have paid the  price. Perhaps you were right when you said that it is time for the  guilt to end, you with your brother and me with Charles.'

Her fingers strayed and she held the small bud of his nipple between them, causing Hawk to simply stop breathing.

Would there ever come a time when he did not want to possess her? Laving  his tongue at her throat, he left a mark, reddened by passion, and took  her to the marriage bed.

It was night when he woke, the moon full through the windows, its pale  shadows lighting the limbs of Lady Aurelia Hawkhurst. Hawkhurst repeated  the name to himself, liking the way it tripped from his tongue into the  silence, midnight long since passed.

Her head was on his chest and her arms were thrown out across him, the  ring he had placed there easily seen in the moonlight on her fingers.  Further off the breeze rattled the leaves on the giant oaks that marched  along the driveway.

Atherton and Aurelia. The rightness of it made him smile and he lay  still just in case she might wake and see all that she meant to him.

Why did he not tell her? Why did he not give her back the words she had given to him all across the long and lovely day?

Treasure.

'It can be simple,' she had said. But he knew that it never was.





Chapter Seventeen


Hawkhurst was gone when she awoke next, the sun streaming into the room.

Mrs Simpson came in with a quick knock, her face wreathed in smiles and a basin of steaming hot water in her hands.

'I'm to help you wash, my lady, and then dress.'

Aurelia felt a wash of embarrassment rise up across her face. The bed  was in a state and, quickly drawing up the blanket from the base, she  tried to hide some of the wreckage.

'A successful wedding night needs to show some … shambles,' the sensible  and eminently practical Mrs Simpson declared. 'In my experience if it  does not then there is not much hope for a future happiness.'

'You are married?'

'For thirty-five years, my lady, and to a man I love as much now as I did when I married him.'

Such chatter calmed Aurelia. 'Does Lord Hawkhurst come to Atherton often?' she asked.

'Not so often. When he was a child he lived here with his parents, but  they passed on with a sickness and he has not returned for great lengths  of time since.'

The information was horrifying. She imagined the hurt and the loneliness of a young Stephen, his world fallen to pieces.

'This is why Lord Hawkhurst is a rolling stone, I'd be thinking, though a good marriage might change that.'

'Thank you for telling me.'

'But come, my lady, your new husband is waiting for you in the downstairs breakfast room.'

Stephen stood by the window in the blue salon and looked out across the  long green lawns. Once he had played here with his brother, laughing and  shouting as they ran and fished and climbed. His parents had stayed at  Atherton for most of the year, wanting the quiet and the beauty of the  place, but it had been the same isolation that had eventually killed  them-too far for any doctor to come with a bag of tricks and a cure.

They had been buried together in the small family graveyard and Daniel  and he had been brought up from school to observe the solemn and joyless  process.

He wiped his hair away from his eyes. Now he was back with a woman who  was nothing like the bride he had thought to take, and where did that  leave him? Smitten and ensnared in the promise of all that she was, that  was where.                       
       
           



       

To wake up this morning with her lying beside him and watch the trust  and peace on her face had been a revelation. He was no longer just  beholden to himself and he hated this power she held over him, no will  of his own save the need to empty his lust inside her like a green boy  in the first flush of adolescence. He abhorred the thought, too, that if  anything ever happened to her he might not survive it. Would not  survive it.

It had been the same with his parents all those years ago when the news  of their deaths had left him breathless and crouched against the side of  a cold brick building struggling for the air that he could not take.

If Aurelia left him … He shook his head and put away the thought, but the  possibility of pregnancy loomed large and he knew the percentages of  healthy women who never made it through labour. Everything was dangerous  when a person wriggled through the careful guard of indifference and  slid into the heart. It was why he had even considered offering for  Elizabeth Berkeley because he knew that there was a part of him that she  could never have touched.

Unlike Aurelia.

He swallowed and thought of his mother. Catherine would have liked his  new wife, for they had the same sort of independence and cleverness. His  father would have liked her, too, with her wide-ranging knowledge of  politics and opinions.

A noise at the door made him turn and there she was before him, a shawl  that he recognised as one of his mother's tucked around her shoulders,  the softer shade of pink setting off the fiery colour of her hair. She  wore it just as his mother had, tucked up in a loose knot at her nape.

The circles of life spun in ways that were fathomless and  incomprehensible and perhaps after all it was just as simple as Aurelia  had said it was. Signalling to the waiting footman to begin serving  breakfast, he helped his bride into a seat at the table.

He was dressed in country clothes this morning, the fabric in his jacket  and his trousers fine tweed and beautifully tailored. On her part  Aurelia could barely meet his glance as she pondered over their hours in  a bedchamber filled with delight. Today in the company of servants  tending to them and the formality of a lordly seat overshadowing  everything, a sort of hesitant uncertainty hovered.

She could not believe that this distant lord was the very same man who  had kissed her into oblivion and given of his body so freely.

'I would like to show you Atherton today on horseback, if you feel up to it.'

Just the thought of a jaunt outside raised her spirits. 'My arm is a lot  better and even if it tires I am well able to manage onehanded.'

'Good. Mrs Simpson will find one of my mother's riding habits for you to  wear. It will be of the old style, of course, but I think you would be  much The same size. Would eleven o'clock suit you?'

'That sounds lovely.' The toast was dry in her mouth as she bit into it.  So formal and stilted. She wished he would look at her as he had in the  moonlight, passion in his eyes as need for her filled him. Today it was  as if she could have been anyone.

'The people who work on Atherton would no doubt enjoy a word or two with  their new mistress if you would not be averse to stopping.'

'Indeed I would not be averse to such a thing.'

His eyes creased at her answer, puzzlement lurking, and because of it  she smiled. Quick wariness took his glance away and he made much of  buttering his toast before lifting up a jug of freshly squeezed and  sweetened lemon juice to fill a fluted glass-the business of an ordinary  breakfast underpinned by a night of high passion and lust.

If she had been braver, she would have reached out and placed her hand  over his and asked him If they might again repair to their bedroom to  speak in a language that needed no words at all. If she had known that  his feelings for her were as strong as the ones she held for him, she  would have done just that, but she had no such certainty. And so she  stayed quiet, the heavy tick of a clock in the corner eating up the  minutes of silence between them.

Finally he seemed to have had enough.

'Alexander Shavvon will be here tomorrow. He is the head of the British  Service and I am hoping he will allow an end to all that has been  uncovered in the Park Street warehouse.'