‘He has been called, sir,’ someone answered from behind.
‘Then call him again. Bates?’ His man stood next to him. Bea had not seen him when Taris Wellingham had first arrived in the room, but of course someone would be there to help him with the lay of the land. ‘Send Liam for my physician and make sure he knows the gravity of the situation.’
As the man hurried off with his orders Bea, feared that Taris might go too and she clung to him fervently.
‘Don’t worry, I shall stay here with you,’ he returned, and she felt his breath. Warm and real, no longer just her!
‘You p…promise?’
When he placed their joined fingers against his heart and smiled, she lay back against the cushion and closed her eyes.
He was here! Now she would be safe.
Taris felt the moment that she relaxed, his fingers measuring the beat of her pulse at her wrist and finding it reassuringly steady and strong. The sticky blood he had felt on her arms was mirrored on her forehead and neck when he ran his touch upwards.
Where the hell was the doctor and what the hell had happened? A woman he presumed to be Elspeth Hardy was sobbing incessantly at one end of the room and the quiet questioning of a constable at the other told him that this was no simple accident. When Bates returned and relayed the story of Beatrice being pushed on to the road and of how she had narrowly missed being run over by a carriage, he felt a roiling sense of disbelief.
Who would try to hurt her?
Who had nearly succeeded in killing her? His anger escalated as he felt the remains of a hat on the small table beside the sofa.
Ruined like her head could have so easily been!
MacLaren’s arrival a little time later took his mind from such suppositions. The family doctor had always been the sort who muttered, a trait that Taris had found useful so that he knew exactly where he was in a room.
‘My lord,’ he offered, and Taris felt his arm next to his, the quiet click of a doctor’s tools telling him that he was measuring Beatrice’s vital signs before making a judgement on her condition.
The astringent odour of smelling salts filled the space around them and then Bea’s voice. Confused. Embarrassed. Flustered.
‘I…I…should sit up,’ she said, her fingers creeping back into his hand as she held on tight.
But the doctor wanted her to stay still and through the grey haze Taris could see that he felt around the lump on her head.
‘A nasty accident. Do you remember if you lost consciousness at the time it happened?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Good. Good.’
‘Lord Wellingham, could you lift her and bring her out to the carriage? I think it may be more beneficial to the lady’s healing to treat her at home.’
‘Of course.’ He was certain that the doctor had long since guessed his eyesight to be weakening, but had never in any shape or form alluded to it. Taris was pleased to step forwards and lift Bea in his arms, the presence of Bates making it an easy pathway out to his conveyance.
Bea barely moved, the heat of her body melding into his, the soft abundance of her breasts against his cloak.
When they came to the doorway she curled in against him so it was easier to negotiate the portal and once outside he counted his footfalls to the kerb. His carriage stood where he had left it and, mounting the steps, he sat with Bea in his lap.
The trip home was completed in silence, Beatrice’s friend opposite sharing the seat with the doctor and Bates to his left. The small stern-faced maid named Sarah completed the party.
An hour later he was finally alone with Beatrice.
‘Doctor MacLaren said you were lucky not to have broken anything and that the grazes will feel a lot better by morning.’
‘Thank you for asking him to see to my injuries, my lord.’
He heard the wariness in her tone, but he was in no mood to ignore the larger question. He also wished she might just call him by his Christian name.
‘Who pushed you, Bea? Did you see him?’
He felt her shaking her head. ‘Sarah said he looked like a pauper and that he ran off into the backstreets as soon as I fell.’
‘A paid assailant, then?’
‘I would guess so.’
‘God. Who would hate you enough to do that?’
‘The same person who might have sawn through the axle of the carriage, perhaps?’
Said without any artifice at all and with a great deal of frank openness. Taris stiffened as something began to tug on his mind. A smell. A certain fragrance he had noticed as he had stepped into the town house this evening. Bergamot. Scattered bits and pieces began to fall into place.
‘The man James Radcliff? You said he was a lawyer?’
‘The junior partner in the firm who looked after my husband’s accounts. Why?’
‘Has he been here again today?’
‘No. I have not seen him since yesterday afternoon when you were here with the Duchess of Carisbrook.’
Such a smell would not linger, would not carry in a space for so very long. A sense of danger began to form and Taris felt as he had in Spain all those years ago before charging into battle.
Then, however, he had had all his faculties and the ability to catch sight of the slightest movement from a great distance away.
Could he protect Bea here if the man should choose to play his hand? The knife tucked into the specially made sock in his boot would help, as would the ring he wore. By turning the gold circle he clicked the edges into place and the heavy bauble changed into a lethal collar of diamond spears. Enough to surprise anyone. His cane would do the rest.
He tilted his head to listen and the silence in the house was comforting. At a guess he would say the lawyer had gone, but why had he been here in the first place? And had he come alone?
‘Did Mr Radcliff ask you for anything?’
‘He wanted to see some ledgers that were sent to me. He asked after them.’
‘And where do you keep them?’
‘Well, that is the strange thing—I do not remember having them.’
‘Does your door have a sturdy lock on it?’
‘I think so.’ Her answer held worry and hope strangely mixed.
Standing, Taris made his way over to it and threw the bolt, testing the door when he had finished doing so.
After listening for a further few moments he crossed to the bed, realising as he came closer that she was fast asleep.
She came awake instantly and fully, with the fright of one who did not quite understand where she was or what time of day it was.
Taris sat in a chair next to the bed, his long legs stretched out before him and the stubble of lost hours shadowing his chin.
Not quite asleep. When she stirred his amber eyes flicked open, unfocused and then alert.
‘What is wrong?’
When he moved his hand she saw a circle of diamond points coming from his ring. A knife lay in his lap, the other fist curled about it, easily, familiarly, in the way of a man who had long courted peril.
But as she frowned both the knife and ring were gone. A short illusion, a little fancy, and then gone; the accoutrements of battle disappearing from the everyday life of an aristocrat who walked the delicate pathways of the ton.
Secrets and menace and something more charged again, sensuality the other side of a dangerous coin.
The jeopardy of today’s accident made risk more accepted, made the fear of rejection less concerning, made the moments she had been given with him here in the night a chance that was to be taken and not lost.
She placed her hand across his and pressed down.
‘Thank you for coming today.’
‘How could I not have?’
‘Easily,’ she answered back, years of coping alone a burden she was more than used to. ‘I thought the carriage was going to run me over.’
‘As it did your hat?’
‘You saw it?’
‘Felt it.’
‘Could the person who did it come back here tonight?’
‘No.’ She liked his certainty, liked the way he did not even waver. A man who would protect her against everything.
‘Will you kiss me?’ Hardly even a question.
‘Could you stop me?’ His was not either.
‘I want to forget everything else save what is here, now, between us.’
‘Flesh?’ This time he ran his finger across her breast, easily distinguished under silk.
‘And blood,’ she answered, her tongue drawing a single wet trail through the stain on the skin of his hand.
‘I would not wish to hurt you.’
‘You will hurt me more if you do not come…’
‘Inside of you?’ No longer careful or limiting, the obvious stated, a balm to fright and hate and hurt.
In reply she held his finger to her lips and sucked in, the small noise thrilling and daring in a way that she had never been before.
Frankwell frowning at any enjoyment, the ghost of need always replaced by hurt.
Never again, she thought. Her body ached with the want of him, the air on her skin orange-glowed from the fire and the scars of her past disappearing into shadow, feeling and hot hard passion.
‘Call me Taris,’ he said. ‘Call me by my name.’
She wrote it on the back of his hand, in the wet of her tongue, and saw the way the hairs rose on his arm and the breath in his throat just stopped.
One second and then two. Suspended in time and place before beginning again, neither will in it nor choice.
A small touch here, a longer caress there. The music between them was heard in breaths and heartbeats and sighs.