‘Which is unusual for you?’
‘It is.’
‘Mama thought she heard music coming from Cristo’s room last night. She told me so this morning.’
His sister-in-law could no longer hold in her laughter and it settled around the room. Beneath the table Taris felt Beatrice’s hand steal into his own and she squeezed it before speaking.
‘Where is your brother Cristo?’
Her question was exactly the right one—it drew everyone’s attention into a completely opposite direction.
‘Our brother has lived in Europe for a number of years after deciding that England no longer suited him.’
Asher’s reasoning was not quite the truth, Taris thought, but close enough.
‘He certainly had good taste in books. I have looked over the shelves in his room and have decided that even the public reading rooms in London do not have the breadth of topic his library has.’
‘A characteristic he inherited from our father.’ Taris was careful in his choice of words and when his sister Lucy appeared at the doorway the family was quick to drop the subject altogether.
‘Why did your brother leave Falder?’ Bea asked the question again an hour later when she was alone with Taris.
‘He killed my father.’ The four words were enunciated without emotion.
‘He shot him?’
‘Nothing as dramatic as that. He just decided that the English system of privilege was not for him and left. All might have been more easily forgiven had our father not been in the throes of a severe winter ague. It was the opinion of the physician at the time that Cristo’s disappearance killed him.’
‘Disappearance?’
‘He left no note. It was only later that one did come and by then our father was long dead. When we tried to locate Cristo he had no wish to be found and sent a message to that effect. As the years mounted we decided to respect his wishes.’
‘But your mother…’
‘Still loves him. He played the piano well and every so often she fancies she hears music coming from his room.’ Bea noticed the way he turned from her as he told her, as though perhaps his mother was not the only one who missed a Falder son.
Bending to a drawer in a desk, he brought out a dark blue box and handed it to her. ‘When I inherited my uncle’s estates I also inherited his family jewels. They are kept here as I had no use for them. Is this something you might wish to wear?’
An intricate gold-and-topaz necklace lay in a white satin interior and to each side matching earrings were embedded.
‘Oh, I could not accept such a thing.’
She was speechless and honoured. This was no insignificant piece. If she wore this, everyone would know where it had come from.
‘There are many others should you want to sort through them as I cannot make out any of their forms.’
Carte blanche. Not a little offer. Still, she would rather have had the words that she had given him so many times last night.
I love you.
In this room with his hair pulled back into a queue he looked like a man who might never give her them back. Not in the daylight, with the voice of sanity and restraint between them and his lack of sight a potent reason for his reticence.
Darkness was their milieu, she decided, when the tendrils of night reduced any difference and the language between their bodies demanded no words.
Lord, even now the memory of it made her blush. As though he felt it too, his hand came against hers in a simple gesture, and the box of jewellery was laid down upon the desk, forgotten.
‘Beatrice?’ A question.
‘Yes.’ An answer.
The heavy slam of his heart was visible in the pulse at his throat. Not as unaffected as she might imagine.
She felt his hand skim across the line of her bottom and lift her skirt. The other one loosened his lacings and tilted her hips, entering slick wet and wanted, his breath against her throat as he pushed in further, no softness at all in it. Sheathed and tight. Full and intimate. Cold oak against the warmth of flesh, and the door unlocked.
Still, she could not pull back as his movements quickened, her hands splayed across the blotter, her head rolling as the same magic took her by surprise.
Anywhere? He could take her anywhere and she would follow? Her whimpers were quietened by his mouth as he covered the gathering waves of release and she was tipped into the place where nothing at all mattered.
He did not let her go when they had finished. Did not move apart or relinquish his tight grasp of her, his breath hoarse and the joining of their bodies tight in want.
‘God.’ Only that above the sound of breath, and the feel of cold air against her bare skin was sinful and exciting. The hot squeeze of his manhood still within her and the daylight exposing everything that night-time never had.
When his hands slid to where his body still lingered, she merely opened her legs further and let him explore, the scent of their lovemaking musky in the air around them.
‘More,’ she whispered and his answering laugh was as unguarded as she had ever heard it.
‘Much more,’ he returned as his fingers found a spot that made her whole body blush.
The sound of the clock brought them back and she had never felt so deliciously decadent as she ran her tongue across the outline of his lips.
‘Taris?’
His eyes sharpened as her fingers traced the scar across his left eye, the trail beginning in his hairline and finishing on the rise of his cheekbone.
Had any lover ever touched him in the way she was doing now? By the way he stayed so very still she thought not.
‘Did it hurt?’
The amber of his irises was brittle gold. ‘At first it did, though the ocean saved me, I suspect, for the salt leached away the pain. By the time we reached land again I could barely feel it.’
‘How long were you in the water?’
‘So many hours that we lost count. With the blood loss from this it was Ashe who dragged me with him finally, though the currents did their part in the rescue and deposited us on land on our second evening afloat.’
‘I have never heard any of this even whispered!’ she said.
‘Because of Emerald. It was her father who had caused the problem in the first place.’
‘Her father?’
‘Beau Sandford.’
‘The pirate? I am beginning to think that your family has as many secrets as I do.’
‘Which is why I tell them to you in the first place. Were you a woman without any past, I could not say a word.’
‘I would always take care of any confidences, no matter what.’
He smiled. ‘I know.’
Lord, Taris thought as he dressed that evening for the Davis country ball. He should tell Bea of his feelings for her, but something stopped him.
His blindness, if the truth were to be told and a dependence that he found repugnant, for the dream had been coming more frequently lately. The dream of the darkness without even a hint of light, lost in eternal black. The weariness and worry of it left him on edge but the child they had conceived together was also growing and the words that Beatrice had given him in the light of day as they made love demanded a response. From him.
Could he tell her everything?
Tell her of his fear and abhorrence of dependence and of pity. Tell her that his relationships with others were harder to maintain now with the sludge thicker, and negotiating a room full of people almost impossible without help.
Her help. He liked the feel of her arm against his, guiding him, lightly. He liked the way she stayed with him and talked, her easy conversation allowing him time to adjust and to avoid the pitfalls that he so often encountered.
He seldom took risks and yet today he had known that the door was unlocked. Anyone might have walked in. His fists tightened at his side as he realised what was happening to him.
Bea was making him live again. Live again even with the fear of tripping up, of being exposed, of having others seeing him in a compromised position.
He swallowed and swallowed again. If he lost her…No, he shook his head. He would not lose her, ever, and tonight when they were home from the party he swore that he would make her understand exactly what she meant to him and why.
Chapter Fifteen
Taris led Beatrice into the Davis soiree, his hand across her own.
‘I seldom attended these sort of outings until recently,’ he said to her as they came into the ballroom.
She smiled. ‘What has changed your mind, my lord?’
‘ You by my side.’ His eyes softened as he said it.
‘A lovely compliment,’ she returned.
‘Oh, I have many more, Beatrice-Maude. Later tonight, if you would let me, I could share them with you.’
‘Later tonight?’ she queried with a laugh. ‘Is that a promise?’
‘Indeed.’ The humour in his voice was easily heard. ‘And may I say that you look very beautiful this evening.’
‘You can see me?’
‘Imagination has its advantages.’
‘Such as?’
‘In my mind you are wearing the gown drenched in perfume that I found you in after returning from London.’
‘Rather revealing at a country ball?’
‘And your hair is down, floating in curls around your shoulders like the sirens on the rocks at Li Galli.’
‘If you heard me sing you might choose another analogy, my lord.’
‘Boudicca, then, of the Iceni, leading the Ancient Britons against the Romans?’
‘With poor Nero and his legions such an easy target!’