What did she want of him? She could not even begin to name it.
Posy Tompkins came to her side and took her hand. Lucinda liked the warm familiarity of the action.
‘You look beautiful tonight, Luce, and I think that fact has something to do with the return of your mysterious husband. Edmund has already been whining to me about your lack of attention.’
‘You never liked him, Posy. I am not certain why.’
‘He is a boy compared to the Duke of Alderworth, a boy who in the end would disappoint you.’
‘And you think that the Duke would not?’
‘I think he has been misjudged by society. I think he is strong like your brothers and honourable in his way. I think, if you gave him a chance, he might surprise you.’
‘You were always the romantic, Posy.’
‘To find the happiness you haven’t had ever since your wedding, Luce, you might need to allow Alderworth some ground for compromise, for a bending is better than a breaking. If it were me, I would grab him with both hands and never let him go.’
‘Fine words from a woman who has sworn off relationships for ever.’
Posy’s more normal optimism was sliced by a sadness Lucinda had sometimes seen in her friend before. ‘He reminds me of a man I knew a long time ago, in Italy.’
Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the Elliott twins, their voices louder than they needed to be.
‘Lucinda, it is so wonderful that your husband is finally back. You must be thrilled that he has returned after all this time?’
Elizabeth Elliott was as effusive as her sister, Louise. ‘Everybody is talking about him, of course, and it seems he has arrived back in England a lot richer than when he left it. Perhaps you might both come to our ball on Saturday night—for Edmund Coleridge had already said that he will be there.’
The questionable undercurrents of the ton at play, Lucinda thought, and was glad when Posy took charge.
‘I had heard a rumour that you are to be married, Lady Elizabeth. Is it true?’
A scream of delight and then much was made of a ring on the third finger of her left hand. Lucinda scanned the room for any sign of her husband and was disappointed when she could not see him at all. Had he simply left or was he in the card room, drinking himself into oblivion and losing a fortune? The excitement she had felt before was suddenly changed into cold hard worry and she did not like the feeling at all.
Ten minutes later she made her way to a large terrace overlooking the garden and was about to walk out on to the edge of it when a scuffle and shouting at the far end caught her attention. Richard Allenby, the Earl of Halsey, was pummelling someone on the ground, a number of others around the prone body adding their particular attentions. Turning away in order to find somebody to help, she saw the profile of the person they were hurting suddenly in the light.
‘Taylen.’ Shouting, she moved forwards, catching the group unawares, each one of them looking towards her with a varying degree of disbelief on their faces. Then she was amongst them, sheltering her husband with her body and daring them to go through her person to get to him.
Blood was on his nose and his chin, a long cut across the back of his head and a metal bar lying down beside him. He looked groggy and dazed, his collar crooked and his jacket torn.
‘You have no business here.’ Allenby’s voice. She turned to face him with pure wrath.
‘No business, Lord Halsey?’ Her hand came out to push him back. ‘Will you hit me next, then? Do you creep up on defenceless women as well as men?’ She stooped as she spoke; her fingers found the bar and she raised it above her head. ‘If anyone comes closer, I will use it on them and I will scream the place down as I do it, you understand. And then when people come running I will tell them exactly what I saw; a bunch of cowardly thugs beating up a badly injured, half-conscious man in their midst and enjoying it.’
Silence reigned except for the breath of her husband, taken noisily through blood and mucus, then they were gone, all of them, the door to the ballroom shutting, leaving them alone.
She leant down to him, his blood staining her blue silk as she tried to mop up his face with her hem. Her hands shook with the shock of it all and she made an effort to still them.
She knew the moment he came back into full consciousness because he stiffened and tried to stand, coming up to his haunches in a way that suggested great pain and swaying with the movement.
‘The bastards hit me from behind.’ His fingers worked around into his hair, finding a gash as he looked at the bar. ‘They used that, I suppose. Halsey always was a coward.’
Lucinda thought that his pupils looked larger than they should be, green shrunk into darkness. He blinked a lot, too, as though his vision was impaired and he was trying to find the way to correct it.
‘There are stairs at the other end of the terrace. If we went through the garden, we could get to the road to find your carriage.’
‘You would come with me?’
‘Of course I would. You need help.’
‘If people see us, they will talk.’
When she laughed it felt free and real and good, a surprising discovery with the trauma of all that was happening around her. ‘They talk now, your Grace, and there is too much blood to go back into the ballroom. If they see you like this, everything will be worse.’
Nodding, he came up into a standing position, though his hands used the balustrade to steady himself, to find his balance. ‘I have ruined your gown.’ His top lip was thickening even as he spoke.
‘A small consideration given all of the others.’
The music had begun again, calling those present to the dancing, and Lucinda was pleased for it. With so much happening inside it would be far less likely for a guest to take the air on the terrace. Placing her arm across his, she led him down the steps, the small pathways amongst the plants lined with white chip stone which made it easy to traverse in the moonlight. Before a moment or so had passed they were out at the gate and Lucinda hailed the Alderworth conveyance, which languished further down the road, the driver throwing a cheroot to the ground and stomping it underfoot before climbing up into the driving box.
Another moment and they were inside with the door closed behind them and, for the first time since finding her husband at the feet of his assailants, Lucinda took in an easy breath. They would not be discovered like this, battered and bloodied after such a scandalous attack. They were safe.
Reaching into her reticule, she found a handkerchief. ‘Here, let me help you.’
His hand came out as he shook away the offer, anger evident in his refusal.
‘Why would Halsey waylay you in the way he did?’
Taylen Ellesmere raised his head slightly and had the temerity to smile.
‘Because, once upon a time, I did just the same to him.’
Chapter Nine
‘You crept up on him like a coward and knocked him out?’
He shook his head and then clutched at the side of it.
‘With a whole group of others to help you do your dirty work?’
‘Of course not.’
‘You used an iron bar on his scalp and hit him with it from behind, allowing him no chance to defend himself, and when he was down you kicked at his face?’
He seemed to suddenly lose patience with her questions, leaning forwards to take her hand into his.
‘Thank you, Lucinda.’
‘You are welcome, Taylen.’
His blood had made his palm sticky and he was careful to wipe her fingers with the tail of his shirt when he let go. Such a simple action and so much imbued within it. She looked away so that he would not see the emotion on her face. Outside the London streets were as busy as usual, nothing changed. Inside her world had shifted, though, the touch of his fingers against her own different now, more familiar. His smell. His warmth. The breadth of his thighs as they pressed against the velour on the seat.
‘My parents always believed in the concept of treating everyone as an enemy. Tonight I forgot.’ The words were said concisely, as if he would place a point on each one of them.
‘Advice like that makes me wonder whether such people have the right to offspring. Surely no child deserves to be brought up under such a cruel misconception.’
The sound of his laughter filled the small space, allowing accord to push through shock and anger. ‘Are you usually so forthright, Duchess?’
‘Indeed I am, Duke. My family would tell you that it is one of my greatest faults.’
His head shook as the Wellingham town house came into view, the action shadowed on the wall of the carriage behind him by the light from the portico. His hair had worked free from its leather strap and lay around his shoulders, darker than the darkness.
‘But I would not. Free speech has always been a particular preference of mine. I think it a residue of being raised by parents who never said what they actually thought.’
‘Because they were trying to protect you?’
He laughed again and was about to say something more when a movement on the stairs before them caught his attention. ‘It seems we have a welcoming party.’
Lucinda’s heart sank. With the blood from his nose still smeared across his face, a rapidly darkening eye and a thickened lip, Taylen Ellesmere looked exactly like the reprobate her brothers had good reason to think that he was.
‘I won’t come in. I doubt my body could take another beating.’ The dispassionate and cynical Duke was back, no warmth in his eyes at all as the footman opened the door and the light spilled upon them.