A Proposition for the Comte

by Sophia James

  ‘People like the Comte?’

  ‘He is a man whose reputation is unequalled.’

  ‘In society? As a hero or a villain?’

  Charles lifted his own glass to his lips and drank deeply. ‘My advice to you, Violet, would be to find another husband and concentrate on being a wife. This is the avenue that could bring about your true happiness. I am certain your mother would have furnished the very same advice.’

  Violet made herself smile prettily as she turned to the room, her heart racing under the pretence. Charles had his fingers in many pies and she had known that he had watched Harland closely. The Home Office, which he headed, was, after all, the ministry designed to keep England safe from any outsiders who might try to harm it.

  ‘You have changed something in here, I think. The colour of the walls, perhaps?’

  ‘Yes. It was blue, but my wife insisted upon a shade of yellow.’ She could see he was relieved by the new topic.

  And so the conversation rolled into the dressing of the home’s interiors and to the antics of his son who had just started at university that very year. Safe discussions and far from the true intent of those others. As she talked she searched for the enigmatic Comte de Beaumont, but she could no longer see him anywhere.

  * * *

  Amaryllis had finally retired, her sister-in-law staying up far later tonight than she had in months. Bidding her farewell, Violet made her own way up to bed, asking a servant to douse the lights below as she went. Did the Comte watch on from somewhere close? Would he even come? Upstairs she left two candles alight and dismissed her lady’s maid.

  ‘Go and find your own rest, Edith. I shall see you in the morning.’

  ‘Thank you, my lady.’

  The girl was off before other duties might come her way and Violet locked the door behind her.

  Last time Aurelian de la Tomber had come from the balcony. This time, no doubt, he would do the same. She stripped away her shawl and laid the dark green velvet fabric across a chair. She no longer felt cold. The heat in her burned like a fire consumed in flame.

  She knew the moment he arrived, the air around congealing in anticipation. Tonight he was dressed fully in black, enmeshed in shadow and night.

  ‘I think Douglas Cummings is a dangerous man.’ Not the words she had hoped for. Was it for politics he had come?

  She frowned. ‘He holds the appearance of one who could hardly swat a fly.’

  ‘Looks can be deceiving.’

  ‘Like yours were at the jeweller’s?’

  He ignored that and carried on. ‘Cummings works for Charles Mountford and has access to all the documents that come into the Home Office.’

  He was serious. It was not a personal dislike, but something much more sinister.

  ‘Did you ever see him at Addington Manor? When your husband was alive?’

  ‘No. But he was the sort that Harland enjoyed most—a man of subservience and gratuitous compliments.’

  Crossing the room, she poured each of them a drink. The cognac was from Charente and the best that money could buy. This could not go on, these half-truths they were telling each other, for she felt that she was simply standing on air. Squaring her shoulders, she turned.

  ‘Who are you, Comte de Beaumont, and why are you asking such questions of me?’

  ‘Why do you think I am here?’ He was so good at turning the question back on the one who had asked it.

  ‘I think that you are investigating my husband.’

  There, it was said, out in the open where she could not take it back.

  ‘Everything I hear about Harland Addington makes me dislike him.’

  She took a good sip of the brandy.

  ‘There were a few good parts.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘He spent much of the year away from our estate.’

  ‘So absence did not make the heart grow fonder?’

  She ignored that and posed her own query. ‘Who do you work for?’

  ‘The Ministère de la Guerre in Paris.’

  An unexpected honesty. She’d heard of them, of course, the shadowy and powerful arm of Napoleon’s policing of the city. No small and insignificant group. The shock of it held her still.

  ‘Your husband is accused of stealing gold sent to him from France for purposes he failed to deliver on. I found a document a few days ago saying as much with his name and yours upon it.’

  The words fell like sharpened swords on any hope that he represented a neutral ground or that it was for some other misdemeanour her husband was being followed. ‘I do not know what you speak of. I never signed any such agreement.’

  And there it was again, that trust. She told him things she had never allowed another to know before. It was astonishing.

  ‘If this blows up publicly, you will be implicated.’

  I am already, she almost said, almost blurted it out here in the silence and with the cold of the winter licking at the night. But it was not just her story to tell and there was danger for anyone whose identity was exposed. How well she understood that.

  Aurelian de la Tomber filled the room as he stood before her, huge and beautiful and overwhelming. He looked as if he was planning to go. She saw him glance towards the door, measuring the passage of space and poised to leave her.

  Reaching out, she laid one hand across his arm, feeling the strength in muscle and sinew. For so very long she had been careful, anonymous. For all the years of her adult life she had barely made one decision that only affected herself and her happiness.

  ‘I am sorry for the lies between us, but I cannot make it different.’

  His eyes caught in the firelight.

  ‘Cannot because you are a part of it or will not because you are protecting somebody else?’

  The truth of that observation seared into the heart of her own connections. He was undeniably clever and he told her the way of it without any apology to her sensitivities.

  A dangerous man, then. A beautiful one, as well. A man who inhabited her dreams.

  ‘Say you do not want me here, Violet, and I will leave this second.’

  She opened her mouth to speak, but couldn’t, for the words of denial stuck in her throat. Then she was in his arms, his mouth claiming hers hard. An elemental taking, his tongue probing deep, one hand winding into the bright of her hair. She tipped back her head and opened further, the melting of her resistance simply taking her breath away.

  Harland had never kissed her like this. He had never possessed her. This was not a pretty, quiet kiss or an ordered one. No, Aurelian de la Tomber took, greedily and completely, twisting her so that he could come in further, owning the right of it, stamping his need.

  She became a part of him and he of her, her breasts plastered against his chest, the junction of his knees riding the line of her upper thighs. Hard. Fast. Like a fantasy, but a thousand times more vivid. When he bit her lip she nipped him back and he broke off the kiss.

  Close up, his eyes were ringed in yellow and feathered in a dark gold-green. The scar on his chin stood out in a welt. But she felt the truth of him, felt the pull of lust and the answering surge of delight. No, that was too tiny a word, too shallow for all that was happening.

  ‘Trust me, Violet. Trust me and live.’

  She could hear the accent of France in his words, a foreignness that was bone deep. She could hear the hope, too.

  Darkness was all about them, the night, the moon, the shadows, the silence. She wanted him to strip off her clothes and take her hard here, on the floor without resistance. She wanted him to hurt her with love to make her live again, make her real, make her want and cry and laugh. Her hands reached for the buttons of his shirt and slid inwards, her fingers tweaking at the bud of one nipple.

  His breathing was as loud as her own, husky, unrestrained and desperate, the kettle dru
m of his heartbeat roaring in her ears.

  A disturbed rhythm, no constant within it, his sex nestled against her stomach, thrust into awareness. Not tame. Not quiet. Neither biddable nor easy. Masculine. Unashamed. Illicit.

  Impossible, too. She could suddenly see it in his eyes as he pulled back, there in the quiet of his truths.

  ‘You are beautiful, Violet, and you deserve so very much more...’

  The words were so absurdly old-fashioned she wanted to cry. Another man telling her what she did or did not need. Breaking away, she knotted her hair, wiping the fabric of her sleeve across her mouth to remove the taste of him.

  ‘Perhaps you are right.’

  She could not argue, not with the world as she knew it changed and unrecognisable. Not at this moment when the future had been stretched before her in a beautiful and flawless line, but was now broken into small and jagged bits.

  She was pleased when he was no longer beside her.

  * * *

  Outside he leaned back against the tree he had climbed down, not trusting himself to go any further.

  He felt dislocated and empty.

  Violet Addington had taken some part of his essence that he could not regather, left there in her room among his passion and lust and need.

  The only way he could protect her was by staying away and here he was like a rutting stag in season, a man panting like a green boy to simply climb back up to her chamber and claim what she had offered.

  ‘Hell.’

  No one who knew him would have recognised him in that room, a man who had always held full control of his emotions, a man whose secrets were so far buried he could barely remember them himself. And there he had been spilling everything, figuratively as well as almost literally.

  He swore again beneath his breath and moved towards the road, careful to stay within the boundary of the winter shrubs and the fence line. If Shay had been in London he would have gone to see him, but his friend had returned to Sussex.

  He’d go home to his town house and think. It was past time to crack this ridiculous farce of the missing gold wide open.

  Cummings was involved, he was sure of it, and Mountford was trying to keep a lid on every new discovery because the Government both here and in France did not want this scandal to be played out in the public sphere.

  Napoleon was interred on Elba and the tides of war were turning towards other things, the hope of diplomacy being one.

  Aurelian was happy with that, for the clandestine world of intelligence held its own safeguards. He just wondered why Violet kept slipping into the middle of it with such alarming regularity.

  Pray to God it was because of her husband’s involvement and not her own, but something was telling him that she was in it much deeper than she let on.

  * * *

  She stood in the place he had left her, listening for the last small noise of his going. She made herself wait even when she could no longer hear him, reaching out in memory, feeling things she had been so very long without.

  The memory of Harland’s death dropped into the middle of her stillness, how her husband’s face had contorted with rage as he died at her feet, the blood running down the side of his temple and into the blonde wispiness of his hair.

  She had led the stallion into the stall as soon as Harland ceased to breathe and left the horse there with the body, taking the bloody hammer in her full and voluminous skirts with shaking fingers.

  Nothing was ever as it seemed. A lesson she had learned over and over and over again.

  Harland’s death. The lost gold. Aurelian de la Tomber’s appearance in the middle of a road on a sleet-filled night.

  Connections linked them, joined them, wound them into each other like skeins of wool, knitted together by expedience and sorrow. And politics.

  What was it she had missed in all of this, what final quiet and tiny clue lay there for her to use wisely? She was so good at puzzles, at finding the missing pieces. Even Harland had admitted that.

  Shaking her head, she dismissed him, a man of foolish greed and threadbare hopes. She thought she had dismantled the potency of the French gold by sending a letter and the ornament to the embassy in Paris, Harland’s greed knowing only the bounds that others might place upon him.

  But she had not counted on those who surrounded her husband, the sycophants and the lie spinners. She had not taken their deceit into consideration and she should have.

  That had been her mistake and it was one that she would not make again.

  Trust no one, not even a man who fired her blood and set her heart racing. Perhaps least of all him.

  Chapter Five

  The note came the next morning just as Violet was about to leave the house with her sister-in-law for a stroll in Hyde Park. After reading the short message she tucked it firmly into her reticule.

  She felt sick. She felt scared. She felt as if a terrible truth had finally escaped its tether and was now loose in the world to do as it willed with her. With them. With Amaryllis and her boys, their two lost faces raised up towards her.

  There is no future for us now.

  Had she just said this aloud? No. Amara still smiled and her maid handed over a warm woollen cloak without hesitation. An old cloak of violent green with a vibrant multicoloured brooch pinned near the collar.

  Shockingly obvious. The overt and delicious taste of flaunting rules she’d felt just half an hour ago when choosing the garment now felt bitter in her mouth.

  It was a target she had just painted upon her person. Hit me. Aim here. Do your best to wipe me off the face of the earth and any other person around me. Yet she could not exchange her cloak without having to explain such an action. Her taste in clothing had magnified exponentially since throwing off the black of mourning and Amara had challenged Violet on it on a number of occasions. Not in the mean way her brother would have, but in the way of a friend who was trying to protect her against the gossip of criticism.

  Her hair this morning was pulled up beneath a purple hat, the plumes of some vibrant country bird streaming from the crown.

  Another poor choice?

  A further mistake.

  Revenge is certain and you will be the next to die.

  She felt the weight of the hammer in her hands even though the instrument of death had long since been disposed of. Well, she would not waver. Women were the steel and the steering rod of a family and if she had forgotten this once with Harland’s bullying then she would never do so again.

  It was up to her to make sure that what was left of her family stayed safe and she was damned if anyone would hurt them again. Fury beat in her temples and anger sent her blood in fast and ever-widening circles.

  ‘You look flushed, Violet. I hope you are not sickening for the same malady of the chest that I was afflicted with?’

  ‘I am certain I am not, but perhaps we should leave the walk till tomorrow?’

  ‘If you feel unwell, my dear, then you must, but I will take a quick stroll to get the boys out for a few moments.’

  The flame of hope for an easy retreat spluttered and died as Violet regrouped.

  ‘Then I shall accompany you, Amara, for fresh air is supposed to be a tonic for one’s health.’

  The carriage was outside and waiting, a footman standing at attention near the opened door. Reidy was absent today and the young driver on the box tipped his head as she approached. Everything held peril. The openness of the small green opposite which could harbour a murderer, another conveyance passing down the street, the strangers who walked in this part of the road. It was as though she was open to every jeopardy.

  She did have her wits, though, and the small sharp knife in her pocket that she seldom ventured anywhere without.

  Michael and Simon were not toddlers, after all, and if there was trouble she could simply shout to them to run and stand the ground
herself to make certain that they were safe. A dread began to gather, the cold of early February clinging to her bones, the same feeling she had had with Harland for all those years of being his wife.

  Revenge is certain and you will be the next to die.

  The note mentioned revenge. Revenge for what? For the gold and her part in breaking open the existence of such a betrayal? For Harland’s death or her hatred of everything he stood for? So many pathways of revenge. But why now after all these months should she suddenly feel threatened? What had changed?

  The Comte de Beaumont had come into her life and she had known from the first moment of meeting him that he was a man to be reckoned with. Had he sent the note? She could not believe that he might have as there’d been so many private conversations between them to suit the purpose of threat so much better.

  The death in Brompton Place had also been a part of all this, she was certain of it. Had the murder there heightened the stakes and pulled the thief from a shadow of silence?

  ‘You are quiet, Violet. I have had an offer from Mr Cummings to accompany him to the Vauxhall Gardens this coming Saturday. His sister and brother-in-law will be in the party. I think I shall accept the kindness.’

  Lian’s words of warning came to mind and Violet frowned.

  ‘Harland was a close acquaintance, so perhaps I should not go?’ Amaryllis continued speaking, her tone uncertain as she took in Violet’s countenance.

  ‘I did not know that Mr Cummings and Harland were acquainted. He never came up to Addington Manor.’

  ‘It was in London that I saw him. You did not leave the country much, but I used to go down to the city quite often. It must have been here I was introduced to him.’

  Violet closed her eyes, trying to think. She was certain that the initials of one ‘D.C.’ had been on a list she had found in the locked bottom drawer of Harland’s desk just after he had died. Were these men his associates in crime? Did Douglas Cummings have some knowledge of the loss of gold and could he be as dangerous as Aurelian predicted?