A Proposition for the Comte

by Sophia James

  Whatever it was, the distance between them seemed heightened, quivering under the pressure of what was known and what was not.

  As the orchestra ground to a halt, however, she could do nothing more than follow him to rejoin Major Lord Shayborne who watched them from one side of the room. She was glad that Antonia and her brother had moved away in the interim.

  Every time she met Aurelian de la Tomber she was upended and more than surprised. She almost expected it now, this topsy-turvy uncertainty. When he excused himself to find them a drink, Summerley Shayborne was quick to speak.

  ‘Lian is the only man in the world who I trust implicitly, but he has been hurt before and I should not wish to see him be so yet again.’

  Somehow Violet did not think Shayborne meant the physical scars. No, these words were being given to her as a warning.

  ‘My wife says he should marry and settle down. She thinks all men reach that point where home is paramount.’ His glance travelled across the room to where Aurelian stood.

  Such an observation had her heartbeat rising and she wondered suddenly how much he might have told Shayborne about her fractured past.

  But Viscount Luxford did not seem to regard her in the way of a foe. Instead there was some odd notice there that she could not quite put her finger on.

  Overcome by her thoughts, Violet excused herself. She needed to be away for a few moments in a place of silence and calm. Seeing the Comte besieged by women here worried her, for there were many in society who would have made admirable wives. Perhaps Summerley Shayborne did know of his friend’s plans and was not saying.

  Violet had always been so careful to keep suitors at a distance until Aurelian de la Tomber. Until he had swept her off her feet and made her into a woman she barely recognised.

  She had reached the ladies’ retiring room now and sat down on a chair propped beneath the window. Outside it was snowing and the night looked cold and dark. Lady Elizabeth Grainger suddenly appeared from nowhere, her eyes full of interest.

  ‘I was just saying to my friend Lady Drayton that you are looking very fetching lately, Lady Addington. I do hope the incident in the park the other day has not continued to upset you.’

  ‘I am well, thank you, and that person has been dealt with.’

  ‘By the Comte de Beaumont?’

  ‘Mr Mountford and Mr Cummings also helped,’ she added, trying to form a layer of legitimacy around Aurelian’s actions.

  ‘I saw Douglas Cummings in Chichester a few weeks back and he looked most agitated. He is not a man with the propensity to hide his feelings, unlike the French Comte who manages it beautifully. Were I a young girl again I think I might be joining the ranks of others here in the hope of knowing him better.’ She stopped. ‘He watches you when you are not looking and I gather he is more than interested in what he sees.’

  ‘I am a widow, Lady Grainger, and no longer young. There is not much to see.’

  ‘You sell yourself short, my dear. You have endured one marriage to a man no one could stand and emerged out the other end of it almost intact. I salute you in that.’

  This time Violet smiled. The woman was so undiplomatic it was almost refreshing and she’d heard that Elizabeth Grainger was neither a tittle-tattle nor a gossip.

  ‘I knew de la Tomber’s mother once. She was the kind of woman whom people were drawn to. Very much like yourself, in actual fact, and unconscious of it. The true and great beauties are always like that, I told my sister just the other night after seeing you and de Beaumont in the park.’

  Flabbergasted at such praise Violet sat still, relieved when another of the woman’s friends came in to join them and she could escape.

  She could not actually believe that such compliments were in any way deserved, but the elderly woman’s words had been sincere in their delivery and they had warmed her heart.

  Aurelian de la Tomber had disappeared by the time she returned to the ballroom and it was not long before she also made her goodbyes.

  Lady Elizabeth’s summation of the character of Douglas Cummings was also interesting and the Chichester connections rang alarm bells for this was the city near which George Taylor had been murdered and the timings were similar.

  Was she imagining things that were not there and finding straws of guilt where none existed? She wished she could speak alone to Aurelian and tell him of her conjectures because of all the men in the world she knew he was the one who could make sense of them.

  * * *

  She awoke in the early hours of the morning to find him there standing at her window and looking out.

  ‘I wanted to make certain you’d arrived home safely and I had not said goodbye.’

  ‘Perhaps because you were besieged by women and they had your whole attention.’ This was petty, she knew, but she could not take it back.

  He simply laughed.

  ‘I sat in the ladies’ retiring room for half an hour where I was waylaid by Lady Elizabeth Grainger.’ Sitting up, she straightened the bed sheets around her.

  ‘The older woman at the park the other day?’

  Violet nodded. ‘She told me that if she had been many years younger she may have set her cap at you. She also said that she saw Douglas Cummings in Chichester two weeks or so ago.’

  ‘About the same time that George Taylor was killed?’

  ‘Charles placed my assailant in Douglas Cummings’s custody. He was the man with the responsibility to keep him alive.’

  ‘One of the gaolers I talked to said they were told to go home early. He also said that the man who assaulted you had been a soldier, but had become a jeweller.’

  ‘You have already been investigating this?’

  ‘Stephen Miller had a jewellery shop in Holborn.’

  ‘Taylor was a jeweller, too.’

  ‘And your husband dealt in the questionable realms of gold tampering. Do you see a pattern?’

  She did. It was the gold that brought them all together and greed that had torn them apart.

  ‘I am a jeweller’s daughter and I think that Harland’s enemies have put two and two together and deduced that it is me who has stolen the gold.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘If you truly need to ask me that, Aurelian, you should not be here.’

  ‘Then where do you think it went?’

  She swallowed as she gave him her answer. ‘I think Harland took some to fund his gambling debts and then he lost control of the rest when he tried to hide it.’

  ‘George Taylor and Stephen Miller took it over?’

  ‘There were others, too.’

  ‘Who? Who else was in it?’

  ‘Charles Mountford asked me that. I said I didn’t know. The jeweller Whitely, perhaps?’

  He waited for a moment. Good intelligence was never to be rushed. It required patience and trust as well as luck and all the time in the world.

  ‘The thing is I did find a list of initials. There were five names underlined twice in dark pen on a sheet of paper and stuffed in a crack of wood in Harland’s desk.’

  ‘Was D.C. among them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘George Taylor and three other initials that I could not find a correlation for at the time.’

  ‘Where is the list?’

  ‘I buried it at Addington Manor under the roses in a tin box. Then the place was sold and I did not think to retrieve it.’

  ‘Who were the others?’

  ‘S.M. was one of them.’

  ‘Stephen Miller? Who else?’

  ‘A.W. and J.C. Then there was a blank line with only an A written on it.’

  ‘Did you show it to anyone else at all?’

  She shook her head. ‘It seemed a dangerous thing to do.’

  ‘Don’t tell, then, not even Charles Mountford. I
am not sure how far he would go to make sure you really are safe.’

  ‘He wanted me to go to Rome.’

  Lian tried to school his face, but she must have seen something for all the blood simply drained from hers.

  ‘It is a trap?’

  ‘I don’t know. To be sure I had Amaryllis Hamilton and the children rerouted.’

  ‘To where?’

  ‘Greece. My family has a house there. They will want for nothing and her letters will come through me to you.’

  ‘It’s more than the gold you are searching for, isn’t it?’

  ‘Treason sets men to lengths that seem unmeasurable, but I think Mountford is trying to do his best under difficult circumstances. I just don’t know how secure his office is. The first objective of my ministère is to retrieve the gold, but the British Government and the Home Office are much more interested in the names of those who had some hand in treason here.’

  ‘You think it’s Cummings? You think he is the one behind it?’

  ‘In the park he saw the man who tried to kill you and directed his men in the opposite direction. At the time that made no sense, but now...’ He tailed-off. ‘He also visited you at your town house the day after the incident in Hyde Park and you told me he had not. Why?’

  Turning away, Violet walked to the window, pulling the curtains back and looking out. Her reflection showing in the glass made her seem slight and still.

  ‘Douglas Cummings came to plead for my hand in marriage.’

  ‘Merde.’

  She spun around at that and faced him directly. ‘I said no and he was furious and I suppose I thought his feelings were hurt so...’

  ‘You didn’t want to tell me of it.’

  ‘It seemed...tarnished. He tried to kiss me. Then he began to cry.’

  ‘Come with me to Sussex, Violet. My house there is safe and I can watch for enemies. We could leave in the morning.’

  ‘Why? Why would you do this for me?’

  He stopped her words by placing his fingers across her lips and feeling the breath of the words falter.

  ‘I was married once a long time ago and my wife died when I failed to protect her. But I can protect you for we can be married tomorrow. I procured a special licence three days ago just in case.’

  * * *

  ‘Married?’ The word wound around them. He had not asked. He had not wanted her opinion. He’d merely told her without giving her any inkling whatsoever about what was going on in his head or in his heart. A pragmatic proposal to assuage the earlier guilt of his wife’s passing. Nothing more?

  ‘You do not think we can continue on like this, surely, Violet, without...?’ His glance went to the bed. ‘What if I get you with child?’

  Should she tell him of her barrenness? Could she?

  With absolute care she told him something else entirely. ‘I married Harland a month after meeting him and I regretted it by the time the second month rolled around.’

  The anger in her words was very easy to hear, but she did not care for it was a sorrow she had never learnt to bear, her stupidity and hopeless rush. ‘So it is not a state I wish to enter into again. But—’ her bruised eyes directly met his own ‘—I shall not refuse to come to your bed without it.’

  He gave the impression he was shocked into silence.

  ‘You are the most dangerous spy in all of Europe and one people steer well clear of so as not to incite your wrath. Every story I have heard of you is more audacious and risky than the last. The opium dens. The underground ministry in Paris. An easy disposal of enemies. Your job of crossing between enemy lines and dealing with situations that no one else can. Yet you are mortified at the thought of the union of our bodies without the blessing of a marriage certificate. Why?’

  ‘Because I cannot keep your enemies at bay without giving you my name.’

  ‘Just as I cannot protect you if I agree to this.’

  ‘Protect me?’

  She turned away to the window and breathed in hard. ‘I was the one who asked George Taylor to fashion the first ornament. Harland was gambling far beyond his means and I thought it was family money he played with and lost. Amaryllis and the boys deserved something left and so I made the decision to make sure there was an inheritance.’

  ‘Lord.’

  ‘I came across him piling up gold coins one day, carelessly, and told him it would be better to fashion what he was not using into a statue. That way no one would know of its value except him and it could be melted down when he needed it. He liked the idea and asked me to pursue it, but George Taylor, the jeweller, was a man I should not have entrusted with my mission. A quarter of the gold went into the piece of art and the rest was of silver and lead. I put away the unused gold and told Amaryllis of my plan, but George Taylor came to Harland and let him know what I had done. My husband punished me and then proceeded to continue the charade for his own benefit with gold that was sent over to him from France. There were three more ornaments made.’

  ‘How did he punish you?’

  ‘With his fists. With a strap. With the things that husbands across the ages have beaten their wives with. Needless to say he also took the gold.’

  ‘Where were your parents?’

  ‘Dead. I was not allowed to contact anyone outside Addington Manor. I had been forbidden to take a horse out or a carriage. I was watched by Harland’s servants from dawn to dusk and any new disobedience was swiftly dealt with. In the end fright kept me numb and Harland began to stay away from our estate for longer and longer periods of time which suited me.’

  She raised her eyes to his.

  ‘I am ruined well and truly, don’t you see, Aurelian? Tonight in the ballroom you had the choice of every available woman there and there were many young and beautiful candidates. Your friend Summerley Shayborne said as much to me. It can be this and no more.’ There were tears in her eyes as she said it, thinking of her barrenness and her inability to ever produce an heir. ‘It is all that I can offer you. My body.’

  ‘Then it is enough.’

  He pushed her nightdress down across her shoulders and one hand came beneath her left breast to cup the weight of it. When he lifted it to his mouth she breathed in.

  The rug beneath them was thick and warm, his shirt and neckcloth off even as he brought her down. Flame licked in the fireplace, the eddies of their movements inciting it, and the room from this angle was strange and different. Here the night was close and the morning far. Here the thrall of all she had felt before returned.

  This lust or truth or whatever it was, this nameless thing wrapped in the forbidden, was fashioned in nearly honesty, too, now, with the secrets between them lessened.

  Her fingers traced his cheek and she opened her eyes to watch him, a puzzlement there.

  ‘What?’ She whispered this, their lips still touching, just a breath of words but heard none the less.

  ‘You are beautiful.’

  Her forefinger then ran across the bridge of his brow, smoothing the lines, making him smile.

  ‘And brave,’ he continued, ‘and kind.’

  Tears pooled and ran down her cheeks. It had been a long time since anyone had said anything so very tender to her, yet tonight she could almost believe them to be true.

  When his lips nuzzled her breast again she arched her neck and smiled, at his exuberance and his expertise, his hands stroking, his flesh warm. A skilled lover with a thousand things to teach her.

  ‘I can hear you thinking, Violet.’ He whispered this in her ear.

  ‘I want to remember how you do it, how you make me want you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So I can give you the gift back.’

  She felt him smile against her skin. ‘This between us? There are no repayments needed.’

  His hand had fallen to her stomach now, arching in circles that
were ever expanding. She felt her breath hitch as he dipped lower.

  ‘Relax, my love, and just feel.’ Such an endearment was unexpected and she bit down on a reply.

  Love me, Aurelian. Let me forget. Take me to a place where it is only us.

  Her hands clung to him even as his fingers came within her, potent and life-giving, catching her between this world and another one as the broken edges of her life softened. She was no match for him, no match for all the things that he knew, but his grace was surprising.

  He would not take that which she did not wish to give, he would not hurt her, either. She could feel her wetness on his fingers and wondered at the way her body rose upwards seeking release, finding the place where thought turned into feeling. Then she was there riding the waves, understanding the elation, breathless and fluid, closing her eyes tight and looking inwards.

  * * *

  She was like no other woman he had been with. She was elemental and earthy as much as she was refined and careful. Such opposites attracted him and made him wonder how many more secrets were inside waiting to be discovered. He undid his breeches front with an unbecoming haste.

  ‘My turn now.’

  He was in her quickly, the finesse he was lauded for lost under desperation as he came. God, he was like a green boy fumbling in anxiety, pumping in as if he had never lain with anyone before. His mouth came down across hers, sealing the sounds he might make into silence, claiming home.

  Violet had him imagining things he had not ever thought of before. The cross at his neck hung between them and he vowed to remove it when he got back to the town house. Veronique was gone, but she had never branded him like Violet Addington did, never made him fretful and impatient, anxious and worried. He wanted to bundle her up here and now and place her into his coach to race through what was left of the night to Sussex. He wanted to wrap her in isolation safe from those who might hurt her, away from the gathering forces of greed and politics that he was so much a part of.

  ‘There is a finality in making love, isn’t there?’ Her words were soft and he smiled before speaking.

  ‘La petite mort, we call it in France. The little death in a brief weakening of consciousness. Some never feel it.’