A Proposition for the Comte

by Sophia James

  Chapter Ten

  They reached Addington Manor by sunset and retrieved the list buried in the wooden box she had placed it in. What could have been a difficult task became easy as the family who had purchased the property were abroad and the main servant who had been left in charge was more than happy to allow Aurelian the time and space to find what he needed in the outside gardens on the strength of a heavy purse of coinage.

  After leaving the manor they stopped in a copse of woods a good hour south and Aurelian allowed her the first opening of the box.

  The list was still wrapped in cloth, a few dried flowers alongside it. Violet took it out carefully and unravelled the sheet of paper looking to see if what she remembered on the note was still there before handing it to Aurelian for a closer look.

  His finger traced the initials.

  ‘“Stephen Miller” and “George Taylor”. “Douglas Cummings” is here, too, as well as “A.W.”. Alexander Whitely. “J.C.” is a question, as is the letter “A”.’

  Violet looked at him, frowning.

  ‘It could belong to Antoinette Herbert, his French mistress. She was one of the last people to see Stephen Miller alive. I went to visit her and she knew who I was.’ He pushed his hair back with his free hand and spoke more softly. ‘I knew her name, too, from Paris. She said she was one of the contributors of the French gold.’

  ‘But you think she was more than that?’

  ‘Much more. She gave and then she took. It was a way in to find the gold.’

  ‘Is she blackmailing Cummings?’

  ‘Into killing, you mean? No.’ He shook his head. ‘Perhaps not that. Cummings has a sick sister, an ageing mother and an estate that looks as though it is in the last stages of falling down. He also has, according to that same mother, a heart of gold. I was there the day you were taken when I should have stayed and watched that you were safe.’

  ‘I am safe now, Aurelian. But why did you want to see the list, then? What could it tell you that I have not?’

  ‘This.’ His finger ran across a mark next to the initials of the letter A. ‘Harland Addington rubbed something out.’

  He turned the paper over and held it up to the fading sky.

  ‘A cross was placed there, in capitals.’

  ‘A kiss?’

  ‘Or the first sign of his realising that Antoinette Herbert, his mistress, needed to be dealt with?’

  ‘You think he might have tried?’

  ‘The fight you mentioned and the broken necklace. Perhaps Antoinette Herbert also saw this list and needed a way to tear Harland Addington into pieces.’

  ‘That makes sense.’

  Lian looked pensive. ‘Did your husband ever hurt your nephews?’

  The world spun around Violet in a frightening and dizzy whirl and she was suddenly hurled back into the horrible years of her marriage.

  Harland’s tastes were strange to say the least and he could be more than violent when he drank. Laudanum was there too, the sweet and sticky smell of the drug clinging to everything.

  After Michael and Simon had come to live at Addington Manor she remembered bruises that had often been on their arms or cheeks. She’d put them down to the boys’ boisterous games. But had Harland been threatening them with his certain sort of brutality until Amaryllis had simply snapped?

  ‘I think he may have...’ But she could barely say the words, the shaking that had started as soon as Aurelian had mentioned her nephews now taking over everything. It explained so much. Why Amaryllis had killed her brother and why she had hated him just as much as Violet had. It would also explain why Michael and Simon were so withdrawn for boys their age. They had lost a beloved father and then been sent to live with a vicious and sadistic uncle, often journeying down to London with their mother to the town house in which Harland mostly stayed. He would have had a freedom to hurt them that was astonishing and Violet knew he would have enjoyed it.

  Her husband had deserved so much more than a simple blow from a hammer. The fury in her made her cry out even as she felt herself falling.

  * * *

  Aurelian laid Violet down carefully and covered her with the blankets, trying to quell the shaking and make her warm.

  She was freezing, her lips blue with the cold and each finger curled in a hard fist against her palm.

  He had heard rumours in London of Addington’s aggression. Now he knew that she had experienced what he had prayed that she would not have and that the dreadful truths of her husband’s cruelty were also her truths.

  The bastard had destroyed her in so many ways that Lian could only wonder how she might have survived, her kindness still there even after all the horror. He held her hand and willed warmth and strength into her, glad when her eyelids finally fluttered and she came back to him.

  ‘You knew what he was like? My husband?’

  ‘I guessed. Was Amaryllis the one who killed him? Did you cover for her because of the boys?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because you understood that it was not only the gold that had ruined him but sheer malice?’

  ‘I didn’t know about my nephews but I had seen others...’

  ‘Others?’

  ‘Other women. In his bed. He taunted me with them and they did not always look...’ She stopped, and regrouped her bravery. ‘Happy. I prayed to God so many times that he might die and if I had said something to Amaryllis I might have saved the boys and her from everything that happened afterwards.’

  ‘You did anyway, Violet. You and Amaryllis dealt with him in the best way you could.’

  ‘Only you would tell me that, Aurelian, and it helps, but how can you look at me and not hate all that I have been?’

  ‘Easily,’ he replied. He leaned over and took her hand and she held on, feeling both his goodness and his strength.

  ‘It is over, Violet. All of it. Now we just have to expose Antoinette Herbert and Douglas Cummings and the others and then everything will be finished.’

  His eyes flicked back to the list.

  ‘Could anybody have known that Harland wrote this? That he kept lists like this?’

  ‘Perhaps. He was a man who needed things written down. Always. It was something he just did.’

  ‘Then maybe they think you have things that would implicate them if they got into the wrong hands. Has your town house ever been robbed?’

  ‘Yes, when I first came to London and then again some weeks ago. Nothing was broken or taken but every room had been gone through.’

  ‘Perhaps because I have been asking questions. When the man in the boarding house tried to kill me on Brompton Place he said a woman had sent him.’

  ‘Antoinette Herbert?’ There was a whisper in her words.

  ‘I would bet money on the truth that she is the one and that the others on this list were her minions.’

  * * *

  Early in the afternoon they headed towards Sussex in a fast carriage Aurelian had rented.

  Aurelian wanted to show Violet his life, his house, his past, all the losses and the gains. Safety also beckoned at Compton Park with its attending quiet, and with the men he had employed watching the perimeters they could stop and breathe and begin to understand each other in a way that would lead them forward.

  He hoped that the opulence and beauty of his home would not frighten Violet but would heal some of her cracks as it had his own. He didn’t want her to feel distanced by its wealth or its majesty.

  Beside him Violet looked so much younger than she had even a week ago, her worry softened with the bruises on her cheeks largely faded. He could feel her breath against his arm.

  He was glad his sister and aunts had left Sussex to go to their house just outside London and would not be visiting Compton Park again until the beginning of March. Leaning back, he closed his eyes for a moment, the tension of the past three d
ays having left him with a building headache. For all that was difficult, Violet was with him, her warmth comforting, her trust gratifying.

  It would have to be enough for now until he could sit without interruption and in safety and be honest. There were so many things he needed to say to Violet and he could see in her eyes that she felt the same.

  Compton Park was the most imposing house she had ever had the pleasure of viewing, its symmetrical three-storeyed façade boasting a great number of turrets and gables and parapets. The windows were numerous and mullioned, the glass panels glinting even in the dull sun of a February day.

  The staff were all lined up in the bottom hallway, obviously having realised it was their master who had come home.

  ‘You do not come here often,’ she said to him before he stepped forward to shake the first man’s hand.

  ‘Rarely. My work has kept me in Europe.’

  She could not even imagine leaving a house like this to go anywhere. The gardens were fully formed and the manor sat on a rise looking across a lake and down a long vista of trees and water features stretching into the far distance. The furniture held a French influence, the light lines and elegance of everything so un-English. The colours were different from most of the London town houses she had been in. There were light creams and yellows and a startling blue in the hallway, the more usual wintery mustiness of English interiors nowhere in evidence here.

  Aurelian introduced her to the servants and they bobbed down before her, and then finally they were alone in a smaller room at the back of the house.

  ‘Mrs Hutchinson will show you to your chamber.’

  ‘Will you be somewhere close by?’

  ‘My room is next to yours. There is a connecting entrance.’

  ‘And it is safe here?’

  ‘Very. Come, I will show you.’

  But the door flew open even as he gave his reply and a woman stood there. A beautiful woman with chestnut hair. Deep dimples graced both her cheeks and her hair roughly pulled back was escaping in untidy tendrils. She was also pregnant.

  ‘Celeste?’

  Aurelian began to smile.

  ‘Summer is behind me.’ She turned to look for him, the light catching the colour of her eyes.

  ‘Violet, may I introduce Celeste Shayborne to you? She is Summerley Shayborne’s wife and also a good friend of mine. Celeste, this is Violet Addington—’

  ‘Oh, we’re old friends already,’ Celeste interrupted.

  When Celeste smiled Violet was entranced.

  ‘We heard you had been seen coming south. Summer felt you might be in danger so we brought a few of the tougher-looking servants with us.’

  Her English was tinged with an accent and when she removed her gloves, Violet saw stripes of white scarring on one wrist that she’d not noticed the other times she had met Celeste. Her eyes then fastened on Violet’s cheek.

  ‘Someone has hit you?’

  ‘Who has hit her?’

  Summerley Shayborne now stood in the space behind his wife, his glance taking in the bruises on Violet’s face.

  ‘Violet was kidnapped and Douglas Cummings is involved somehow.’ Aurelian answered the question.

  ‘Where is Cummings now?’

  ‘In London probably and trying to make a case against me for sending all his plans awry. I think he is being blackmailed by the woman behind all this.’

  ‘A woman? Complicated?’ Shay said this.

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Being French is not an easy thing in a country fixated on the danger of Napoleon Bonaparte.’ Celeste joined in now and Violet saw in her logic a new peril.

  ‘I can vouch for Aurelian’s actions. He was with me.’

  Even as she said this she understood another truth. Both she and Aurelian were in danger. She could see that everyone else in the room had understood this before she had.

  Usually she was not so slow but she was exhausted and aching and the house here had folded its strength about her and made her falter.

  ‘We have Charles Mountford on our side,’ Aurelian said. ‘I have discovered nothing that says he is in on it.’

  ‘What of Violet, though?’ Shayborne’s query was sharp. ‘If we know that she is here then others undoubtedly will. It could ruin her.’

  ‘I am an ageing widow, my lord, who has already been...ruined as you put it. Among his other failings, my dead husband was a man of greed and avarice and when this is known publicly, which it soon must be, I doubt I shall be on anyone’s list of exalted guests. Frankly, it will be a relief.’

  Celeste began to laugh. ‘We live well enough away from Society and all its pretensions. But still, the choice of respectability is a wise thing to maintain if it can be managed.’

  ‘I have offered Violet marriage to make our situation legal.’

  Aurelian’s words created a sudden silence, the mouths of both Summerley and Celeste Shayborne opening with astonishment.

  ‘I am not a good proposition for your future. I have told you that.’ She whispered her words fiercely, thinking of all that had transpired over the past few days.

  ‘Violet cannot have children.’

  This honesty brought the blood to her cheeks. ‘I am certain that your friends do not wish to hear any of this.’

  ‘Oh, but we do.’ Celeste poured three drinks and proceeded to hand them around. ‘A conversation like this demands fortification. You could definitely do worse in the husband stakes, Lady Addington. I have it on good authority there would be many others who would jump at the chance of being the bride of the Comte de Beaumont.’

  ‘Enough, Celeste.’ This came from Summerley.

  Aurelian’s hand wound into Violet’s and she was glad for the touch, though in the conversation she had felt no judgement. Perhaps there were groups of people that were simply honest with each other and who loved each other enough to be so. Strong people who did not care for the petty rules so prevalent in society and who did not judge people for faults or impediments or for rumour.

  As Summer and Aurelian began to talk together, Celeste leaned over and asked her own quiet questions.

  ‘Do you have family, Violet?’

  ‘I don’t. My parents died years ago and apart from a sister-in-law and two nephews I am alone.’

  ‘Aurelian needs to settle in England. Here. In Sussex.’

  ‘You are French?’

  ‘My father was. I am the one who gave Lian the scar on his face. In my defence, I was trying to protect him and although he sacrificed a little vanity he kept his life.’

  ‘You were a spy, too?’

  ‘In Paris, but that’s not something I tell many people.’

  ‘Then I am honoured at such a confidence.’

  ‘You have your secrets, too. Sometimes when they are held tightly they can only harm you and stop you from moving onwards.’

  God, Violet thought, no wonder Aurelian and these people were good friends. They all had that knack of turning the world upside down, her years of carefully protected privacy washed away in minutes. And yet in their dismissal of her concerns they became lessened. Her barrenness. Her past. Her dreadful first marriage.

  * * *

  ‘You have lovely friends.’

  She said this to Aurelian as she watched Celeste and Summerley depart, their time together a welcome break from all the fear of the past days.

  ‘They like you, too. I haven’t yet met a person, Violet, who hasn’t fallen under your spell.’

  ‘Harland didn’t.’

  ‘He was a fool. But for now you need to sleep. You are dead on your feet.’

  ‘Your chamber is the one next door to mine?’ she asked for confirmation again.

  ‘It is.’

  He did not offer more as he took her arm and walked with her, the staircase wide and beautiful as everything els
e was in the house. She was almost dizzy with fatigue and yet still she would have come into his arms on the tiniest of hints, mesmerised by a man who was as clever as he was kind.

  At the doorway of her room, he kissed her forehead and delivered her into the competent hands of two maids who had supplied a bath of steaming water.

  * * *

  Much later she awoke to the darkness and the silence and the hugeness of an unknown room. For a moment she stiffened, panic beginning to fill her mind. The lateness of the hour was apparent and she heard the soft rap of a branch against her window.

  Had she cried out? Had Aurelian heard her? The house was still and so she lay there, too, watching shadows and remembering.

  An hour later she was still not asleep and any repose seemed further away than it had been when first she’d awoken. With care, she sat on the bed and shifted her legs to the side, standing so as not to make any noise at all as she walked.

  The world before her outside the window was blanketed in snow, a white wonderland of trees and hills and gardens and there was a peace here that was exhilarating.

  A footfall to one side had her turning and Aurelian stood close. He had removed his neckcloth, his shirt falling away from the top of his chest.

  ‘I heard you had wakened.’

  ‘I tried to be as quiet as I could.’

  He looked down. ‘There is no silence in a house like this one.’

  ‘You were not asleep?’

  He did not answer this as he came to stand directly beside her, observing the landscape just as she was.

  ‘In France my family has land they have owned for centuries, old land where our ancestors walk as ghosts. Moving to England allows me a new canvas to fill with my own memories.’

  She liked that thought.

  ‘Beginnings,’ she whispered just as his voice came again across the darkness.

  ‘“Remember tonight, for it is the beginning of always.”’

  ‘That’s beautiful. Who said it?’

  ‘Dante Alighieri, an Italian poet of the late Middle Ages.’