But it was Lady Dorna Elwick who surprised Amelie most by her flimsy excuses for not being available to help in the search for Caterina. She had been out all day with a friend, Stephen told her, filling in the gaps left open by Lord Elyot. Dorna had remained silent about which friend and where, but had left Tam and Hannah in charge of the house and told Tam not to leave it for any reason. He had obeyed her to the letter, knowing that if he did not, he would be back where he started. Dorna had known that Amelie and Caterina would be unavailable all day, so it was not until she arrived home at dinner time that she was told of Caterina’s disappearance, by which time she was sure she would have turned up. It apparently did not occur to her to send to Lansdown Crescent to find out.
‘Imagine her astonishment,’ Stephen told Amelie, ‘when she found her two brothers and a total stranger in her breakfast room this morning with faces like thunder.’
Amelie was thinking of another face she had seen beside Dorna, coming out of the abbey and walking away quickly without a word of explanation. Was he the mysterious companion of yesterday, too?
Hoping perhaps to redeem herself, Dorna had sent an invitation for them to join her at Sydney Place for dinner tomorrow before the concert at the Assembly Rooms.
‘Tomorrow?’ said Amelie, turning a pained look upon Lord Elyot. ‘Why didn’t you say?’
‘How much notice do you need to dress for dinner?’ he replied.
This Stephen thought discourteous and could not for the life of him understand why Amelie accepted it so meekly. Obviously, the man had a very strong hold over her or she would not be behaving as if they were already married. He would like to have known exactly what it was.
Amelie would rather have continued her private discussion with Lord Elyot, but Stephen’s woes had put a damper on the conversation that had crackled and sparked so provocatively before his arrival. It was the kind of discourse she had never experienced with Josiah, part-scolding, part-loving, like a duel where losing was as enjoyable as winning. The thought that she would have to live the rest of her life without him clutched at her heart like the icy hand of winter. What had he discovered about her background? And why, if he had found it out, was he still insisting on making her his wife?
The meeting between Caterina and Lord Rayne took place later that morning while both were sitting on the piano stool, but with no music to ease the gentle flow of words. Caterina remembered nothing of her rescue, nor did Seton tell her how he and his brother had carried her home in their arms, which would have embarrassed her greatly. But exactly what passed between them remained private, and afterwards he took her on his arm into the town to be seen in the Pump Room and on South Parade, calling at Sally Lunn’s bake shop like comfortable old friends.
What pain the young lady held in her heart, however, was not hidden from Amelie that same day when they drove in the phaeton, at Caterina’s request, up to the top of Lansdown Hill. Then, while Caterina vowed she would never weep for a man again, her eyes welled as she told how kind and courteous Lord Rayne had been, not in the least censorious, but insisting that the fault lay entirely with him for allowing her to hope for something that could never be. More details she did not give, nor did Amelie press her, but Caterina’s dread of some future date, when he would appear with a lovelier older woman on his arm, was the hardest to bear. All the more so for its resemblance to Amelie’s very similar fear.
Meanwhile, Caterina begged to be allowed to stay in Bath for a few more days, having no wish to martyr herself by dashing off home as if she could not bear his company. Her voice was quiet, low and heavy with emotion, her bearing more like a swan than a cygnet, though when they removed their bonnets and let the wind comb through their hair, she became a young goddess with the world at her feet and a small wound in her heart.
It was Aunt Amelie, however, who received the censure for driving her phaeton up the very steep hill and down again with only Riley on the back. ‘What in hell’s name could he do?’ Lord Elyot barked at her. ‘He couldn’t have held it if it had rolled back, and nor could either of you. S’truth, woman! Do you have a death wish?’
‘Oh, don’t be so dramatic!’ she yelped, brushing past him. ‘I’ve been driving my phaeton up hills steeper than that all my life without the slightest mishap. What’s the fuss about?’
‘Really, my lord,’ said Stephen. ‘That’s no way to speak to Lady Chester. I do think—’
‘Good for you,’ snapped Lord Elyot, following Amelie upstairs two at a time. ‘Keep it up.’ Steering her quite forcibly into her workroom, he closed the door.
Prepared for more scolding, she tried to get her word in first, but was stopped by his hard embrace and the determined pressure of his mouth over hers; by the time he had drunk deeply from her lips, her words had been stolen. It was some time before either of them spoke, their need for each other having almost reached desperation, and it was clear to Amelie that his rebuke about the phaeton was no more than an excuse to haul her off and relieve his craving.
‘You are like a drug, woman,’ he whispered, lapping softly at the side of her throat. ‘The more I have of you, the more I want. How are we going to get rid of him? Eh?’
‘Who … Stephen?’
‘Yes. I want to take you to bed.’
‘Can you wait?’
‘No. How long?’ He lifted a strand of her hair and placed his lips where it had been.
‘Tonight? We really do have to talk, you know. Things cannot go on as they are. You must see that.’
‘It’s not talking I have in mind, sweetheart. But, yes, we do have to talk. My parents are back in Richmond and I shall take you to meet them as soon as we get home.’
‘No … no! That’s the problem that must be resolved. You’ve changed the original plan. It was not meant to be like that. You know it wasn’t.’
‘You’re mistaken. It was always meant to be like that.’
‘By you, perhaps. But my lord … listen to me … please.’ Backed against the piano, she was captured inside his braced arms with her palms pressing the lapels of his coat, trying to keep hold of what she had to say.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I will listen to you tonight, but meanwhile we shall carry on as we have been doing, to your brother-in-law’s great annoyance.’
‘He was good to me, my lord.’
‘And I shall be even better.’
‘He was never in my bed, if that’s what you think.’
His wide mobile mouth moved, and there was some slight crinkling at the corner of his eyes. ‘No, I’m sure he was not.’
‘Not that he didn’t want to be, I think.’
‘I doubt there’s a man anywhere in the world who would not want to be.’ His hands had strayed on to her hips, and there was another delay as her body responded, and ached, and allowed itself to be fondled, intimately.
The afternoon was still wild, but not wet enough to prevent them from visiting the King’s Baths to watch the bathers, walking through the abbey, plundering the shops and buying extra tickets for the following night’s concert at the Assembly Rooms which was to be conducted by none other than Signor Rauzzini. That evening, Amelie, Dorna and her sister-in-law joined the men at the White Hart Inn for dinner, which might have been another ordeal for Stephen Chester had not Miss Hannah Elwick sat next to him to tend his needs like a mother and her favourite child.
If it had been part of Amelie’s strategy to use the hapless Stephen as a possible second string to her bow, she now had no option but to let it go when he and Hannah stuck together like glue all evening. But it was beneficial in another way, for as the two brothers escorted Amelie and Caterina back to Lansdown, Stephen escorted the other two ladies back to Sydney Place and so missed Lord Rayne’s solo return to the White Hart.
Amelie had been unusually quiet that evening, though Dorna’s gaiety bubbled over the meal and no one noticed except Lord Elyot, whose hand stole more than once across to Amelie’s lap, as if he knew instinctively which of her concerns was uppermo
st in her mind.
Later, behind the white bedcurtains that kept out the wind’s buffeting roar, she lay in his arms feeling that this might be for the last time, wondering how to reconcile what she knew with what he had discovered and whether, or indeed how, he would accept it. But the time for accusations had passed, and now their starving bodies came together and fused along every surface to assuage the long week of emptiness.
The time away from each other, marred for Amelie by doubts, gave her an edge of anger that she could not suppress, as if to make him aware of every discomfort he had imposed upon her, wittingly or not. Aroused and kindled to white heat, she still refused him access, biting, fending him off while leading him on, fighting him, telling him no when every fibre cried out yes. He played along with it until she was too tired to contest him any longer, then, holding her flailing arms into the pillow, he met her lifting thighs with a fierceness that matched her own, subduing her in an instant. There were no words, not even endearments, but the breath-shattering beat of his body against hers said all she needed to know about his desire and commitment. How could she ever have doubted him?
Although his need of her had burned in him so long without release, he was a careful and unselfish lover who knew well how to give pleasure through all the ebbing and flowing tides, how to bring her to the height of the wave, to wait, then to crash down with rapturous cries of delight after an eternity of suspense.
Limp and satiated, she lay sprawled across him, savouring every inch of the moist warm contact and wondering if what they had just done would bring on the monthly event which, this time, had failed her when she needed it most.
Consequently, when he said, very quietly, ‘I believe you have something to tell me, sweetheart,’ she was lost for an answer. Was he able to read her mind?
She hesitated, and he prompted her. ‘Do you want to tell me how a widow manages to remain a virgin? It is rather unusual, you have to admit. Was Chester impotent? Is that the reason?’
She felt the prickling sensation at the base of her neck. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘He was not.’
‘So what happened? Can you tell me?’
She smoothed a hand over his powerful chest, calming the expected storm. ‘I’ve always maintained that I cannot marry you,’ she said, ‘for a very good reason. I have no natural parents. No ancestry. My parents, the Carrs, adopted me a few days after I was born. Sons of marquesses, my lord, don’t marry foundlings. Even though you may wish to, your father would not allow it. You know that. You may say that he need not know, but I know, and I couldn’t let it happen. No man should be so deceived.’
‘That’s … very … interesting,’ he murmured, drowsily, ‘but it hardly accounts for you holding on to your virginity after you were married, does it? Unless Sir Josiah discovered your birth and felt cheated. Was that what happened? Had you better start from the beginning, sweetheart?’
‘You were not supposed to know that I was a virgin. How did you find it out? Was it guesswork?’
He sighed and rolled on to an elbow to see the dark fearful eyes in the candlelight. ‘No, not guesswork. A man can tell, you see. Unless he’s blind drunk. And I wasn’t.’ He smiled, tracing a tender line down her nose with a finger.
‘Can he?’
‘Yes. Believe me. Now, can we get back to your marriage?’
‘When Stephen lost his wife, he wanted me to take her place, but he was the second son, you see. Josiah was the first, the wealthy baronet, and he offered for me too. My mother had huge ambitions for me and I was their only daughter, dutiful and obedient, and although I didn’t love either of the brothers, Josiah was fatherly and kind, and I thought I could make him a good wife. I didn’t particularly want to step into Stephen’s first wife’s shoes. My mother insisted I accept Josiah, and my father went along with it, intending to keep the details of the adoption secret. I believe it was not too difficult. They had spent months in Switzerland before they took me in, so she could have pretended that she was pregnant during that time. But this is what I fear Ruben Hurst may have discovered, according to his letter.’
‘I think that’s highly unlikely. But go on.’
‘As I said, my mother would have told nobody, not even Josiah, but my father took a different view and, on the night before our wedding, he was struck by conscience. He told us both how I’d been rescued from the Manchester Foundling Hospital, and said that Josiah should not be deceived into thinking that he was marrying a woman of good ancestry when he—that is, my father—had no idea who my parents were. He and my mother had felt it best not to ask for details, and I think at that time they were not keeping proper records as they do in London. In Manchester, the children were left with some little item belonging to one of the parents, in case they wanted to reclaim it.’
‘Did you have anything?’
‘No, I think not. Nothing. I think, you see, that my father wanted to give Josiah the chance to call the marriage off before it was too late. He deeply respected Josiah. They had been friends for years.’
‘But he preferred to go ahead with it. Did he love you too much?’
‘There’s more, my lord. When my father left us, Josiah was very upset, and eventually he confessed to me that the choice would be mine. He’d had an affair with his mother’s maid when he was twenty-three and, to cut a long story short, to save the maid’s job he’d taken the newborn child, a girl, to the same Foundling Hospital in Manchester, only a few days before I was rescued from there by the Carrs. He was quite sure about the date. And because of that, and because I had the maid’s looks by then, Josiah believed there was a strong chance I could be his daughter. Perhaps that explained his love for me. I don’t know.’
‘What was the maid’s name? Did he say?’
‘No, it would have been nice if I’d known my mother’s name, but Josiah thought it best not to say. We agonised about the problem for a long time, and Josiah would have released me, but I wouldn’t let him call it off. I knew that, if we said nothing, no one except ourselves would know.’
‘But couldn’t he have verified it, somehow?’
‘The wedding was the next day. It was to be the greatest day of my mother’s life, and Josiah’s too. I couldn’t … I simply couldn’t pull out at that late stage. It would have been the end of my mother, I think. There was no time for him to enquire before the wedding, and even if he’d postponed it, he may have been proved correct, after all that, raising a lot of questions he didn’t want to answer about his lover and her identity, a terrible scandal and a daughter he didn’t want. He was forty-three, highly respected with an expanding business and a solid reputation, and I couldn’t bear to think of the consequences, so I was the one to decide it was best not to know. But that also meant we could never consummate our marriage, in case it was true.’
‘Yes, I see. But that was a great sacrifice for you.’
‘It was my choice, Nick. I was a dutiful daughter, and the thought of hurting such a good man was more than I could have borne. I knew he adored me, you see, and I didn’t know anything about lovemaking, and I didn’t know what I was missing except the chance to have a family of my own.’ Her voice wavered and dropped a pitch. ‘That’s all I missed.’ She turned her head away and, when he brought it back to face him, he saw how her eyes were filling with tears, her lovely features contorted with anguish. ‘It was my duty, Nick,’ she whispered, ‘and he was offering me so much with the chance to please my ageing parents.’
She had carried that burden for four years, two as a married woman and two as a widow and now, having spoken it out loud for the first time, the significance of it swamped her with deep despair, exposing a grief for her childlessness and for what she saw as failure in every direction she took. ‘Nick … Nick,’ she sobbed, hiding her face in him, ‘you must know … before you … you go … that I … love you. You must know that.’
Pushing her damp hair away, he rocked her in his arms and mopped her tears. ‘Sweetheart, hush now. What are you talking about?
I’m not going anywhere. And I know you love me. Why, I have only to look into your eyes to see that. There now … hush … I’m not leaving you. It’s you who cares most about your parentage, not me, sweetheart. I’ve found the woman I love, the one I’m going to marry and have children with, and I don’t care a damn who her parents are. As it happens, I believe your kindly Josiah may have withheld some of the truth, even from you, to protect your mother’s good name. Come now, lass, dry these tears. You’ll not get away from me on that kind of excuse. Tell me you love me again.’
‘I love you, Nick … dear heart,’ she gulped. ‘I love you, and I can’t bear the thought of losing you.’
‘Sweetheart, you’re not going to. I told you at the start that this relationship was not going to fail. Didn’t I?’
‘You say you’ve found the woman you love. Is it true?’
‘Quite true. Do you know that I almost threw myself at your feet in Rundell’s that day we first met? Dearest love, there hasn’t been a single moment when I’ve not been desperately in love with you, and I would have used every trick in the book to get you, unwilling widow. Everybody knows how in love with you I am, little goose, so it’s no good dragging up your dodgy parentage to hold me off.’
‘But everybody also knows how bloodlines matter more than anything to the aristocracy, Nick. Your father would not accept it, if he knew, and I could not so deceive a man. And your mother doesn’t tolerate scandal. You told me that yourself, didn’t you?’
When he rolled off the bed, Amelie took it as a sign that he was debating the reply, but in the next moment she was being wrapped in the counterpane and carried over to the hearth where the low fire was resurrected into a dancing blaze. Holding her within the circle of his arms, he pretended to have mislaid the question.
‘You were saying, m’lady?’ He smiled, behind her head.
‘Well, that was a fudge, wasn’t it, my lord? My informant reliably tells me that the scandalous doings of your mother would make the Chesters’ saga look almost respectable. How could you have used such an excuse to get me into your bed?’
Regency Rumours/A Scandalous Mistress/Dishonour And Desire Page 24