by Sophia James
‘Hell.’ He broke away without explanation and moved back, breathing so heavily he could hardly find air. ‘Hell,’ he repeated again, the world turning on its axis.
‘Fix up your moustache.’ It was all he could think to say, the thin disguise unpeeling to one side of her mouth.
Florentia Hale-Burton made him into a man he no longer recognised, a dolt with the manners of an oaf. Beneath the door he saw the shadow of Roy Warrenden marching up and down.
‘I realise that you can never forgive me for my appalling mistake all those years ago, so if it is money instead that you have a need of...’
‘No.’ She limped to the door and opened it, allowing him no recourse but to leave. Roy was outside, the look on his face dark.
‘Thank you for coming to enquire about my health, Lord Winterton, but as you can see I am fine.’
For the first time ever Winter understood her prowess as an actor, no tremble in her words, no expression that would give away even a little of what had happened between them.
‘Then I am glad for it, Mr Rutherford, and I promise that I shall not trouble you further.’
With a tip of his head he walked out of the house, relieved to see his driver in place and the square empty of other traffic.
It was over. He had offered a fair and reasonable compensation to alleviate his own guilt, but she had not accepted it. Swallowing, he wiped the fabric of one sleeve across his mouth, trying to remove the sweetness of her lips from memory.
* * *
Florentia sat down heavily, her leg aching and heart thumping.
She hated him, hated Lord Winterton for his supercilious and patronising arrogance. To offer money and marriage in exactly the same breath and then to kiss her as if she actually meant something to him, his mouth hot against her own exploding into a feeling that was both dizzying and inexplicable.
She’d kissed him back, too, she knew she had. She’d given herself away before she had even had the chance to think. She could not even bear to imagine what might have happened had they truly been alone.
Swallowing, she looked up at Roy, her whole body shaking.
‘I think you should not see Winter again, Florentia, and we will say nothing of this visit to Maria for it would only make her worry.’
‘Thank you.’
‘The Viscount is a man who always got his way. Even at school. The charm of the devil, we used to say, but there were darker parts in Winter, even then. He saw through your disguise?’
She nodded.
‘At his house when you were drawing his portrait?’
‘No, it was only afterwards.’
‘Praise the Lord for that, at least. He’s a womaniser. The very best that there is, by all accounts. His conquests are legendary.’
‘Well, I am not one of them, Roy.’
‘I am glad to hear it, Florentia. I do not think you could survive such an onslaught for his taste is eclectic and not at all salubrious. Maria was at pains to tell me that every unmarried woman in the ton is holding out for a chance to bear his name, like lambs to the slaughter.’
The irony of such an observation had her standing. ‘Well, if you will excuse me I think I shall go and rest upstairs.’
‘And tomorrow we will retire back to Kent?’
‘Yes.’
She wished desperately and with all of her heart to be home.
* * *
James knew that the society wolves were circling and he needed to stop them. Already this evening at a soirée in Chelsea three days after the Northbury ball everybody he met had regaled him with the news of the artist’s accident.
‘Mr Frederick Rutherford is the talk of the town, Winter, and questions are beginning to be asked.’
Frank Reading was quick to tell him this as he came upon him in the card room about halfway through the night.
‘Questions?’ James tried to make his tone as nonchalant as he could.
‘Questions such as how Rutherford is related to the Hale-Burtons given his likeness to the family. There is also another strain of mystery which expounds the theory that nobody in the ton seems to have met him before this.’
James understood well how gossip worked; the first stirrings, the quiet queries that then led to further unanswered puzzles and deeper mysteries. Part of him wanted to simply move away and leave Florentia Hale-Burton to cope on her own, but another and greater part found it hard to simply abandon her. Her problems had been caused by him, after all, and despite her personal anger at him he needed to make reparation.
‘From what I have heard he is a second or third cousin to Albany’s daughters and one who had only just moved up from the West Country.’
He sought to make the geography and the relationship as vague as he could manage it and was glad that the Honourable Phillip Wiggins had joined their group because the man was a notorious gossip.
James lent in to give his next words quietly. ‘Rutherford has taken ship to the Americas, according to my sources, to try his chances in a new land. I think he felt after the incident in the Northbury ballroom he could no longer fit in here.’
‘He did seem to take the injury rather to heart,’ Wiggins said. ‘Perhaps he was younger than we thought him to be, more emotional.’
‘I am certain that could be true,’ Winter returned, weighing the new theory with a heavy consideration, for anything to take the focus off Florentia Hale-Burton was to be encouraged.
Heron walked by and he felt the man watching him. For a moment it looked as though he might indeed stop and speak, but then he moved away. The anger in James twisted and it was all he could do to stop himself from confronting him directly.
‘Warrenden is probably rueing the day the lad came into their life for all the problems he seems to have caused them. I know his agent is furious that he should have simply disappeared. Most inconsiderate of him, really. There was some talk about the younger sister, too, as I recall.’ Wiggins offered this quietly as though he were trying to remember the particulars.
‘The Albany girls have had their detractors for the scandal with the younger daughter was something that was never resolved.’ Reading leaned in to add his piece. ‘I myself always thought they seemed like nice and sensible girls. Very pretty, too.’
‘Well, all that talk of scandal was a long time ago and it was a rather scrambled story.’ Now James made his contribution.
‘Scrambled?’
‘There were no real witnesses to any of it from what I hear and Lady Florentia was back at her family home before nightfall.’ James kept his tone light.
‘Then why did she not return to society?’
‘It’s widely known that the Hale-Burton sisters never really fitted in here. My guess is the younger daughter did not wish to return and was glad for the conundrum. Kent was a sanctuary and she ran for its cover and protection.’
Wiggins nodded. ‘Perhaps it could be true. Warrenden’s wife is certainly direct to a fault, although he seems more than enamoured by her. Besides, Albany was always unusual and his wife was much the same. My own mother knew her at school and said she was strikingly unconventional.’
The conversation then moved on to other topics, but the first seeds were planted of a different theory and one which dismissed the sisters as uncommon rather than ruined.
It was all in the semantics, James thought, as he swallowed his brandy. A slight question, a skewered truth, the niggle of uncertainty and the hint of doubt.
Wiggins would talk as would Reading and those they talked to would talk as well. A widening pool of knowledge about Rutherford and the Hale-Burtons, about the artist’s desperate flight to America and the sister’s need for quiet down in Kent which, after all was said and done, was almost expected in a family as unusual as the Hale-Burtons.
This was how the w
orld worked and how society made sense of itself. Years of intelligence in both Europe and America had at least taught him that.
He had heard that the Warrenden party had repaired to Albany the day after his ill-thought-out visit. He wished he might have heard how Florentia fared there, but with the history he had with her father he did not dare to enquire. Warrenden too, was another consideration. Roy had known something had been amiss the other morning though he was too polite to take it up further. But if his part in her abduction ever came to light...
The glow of the social occasion seemed dimmer without the clever and measured repartee of the youngest Hale-Burton. Every other woman here seemed dull, ordinary and witless. He wondered if he would ever see beauty again in the flirtatious shallowness of the ton, with its penchant to breed girls totally consumed with what they looked like and whom they would marry.
He wished he had met Florentia Hale-Burton properly in society six years ago, when all the world was before her and she could have chosen him on his merits.
He smiled at such fancy, for even an impoverished Earl’s daughter might have had second thoughts about a man with no land or prospects and an army career that had left him in tatters.
And therein lay the crux of it all. He was richer now and the title was his, but his abduction had left her with a distaste for him and all that he had done.
Still, he could not allow his foolish mistake to erode his sense of justice. He would make sure that she was safe and back in the fold of the ton that was her heritage and then he would leave for Atherton Abbey to see out his days there and far away from the prattle of society.
A movement to one side of the room showed Benjamin Heron slipping out to the balcony. Perhaps tonight he could lay more ghosts to rest and, although a crowded ballroom was probably not the place to bring up his father’s past, he none the less would use this opportunity to do so, feeling that there might never be another presented.
As he strode outside he saw the older man standing to one end of the small enclosure. In the lamplight Heron looked worn down, his face lined and frightened as he recognised who the newcomer was. That emotion made James wary for it was so unexpected.
‘I wonder if I might have a word with you, Mr Heron?’
At that the man paled and sat on a small seat behind him, this reaction so out of character Winter wondered momentarily if he was ill.
‘I knew you would come, Winterton. I knew that one day this moment would arrive between us and I should be left asking myself why I had not been honest before it, why I had not been honourable. Alfred Perkins talked, didn’t he? He told you about your father? He said I had something to do with his death?’
Lord, this conversation was going places James had no notion of, no true way of answering without blatant accusations. He decided to chance it. ‘Did you?’
‘William was my friend and had been for a very long time, but...’ Perspiration beaded at his temples and on the top of his lip. ‘But he betrayed me.’
‘How?’
‘He slept with my sister under the nose of her husband and got her with child.’
‘When?’
‘Twenty-two years ago. The boy gained his majority last year. I thought they should meet at least once and William should know the face of the son he had never wanted to acknowledge. A boy caught between dalliances...between a true identity. A young troubled man with needs of his own.’
This news was unexpected and life-altering. Winter had never had much in the way of family and here was a half-brother who was suddenly and shockingly presented.
‘What was his name?’
‘Trevellyen Hartington. He took my sister’s husband’s name though they were already distant when he was born in Wales.’
‘And he did not return?’
‘Not until early last year when he came to London. He wanted answers.’
‘I should imagine he did.’
‘He demanded to meet William and so I arranged it, but there was a quarrel and recriminations and unfortunately your father was deep into his cups. The meeting did not go well and to try not to attract the attention of others at the busy inn we walked down to the river bank for some privacy. When Trevellyen told your father he was off to the Americas William said he was glad to be rid of him and that he would never get a penny from his estate and there was a scuffle. They both fell into the river where the current was particularly strong and I did not see either of them again.’
The truth of what Heron was not saying began to sink in. ‘You tried to cover up the evidence. You left my father’s clothes in a pile by the water’s edge and walked away.’
‘His jacket, gloves and neckcloth. William had taken those off when he was shouting and I didn’t want an investigation so I folded the clothes and left them there for others to find. In a neat pile because that way I thought there might not need to be an enquiry which could only hurt all those who were left behind.’
‘So the constabulary would come to the conclusion of suicide?’
The older man nodded his head and there were tears in his eyes. ‘I did it to protect my nephew Trevellyen and my sister and your father as well. I did that to protect everyone.’
God, thought James. There was a certain sense to what he was saying, even an honour if it could be called such. The man was outwardly sobbing now, the powerful and rich man reduced to a shadow. He prayed no one else would come through the unlocked door and see them here.
‘Amelia, my sister, had two other sons and they have children as well. A lineage that would be tainted should all of this be known, a scandal to walk on down through the decades with them.’
‘And what of my lineage?’
‘Scandal is the Wintertons’ life blood, do you not see? It is what makes your family stand out and be...different. But mine...? I have built the family finances on being...righteous, on toeing the line if you like, and I have three daughters who need husbands, one who is not even out of the schoolroom yet...’
The sniffing stopped and he looked up. ‘I betrayed your father and my friend in his death and if it is my blood you demand, Lord Winterton, then I will agree to it. I will meet you at dawn in any location you desire.’
‘You are talking of a duel?’ James could barely believe the arc of this conversation.
‘I would not draw my pistol against you.’
‘You want me to kill you?’
‘No. That is my burden alone.’ Now he squared his shoulders and stood. ‘I would use the loaded gun on myself.’
‘God.’ James went over to the balustrade edge, the greyness of the night creeping into his very bones.
‘I decline such an offer, Heron. Your secret is safe with me and I do not demand your life for it.’
‘Why?’
‘William did not do the right thing for his son.’ As James said this he heard the anger in each and every word. ‘Or indeed for your sister. This way my father can repay at least some of his debt.’
Benjamin Heron had taken a handkerchief now from his pocket and was wiping his face briskly.
‘Your father used to be like you before the drink ruined him and if there is ever anything that I can do for you in return for the keeping of this secret...’
Winter began to smile.
‘Well, actually there is one thing that might balance the books, so to speak...’
He was glad to see Heron move forward and listen.
Chapter Eleven
Florentia could not believe the name on the card delivered into her hand by the butler at Albany Manor twelve days later.
‘Mrs Heron, Miss Heron and Miss Caroline Heron have come down from London to call.’
Her sister clapped her hand across her mouth and whispered between her fingers, ‘Why on earth would they travel all this way to see us unless...?’<
br />
The door opened, however, before Flora could reply, leaving them both to rise and meet the fashionably dressed new arrivals. Julia came across, offering her hand to both of them, a look of concern in her eyes.
‘We heard the news about Mr Rutherford from Papa and came to see if we could be of any help. It is a sad fact of life when a man as sensitive and talented is harried out of society for an accident that was hardly his fault in the first place. If your own family suffers with the connection, well, that is even more unfair.’
‘Indeed.’ Maria seemed to have recovered her wits faster than Florentia had. ‘What was it your papa had heard exactly, Miss Heron?’
‘That Mr Rutherford has taken ship to the Americas in the hope of escaping the ugly gossip about his unfortunate wounds and that he did not intend to return. Ever.’
‘Which is such a very long time.’ Caroline Heron seemed determined to add her thoughts now. ‘And it was hardly his fault, any of it.’
‘Perhaps he imagined society might censure him for such sensitivity, but it is my opinion that an artist should be able to express himself in such a way and not be thought the less of for it.’ Julia had taken over the conversation again, her clipped and rounded vowels horrified by such censure.
Flora, who had finally found her wits after the shock of entertaining the family in their parlour, wondered who might have spread such a rumour in the first place. ‘Society can indeed be cruel...’
She left the thought hanging.
‘Which is why we have come to see you.’ For the first time Mrs Heron spoke. ‘My husband is most insistent that our family be seen as the one to hold out an olive branch and ask if you all might like to come to a ball we are having in two weeks’ time at our town house.’
‘I am not sure, Mrs Heron.’ Maria had the tone of worry and politeness exactly right. ‘My sister has had her detractors in the past...’
Julia leapt in to clarify things. ‘But we should be there to see an end to it, Lady Warrenden. You will all come as our guests of honour and no one would dare to question such an authority under our roof. Your relative, Mr Rutherford, has left England needlessly and unfairly, but as his cousin, Lady Florentia, the very least we can do is return you to the fold.’