by Sophia James
She did not even need to glance at her list to know that what he said was true.
* * *
‘Calderwood looks like the cat who has the cream,’ Frank Reading stated. ‘But it is good to see the Albany girl so happy.’
Guilt wrapped around the heart of his anger as he made himself look away.
‘Tonight every man in the room who is unattached or interested in changing their circumstances has made their feelings known. Lady Florentia has a full card and no shortage of compliments and it is a pleasing sight.’
Swearing softly under his breath, James finished his drink and laid the glass down on the polished surface of one of the tables marching down the length of the room; the delicate crystal meeting the hard marble with barely a sound.
He’d always lived with shadows. Seeing Florentia in the light of such adoration reinforced such a fact. He was damaged and scarred and the distance he held between himself and others had widened without his even knowing it. Arabella had warned him of such things and so had Rafe.
But tonight he was tired of fighting it, this inertia. Tonight as the music swelled about him and the golden dress of Florentia Hale-Burton caught in the light all he wanted to do was to be alone and outside away from the noise and the laughter.
He wondered if Reading had caught all he tried not to show as he turned away, the weary naked core of himself harder and harder to hide.
* * *
He was leaving, Florentia knew that he was and he had not come to claim his waltz for the first strains of the dance were being played. He had not even come to apologise for it either—a man who had asked her to marry him without any emotion at all and then failed to turn up for a single promised dance.
Timothy Calderwood on the other hand was hovering at her elbow and if she tarried he would see the gap. Claiming she needed a drink, she threaded her arm through her sister’s and asked Maria if she would accompany her for a stroll about the room. Once away from Timothy Calderwood she unlaced her fingers and spoke quietly.
‘Maria, you are the most wonderful sister in all of the world but I am going to ask you now to do something for me that you may not quite agree with.’
‘It is something to do with Lord Winterton, isn’t it?’ The retort was sharp.
‘The Viscount has promised me this dance and I need you to walk with me over to him so that I can claim it, for I think he is leaving.’
‘Roy said there is much unknown in Winter, Flora. He implied there are things that are hidden within him.’
‘Please...’ Flora swallowed as she asked this. ‘Please will you help me?’
Maria looked stricken, her eyes wide and frightened. ‘If he hurts you again...’
‘Again?’
‘Oh, Flora, I know you so much better than you think I do. All these meetings with Winterton. All your interest. The scar on his neck that he hides, the pull that he seems to hold over you and the drawing of the portrait...’ She stopped. ‘He was the lord who kidnapped you, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yet you still think this wise?’
They had reached the trajectory that brought him directly to them, another few seconds and he would be there.
‘I do. There are many things you don’t know about him, Maria, good things that I need you to trust me with. Please?’
‘If this turns out badly...’
‘It won’t. But if I don’t try, I will always regret it.’
Maria raised her hand and pasted a smile across her face, signalling her surprise at finding Winterton right there beside them.
‘Lord Winterton, how very fortuitous for my sister was just saying that you had promised her this dance, and here you are. I shall leave you both to it and go and petition my own husband to join me on the floor.’
A warning placed around social niceties, but at least James Waverley could do nothing else but agree to accompany her into the waltz.
Florentia felt his arm beneath her elbow shepherding her through the throng of others, the warm sandalwood of his scent familiar and known.
‘I realise you were just leaving, but I needed to speak with you. To explain.’
He had taken her into his arms now, the intimacy of the dance allowing them privacy, and she could not quite meet his gaze. All night she had stood up with a variety of lords and all night she had wished only for this one.
‘I want to say that I absolve you from any wrongdoing, Lord Winterton. You owe me nothing more now. My own charade was ill advised and risky and I want to thank you for the story of a broken-hearted Frederick Rutherford scampering from London on a ship bound for the Americas. From all accounts the narrative seems to be your doing.’
‘Says who?’
‘Every one of the Heron women. Phillip Wiggins. My brother-in-law. The list goes on.’
He smiled at that, his teeth white against sun-burnished skin. ‘I had forgotten and underestimated the temerity of the London ton in determining the source of any scandal. But be warned, Lady Florentia, a benevolent and sainted defender is far from who I am.’
Now there was no humour at all, the scars across the knuckles of his hand across hers opaque beneath the lights. Her finger ran softly over one of the marks.
‘Who hurt you here?’
He stiffened perceptibly and she turned her own thumb over when he failed to answer. ‘This came from the inn when you fell to the ground beneath me. There was glass on the road and it cut deeply. Afterwards it was a memory. Often I would feel along the raised ridge of skin when I thought you were dead and pray for your soul. It helped, I think, to try and find forgiveness in something so very terrible.’
His green eyes met hers directly and they were full of pain.
* * *
He felt the shock of her words run through him like small daggers into the heart of his darkness. The scar. The one he had seen a score of times in the company of Frederick Rutherford took on an importance that was poignant.
But she did not truly know who he was.
He’d always been divided since he was little, one side of him turned to the light and the other to the shadows and fear.
His early family life was partly to blame, his own mother’s indifference and bitterness part of the tableau, and his years of soldiering had deepened the dislocation.
Florentia had been damaged by him in a number of ways and yet she seemed to have survived in forgiveness, the elemental hell that he had thrown her into lessened by the mercy of a pardon.
God, he’d tried to understand people, but he had seldom managed the trick of it. Rafe and Arabella had been the closest friends he knew, but they were both as damaged as he was so perhaps they did not count.
Florentia on the other hand was blameless. An innocent thrust into notoriety by his poor actions and living out her years in the seclusion of the Kentish countryside, filling her mind with images of art in all its forms. He didn’t deserve such goodness, that much was certain, and if he allowed her into his own particular ruin she could only be hurt further.
The most honourable path would be to beat a retreat and flee to leave her to the sort of life she had been born to, kind un-complex men and women who found joy in all the things he never had. Still he felt an ache surge in the very pit of his belly.
‘I am leaving for Herefordshire in the morning and I am not sure when I shall be back.’
‘I see.’ Her words were small. He felt the breath of them against his cheek.
‘London has palled in its delight for me and I yearn for more open spaces.’
She made no attempt at all in answering this.
‘I have done everything I can to see that your reputation is recovered and tonight you are undoubtedly resurrected.’
‘I am.’ This was stated in a tone that held the promise of a fight. ‘Like a ph
oenix.’
‘A state of affairs that gives much delight to all of those around you.’ Such a platitude made his mouth dry.
‘I prefer you when you are at least honest, my lord. The patronising words of a man who knows he has slipped a noose whilst proclaiming its very beauty does not become you.’
‘You will thank me for it one day, Florentia.’
‘Will I, Lord Winterton?’
At that he stumbled, the misstep bringing her into him closer. He could feel the rise of her breasts.
Hell, would this dance never end? He could see others watching them and moved back again.
Roy and her sister were near now, a few feet away, Warrenden’s wife’s frown full upon her brow.
And then the music sidled into silence and the world crashed in on them again, pulling them apart, the uttered thanks, the quiet goodbyes. An inch, a foot, a yard away.
The smell of lavender followed him from the room and out into the night where he stood under the shadow of a tree and leaned against a wall.
‘Please protect her. Please God let her be safe.’
It had been so long since he had prayed to any deity he could not remember the proper form of entreaty. But the wind heightened and the clouds scudded across the dull London sky and for just a moment he felt honourable.
* * *
Half an hour later the Warrenden carriage was heading back to Grosvenor Square.
Maria was unusually quiet and Flora knew there would be many difficult questions about the Viscount on arrival.
‘Winter told me that he was off to the country on the morrow to visit the property he’s just bought. Somewhere to the west, I believe.’ Roy reached into his pocket for his flask. ‘God, but I am so glad to be away from all that joviality. Calderwood looked enamoured by you, Florentia?’
‘He used to be a long time ago before...’ Maria stopped.
‘Before my ruination.’ Flora smiled gently. ‘I think now he is only sad.’
‘A frightened kitten, but at least a moral one.’ Her sister’s eyebrows raised as she looked straight at her.
They’d played this game years ago, divided people into various animal personas. And if Calderwood was now a moral cat, then Lord Winterton was a wolf. An alpha wolf, she amended, with his teeth fully bared.
She had seen the women there watching his every move, young women and old. He had that sort of aura that was undeniable and magnetic...
The leg that had been hurt at the Northbury ball was aching from standing for so very long and she wanted to be home in her room, alone to think.
* * *
Once they were back at Grosvenor Square, however, Maria came to her room and she looked anything but happy.
‘You should have told me, Florentia, about Winterton. You should have said something.’
‘So that you could warn me off him? So that I could not discover what sort of a man he was by myself?’
‘And did you? Discover that?’
‘He is remorseful for what he did. It was by mistake that he took me from Mount Street in the first place—he thought that I was his cousin’s lover.’
‘I don’t think this is making me feel reassured, Flora.’ Her sister looked shocked.
‘He never hurt me, Maria. He protected me. He was kind and good and beautiful. When Papa shot him...’ She stopped and lowered her voice. ‘I have never ceased to hope that he would be alive and when I knew that he was... I felt whole again and so very relieved. He asked me to marry him in order that he might protect me.’
Maria sat, her pallor whitening. ‘What answer did you give him?’
‘He does not love me. He asked out of duty. What could I say?’
‘My God, Flora. If Papa ever finds out that it was him...’
‘He would probably die of shock. I have thought of that, too.’
‘So where does that leave you?’
‘I am not sure. Lonelier, I suppose. Less hopeful. He is leaving London and he wished me a happy life without him even as we danced.’
When Maria began to pace across the room Florentia felt a rising worry.
‘When did he propose to you?’
‘At the Northbury ball and also when he came to visit the Warrenden town house the day after I had been injured.’
‘Twice? He has asked twice? You have never been able to see what is right in front of your nose, Flora, for you do not value yourself highly enough and it is time that you learnt to. There is something about Lord Winterton that is hardened and distant, but perhaps you are the only one in the world who might find his softness and retrieve your own happiness in the process.’
With that her sister kissed her on the cheek and retired, leaving Florentia to mull over and try to make sense of what exactly she had said.
Chapter Twelve
Winter rode across the lands of Atherton, the wind in his face and the promise of rain in the west across the Black Mountains.
For the first time in a long while he felt able to breathe, to take in the air that was somehow denied to him in London.
He skirted the rocky knife edge of the ridges, the narrow single track leading past peat bogs and cairns. Down in the valley he could see the Olchon River cutting into the land and further away the slopes of Hay Bluff rose above Hay-on-Wye, the barren summit clouded in mist.
He had bought Atherton Abbey because his maternal grandmother had lived her years out here at Craswell Village and this was where he had enjoyed some of the happiest moments of his childhood.
He understood this land like no other. He knew the birdcalls, the red kites, the kestrels and carrion crows and when he noticed the birds of prey riding the thermals on the edges of the hills he felt a familiar tug of memory and was comforted by such recollection.
He wished Florentia was here so that he might have shown her the majesty of the place.
Florentia. He could no longer make out what to do about her. Marry her or ignore her? She had refused his offers of marriage twice and yet he felt a pull between them that was undeniable.
He imagining how she would have drawn the outcrops and screes and the spring-line flushes. The birch and oak and alders stood in the valleys, the bushy slopes and the barren summits. Like a portrait. A portrait of an ancient knowingness, red-brown sandstone and solid bedrock.
Breathing out, he closed his eyes, taking in the particular smell of this corner of England. Here he felt whole again and healed.
Home.
* * *
An hour and a half later when he was back at Atherton Abbey he asked his man to begin hiring more of the local villagers in preparation for his move here permanently.
‘And the furniture, my lord? What instructions do you have there?’
‘Keep what is here and we will add to things as we see fit. The roof will need some work as will the salons in the west wing. Other than that a good clean and tidy should do it.’
They had reached the kitchens now and a small maid curtsied to them as they came into the room, a wriggling and rough sack in her hand.
‘What do you have there, Mavis?’ His factor’s voice was stern.
‘The last of the puppies, sir. No one wants the thing as it is scrawny and sick and the old stable master told me to go and throw it into the lake.’
‘Very well.’ Kenning stepped back to let the girl pass, but James stood in her way.
‘I will deal with the stray, Kenning. You may see to the other orders I have given you.’
* * *
It was so good to have the brushes back in her hand, Florentia thought, and to be in front of a canvas in a secluded section of Hyde Park. The Warrendens had re-established themselves again at Grosvenor Square a few days prior, Roy having urgent business to deal with in town.
S
he had taken up painting again, carefully and in isolated spots for she did not wish any notice from society.
Her maid sat on a wooden seat some twenty yards away. Her own seat was the grassy bank above a line of trees stretching into the distance.
Early morning in town had that certain light to it and she wanted to capture the nuances before the sun was higher and the day was dispersed. Hence she worked quickly, the pink blush on the horizon committed to paper and the deep green at her feet juxtaposed against it. Shadow and light. Cloud and grass. The hard edges of the trees seemed to float against an amorphous sky, like sentinels, and she was lost in the beauty.
‘I did not expect to see you here, Lady Florentia?’
She turned to the voice and Winter was standing there, looking into the sun, a thin brown and white puppy on a leash at his side, its ears floppy and skin wrinkled. She could not help but smile as the dog pawed at her with one loose-skinned leg. The canine looked a lot less wary than the man.
‘Her name is Faith. I acquired her unexpectedly.’ It seemed as if he might turn away, his glance taking in the pathway behind, a man caught in a place he wished he was not.
‘She is beautiful.’ And she was, brown soulful eyes staring straight into her own.
‘She has just eaten my best pair of boots for breakfast. If I had not brought her out to the park, I think my valet may well have murdered her.’
The humour was welcome and the clothes he wore countrified. She could imagine him on a horse with more dogs like this one running beside him and a magnificent estate in the background.
‘Would your puppy sit still for a portrait, do you think? It will not take long.’
He motioned to the dog to lie down and she did.
‘You have trained her to do this?’
‘It’s the first time she has obeyed any command since I got her a week ago. I doubt she would do so twice.’
Florentia used charcoal, the lines of a hunting dog appearing over the sweet-tempered calmness of the puppy.
‘You work fast?’
‘She is an easy subject.’
‘Whereas I was not?’
‘You have many layers, my lord, and each one is blurred by secrecy. Faith’s face is open and simple.’