Mistress at Midnight

by Sophia James

  No one else existed in that room as the music swirled about them and he led her into the steps, the smell of soap and brandy vying for an ascendance, his body hard beneath the superfine in his jacket.

  Charles had been softer and heavier and shorter. The very thought made her shiver.

  ‘You are cold?’

  ‘No.’ Her eyes met his as she pulled back slightly.

  ‘Was Charles a kind husband, Aurelia?’

  ‘Why do you ask that?’ Tonight, in his arms, lying was difficult.

  ‘Cassandra mentioned that you were left alone often and that the servants had talked.’

  ‘I was eighteen and foolish enough to imagine that marriage to a man I did not know well might solve all the problems in the world.’

  ‘And now you are twenty-six and wise?’ His voice was lowered, the husky edge of it inciting all that she remembered from the night in his town house. Hardly strangers. Not quite lovers. There was a danger in it Aurelia found exhilarating and forbidden. Pushing against him so that he might feel the curve of her breasts, she watched his expression change.

  Feminine power was surprisingly easy, the potency of her own body something she had never considered before because Charles had left her so very damaged.

  ‘Keep doing that and I will drag you off home before you know what has happened to you and you will not have a chance to change it.’

  ‘Is that a warning, my lord?’ Flirtation was another game she had little practice in and she knew he must be able to feel the drum of her heartbeat. Beneath her palm the calm and ordered rhythm of his heart disturbed her. How often a man like him must have been in exactly this position before—a heartsick female flirting to gain an attention she would never be able to win. Such a thought was sobering.

  There was no pathway to make the relationship between them different and when the music stopped and the dancers stilled she was glad to move back to where her sister lingered and even more pleased when he made a bow and left her.

  Stephen watched Aurelia St Harlow from the other side of the room, trying to get a powerful surge of lust under control and failing. Every part of his body filled with the fury of incomprehension.

  ‘She is a beauty, is she not? Charles’s widow?’ Nat stood beside him. ‘Apart from Cassie and Lilly, the most beautiful female in all of England, would be my guess. She seems alone, though. Substantial and alone. I should not wish to see her hurt further in any way. What is her accent?’

  Stephen answered, because to do otherwise would have caused comment. ‘French. Her mother was French.’

  ‘Aye, you can see it in the bones of her arms and shoulders. Small like the Anjou princesses. Cassie says that you have looked happier lately, more alive, Hawk. She thinks that the beautiful and mysterious Mrs St Harlow may have something to do with your altered state of affairs.’

  ‘Your wife has a penchant for matchmaking that has never been successful.’ He growled out the words and readjusted the coat-tails of his jacket.

  ‘Well, it has been years since you have courted a woman properly, Stephen, years since you had one that actually counted. Perhaps she is hoping that this time—’

  ‘Stop.’ He had bedded a good number of women, but none had made him even consider that any relationship might become permanent save for Elizabeth Berkeley. Her blond curls and blue eyes came to mind, the sweetness in her the thing that had drawn him to her in the first place, but for the past weeks all he had seen in her was extreme youthfulness and an astounding lack of knowledge. When had that happened? When had the fresh goodness of his ‘almost fiancée’ become a fault rather than a perfection? He ran a hand across his face and breathed out. Hard.

  Ever since meeting Aurelia St Harlow. That’s when everything had changed, the world lost for him in her mismatched eyes and Titian hair.

  He would have to do something about her—he knew he would—but first he needed to see the Berkeleys and explain as best as he could the changed state of his position.

  Nathaniel had been right about one thing, at least. Those who played with fire should expect to be burnt by it. He winced as the flames licked at the place he thought his heart had been long gone from.

  The terrace was deserted when Aurelia managed to escape the throng a good two hours later. Lord Hawkhurst had danced with every eligible woman in the room, she thought…every beautiful, laughing uncomplicated woman, she amended. She wished he had asked her again, but he hadn’t come near her.

  Her feet were sore from her new slippers and she was tired of looking down and seeing her breasts so easily on display in the heavy stiffness of emerald silk. She would not wear such a gown again, no matter what the inducement, and she hoped that not too much time would elapse before Leonora indicated that she wished to leave.

  Leonora. A few outings had turned her into a woman with as much strength as Emily, her father’s youngest sister. Emily Beauchamp had been Aurelia’s chaperon in her first Season, a gentle laughing presence and a woman who garnered suitors and admirers, but had never chosen one of them. It was Emily who had introduced her to Charles and who had so favoured the match her father never had. The memory was bittersweet, for her aunt had died of some unexplained illness, here for the day of her wedding and then gone the next. Aurelia had been hauled away by a husband who was impatient to sample all the curves he had found so enticing. The delight she had initially felt at such a barrage of compliments turned into utter despair when she understood that her new groom would not tarry for anyone and that the funeral she hoped to attend was denied to her.

  ‘I do not wish for a wife in black,’ Charles had said at the time as he ordered his staff to pack the coach. Running from a house of death was a character trait, but Aurelia had not yet come to understand that about the man she had married, though later she would realise responsibility and familial duty were things to be avoided at all costs.

  Charles had unlaced her gown so that it looked like one a harlot might have enjoyed wearing, his fingers running under the silk of her skirt even as they sat in the moving carriage. Aye, he enjoyed taking risks and breaking rules, the expected niceties of society angering him, a man who disliked the strict regime of the newly flourishing social moralists. Aurelia had learnt to be careful to hide any criticism for fear of yet another lecture on the mundane, safe and boring pathways she always followed.

  She hid everything, she suddenly thought. Her father. Her mother. Her work. her debts. Her past. Her beating heart when Lord Stephen Hawkhurst came anywhere near her person.

  The very concern made her frown and she lifted the mask away. He was as good as engaged to the most beautiful debutante of the Season, a girl lauded for her kindness and her sweet nature. Why, then, did she even imagine that she might be able to catch and hold the eye of a man with more reason than anyone to despise her?

  She was twenty-six, for goodness’ sake, and eminently sensible, a woman who after The Great Mistake had never made another. Looking up, she saw that the stars tonight lay between banks of clouds and the temperature was as warm as it ever became in an English summer. The quiet sounds of a fountain further out in the garden made her turn, as she tried to catch a glimpse of water through the darkness.

  It was then that she saw him, standing not ten feet away, a cheroot in his hand, the red glow of the tip brightly arcing as he flipped it into the garden.

  ‘Mrs St Harlow.’

  He looked less than pleased to see her.

  ‘Lord Hawkhurst.’

  Quietly he came closer, careful not to touch, the white in his necktie standing out boldly.

  ‘Do you think that our salvation might lie in formality?’ His voice sounded tired and wary, the slur of his words indicating that he had drunk far more than he should have.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You and I, my lady. Do we skirt around each other forever or do we take a chance and see just where it is this attraction could lead us?’

  ‘You speak in riddles, my lord.’ She hated the
forced joviality in her voice, a tone she had so often used with Charles.

  ‘Do I?’ He reached out then, and caught her hand, the anger in him felt in even such a small movement. ‘The riddle of lust is not so hard to comprehend.’ Laying his finger against her wrist, he waited. ‘See, it is in your blood tonight, calling me, remembering the other times between us…’

  ‘No.’ Her husband had done this, too, pressuring her at the most inopportune of moments, expecting a response, but she was wiser now and older and the horror that blossomed was like a weapon. ‘You have had too much to drink, my lord, and your mind is addled.’ She threw off his touch, pleased when his hands stayed at his side.

  ‘Not addled, but disappointed. The culmination of a life’s work, I suppose, and too little goodness in it.’ He tipped his head. ‘Are you God-sent, Aurelia? Could you heal the demons that lurk inside me once and for all?’

  A different tack. His hands shook more tonight than she had ever seen them do. The wine, perhaps, or the memories?

  ‘I thought you had already refused my prior suggestion of…closeness, Lord Hawkhurst?’

  ‘Those suggestions given without any form of passion?’ He laughed. ‘I am not seeking to be a pawn of politics.’

  ‘Then what is it you are after?’

  ‘I only wish I knew.’

  The silence lengthened, though it was not difficult or uncomfortable. Wordlessness had its own sort of communication after all, the small turn of a head, the warmth of body heat, the smell of violets and woodsmoke mixed as one.

  Finally he spoke again. ‘From what I have heard, the state of your union with my cousin was not exactly holy.’

  Tonight with all that he knew of her she could no longer skirt around the truth. ‘Indeed, our marriage was a mistake.’

  ‘So you killed him?’

  In the half-light she saw a tick in the muscle of his jaw, as if he were holding it tense against an answer and the anger in her was as raw as it had been four years ago. ‘I cannot deny that I wanted to, though in the end Charles died from his own lack of morals. He brutally raped a pregnant servant and her distraught father made sure that there would be no further…indiscretions. Every woman on the estate probably breathed a little easier that afternoon. I know I did.’

  ‘You told the court this?’

  ‘No. I told them only what it was I had seen.’

  ‘Which was…?’

  ‘I said that my husband had jumped across a poorly constructed barrier whilst exercising his favourite horse and had fallen badly.’

  The music inside the ballroom reached them here, soft and lilting against the harsh truth, her candid honesty allowing the sort of relief she could barely believe was possible and even when he remained silent she did not wish to take it back.

  ‘The consideration of any family name is important, do you not think, my lord? I felt that generations of Hawkhursts suffering for the poor judgement of one weak-willed relative was unfair and so I chose to offer another explanation.’

  When his eyes darkened she turned to watch the night, hating the way her heart beat so very quickly.

  Aurelia St Harlow had allowed herself to be ostracized for years for a crime she had not committed and all in the guise of protection? She was a saint rather than a sinner and if his cousin had materialised out of the darkness then and there he would have killed him himself for everything he had put her through: a court case public and damning and the whispers of her involvement in Charles’s demise following her every move.

  He remembered the way she had come through the crowd at his ball as the ton had given her the cut direct, her chin held high and a smile set on her face. Like a player just before the curtain rises, a certain brittle confidence in her eyes allowing only the glimpse of fright.

  ‘A difficult secret.’

  Her small nod in response made him swear.

  ‘And a fiction that has held you a prisoner for years?’

  This time she looked at him directly. ‘There is no way to refute all that has been said of me and I would countenance no suggestions otherwise. It is not redemption I am searching for, my lord.’ Her fingers rose to her neck and he saw that the small diamond pendant he had recovered was back in place. ‘Once my sisters are settled into society and I have sold my business I can retire with my father into the very depths of the countryside and I shall never look back.’

  The distress in her eyes made his heart ache. She was like a small and single rose trying to survive through a crack in concrete.

  ‘A sombre ending for a woman who has sacrificed herself for the good of others. If it were me, I should continue on with the colourful gowns and confuse everybody. What more could they say of you, after all?’

  Her left hand pulled at the gaping silk of her bodice, trying to close it. ‘Once I might not have cared, but now…’

  He laughed. ‘You are the most fearsome female of my acquaintance, Aurelia. Do not let anyone tell you differently.’

  Her smile brought deep dimples to her cheeks. ‘I will take that as a compliment, my lord.’

  ‘My cousin never deserved you. He was a man who even as a boy was not easy. He lost his parents just after I lost mine and maybe because of it was damaged. In the end I gave up on trying to know him.’

  ‘Which is why I never saw you at Medlands.’

  He shook his head. ‘There were other reasons, too.’

  ‘You were in Europe?’

  ‘For a long time.’ He smiled.

  He wished he could have said more. He wondered at his cousin’s rumoured predilection for racy women and fast parties. What had Aurelia seen in a man so untrustworthy and selfish and why had she married him in the first place? So many questions to ask and to answer, hers and his, the worlds they inhabited underpinned by unrevealed confidences.

  She had saved him at Taylor’s Gap with her chatter and a kiss that had simply scorched away any desire to end it all. He might have jumped if she had not been there, pushing through a flimsy barrier to a welcomed oblivion. But instead…

  He reached forwards to take a vibrant red curl with his finger, the silk of it falling across his palm. ‘Then I must thank you for tending to the Hawkhurst family name as Charles so obviously did not.’

  When she nodded he simply left because he did not wish to tell her more and because every part of him wanted to. Gathering his wits about him, he stepped into the light of the ballroom and made his way through the crowded salons to the front portico.

  Aurelia closed her eyes and tried to find her composure. She had told him exactly what she said she wouldn’t and yet relief was the only emotion she could truly identify. Her fingers strayed to her pendant, liking the familiar feel of it.

  She had been amazed that he had even remembered the piece, let alone tracked it down and repossessed it. For her.

  At the sound of a door opening she took in breath. Had he returned?

  ‘I saw Stephen leave,’ Cassandra Lindsay said, ‘and he did not look happy. My guess is that you do not, either.’ Aurelia saw a question in the other woman’s eyes as she turned.

  ‘Nathaniel and I have known Hawk for ever. He is a fine friend and a good man, though for the past six months he has been… . melancholic and pensive.’ She stopped and placed her palms across the stone on the top of the terrace wall. Like an anchor. Or a prayer.

  Aurelia waited. Sometimes people needed to find their thoughts without interruption.

  ‘We wondered if it was his search for a wife that was making him maudlin. Elizabeth Berkeley is a lovely girl, but she is hardly…strong.’

  The word surprised Aurelia. ‘Perhaps strength is not what he needs. Perhaps simple, honest and uncomplicated would chase away the demons?’

  Cassandra laughed. ‘That is what he thinks he needs, but I have had this conversation with my husband many times over and we have come to the conclusion that he needs a woman who can bring him to life again…one who could save him from himself, one who might be able to endure the b
arriers that he will undoubtedly erect.’

  The cliff on Taylor’s Gap came to Aurelia’s mind. Perhaps he would have pushed further had she not been there?

  ‘Espionage is not an occupation that would leave one much joy, I suspect.’

  ‘You know what he does?’ Surprise tempered Cassandra Lindsay’s words.

  ‘I have heard rumours.’

  Lady Lindsay nodded. ‘His brother was killed in France on a mission and Hawk thinks it was his fault that it happened—a personal revenge, if you like, and one that has eaten at his soul. He has seen things that it would be better for a man not to have and without family around him save for Alfred…’ She stopped and laid her hand upon Aurelia’s. ‘Loneliness and responsibility make poor bedfellows. I think you might know that every bit as well as he does, as by all accounts you have had your own battles in life.’ She took in a deep breath. ‘When I first met Nathaniel I had been a prisoner in France for near on ten months. It was not an easy detention and there were things that happened…things I thought would make Nathaniel seek another more wholesome woman if he knew the truth of it all. I tried to turn him away. I was damaged and I felt I would damage anyone else around me if I let them get close. I ran away on my wedding night to give him the chance of release, but he came after me. He saved me.’ She looked Aurelia straight in the eye before she continued. ‘If Hawk and you could save each other, any risk might be worth it.’

  Then she was gone, sailing back through the door with the grace she’d had coming through it, the honesty and candour left behind her allowing hope. Cassandra Lindsay had not been untouched or unblemished and yet she had risen above adversity and found her place in the world beside a man who would protect her.

  Could she do the same?

  Her arms curled momentarily around her body and she took in a deep breath before replacing her mask and following Lady Lindsay back into the ballroom.