Mistress at Midnight

by Sophia James

  The anger he was consumed with was nothing like the regrets he now harboured as he thought back to the scene of a few hours ago. Lord, Aurelia had been crucified for the boorish behaviour of her husband and because of it not a word of his cousin’s deviousness had ever been uttered.

  Unlike her, he cared for little and loved even less. Alfred was in his seventies and might not last for too much longer and when he was gone…there would be nothing of family or blood left. The last Hawkhurst. The final member of a cursed line blotted out by circumstance and sickness and betrayal.

  And now even the hope of a faultless, blameless innocent fiancée was lost because he recognised finally what he should have always known. He would ruin Elizabeth Berkeley as surely as she would ruin him, like an apple with one small black spot of rottenness, growing, spreading, consuming flesh that was uncontaminated and pure.

  He remembered Aurelia St Harlow’s expression on the terrace as she had looked at him, a sort of hope in her eyes. He had wanted to carry her off then and there and bring her home to strip away the emerald gown, claiming all that he could not, spilling his seed into the centre of her womanhood and hoping for…what? A child? An heir? An ending to all the solitude? Even knowing it was wrong, he could not stop the coursing hunger and his cock rose rigid.

  His. She would be his. There was no longer any question of it for nothing would stop him. Not duty. Not King. Not country. Not even treason.

  ‘God help us.’ He whispered the words into the darkness and closed his eyes against utter need.

  Chapter Eleven

  The man stepped out in front of her as she fumbled with the keys on the heavy lock on the Park Street doorway.

  ‘You are Mrs St Harlow?’ The question was in French.

  When she nodded he simply handed her over a letter.

  ‘She said I was to come back for your answer after you had had a day to look at it. She said you would give me a reply.’

  With that he left. Looking around to see if anyone else was about and hoping the rapid beat of her heart might begin to slow, Aurelia let herself in, the unmarked white envelope clutched in her fingers.

  She? Could he mean her mother?

  Caesar stirred from sleep, stretching and yawning as she untied him and took him outside. Briefly. She wanted to open the note before Kerslake arrived and as an added precaution she snapped the lock behind her when she re-entered the office.

  A necklace she recognised as one of her mother’s lay wrapped inside a letter. She instantly knew Sylvienne’s hand.

  Lia

  I am ill. Sell this necklace, for I have the need of a maid to help me through this ague. My friend will bring the money back to me and can be trusted.

  Grasping the table for balance, Aurelia sat, her fingers straying to the chipped and worn beads of the cut-glass bauble. As cheap and worthless as the life her mother now lived.

  She had met Sylvienne again four years ago in Paris on a visit, the untarnished beauty she had once been renowned for slipping into something less attractive, the liberal lifestyle so appealing when she had left England now futile and wretched.

  Aurelia, just out of a marriage that smacked of the same sort of despair she saw her mother consumed by, had been desperate to help. Women survived in the only way they knew how and with the roles reversed between them, she felt the need to parent Sylvienne. Even then she had been uneasy with the sort of people her mama had been reduced to dealing with, the crammed and squalid conditions of her rented apartment a far cry from her life in London. No wonder she had become ill. But how ill?

  She could not just go to Paris on a whim and leave Papa, not with the silk business on the verge of a good profit and Leonora needing to be chaperoned in the company of Rodney Northrup. Perhaps her mother could be brought to London for some rest and respite? A new worry surfaced. Sylvienne had said again and again she would never live in England, the dreary boredom of it sapping her soul.

  Closing her eyes, Aurelia took in a deep breath. Outside bells called true believers to prayer and further afield the shrill blast of a horn sounded, an outgoing vessel on the morning tide making its way to a far-off destination with a full cargo and the hopes of pleasant seas. Ordinary lives. Routine departures. Her own existence seemed beleaguered by stress and unease.

  With a flourish she inked her pen and set to writing, the words coming quickly as she decided on the course of action that she would follow. She still had the ruby pin Emily had given her and there were a number of books in the library that her father might not miss. Quick cash. Her fingers crept to the pendant at her neck. She could not pawn this, for Hawkhurst’s eyes were everywhere and if he were to find it again…?

  Squashing down the rising anger of her thoughts, she locked the envelope in the bottom drawer of her desk and left the warehouse.

  ‘Kerslake is involved. He has been seen in Delsarte’s company and they look more than chummy. They were at school together, though they were both expelled for stealing.’

  Shavvon looked down at the pile of notes he had on his table and then back up to Hawk. ‘What of the woman, Mrs Aurelia St Harlow? What do we know of her?’

  ‘Nothing much.’ The lies came easily, falling off Stephen’s tongue into the silence of the room. ‘She has an old father who is ill and three younger sisters. The Beauchamp silk mills have been in the family for years and she is busy running them.’

  Hawk had never once in all of the time he had worked for the British Service omitted a fact that was important to an investigation. Sometimes, when innocents had perished in the quest for a greater good he had hardly turned a hair, reasoning that in any conflict those close to the perpetrators were bound to be damaged and there was little he could do about it.

  Yet here he was protecting a woman who had by her own admission omitted salient details to the courts of England about the murder of his cousin. He breathed out in that slow and careful way he had long since perfected, attracting no unwanted attention.

  ‘You know her personally, don’t you? Mrs St Harlow, I mean?’

  Caution surfaced. ‘Vaguely, sir.’

  ‘You met her in the library at Hookham’s in Bond Street and then again at the Carringtons’ ball yesterday. It seems both times you had long conversations?’

  Hawk smiled. He should have realised that he would have been under observation, as well, for trust was a hard commodity to come by in this game. ‘She was married to my cousin. It would cause more gossip to give her the cut direct.’

  ‘Then don’t. I need you to get closer to the source of these missives and it seems the Park Street warehouse may lead us right to them.’

  Again Shavvon noted something on the book before him, a longer observation, this time, and underlined it. ‘Watch her carefully. I don’t trust her. She has come in front of the courts already and public opinion of her is unflattering.’

  Something inside Hawk was breaking as fast as Shavvon was speaking. This would be the last time he would work for the British Service. When he returned he would hand in all correspondence pertaining to intelligence, all the weapons and the charts of countries long at strife with England, all the codes and the books of observances made over thirteen years of spying. It would be finished then, this part of his life, this wandering nothingness that had left him stranded in a place he no longer wished to be.

  But first he must warn Aurelia St Harlow that she was being watched and that without due care and diligence she would be dragged in and questioned to within an inch of her life.

  Aye, under all the allegiance he felt for the Service another loyalty budded, stronger and more real. He would have liked to have asked what exactly they had on file about her already, but knew that to do so would invite question. So he merely smiled and listened to a diatribe about the inherent dangers of French spies who, according to Shavvon, were crouched like tigers and about to pounce on the very fabric of an unsuspecting British society.

  London was as busy as it usually was on a Monday morning jus
t before the luncheon hour. The ruby pin had realised a lot more than Aurelia had thought it would, saving her the task of looking through her father’s library for a few tomes that he might not miss.

  She noticed Hawkhurst before he did her, crossing the road at Hyde Park Corner. Tattersalls, she thought. The sales it ran were on a Monday, but it was also the day that gamblers received their winnings or were required to pay their debts. Would Stephen Hawkhurst be like Charles in that way, always looking for the next surefire gamble, the easy money that never came? Somehow she doubted it.

  ‘Mrs St Harlow. Are you alone?’ The humour she saw in his eyes was unexpected.

  ‘I am, my lord.’

  ‘Then perhaps you might walk with me for a moment. I have something I want to ask of you.’

  She stiffened. Was the warehouse in Park Street still being watched? Had Hawkhurst some knowledge of her mother’s condition and the need for money? Would he enquire after the Frenchman who had come yesterday, a connection providing him with another way of imagining her disloyalty to the security of the English homelands?

  ‘My Uncle Alfred is celebrating his seventy-fifth birthday tomorrow evening. A quiet dinner party with only the very fewest of guests. He has asked if you might attend.’

  The relief felt enormous. ‘Of course. I would love to come. Is there some little thing He might want as a present?’

  ‘A good bottle of wine would suit him exactly. He misplaces almost everything else he is given.’

  ‘It is said your uncle was hurt in the Napoleonic campaigns.’ She had heard the gossip, of course, much of society losing patience with a man who failed to observe the strict rules of etiquette.

  ‘He took a shot to the head in the second Peninsular campaign under Wellington. That is really the last whole memory he has.’

  ‘It must be difficult to live for so many years without true recall.’

  A wobbly cobblestone had her losing her footing and he tucked her hand through his arm.

  ‘Most people’s lives are touched by some sort of adversity and in the end it makes them stronger.’

  She could not let that pass. ‘Sometimes it makes them more afraid.’

  ‘You speak of Charles?’

  Unexpectedly she smiled. ‘I suppose I do.’

  ‘When did you meet him?’

  ‘In the first weeks of my first Season. He was a fine dancer and he wore his clothes well.’

  ‘Ahh, so shallow, Mrs St Harlow?’

  She smiled again, liking the playful tone in his voice. ‘You are the only person I have ever admitted such a dreadful nonsense to. In my defence it did not take me long to realise that the cut of a man’s coat was only a very minor consideration when choosing someone to live the rest of one’s life with.’

  ‘And your family? Your father? He approved?’

  ‘Oh, Papa was busy with my stepmother and my sisters and he said my stubbornness reminded him of Mama. It was not a compliment.’

  ‘So you no longer view the state of holy matrimony warmly?’

  ‘I do not.’

  He laughed at that, loudly. ‘Most women in my company would say the very opposite.’

  ‘Well, you are safe with me, my lord.’

  But when the sunlight caught his eyes, softening green into burnished velvet, she knew that she lied to herself, the memory of kisses he had given her making her heart suddenly hum in her chest and the blood of her cheeks rise.

  Disengaging her hand, she stepped back. Hawkhurst was a thousand times more dangerous than his cousin had ever been. She just simply wanted to feel what it would be like to wrap her arms around the naked warmth of his skin and allow him…everything.

  And there, right in the middle of a crowded street, with people hurrying by on each side of them, Aurelia understood what it was to truly desire a man. Not any man, but this one: his strength and his goodness, his dangerous solitariness and his secret grief.

  Cassandra Lindsay had been right. Elizabeth Berkeley would never understand him as she did, never nurture that part of him that was wild and menacing, never stare into the heart of his solitude and recognise herself in the wasteland.

  She looked away.

  Something was worrying Aurelia St Harlow, Hawkhurst thought—the talk of marriage, probably, and his roughshod questioning. She had been through hell with his cousin and had made it abundantly clear ever since the first second of meeting at Taylor’s Gap that she was not looking for a replacement. Again, he cursed Charles with a vengeance.

  ‘I will send a carriage around just before eight tomorrow night to pick you up.’

  He knew finances were tight in Braeburn House.

  When she nodded in agreement Hawkhurst made certain he did not tarry longer than he had to in case she thought about the matter and changed her mind.

  But as he walked away, the red flame of her hair juxtaposed against the familiar dark of her clothes burnt an image into his brain. And he knew without any doubt that tomorrow night would see an ending to the dance of sensual tension that smouldered between them.

  Any thought that it might only be a very small birthday celebration was wiped away as Aurelia started down the hallway behind an austere-looking Hawkhurst servant. Voices of men and women were raised in laughter, though recognising Cassandra Lindsay amongst them she felt a little less worried.

  Hawkhurst moved forwards to greet her. ‘You look lovely,’ he said, his glance taking in the hairstyle she had allowed Leonora to fashion. Normally she bound her hair back, tight against her head to hide the vibrant colour. Tonight she wore it in a looser style, her long curls tied at the nape. She had dispensed completely with the glasses. Her gown was scarlet silk.

  Alfred had also risen, a broad smile on his face. Taking the wrapped present from her reticule, Aurelia handed it to him. The thin lengths of silk in the bow trailed down the side of old thin hands.

  Hawkhurst’s uncle took his time to look at it, turning it this way and that, the fabric catching the light of a large chandelier above. Finally he loosened the ties and opened the wooden box.

  A ring was inside, a ring she had found in a circus years before with her mother, gaudy and substantial, but beautiful, its cut-glass edges showing off all the colours of the rainbow.

  ‘Nothing as mundane as wine, then?’ Hawkhurst said this with a tenderness in his tone as his uncle drew the circle on to his finger before leaning across.

  ‘Thank you.’ Delight made his eyes sparkle.

  ‘You are most welcome.’

  The scar on the side of his head drew the skin around his left eye upwards. Aurelia imagined the pain of receiving such a wound so far away from any hospital and in the middle of a war.

  She liked the way Alfred stroked her hand, the expectation and restraints of Victorian society so clearly missing in the uninhibited reaction. She also liked the way Hawkhurst did not hurry him, but waited while his uncle processed what it was he wished to say and do.

  The others further away were still chatting as though it was the most normal thing in the world for an elderly gentleman to hold on to her fingers and look deeply into her eyes. Perhaps it was for him, this man lost to time.

  ‘Rings are my favourite jewellery,’ he finally said and let her go, walking over to show the others his new and wonderful gift.

  ‘You remembered he liked your pendant?’ Hawkhurst asked the question.

  ‘Wine seemed too momentary for a man celebrating the length of seventy-five years.’

  ‘I know he will treasure such a gift. Even the packaging was inspired.’

  ‘Part of Mama’s heritage, I think. She was never a woman to do things by halves and I always wrap gifts that way.’

  Cassandra rose from her place by the fire to join them.

  ‘Alfred is more than happy, Aurelia. Hawk instructed us to buy wine and we did, but next year we will take your lead and look for something far more original.’

  Another woman also walked over, a beautiful, heavily pregnant woman with a whi
te dress embroidered in multicoloured flowers at the neckline. The stitchwork looked like it had been done by a child, the rough sewing out of place against the elegance of the dress.

  ‘I was just telling Hawk, Lilly, that we shall be taking no notice of his suggestions for presents ever again.’ There was a soft tone in Cassandra Lindsay’s rebuke.

  ‘Absolutely, Mrs St Harlow, for yours has eclipsed our offerings entirely. I am Lillian Clairmont, and my husband is the one trying at this moment to wrestle the ring from Alfred’s hand. Lucas’s taste in material goods is more than questionable, you see.’ She coloured as she realised her criticism. ‘But I do not mean to imply that I think your present is…tasteless…’ She stopped and shook her head and her hair under the light showed up myriad hues. ‘I am expecting our third child very soon and the good manners that used to be the hallmark of my character seem to have all but deserted me.’

  As the others laughed, Hawkhurst then made a proper introduction. ‘Lillian and Lucas Clairmont are down in London only for a few nights. They have a property in the north and children waiting at home for them.’

  ‘Lucas is the Luc of the dancing lessons at Eton?’ Aurelia had suddenly placed him.

  ‘Indeed.’ When Clairmont walked to stand beside his wife, Aurelia saw how he wove their fingers together.

  ‘We met at Stephen’s ball, Mrs St Harlow. I thought your entrance was one of the grander ones I have seen so far in London, though my first introduction to court may have even eclipsed your own.’

  ‘He arrived brawling with my cousin, blood on his lip and a sneer in his eyes,’ Lillian explained with a smile. ‘Americans like to…turn up with aplomb, you see.’

  ‘I shall take such information to heart then, Mr Clairmont,’ Aurelia returned, ‘if I should ever find myself in your homeland.’

  ‘Hawk could bring you. We are due to go back on a holiday next May and I would deem it a pleasure to show you Virginia.’

  Surprised by the wash of yearning that was inspired by such an invitation, Aurelia glanced at Stephen Hawkhurst. What would months in each other’s company on a boat out of London feel like? Such freedom would be impossible, unless…She shook away the qualifier as all her responsibilities came crashing back in.