by Sophia James
Shock held Aurelia immobile as a shimmer of recognition passed wordlessly down the long line of servants. The St Harlow name would hardly be salubrious and Charles’s early demise must have been a topic of conversation for months in the downstairs chambers of the castle. Besides, the idea of marriage mooted privately between themselves was very different from a direct proclamation to all who might listen.
Her shoulder ached as did her cheek and this charade was the very last thing she felt like being a part of. Still, with the long reach of the law, she knew that to insist otherwise and in front of so many people would be unwise.
Finally they were in the house and in a room to one side of the wide and lavishly furnished front hall. As the door closed against the last departing maid there was a moment’s silence and Aurelia wished that instead of looking so fierce Hawkhurst would simply walk forwards to take her in his arms to kiss her.
It might fix everything, a kiss: her worry, her fear, her aching uncertainty of walking into yet another mistaken marriage.
‘The vicar from the Atherton chapel will wed us first thing in the morning.’
‘Without banns?’
‘That will be taken care of.’ His voice was flat and weary.
‘If there is any other way that I might find protection, then I think we should consider—’ He stopped her.
‘There is not, Aurelia.’
Looking down at the cream dress Lillian had bequeathed her, Aurelia saw how the hours of being on the road had rumpled the silk. Hawk looked no better, his jacket dirty and his trousers and boots dusty.
‘I am sure that our union will be viewed very badly by all who hear of it.’ She tried to keep the shaking from her voice.
‘Then let us hope we can keep it secret for a while longer. I have worked for the British Service for over a decade and the least that they could accord me from this fiasco is the right of a few weeks of silence.’
A fiasco. She wondered if he might hear the sound of her heart breaking into a hundred little pieces even as she mulled over her options.
‘Annulments are not viewed favourably and are complex and difficult to procure. I could not afford the money needed for one.’
‘Enough, Aurelia.’ His hand came down across his thigh hard and dust spun into the late evening air, the motes swirling in the last slant of sun.
He said her name in a way that made her look up, the implied protection surprising, and suddenly she was breathless. Could he mean to help her because he wanted her, needed her, in the same way that she needed him? Hope blossomed with a fervour that she tried her hardest to hide.
Mismatched eyes held the sort of wariness he so often saw in her. She did not wish to marry him, that much was certain, but even in the face of such strident opposition he could not be kind. He would drag her to the altar voiceless if he needed to and the vicar had been in his employ long enough to understand the implications of ruin for a woman.
He would prevail because he was the Lord of Atherton and because the tithes he paid to the church were generous and frequent. He would insist on the ceremony because without it Aurelia St Harlow would be lost to the vagaries of law.
‘The family chapel is just through here.’
Aurelia took in a breath. She had slept right through the night and felt more able to cope with everything this morning. On waking she had found the dress borrowed from Lillian hanging before the wardrobe, carefully cleaned and pressed. She left the sling on the chair.
As Hawkhurst opened a set of double doors behind him, Aurelia saw the polished brown wood of pews with their velvet inlays and prayer books neatly stacked in front. The ceiling was vaulted and the windows were drawn in lead and coloured glass, the Christ child on Mary’s knee, His head garlanded in flowers.
Standing at the top of the aisle was an old clergyman, whitened eyebrows and hair attesting to an age well reached.
‘I will begin when you are ready, my lord.’ He rearranged a few papers on the pulpit before him.
Hawkhurst did not even look at her as he bade her forwards and Aurelia felt as though she had stepped into a travesty she could not stop, the parts of a marriage laid out in a cold-blooded fashion and only for the reason of pretence.
‘I do not think…’
The minister stopped momentarily to observe her, his piercing eyes daring her to speak further. ‘You are a child of God and as such you deserve the sanctity of a union which is the most joyous of all His celebrations.’
Joyous? She remembered her last wedding with a shudder. Field flowers now waved their heads in a vase on a table and a number of the servants of Atherton had filed in behind her to sit quietly.
Witnesses.
The contrast to her marriage to Charles with all its pomp and circumstance could not have been greater.
Already an organ had begun to play, soft music filling the chapel, the only thing that was beautiful. The lump in her throat thickened at the purity of the notes.
He wished his uncle could have been here, standing beside him, or Lucas or Nathaniel, but there was nobody save the rows of servants, hair tidied and hands washed. His mouth was dry and the blisters on both palms from long days of riding stung with the salt of sweat.
His marriage day—his first and his last. He wanted to lean over and take Aurelia’s hand in his own and hold it tight in an effort to tell her that all was not lost and that although she felt the farce of it keenly, to him it was…perfect.
The very word made him smile. Perfect implied a consent that was without compromise. Perfect implied compliance and sanction and a God-given need of the union they were about to enter into. Perfect presupposed a sense of history behind them that had reached up to this moment. The frown on his bride-to-be’s face etched a heavy line into her forehead, negating any such acquiescence.
‘We are here today to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony.’ Johnathon Cattrell’s voice was low and even, the pledge of for ever well formed. When Stephen glanced down he saw that every knuckle on Aurelia’s hands was stretched white.
His parents had been married here and his grandparents and all the other Hawkhursts before him. He felt the rightness of it settle in his bones.
Protection was only a tiny part of why he was standing here. He knew that with a blinding honesty. When the minister asked for a ring he drew the Atherton signet from his own hand. The circle of gold was far too big, but it was all he had. Aurelia could not offer any token, but Johnathon Cattrell ignored such an omission in the face of everything else that was strange.
Then it was finished. Man and wife. For ever.
He took her hand and she did not pull away. The smiling, clapping servants followed them out.
The wedding breakfast was sumptuous, the top table in the room flanked by at least ten others, the same wild flowers she had seen in the chapel in vases on each one.
Every manner of meat sat on large plates carved into succulent-looking pieces, plus vegetables, fruits, sauces, shellfish, savouries and a selection of iced cakes.
Large jugs of wine and smaller ones of orange water were scattered between the food. The glasses were all crystal and the plates a fine white china.
When Hawkhurst stood as they were all seated a hush came over the room.
‘Welcome to Atherton, Lady Hawkhurst. I hope you might come to love this place as much as I do and that all the years of our life here will be happy ones.’ Raising his glass, he offered a toast. ‘To Lady Aurelia, the most beautiful bride any man could want.’
Her name echoed across the room, and in the eyes of those around her she saw a genuine and warm welcome. Sipping at the wine, she felt herself relax. The most beautiful bride any man could want. Not tarnished, second-hand and a traitor? Not a woman he had had to marry under duress because of politics?
She had not seen Stephen in a setting like this before, surrounded by his workers and staff. Here, he did not seem so much the lord, but a part of a great estate that required much co-operation and respect. S
he wondered how many other men of London society could have made the transition so easily.
She also thought of the time after the feast, the time when they would be alone. A rush of heat fanned through her body, fierce and possessive, and when she felt his arm against Her own she did not move away, but stayed still, enjoying the tiny contact.
Her husband. Her lover. For ever. She took one sip of wine and then another.
Aurelia was leaning against him and he liked the feel of her beside him. Today there was something different about her, some quieter acceptance that was seen in her eyes and in her laughter. Mrs Simpson was regaling her with various accounts of family life when he had been a child and his wife was listening with intent.
A new beginning for Atherton. Another chance at normal.
‘Did you have brothers and sisters yourself when you were growing up, my lady?’ He could hear the interest in his housekeeper’s voice.
‘Not really. My half-sisters are much younger than I am, you see, and my mother had left.’
‘Then you’ll be needing a large family here to take away the loneliness.’
The laughter accompanying this remark brought a blush to Aurelia’s cheeks and Stephen stepped in. Perhaps now was a good time for them to withdraw. Already the tables were becoming rowdier, the treat of a holiday and good food having their effect.
The room was Hawkhurst’s. She could tell it was from the books and the writing desk and a wardrobe with clothes that looked exactly his size.
‘I have not stayed here much over the last years so the room is full of things from the past.’
She crossed to a globe on the table, the brass holder it sat in carved with the figure of a dragon.
‘Like this?’
Aurelia spun the countries around, the colours of oceans, lands and rivers melding into one.
He laughed. ‘I always found travel fascinating. If you look closer, you will see the marks on all the lands I wished to visit.’
‘And have you?’
‘Most of them.’
‘And what about the pocket watch?’
‘It was my brother’s. I never wound it again after he died.’
‘“Time moves on in good ways and in bad.” Mama used to say that to me.’ She looked at him then, his neckcloth loosened and the gold in his eyes velvet. ‘I wish I had not been married before. I wish this was my very first time and that…and that…we had met back then, when I was younger. You would have liked me more.’
He laughed again.
In the mirror opposite she caught sight of herself, her colour heightened and her eyes glittering. She looked so similar to the girls Charles had brought to Medlands in the first year of their marriage, his wild and unbridled parties demanding the sort of feminine willingness that was palpable in the expressions of those attending.
Thank goodness she was not back there, moving like a ghost around the few rooms left to her use, always frightened and never certain.
This relationship could not be like before, with Charles. She could not endure another loveless and distant marriage in which both parties had dealt with each other in hatred and mistrust. This one had to be different, better, real.
Shaking her head, she chastised herself for such fantasy. It was duty and obligation that had brought each of them to this pass. Fluffy oversized cushions on the bed behind beckoned and a carafe of wine and two glasses sat on a cabinet nearby.
There would be expectations placed on the head of the title, and one of them resulting from a marriage even as hasty and ill-conceived as this one would be children. Heirs to trace the name of Hawkhurst down through the centuries and link them to the ancestors who had already been. Antiquity lived in a castle like Atherton and no one person’s needs were bigger than the narrative of history. Especially not hers.
With Charles she had withdrawn from any intimacy as soon as she realised what sort of man he was. But here…here a different truth lingered.
‘You sell yourself too short, my lady. A wife with a blameless slate would not suit me at all. Oh, granted, once I thought so, but now…’
The compliment made her cheeks redden and she knew the blush of it was showing on her face. She hoped he might step forwards and show her exactly what it meant to be his wife. The dampness between her legs throbbed, the lust of want so familiar she felt dizzy from it.
She wanted him, wanted him in the same way they had wanted each other in London, breathless and burning, wrapped in each other’s arms until the morning. As Hawk poured two glasses of the red wine, she tried to take stock of everything.
‘To us,’ he said, handing her a goblet, careful not to touch her as he moved back and drank. His eyes did not stray from her own.
Drink took the edge from panic and she needed it to. her nipples hardened in a movement that sent small clenches of need to her core as he touched her arm.
‘Does it hurt?’
Shaking her head, she smiled. ‘Mrs Simpson found a bandage this morning and she dressed it. The ointment took away any pain.’
He placed her left hand in his. ‘I will find you a ring that fits as soon as I can. My mother had many and…’
His words petered out as she placed her lips on his fingers, one by one.
‘I love you, Stephen.’
There was nothing else to say to a man who had never given up on her, even when he thought her a traitor.
He shook his head at her proclamation and tried to move back, but she would not let him. ‘Ahhh, sweetheart, you don’t know who I am inside,’ he said, his free hand above his heart as if shielding some dark thing that he did not wish her to see. ‘And if you did…’
‘Then I would love you more.’ She could not allow his distance to break honesty into pieces. He could not love her back in the way that she wanted, he could not say the words that she could barely hold back each and every time she was with him.
I love you.
I love you with every breath and every heartbeat.
‘It is the imperfections that make people interesting, Stephen, those things that are hidden from everybody else.’
‘I have killed people, Aurelia, many people.’
‘In the name of a country trying to keep its citizens safe. England should thank you for it.’
‘If only it were so simple.’ Yearning lay in his voice.
‘Sometimes it is, my love,’ she returned. ‘Sometimes to forget for a moment is simple.’ Her fingers began to unbutton his jacket and she was pleased as he allowed her to slip it off. His neckcloth, waistcoat and shirt followed. He breathed in quickly as he traced the line of bandage across her left arm and helped her out of Lillian’s gown.
‘If you had not survived it…’ His thumb crossed her left breast, drawing a name. His name. Hawk. She read it in the quiet touch of skin.
Her husband. Joined by God and by law. Contentment gave way to alarm, though, as his fingers passed over raised skin at her nape and he pushed her hair aside.
‘What happened here?’ It was not the mark a lady should have had, she knew this, the quick slice of Charles’s knife a warning to comply.
‘I married your cousin on a whim and he soon regretted it.’ She took a deep breath. ‘He was my husband and I had promised before God to obey him. If I had given him his marriage rights perhaps none of what happened would have happened. John’s daughter might have had her baby and would still have been alive.’
Hawkhurst shook his head. ‘A man who would slice the skin of the neck of his wife is an unbalanced and dangerous one, Aurelia. You were wise to stay clear of him and there is no shame in protecting yourself.’
She smiled at that. ‘As you protected your brother?’
Shock ran through him. ‘Who told you?’
‘Lillian did. She said the scar on your thigh was from your effort to save your brother when he was caught in the crossfire of war.’
‘It was a fumbled effort. He died in my arms.’
Lord, he could give out advice, but he cou
ld not receive it. The irony of that made him smile and when she began again to talk he made himself listen.
‘Both of us have been scarred by death then, it seems, and have paid the price. Perhaps you were right when you said that it is time for the guilt to end, you with your brother and me with Charles.’
Her fingers strayed and she held the small bud of his nipple between them, causing Hawk to simply stop breathing.
Would there ever come a time when he did not want to possess her? Laving his tongue at her throat, he left a mark, reddened by passion, and took her to the marriage bed.
It was night when he woke, the moon full through the windows, its pale shadows lighting the limbs of Lady Aurelia Hawkhurst. Hawkhurst repeated the name to himself, liking the way it tripped from his tongue into the silence, midnight long since passed.
Her head was on his chest and her arms were thrown out across him, the ring he had placed there easily seen in the moonlight on her fingers. Further off the breeze rattled the leaves on the giant oaks that marched along the driveway.
Atherton and Aurelia. The rightness of it made him smile and he lay still just in case she might wake and see all that she meant to him.
Why did he not tell her? Why did he not give her back the words she had given to him all across the long and lovely day?
Treasure.
‘It can be simple,’ she had said. But he knew that it never was.
Chapter Seventeen
Hawkhurst was gone when she awoke next, the sun streaming into the room.
Mrs Simpson came in with a quick knock, her face wreathed in smiles and a basin of steaming hot water in her hands.
‘I’m to help you wash, my lady, and then dress.’
Aurelia felt a wash of embarrassment rise up across her face. The bed was in a state and, quickly drawing up the blanket from the base, she tried to hide some of the wreckage.
‘A successful wedding night needs to show some…shambles,’ the sensible and eminently practical Mrs Simpson declared. ‘In my experience if it does not then there is not much hope for a future happiness.’