by Sophia James
‘I know, but they suit each other in a way that is surprising. At the ball when they danced I thought they looked completely right.’
‘I doubt Nick would appreciate words on the subject from me, but I suppose a relationship could be possible.’
Rose ran her finger down across his cheek to his lips and then her touch fell lower. ‘Which is exactly why we shall only watch from a distance, Jacob, but with hope in our hearts.’
He turned at that and pulled her down beneath him, his dark hair burnished by candlelight. ‘You are both wise and beautiful, my love, and I thank God every day that he allowed us to find each other.’
‘Show me,’ she whispered and wrapped her nakedness about him. As he blew out the scented flame Rose had the distinct impression of strength tempered with gentleness, and the sheer beauty of Jacob Huntingdon, her husband, warmed her heart.
Chapter Seven
Eleanor found her grandmother in the library the next morning as she came down to breakfast.
‘You look busy, Grandmama.’ Her eyes fell to the large pile of books stacked in the middle of the table.
‘That is because I am trying to understand the world that Nicholas Bartlett inhabited during his time away.’
Of all the things she had expected her slight and frail grandmother to say that was the very last of them.
‘You have spoken with Viscount Bromley since he has been back?’
‘Briefly. The first night he came home with Jacob I saw him in the hallway and he told me he had just returned from the Americas. His grandmother would have been saddened by his losses, I think, God bless her soul.’
‘You knew his grandmother?’
‘Anna Bartlett? Yes, she came out the same year that I did and I was glad that she died before her son and her daughter-in-law went. A terrible death and I was always glad that Jacob was Nicholas’s friend when they both were sent up to Eton. You were his friend, too, if I remember rightly, Eleanor. That day in the Vauxhall Gardens just after you’d come out into society and I’d lost sight of you for a little while, I was certain he was there.’
‘There?’ Her heartbeat quickened.
‘Watching the fireworks and speaking with you. He was always a beautiful child and he became a beautiful man even with his wild ways and a weakness for gambling. But then he was a boy. Now he is a man.’
Her words flowed around the alarm that Eleanor had felt ever since Nicholas’s disappearance. Her grandmother was a woman who noticed things in a way others did not.
‘I’d hoped perhaps...’ She stopped, the crinkles at each eye deep.
‘What? What did you hope?’
‘That the happiness Anna always prayed for would be bestowed upon him. Did you know Richmond is a town in Virginia, too, Eleanor? A beautiful place by the sounds of it.’
The juxtaposition of these words and Nicholas’s at the tea shop made her head spin.
Once a travelling woman in Richmond told my fortune from a pile of sticks she carried.
How much of a conversation had her grandmother held with him?
‘If he returns again, my love, could you ask him if he might come and see me and have a proper visit? I would like to chat further for old time’s sake.’ She took a breath and turned the page on a large atlas. ‘You are looking lovely today, Granddaughter. It is a relief to see the fire back in your cheeks.’
Was it just coincidence, her grandmother’s chatter, or was there some other purpose underneath her words?
The Huntingdon family sorrows had overshadowed joy for such a long time now: her mother’s fatal illness, her own shame with an unmarried pregnancy and a lover whom she refused to name. The more recent deaths of her father and brother had been another blow and Jacob’s tendency to blame himself for everything had left them struggling.
‘I hope Lucy will be back in London in time for the New Year? I miss her chatter and her laughter.’
‘She is due back here tomorrow, Grandmama, for Jacob and Rose have a small family party planned for the evening of the first of January.’
‘And Nicholas Bartlett will be here, too?’
‘I am not sure. Why?’ These words broke through restraint and caution, and were harsh and discordant.
‘Because it is simply nice when the parts of one’s life come together, Eleanor. The old and the new. All the pieces of it finally making sense.’
‘Sense?’
‘There is a time for sadness and also one for joy. It is our turn as a family to find some happiness now and to look to the future. Had your father been here he would have been saying exactly the same thing.’
‘I am glad I like you so much, Grandmama.’
Kissing her grandmother on the cheek before walking away, Eleanor recited the words of Ecclesiastes under her breath.
A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance.
She wondered which time it was now for her.
* * *
The place was as odd as she had remembered it, she thought, as she walked through the solid Egyptian doors of Bullock’s Museum in Piccadilly. The inside was even stranger, large stuffed animals in a fenced-off enclosure and trees towering above that looked as if they came from some ancient and long-lost world.
Nicholas was waiting next to a glass case, glancing not at the artefacts but at the light that spilled in through the window above him. The sight caught at Eleanor with a poignancy that made her stop still and simply watch. He looked as out of place here as he had done at Gunter’s, the danger in him only thinly veiled and a sense of carefully checked distance overlaying that. He had not seen her yet, one arm held against his chest as though it was painful, the opposite hand anchoring it.
Mr William Bullock’s artefacts were many after a lifetime of travelling abroad and Eleanor wondered what Nicholas Bartlett’s treasure trove might look like had he gathered small tributes from all his years in the Americas.
He seemed like a man who travelled light. Her brother had said he’d had one small leather case with him when he had come straight from the ship to the door of Vitium et Virtus on Boxing Day.
He had caught sight of her now, the wounded hand replaced at his side as he walked over. It shook slightly against his thigh.
‘Surely this museum brings back some memories?’ She said this when he stood next to her, hoping that humour might lighten the mood. ‘The naked Hottentot Venus smoking a pipe and the Polish dwarf are not sights easily forgotten, after all. If anything were to jolt your memory, it might be them.’
He laughed at her words, all the lines on his face softening. ‘Did you make me laugh like this before, Eleanor?’
The world around her stopped, just slowed down and stood still because there was a look in his eyes that she recognised. A hunger that made his dark eyes darker.
‘I think that perhaps I did.’
He glanced away then, a frown deepening as he moved back a pace.
* * *
His lack of memory was more irritating today than it ever had been before because he knew suddenly he would have found Lady Eleanor Huntingdon as charming and fascinating six years ago as he did at this moment and he did not know what he had done about that fact.
Had he kissed her? Had he taken it further? That thought made him step away just so that he did not reach out because he could not trust himself as to what might happen next. The memory of the women he had bedded in the Americas also sat there in the equation. He was damaged goods. Eleanor deserved a man who was exemplary in every way, not one whose life had been marred irreparably in the messy business of surviving and who still did not know if he brought danger to those he had contact with.
He needed to keep things light to allow her an escape. A sign at the doorway gave him a subject.
‘Napoleon’s trave
lling carriage is here at the museum?’
The flare in her eyes dimmed at his query.
‘The French General’s personal belongings have been a very popular exhibition by all accounts, my lord.’
‘A gamble that has paid off, then?’ He was barely thinking of Bullock as he said these words and he had the impression that she might have known this. ‘The risk of the unknown to fill one’s heart’s desire?’
‘There is also a nightgown, a set of pistols, his boots and a cloak amongst other things. With the numbers who have come to view them it’s said that Bullock has made a small personal fortune from the ticket sales. Many people have been speaking of it and I have only heard interest and fascination.’
Her words ran on, one over the other, giving an impression of nerves. He thought he had never met a woman who was more fascinating. They were passing tall cabinets now which were full of more of the sort of insects he had seen before in the front room.
‘Your eyes are exactly the shade of that butterfly wing, Lady Eleanor. “Morpho paleides”.’ He read this slowly. ‘One of the largest butterflies in the world apparently with wings of iridescent blue on one side and an ordinary brown on the other. It allows the insect the ability to disappear at will if you like. A camouflage against predators?’
The sort of disguise she used, he thought. At Frederick’s soirée she had looked unmatched in a deep blue gown. Today she sported a coat of dull beige, an ugly hat jammed tightly over her head. Why?
‘I have always been careful.’ She had told him this in the carriage as they had made their way to Berkeley Square. ‘So careful that perhaps...’ She had not finished.
So careful that perhaps life had passed her by? A beloved husband whom she pined for and a daughter who had kept her away from the London social scene? So careful that she saw him as only a risk?
‘How old are you now, Eleanor?’
‘Twenty-four. Almost twenty-five.’
She said it as if it were a great age and he smiled.
‘Young then?’
‘Sometimes I feel like I am a hundred.’
He swallowed because she kept doing this to him. Allowing him a small window into her soul that showed only a truth.
* * *
She had hurt him, she thought, in some way. Again. Perhaps her honesty was something he did not wish for. Perhaps in the aftermath of the lies he had lived with he now held a discomfort of the truth? Especially her truths, with all their corresponding sadness.
His hands were running across the door of Napoleon Bonaparte’s carriage as if such a treasure was the only thing he wished to think about. Another couple lingering next to the conveyance watched him with interest and the man spoke suddenly.
‘Bromley. My God, I had heard that you were back from the dead. David Wilshire.’
Nicholas looked at him for a second as if trying to place him. Finally he seemed able to. ‘You knew Nash Bowles if I remember rightly and I beat you in a card game which you did not take kindly to?’
‘I used to take losing more seriously than I do now,’ the man said, ‘though Bowles has not forgiven you. He still proclaims weekly that he is no friend of yours.’
‘There are many more who might claim that honour, Mr Wilshire.’ Nicholas’s voice was tight, the tone in it hard.
‘You are meaning those to whom you owe large debts at the gambling table, I suppose, though it is said now you are more proficient at winning than you once were.’
‘Word travels fast in London. Did you also hear I suffer fools less gladly?’
Wilshire frowned and stepped back, tipping his hat in leave and dragging the woman he was with from the room. The Viscount looked after them with a frown.
‘At school there were those students who were bullies, cheats and troublemakers and he was one of them. I doubt he has changed.’
‘Who is Nash Bowles?’
‘A miscreant who wanted to be a partner in Vitium et Virtus in the early days and who was not pleased to be turned down.’
‘By you all.’
‘By me, in particular.’
Eleanor had the impression he was not telling the whole story, but she did not feel comfortable to press further, so she was surprised when he continued talking.
‘Some of the men who hate me probably have good reason as there’s only a certain amount of arrogance people can stomach before the bile begins to work.’
‘People like Bowles?’
‘No. Not him. His animosity comes from a whole different place altogether.’
* * *
There it was again, that uncompromising anger, that hard flash of steel in him that was so much different from the man he had been. But if she was truthful that same resoluteness was also a part of her character now. She and Nicholas Bartlett had been transformed in a way that was similar, hardened by life but still trying to live.
She liked the way he took her arm, after they exited Bullock’s, and helped her across the road as they walked towards Green Park, though once on the other side he let her go.
‘Did we walk much, then?’ There was now decided interest in his words.
She wanted to say that they hadn’t had time, particularly after the first few days when all they looked for were secluded and quiet areas to be alone together, to whisper and to touch.
To kiss for the first time in the back room at Lackington’s when Nicholas had simply leaned over the dusty scientific tomes nobody ever looked at and taken her mouth beneath his.
A pure pain of shock ran through her at such a reminiscence. He had been slender then, softer. Just a youth. What would it be like to kiss this man he had become?
Could she risk taking him there tomorrow? To Lackington’s? Part of her wanted to, but the other part felt only fear. What if he remembered and then scorned her? What if this new Nicholas wanted nothing to do with a woman who had thrown herself into his bed after only four days of knowing each other and had conceived an illegitimate child in the process?
‘You seem quiet.’
‘Oh, I am often that now, my lord.’
Love me, Nicholas, my love. Love me until we both die from the feeling.
She’d said that to him at the Bromley town house. Said other things, too, full of girly pathos and rampant exaggeration. She’d laid her heart on her sleeve and told him every little thought, every sorrow and hurt.
Now she could barely admit to anything because in the tiniest clue he might guess it all. Glancing across at him, she saw he looked full of thought, though he began to speak again after the short silence.
‘For the first five weeks after I got to the Americas I lay in a poor house in Boston with fever until a reverend took me home and fattened up both my body and soul.’ When he shrugged she could see the line of tension in his shoulders. ‘That was the only time in all the six years I was away that I thought I was safe.’
She was astonished by such honesty.
‘I tell you this because I am still not safe and that if you should wish to reconsider your kindness I will understand why.’
‘My kindness?’ She didn’t quite know what he meant.
‘Squiring me through these events that I have long forgotten. Truth be told, perhaps they are better left unremembered.’ The flatness in his eyes was familiar and dragged at Eleanor’s own protected sorrow.
‘I used to think that after my mother died, my lord. I wished for no recall of her whatsoever because I had been hurt too much. Now, I struggle to remember her face, her voice, her smell and the irony is that I would give anything to have her visage back again.’
‘Jake talked of her all the time at the club in the months after her death. You were lucky with such a mother.’
‘How old were you when your own died?’
‘Eight. Young enough to f
orget some things and old enough to remember others.’
‘Seventeen was no better, I assure you.’ She still remembered the shock and grief as if it were yesterday.
‘My mother had hair exactly the colour of your own. In the sunshine there were threads of gold amongst the brown just like yours.’ He smiled as he said this.
‘I will take such words as a compliment, Lord Bromley.’
‘Nicholas. Or Nick. And it was meant as one.’
There it was again, the difference in him that she could not quite pin down. He was less evasive than he had been once and much more to the point. The flowery rhetoric of the past was well gone and in its place sat an honesty that was borne from adversity. She wished she might be brave enough to simply step forward and lay her hand upon his chest and tell him everything, but a vendor of hot chestnuts called out to them from further afield and her own sense of place and time was re-gathered.
‘Are you hungry?’ He looked altogether younger as he asked this of her. ‘In New York they sold chestnuts, too, but they never tasted quite right. And now I know why. They are different from the ones here in England.’
Perhaps confessing past problems had been good for them both because she was starving and even from this distance the smell of the roasted nuts was delicious.
‘Give me a moment, then.’
As he walked away to procure the treat another man coming through the park stopped before her. Swarthy and thickset, he had the look of a gentleman out of sorts with his world.
‘You are Lady Eleanor Robertson, the Duke of Westmoor’s sister, are you not?’
Flustered, Eleanor nodded.
‘I was introduced to you once at a ball in Chelsea and I seldom forget a face, particularly one as beautiful as your own.’
The slight lisp he had was as disconcerting as his words. She looked over towards Nicholas Bartlett, but his back was to her.
As the newcomer followed her glance, he, too, registered Lord Bromley’s presence and the blood simply drained from his face to leave him decidedly pale.
‘You are with Bartlett?’