A Proposition for the Comte
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Sophia James
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Chapter One
Aurelian de la Tomber felt the bullet rip through his arm, rebounding off bone and travelling on to some further softer place in his side. Standing perfectly still, he waited, for life, or for death, his blood racing as vision lightened.
After a long moment he wondered if he might lose consciousness altogether and be found here by others in this damning position, caught red-handed and without excuse. Catching his balance, he breathed in hard and fast, his mind calculating all the variables in the situation as he struggled for logic.
The bullet had patently not pierced an artery for the flow from his wounds was already slowing. The heavy beat of blood in his ears suggested that his heart still worked despite the intrusion and, with careful movement, his impaired balance might also be manageable. That he could even reason any of this out was another plus and if the sweat on his forehead and upper lip was building he knew this to be a normal part of shock. Still, he had no idea of how deep the bullet had gone and the pain numbed in the first moment of impact was rising. A good sign that, he thought, for in the quickening of discomfort lay the first defence in a body’s quest for living.
The man before him was dead and no longer any threat, the blood from his neck pooling on to a thick rug. Kicking away the gun, Aurelian turned to the door. People would have heard the shot, he was certain of it, for the upmarket boarding house on Brompton Place was well inhabited. Unlacing his neckcloth, he used his teeth to anchor the end of the fabric before winding it as tightly as he could around his upper arm. It was all he could do for now. It would staunch the flow and allow him a passage of escape. Hopefully.
When he began to shake he cursed, the world blurring before him and moving in a strange and convoluted way. It felt as if he was on the deck of a ship in a storm, his footfalls not quite where he placed them, the roiling world making him nauseous.
‘Merde.’
The expletive was short and harsh. He had to get as far from here as he could before he collapsed. Placing his good hand against the wall, he counted the rises. Fourteen on one set of stairs and another fourteen on the next. He always knew how many steps went up or down in every building he entered, for it was part of his training and laxity led to mistakes. His breathing was laboured and he coughed to hide the noise as he passed by the small blue room to one side of the lobby. He was relieved to see that the watcher who’d been there when he arrived a quarter of an hour ago was now absent.
The front door was ten footfalls from the base of the stairs, the fourth tile risen and badly cracked, then the door handle was in his grasp. Blood made his fingers slip from the metal and he wiped his palm against his jacket before trying again.
Finally he was out, the cold of the night on his face, a blustery nor’wester, he reasoned as he turned, the stone wall a new anchor, a way to walk straight. His nails dug into the crumbling mortar, scraggly plants reaching up from the pathway and smelling of something akin to the chestnuts roasting on open fires on the Champs-Élysées at Christmas.
That wasn’t right, he thought.
There were no vendors at this time of night in Brompton Place in Chelsea. He closed his eyes and then opened them again quickly. Brompton Road lay before him and then Hyde Park. If he could get there he would be safe, for the greenery would hide him. He could take stock of things in solitude and stuff his jacket with grass to staunch the blood. If he followed the tree lines he could find sanctuary and silence. It was cold and the fingers on his left hand felt strange, the pins and needles lessening now down to nothingness.
If this had been Paris, he thought, he would have known countless alleys to simply disappear into and numerous contacts from whom to find help. He swore again, only this time his voice sounded distant and hollow.
Falling heavily, he knew he could no longer stand, but there was a grate that led to an underground drain in the gutter and he crawled there until his fingers closed on cold metal. He lifted the covering, straining for all he was worth, the weight of the thing throwing him backwards on to the road, slick with the black ice of a freezing January morning. His head took the knock of it as he slammed against the cobbles.
The sound of carriage wheels close by was his last thought before a tunnel of darkness took him in.
Violet Augusta Juliet, the Dowager Viscountess Addington, should never have encouraged the Honourable Alfred Bigglesworth to air his opinions on horseflesh because all night she had been forced to pay attention to them. No, she should have smiled nicely and moved on when he first waylaid her at the Barringtons’ ball, but there had been something in his expression that looked rather desperate and so she had listened.
It was both her best and worst point, she thought, this worry for other people’s feelings and her need to make them...happy. She shook her head and turned to gaze out of the carriage window and into the darkness. Happy was not quite the word she sought. Valued was a better one, perhaps. Frowning at such ruminations, she removed her gloves. She’d never liked her hands wrapped in fabric and it was a nightly habit of hers to tear off the strictures as soon as she was able. Her cap followed.
‘Mr Bigglesworth seemed to have taken your fancy, Violet?’
Amaryllis Hamilton sat beside her in the carriage, dark eyes observant, and Violet felt a spurt of guilt for she’d meant to leave earlier as she knew her sister-in-law had only recently recovered from a malady of the chest.
She continued, ‘He is said to be a sterling catch and those who know him speak highly of the family.’
Her tone was playful and dimples showed plainly, but Violet hoped Amara might have said all she wanted to. However, she was not yet finished.
‘You deserve a good man to walk in life beside you, Violet, and I pray nightly to the Lord above that you might yet find one.’
This was a conversation that had been ongoing across the past twelve months between them, but tonight Violet was irritated by it. ‘I have attained the grand old age of twenty-seven, Amara, and I am not on the lookout for another husband. Thank goodness.’
That echo of honesty had her sitting up straighter, the wedding ring on her left hand catching at the light.
She remembered when Harland had placed it on her finger under a window of stained glass and beside a vase filled with lilies.
She’d never liked the flowers since, the sheen on waxy petals somehow synonymous with the sweat across her new husband’s brow. Avaricious. Relieved. A coupling written in law and not easily broken. Her substantial dowry in his hands and her father standing there with a broad smile upon his face.
The carriage had now slowed to pass through the narrow lanes off Brompton Road and then it stopped altogether—which was unusual given that the traffic at this time of the early morning should have been negligible.
Pushing back the curtain, Violet peered out and saw a man lying there. A gentleman, by the style of his clothing, though he was without his necktie and was more than rumpled looking. Unlatching the window, she called out to her driver.
‘Is there some problem, Reidy?’
‘It’s nothing, my lady. Just a drunk who’s fallen asleep on the throughway. The young footman is trying to remove him to a safer distance as we speak. We shall be off again in a moment.’
Violet glanced down and saw the half-truth of such a statement, for the Addington footman was a slight lad who was having a good deal of trouble in dragging the larger man to safety. The glint of dark blood caught what little light there was and without hesitation she opened the door and slipped out of the carriage.
‘He is hurt and will need to be seen by a doctor straight away.’ A heavy gash in the hairline above his right ear had spread blood across his face and there was a bandage wrapped about the top half of his left arm. His eyes opened at the sound of her voice, but she had no true picture of his visage in the midnight gloom.
‘I...will...be...fine.’ It was almost whispered, irritated and impatient.
She bent down. ‘Fine to lie here and die from loss of blood, sir, or fine to simply freeze in the cold of this night?’
Her driver had brought forth a light and the stranger’s smile heartened her. If he was indeed dying, she did not imagine he would find humour in anything. Laying one hand across his own, she felt it to be frozen.
‘Bring him into the carriage. Owing to the lateness of the hour and the falling temperature, I think it wise to deliver him home ourselves without further ado.’
With a struggle the servants righted him and Violet saw that he was tall, towering a good way above her own five foot six.
He swore in fluent French, too, a fact that made her stiffen and take in breath. Then he was sick all over his boots, the look of horror on his face plain.
‘Find the water bottle and sluice him down.’
Her driver’s frown was heavy. ‘It seems the man might be better left to go his own way, my lady.’
‘Please do as I say, Reidy. It is cold out here and I should like to be inside the warmth of the carriage.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
The water soaked her own silken slippers as it tumbled from the man’s Hessians on to the icy street. As the stranger wiped the blood from around his mouth with the fabric of his sleeve, a scar across the lower part of his chin was much more easily detected.
He looked like a pirate dragged in from battle, dangerous, huge and unknown, his dark hair loose and his eyes caught in the half-light to gleam a furious and glittering gold.
‘Where do you live, sir?’ She asked this question as soon as she had him settled, instructing her driver to wait and see which direction he required.
But even as he coughed and tried to speak his eyes simply rolled back and he toppled against the cushioned leather.
‘We will make for home. He needs warmth and a physician.’
‘You are certain, my lady?’
‘I am. Mrs Hamilton will see that I am unharmed and the young footman can join us inside. If there is any difficulty at all we will bang loudly on the roof. In his state, I hardly think that he constitutes a threat.’
As the conveyance began to move, Violet looked across at the new arrival. She thought he was awkwardly placed, the stranger, his good arm caught in an angle beneath him. He held a weapon in his pocket and another in the soft leather of his right boot. She could see the swell of the haft of a blade.
Armed and unsafe. She should throw him out right now on to the street where another might find him. Yet she did not.
He was wounded and the strange vulnerability of a strong man bent into unconsciousness played at her heartstrings.
It had begun to sleet, too, the weather sealing them into a small and warm cocoon as they wound their way back to her town house. Soon it would snow hard for the storm clouds across the city last evening had been purple. Further off towards the river, bands of freezing rain blurred the horizon. She shivered and then ground her teeth, top against bottom with the thought of all that she had done.
Impetuous. Foolish. How often had Harland said that of her? A woman of small and insignificant opinion. A woman who never quite got things right. Amara was observing her with uncertainty and even the footman had trouble meeting her eyes. The price of folly, she thought, yet if she had left him he would have died, she was certain of it.
Arriving home, she bade her servants to help the driver to carry the man in and sent a footman off to fetch the physician.
‘At this time of night he may be difficult to find, my lady.’
‘All I ask is that you hurry, Adams, and instruct the doctor that he shall be paid well when he comes.’
Placing her guest in a bedchamber a good few doors down from her own, Violet ignored Amara’s qualms.
‘He does not look like a tame man,’ her sister-in-law offered, watching from the doorway. ‘He does not quite look English, either.’
She was right. He looked nothing like the milksop lords they had waded through tonight at the Barringtons’ ball. His dress was too plain and his hair was far longer than any man in the ton would have worn theirs. He looked menacing and severe and beautiful. Society would tiptoe around a man like this, not quite knowing how to categorise him. Left in a bedchamber filled with ruffled yellow fabric and ornate fragile furniture he was badly misplaced. His natural home looked to be far more rudimentary than this.
‘Clean him up, Mrs Kennings, and find him one of my late husband’s nightshirts. The doctor should be here in a short while. Choose others to help you.’
The clock struck the half-hour as she walked past the main staircase to the library. She no longer felt tired. She felt alive and somewhat confused as to her reaction to this whole conundrum.
Harland had insisted that every decision had been his to make and she had seldom had a hand in it. Tonight there was a sort of freedom dancing in the air, a possibility of all that could be, another layer between who she had been and who she was to become.
If the servants wondered at her orders they didn’t say, obeying her and refraining from further query. Power held a quiet energy that was gratifying.
A knock on the door of her library a few moments later brought a footman inside the room with an armful of weapons. ‘Mrs Kennings sent me in with these, my lady. She said she thought they were better off here than on the stranger’s person. The doctor has just arrived, too.’
‘Ask him to come and see me when he has finished then, Adams. I shall wait for him in here.’
‘Very well.’
She noted the armaments were many and varied as she looked over the array on the table. A flintlock pistol made of walnut and steel sat before her, the brass butt plate catching the light. A well-weighted piece, she thought, as she lifted it and wondered at its history. A selection of knives sat to one side: a blade wedged into rough leather; a longer, sharper knife with a handle of inlaid shell; and a thicker, broader half-sword, the haft engraved with some ancient design.
The tools of his trade and a violent declaration of intent. Such a truth was as undeniable as it was shocking. This man she had helped was a dealer in death, a pillager of lives. She wondered how being such would have marked him. Perhaps at this very moment Mrs Kennings was lifting away the fabric of his shirt to show the doctor the scars written on his skin as a history.
She was sure it would be so. A darkness of blood was smeared across the dull grey of the sword’s steel where it had bitten into bone and flesh only recently. She imagined what the other opponent might now look like and crossed to the cabinet to pour herself a brandy.
She had not drunk anything stronger than a spiced punch in all the years of her marriage. Now she found herself inclined to brandy for the spirit took away some of her pain, though she was always careful to drink alone. The brandy slid down her throat like a warm tonic, settling in her stomach and quelling her nerves.
She wanted to rise and go to the stranger just to make certain that he was not dead. She wanted to touch him again, too, and feel the heat of his skin, to know that he breathed. Tilting her head, she listened for any sign of footsteps, glad when they did not come, for if the moments multiplied it could only mean he lived. The dead would not hold a physician here for an extended length of time and a medic expecting payment would be quick to come to the library and claim what was owed.
She heard a deep cry of pain and tensed, the ensuing silence just as potent as the noise had been. She imagined the treatment that he was now being subjected to as the doctor tried to make sense of his wounds.
‘Please, God, help him.’ She whispered these words into the night and looked across at the fire burning in the grate.
The maid must have been roused from the warmth of her bed to set it. Sometimes the unfairness in life was a never-ending carousel—a misfortune here, a death there, the nuisance of it left as a past-midnight duty for those who served their masters even in exhaustion.
Harland was a part of it, too, with his immorality and anger. After their first few months together she had rarely seen him happy. She frowned. The events of the evening were making her maudlin and there was no point in looking back on all that had been so shattering.
Her father’s words were in the mix there, too. When he had seen her off into the arms of Harland Addington, he had leaned down and given his advice.
‘The Viscount is a man going places, a clever and titled young man. He will do you well, Violet, you will see.’
She had imagined at the time he’d believed it, but now she was not so certain. Her father had been a hard and distant parent whose personal relationships had faltered consistently.
They had hated each other after a few years together, her stepmother and father, almost with the same heated distaste that she and Harland had regarded one another by the end of it all. Like father like daughter. Lost in the tricky mire of right and wrong.
A noise in the passageway twenty-five minutes later had her turning and she put the empty second glass of brandy on the table and waited for the door to open.
‘Dr Barry is ready to depart, my lady.’ Her housekeeper stood at the old physician’s side. Violet vaguely recognised the man. Perhaps Harland had had him here at the town house before to diagnose one of his many and varied physical complaints.
‘How does the patient fare?’
‘Poorly, I am afraid, Lady Addington.’ She knew from the expression on his face that the prognosis was not a hopeful one. ‘The whole site is swollen. If God in all his wisdom wants him to recover then he might, but if not...’
He left the sentiment hanging for a second before he carried on. ‘A man of violence must take his chances with the angels or the demons.’
‘Are there instructions for his care?’
‘There are, my lady. Make certain he takes in water and apply this salve to his right temple and left arm every six hours. I have a compress in place at his side under the bandage and will change that in the morning. The ribcage is the area of the most worry, but the bullet has been removed. I will return on the morrow at the noon hour to examine him again unless you would wish to have him taken from here...’
‘No, I do not.’ She barely knew where that reply came from and the doctor looked surprised.
‘Very well, Lady Addington. I have left my receipt and wish you well for what remains of this night. If he dies by the morning, send word. I’ll come for the body.’
Nodding, she swallowed away any thank you she had been about to offer. Violet had expected more grace, honour and hope in one whose path in life was to tend to the needs of the sick. She would not let him call again, she swore it.
Moments later she was perched on a chair by her tall stranger’s bed, the weight of her decision to bring him into her custody firming upon her shoulders.
He was even more beautiful without the blood and the dirt. She could see that in the first second of observing him. Better for him to have been plain and homely, for Harland had been as remarkably handsome and look at what had happened there.
Shaking her head, she concentrated on the man before her, glad to be alone with him, glad for the night-time and the candles and the half-forgotten world outside.
Her housekeeper had dressed him in one of Harland’s starched and embroidered gowns, the collar of it stiff about his neck. The gash above his ear had been stitched and his long dark hair fell over the yellow ointment smeared across the wound. Nothing could hide the mark on his chin, though, a scar just under the side of his mouth and curling beneath his neck. A knife wound, Violet thought, that had been left untended till it festered for it was no cleanly healed injury at all. She wondered at the pain of such a wound.
He was hot. She could see this in the bloom of his skin and the stretched closeness of bone, the pulse in his throat skittering and thready.
‘Let him live,’ she pleaded to no one in particular, though she supposed it was to God that she made this entreaty. It had been a long time since she had prayed with any sincerity.
He was pale and the dark bruising of tiredness lay beneath closed eyes. His nails were short and well trimmed, the ring he wore brought into full relief by the light in the room. It was crested and fashioned out of a heavy gold, a row of small diamonds caught under an engraved coronet.
He had lost the top of the third finger on his right hand, a clean healed cut that spoke of intent and expertise, but a relatively old wound for the scarring was opaque and faded. A man with life drawn upon him like a story and tonight with more chapters adding to the tale. The bed barely contained his height, his knees bent so that his feet did not overlap the base board. The boots placed beside the bed were of the finest leather, the buckles heavy, well fashioned and expensive, the same coronet of the ring engraved in silver.
With a sigh she stood and turned to the window, looking out across the city and the tableau of fading lights. London felt safe and busy. It felt peopled and close with the movement and the noise and the constant change of things to see. She had been here for twelve months now and had not once left the central district of the town. An ordered life with nothing surprising in it. Why had she then insisted that this dangerous golden-eyed stranger be brought home?
Taking up the book she had brought in with her, she sat again on the chair by the bed and began to read aloud. She’d heard somewhere that connections to the living world were advantageous to those knocking on the door of the next one, for it brought them back, guiding them.
Half an hour later when he spoke she almost jumped.
‘Where...am...I?’ His tongue wet the dryness of his lips, each word carefully enunciated.
‘In Chelsea at my town house. I am Violet, Lady Addington, sir, and we found you wounded on Brompton Place in the very early hours of this morning. When you were unable to give us your address we brought you here.’
‘We?’ The one word held a wealth of questions.
The quiet blush of blood ran across her cheeks. It was the curse of having such a fair skin and she gritted her teeth in fury. She had no need to explain any of her circumstances to him and she would not. Ignoring his query, she went on.
‘You have a substantial wound in the hairline above your right ear. It has bled profusely, though it has now been stitched. You also have a bullet hole in your left side which travelled through your arm to enter your ribcage. It has been removed, but the doctor who was summoned to tend to you is not certain of the effects it might engender. My housekeeper, however, insists she has seen others with your malady up and walking within a matter of days.’
In point of fact, Mrs Kennings had said a lot more than that about the patient, Violet thought, but was not about to repeat her servant’s fervent appreciation of the more favourable parts of his body.
‘Did anyone follow me here?’
The horror of such a question had her staring. ‘No. Did you expect them to?’
He turned his head away.
‘Where are my clothes?’
‘They were filthy, sir. We placed a nightgown upon you and tucked you into bed. There are garments you can wear in the drawer across the room when you recover. Your own clothes shall be returned to you on the morrow.’
‘And my weapons?’
‘Are being cleaned. I think you need to rest, for it was the opinion of my driver that you would feel dizzy if you moved too fast.’
‘He was right.’
He raised his hand against the light to shade his eyes. A headache, perhaps?
‘I do not think it was a robber who hurt you.’
‘No. I do not think that, either.’
His diction was aristocratic and old-fashioned. He spoke as if every word needed to be carefully said and thought about. She had the vague impression that perhaps English was not his first language and another worry surfaced as she remembered how he had sworn in French when first she had found him.
‘Who exactly are you, sir?’
This time Violet allowed more sharpness into her tone.
The woman peering at him was beautiful. He hadn’t seen such colouring on anyone before, with her green-grey eyes, stark white skin and hair that fell around a finely sculpted face in a blaze of red glory. She also looked uncertain, her full lips parted and the tip-tilt of her nose above giving her the appearance of an angel newly delivered from Heaven. A sun-kissed one at that, given her freckles.
Shaking his head hard, he imagined her as an illusion resulting from the blow to his temple and the shot in his side, but when he looked again all the parts of Violet Addington were still assembled in such a startling comeliness.
Violet. She suited her name. Delicate. Unadorned. Fragile. A hint of steel was there, too, as well as a baffling openness.
Lady Addington? Why would she be in a bedchamber with him across the depths of a frigid London night wearing a dark green high-necked ballgown with her hair down?
Nothing quite made sense.
‘Why are you here with me alone?’ He did not wish to give her his name for it meant some involvement in his life that she could not help but be hurt by. He was pleased when he saw her measure the truth of his reticence and look away. If he could have dragged himself off the bed and got to the door there and then, he would have, but nothing seemed to be working properly and he was so damnably tired.
‘You were reading me a story about the Spartans?’
She smiled. ‘I imagined you might enjoy it. You look a little like one of those ancient warriors yourself.’
‘In an embroidered nightshirt?’
‘Oh, it’s not your clothes I am speaking of, but your disposition. One would need to be more than dangerous to be allowed within their ranks. It’s a certain peril, an expectation, a darkness that does not allow in the light.’
‘Well, you’re right about that at least.’
Shadows crossed her face, a frown marking a line on her forehead. ‘I should probably leave you to sleep.’
He closed his eyes momentarily as he nodded and when he opened them again she was gone.
She barely slumbered that night, but lay tense and fidgety in her bed, listening for any sound of movement, but hearing none at all from his chamber at the end of the corridor. Was he asleep or did he lie there as she did, eyes wide open with expectation?
He had not wanted to give her his name which meant there were secrets he wished hidden. His weapons were back at his side now and she wondered if that was a safe thing to have done for the well-being of her household. But his query as to whether anyone had followed them also rang loud in her head.
Did he expect more trouble? Was he a man whom others could be hunting even at this moment along the wealthy streets of Chelsea and Knightsbridge? If peril were indeed to arrive at her door would he be able to protect them all? Or was he the peril?
The clock in her room beat out the hour of four and still she felt sleep far away. Once she had seldom slept at all through the night, day after day of restless slumber ending only when her husband’s factor had come up from the stables with a solemn face to pronounce Harland dead from an accident.
Nowadays she slept a little better, if not dreamlessly, the city enveloping her with its noise and its toil; the sort of rest that had taken the circles from beneath her eyes. The dragging lethargy was gone, but often she felt the self-blame of doubt.
Could she ever regain the girl she had once been before her marriage, the one who had thought the world open and good and fair? The one who was not so scared of life?
She turned her wedding ring on her finger, wishing she could simply tear it off and be done with memories, but there were expectations here in society and requirements for grief, even if the emotion did not exist in her. She could not expunge the memory of Harland completely from either her person or from the town house without such vehemence tossing up questions. Questions she could ill afford to answer.
She felt old and dried up, today’s unexpected ending so out of the ordinary that she was certain it would all finish badly, just as everything else in her life so far had.
The stranger had been hurt many times, the doctor had said and so had her housekeeper, for his skin was marked with years of violence. The stillness in him magnified his danger, too, his observation menacing. He gave an impression that he was just waiting for his time to strike, marking out his territory, lying there injured and pale but with watchfulness alive in his eyes.
It was as if she had invited a Bengal tiger to sit down with her for supper. She could already feel the damage he might leave for he was far from tame, perhaps temporarily muzzled and bridled by his substantial injuries, but undeniably perilous. She would be a fool to think otherwise.
The anger in her rose and sleep seemed a long way off.
She woke up with a start, her heart pounding, and the clock at her bedside pointing to the late hour of ten. Was he dead? Had the doctor come again? Was the world changed in a way that might make everything different? Why had no one woken her? All these questions went around and around as she sat and rang the small silver bell to summon her maid.
Edith came with her usual bustle, though this morning she had news to impart. ‘When Mrs Kennings went in early to check on the newcomer the bed was made and the gown was folded. The junior maid said he was not in bed when she came to stoke the fires just after six, my lady. She said that he was a neat and tidy guest, though, and that he left you a note. I put it in my pocket here to give to you the moment you woke so that it would not be lost.’
With trepidation Violet took the paper, seeing how intricately the note had been folded in on itself. Her name lay on the outside. She waited until her maid left to fossick around in her dressing room for the day’s adornments.
Violet
It was written with a sharpened piece of charcoal from the fireplace in his room. Carefully she opened the missive so as not to tear the paper.
Thank you for your help. I will not forget it.
It was unsigned.
The hand was bold and sloped, the f’s tailed in a way that was foreign to an English way of writing. He’d underscored the word not as a means of emphasising its importance and somehow she believed him, for he hadn’t given the appearance of a man who might forget a promise.
Edith stepped back into the room, clothing across her arms and her expression full of curiosity. ‘I don’t know why he left so quickly, my lady, for the downstairs girl said there was blood on the handrail of the stair balustrade so he was hardly well.’
‘Let us hope then that he got to his home safely and is being cared for by his own family as we speak.’
Even as she gave this platitude she wondered if he would have a family. He gave the impression of detachment and isolation, a man who had walked the harsher corners of the world and survived. Alone.
He’d been dressed as a gentleman and had spoken like one, too. Had she the way of his name she might have made enquiries, but she shook away such a thought. If he had wanted her to know him, he would have given it and when he had made a veiled reference about others who might have followed him she had sensed his preference to remain anonymous.
She had finally got her life back on track and she did not wish to derail her newly found contentment. Better to forget him. Better still, maybe, to have never stopped and picked him up in the first place, but she could not quite make herself believe in this line of reasoning. The snow outside today was thick and the temperatures had plummeted. If he had been left all night out in such conditions she doubted he would have been alive come the morning.
Later that evening, sitting with Amaryllis in the downstairs parlour, Violet tried to concentrate on the piece of embroidery she was doing of a rural scene with a thatched cottage near a river, the garden full of summer flowers before it. The fire was bright and warm, the embers sending out a good deal of heat. Outside she could hear the occasional carriage passing, their noise muffled by at least four inches of newly fallen snow. Usually she loved this kind of quiet end to a winter day, with the darkness complete and a project in hand. Tonight, however, she was feeling restless and agitated.
‘My lady’s maid said that the marketplace was full of gossip this morning.’ There was a certain tone to Amara’s words that made her look up.
‘Gossip?’ Violet was not one to enjoy the whispers of tittle-tattle, but after her badly broken sleep she could not help but ask.
‘It is being said that there was a fight last night in a boarding house in Brompton Place that left a man dead. A gentleman, too, by the sounds. Seems the man had his throat cut. Brutally.’
The hint of question in her sister-in-law’s voice demanded an answer.
‘And you think the stranger we brought home may have had something to do with this?’
‘Well, we did find him at one end of Brompton Place and there was blood on his clothes, Violet. He also carried multiple weapons. God, he might have done away with us all in our beds had he the inclination for it and then where would we have been?’
Violet stopped the tirade as soon as she could. ‘Did anyone in the marketplace have an idea of the dead man’s name or occupation?’
‘I do not think so. It is understood that he was from the city and that he had a gun found beside him and a full purse in his pocket.’
‘It was not taken by whoever had killed him?’
‘That’s the way of it. It was violence the murderer was after, not the money, it seems. I suppose there are men here like that, men who live in the underbelly of London and in places we would have no knowledge of. Maybe he wanted to silence the other so that what was known between them should never be allowed to escape and it is a secret so terrible there will be repercussions everywhere.’
‘I think you have been reading too many books, Amara. Perhaps it was simply an argument that got out of hand.’
A sniffle alerted her to stronger feelings. ‘I feel scared, Violet, for an incident like this brings everything that much closer. What if they find out about us? What then? This could all happen again if we are not cautious.’
‘It won’t, I promise you. They will never find out.’
‘I cannot pretend to be as brave as you are. I wish I could be, but I can’t.’
‘We are here in London, Amaryllis, and it has been over fifteen months since Harland died. We are safe.’
Violet laid the embroidery in her lap, all the neat and ordered rows of stitchery so contrary to the thoughts she was having. Did Amara hold the right of it? Had she fallen headlong into a world of disorder and tumult by rescuing a man she knew nothing at all about?
I will not forget it.
His note came to mind, too. Words of gratitude or of threat?
She had promised herself at the graveside of her late husband to be circumspect and prudent for that was the way that safety dwelled. And now look. Here she was wondering if the locks on her doors would be strong enough and if the stranger who knew exactly the layout of her house might be back.
Her contentment fell into disarray like a house built of cards, each argument falling on to the other until there was nothing left at all to find a truth with.
Stupid. Stupid, she chastised herself, her heart racing. She had been here before, in a position of weakness and vulnerability, a place she had promised never to be again. The worry inside knocked her off balance.
Swallowing hard, she made herself smile. It never paid to let anyone know your true feelings, for then control would be gone and this charade was all she had left of herself.
‘I am sure the constable will find the culprit, Amara, and that shall be the very last we hear of it.’
‘You do not think we ought to say anything about the one who was here last night? His wounds? The blood?’
‘No, I don’t think we should.’ These words came with all the conviction she could muster and she was glad to see her sister-in-law nod in agreement.
He was most memorable. He would stand out in a crowd. The scar, the golden eyes, his beauty and his tallness. All the pieces of a man who was not in any way ordinary and so easy to find if someone was looking.
Danger balanced on the edge of a precipice, the beginnings of the consequences of her lies, the start of all that might come next? Another thought also occurred to her.
‘Are the clothes the stranger wore last night still in the laundry?’
‘No. They were dried early before the kitchen fire and the downstairs maid has ironed them.’
‘Can you find them for me, Amara? Perhaps they might tell us things.’
‘Things we may not wish to know?’
When Violet failed to answer, her sister-in-law stood and took her leave.
Why should she want to understand more about the stranger by gathering clues from his laundered garments? Could knowing more hurt her? With Harland she remembered sifting through his lies and truths and feeling sullied, a sort of panicked dirtiness inherent in every new thing she discovered about him.
When Amaryllis returned, she handed the items over with a heavy frown. ‘If one made it one’s business never to look into the hidden affairs of others, oblivion would be the result, Violet. Perhaps the curious hold a curse that trips them up repeatedly. I think we ought to donate these garments to charity and forget that we ever met this man. He is gone and it is for the best. For what it is worth, the butler said he had the look of duplicity about him and, of all the things in the world, we do not need that again.’
Then, after uttering a quick goodnight, her sister-in-law was gone, the door closed behind her. Violet was pleased to be alone with what was left of the man she’d found on the street, the fine linen of his shirtsleeves edged in silver and the breeches of a good quality serge. Lifting the material to her face, she breathed in, but the smell of him had disappeared. Only lye soap and fire smoke remained.
‘Who are you?’ she whispered into the night. ‘And where are you now?’
The booming of a clock out in the hallway was her answer. He had faded into the teeming thousands who called London their home, lost in the melee of survival and danger. He would not be back.
Placing the garments on the small table beside her, she determined not to think of him again.
