One Unashamed Night (10 page)

‘Curiosity.’

‘Pardon?’

‘You had asked her to dance at the Rutledge soiree and I wanted to see why you had.’

‘Lord. Any number of reasons could have had me up on the floor and certainly none of them requiring the sort of consequences that you are now mentioning.’

‘I did not wring it out of Mrs Bassingstoke, Taris. She seemed to want to tell me.’

‘And who else have you told?’

‘Just you.’

‘Well then, say nothing of her condition to any other person.’

‘I might have told Penny Whitford.’

‘Might have?’

‘Did. On my way back I happened to see her. She asked me where I had been.’

‘God!’

‘Mrs Bassingstoke did not petition my confidence on the matter, Taris.’

His sister sounded upset and he hoped that she would not burst into tears. Why the hell would Beatrice-Maude have spilled such a private thing to a mere acquaintance anyway?

Barren?

Would society be kind or cruel when the confidence she had so unwisely given became gossip?

Beatrice. He wanted to see her again, to feel her beside him, to spar with her wit and to laugh at her honesty. He would go to her discussion group on Wednesday evening and warn her of the dangers of too much candour.

Using a softer tone, he bade Lucinda to stop worrying and was pleased when she stood and took her leave.

Chapter Eight

B
eatrice-Maude’s salon was crowded with people and Taris hung at the back of the room beside a bookshelf, his hand against the heavy wood of it to give him balance. He rarely came to anything like this, the inherent danger of tripping always close, but Jack had accompanied him tonight and had gone to help himself to drinks at a generously laid table his friend had used much detail in describing.

The shape of someone loomed in front of Taris though he had no way of knowing who it was, so he stopped and waited, pretending to take interest in the numerous titles he had felt on the shelf.

‘Good evening, Lord Wellingham.’

Bea’s voice. Taris could not quite believe his luck. He moved to face her.

‘Mrs Bassingstoke. I thought I should take you up on your offer to broaden my mind.’

‘And I am pleased that you have done so.’

‘My sister has told me that she made your acquaintance.’

Silence greeted the statement.

‘Lucinda can be a chatterbox.’

Again there was silence.

‘Put more bluntly it would probably be prudent not to relate any secrets into her safekeeping.’

‘Secrets such as my not being able to have children, you mean?’

Taris winced at her direct honesty. ‘Playing your cards close to your chest is sometimes a wiser option.’

‘As close as you play yours?’ The query made him wary and he jammed his hands into his pockets. No one had ever spoken to him as this woman did.

‘Sometimes secrets hold us back,’ she added, her husky lisp more evident today than he had ever heard it.

‘Twenty-eight and a sage!’ He could help neither the anger in his reply, nor the memories of her naked skin against his own.

‘A barren sage,’ she returned, challenge evident in the edge of her words. ‘And one who it seems has forgotten the golden rule.’

‘Which is?’

‘In society a lady does not ever question the intent of a gentleman with a better pedigree than her own.’

‘You sound scathing. I am certain such rules cannot have ever bothered you before, Mrs Bassingstoke.’

‘You would be surprised…’

‘But not enlightened?’

Her laugh was light and real, so different from the shallow false humour he heard in other drawing rooms of this city.

‘It seems perhaps I was remiss in scolding you, my lord. Do you have a drink?’

‘Jack Henshaw has gone to get me one.’

‘Do try the punch. I made it myself. A non-alcoholic concoction with more than a hint of fruitiness!’

‘Sounds delicious.’

She began to laugh again. ‘The discussion will begin in another five minutes or so. I do hope that you will be happy to contribute.’

‘I fear in this room, Mrs Bassingstoke, that my opinion will not be popular.’

‘Oh, you might be surprised. The tolerance is as remarkable here as the range of opinions. Indeed, sometimes I think Parliament might do well to mimic us.’

‘I will make sure to relate that to Lord Grey next time I see him.’

‘Little voices can hold as much sway as more important ones.’

‘A sentiment I would never question.’

‘Even with the weight of privilege full upon your shoulders?’

‘Such a bigot, Mrs Bassingstoke.’

Her giggles were like a fountain of joy ringing around the room and chasing away the darkness and her touch upon his arm was taken with the ease that it was given.

Not forced or obtrusive, but natural and easy.

The shadows of many people swirled around him, the timbre of voices attesting to a very large number. He did not recognise any of them. The occasional accent was of a member of the trades or a dweller from the parts of London that were considered undesirable by the
ton,
though Beatrice made no mention of occupation or their standing in society as she introduced him.

Finally they stopped and the room seemed to quieten. Whether she had raised her hand he could not tell because she had moved away from him now and Jack was once again at his side.

‘The place is full to bursting,’ his friend said quietly. ‘Cowan is here and Lansdowne, and the wife of Lord Drummond is sitting with her sister in the corner.’

‘A rather eclectic bunch, then,’ Taris returned.

‘With little differentiation between those who are gentry and those who are not! There are four women standing at the back who look like servants and they have a glass in their hands as everyone else here does.’

Taris began to smile. ‘The egalitarianism of the Americas has come to London?’

‘At least the debate on property rights should prove interesting. Some here look so formidably righteous that I hope they are not heiresses.’

‘Excuse me, my lord.’ Taris turned to the voice at his left shoulder. ‘Mrs Bassingstoke asked me to bring you this drink.’

‘Thank you.’ He took the glass in his hand and sipped a fine smooth brandy. Not the fruit punch that he had expected, he ruminated, as he leant back against the wall next to Jack, listening to Beatrice call the discussion to order.

Half an hour later Taris realised that indeed this room was a hot bed of liberalism and that at least on the subject of matrimonial property rights the opinion here was swayed very firmly towards the viewpoint of the hard-done-by bride. Finally he had had enough.

‘The presumptive legal unity of husband and wife can cut the other way too,’ he began when there was a second of space in the heated argument, and he felt the room take in a collective breath before turning its attention to him. The heavy censure made him smile. ‘With marriage a bride and groom become one person and the husband is held legally liable for any debts and civil wrongs his wife may have incurred.’

Beatrice leapt into the fray. ‘I hardly think that the virtual loss of a woman’s property on marrying can be compensated by the unlikely event that if she breaks a law her husband may take the blame for it.’

Taris was beginning to feel the flimsiness of his arguments, but pressed on regardless. ‘Female capriciousness is well documented and some might say that the art of marriage is nothing more than an economic transaction tied to the protection of the great estates.’

A murmur settled around the room, and he realised he had probably used the wrong word when describing the changeable character of women. Beatrice’s quick reply was well worded.

‘Others would argue that it is nothing more than a sham to allow men the right of power over something that was never theirs in the first place, Lord Wellingham.’

‘
Yet you do not take into account that economic manoeuvring favours a bride as well as a groom if the financial aspects are considered openly. The benefits of a well set-out investment can hardly be to the disadvantage of either party.’

‘Well set out for the husband, my lord. Should he wish to confine her against her will and administer any properties himself he is well within his rights to do so.’

‘Our world is not peopled with characters from Samuel Richardson’s
Clarissa,
Mrs Bassingstoke, and the “vile Lovelace” exists only in a story.’

Laughter resounded and Taris fought to hear Beatrice’s voice above it.

‘Any husband may “correct” his wife should he wish to do so and the tales of such cruelty are certainly not solely the preserve of popular fiction.’

There was a tone in her voice that was not simply academic, a tone that trembled beneath the tenets of truth and chased away any desire he might have had to keep such a disagreement going.

‘Touché,’
he returned with a smile as he leant back against the wall and took a sip of fine brandy. ‘I concede my case entirely.’

‘It’s not like you to give up a fight, Taris?’

Jack’s question a few seconds later held a warning within it that he did not like as the chatter around them grew more general.

‘You are beginning to sound just like my brother.’

‘And your week is beginning to ring with the dubious clanging of firsts, my friend.’

‘How so?’ Finishing his brandy, Taris knew exactly what was coming.

‘The first waltz, the first concession of an argument you could have won had you truly wanted to…’

‘You read too much into these actions.’

‘Do I, indeed? Your Mrs Bassingstoke is coming towards us, by the way, and she looks like a cat who just swallowed the cream. Perhaps your reasoning in playing the “honourably beaten” was sounder than I gave it credit for, after all.’

Taris shoved his glass into Jack’s hand. ‘Get me another drink, will you?’

‘I will do so only because I detect your desire to be alone with the clever widow,’ he returned, laughter imbued in his retort.

‘Lord Henshaw looks as though he is enjoying our soiree,’ Beatrice said less than a few seconds later. ‘I hope that you are too?’

‘The debate is all that I imagined it to be.’

Her answer was worried. ‘I think our discussions go better when the opinion for and against them is more evenly divided.’

He laughed. ‘You won the argument, Bea.’

‘But not well. I think you gave up on me for some reason.’

He felt her hand on his arm, the pounding awareness between them blotting out all other noise.

‘Could I speak to you alone? After this is over?’

‘Yes.’ She gave her promise easily and as the world and its noise and need cascaded again on to them she was claimed in speech by another before disappearing into the crowded room.

Taris Wellingham had spoken carefully and well in the debate, she thought. A man who was confident in his ability to woo a crowd and gracious in defeat.

He was nobody’s man save his own, the one concession to his limited sight an opened hand that lay on the wall behind. He always did that, always created an anchor to the environment around him. The fence at the park, the ledge of the window in the carriage, his foot against the edge of the ditch in the snow outside Maldon.

A small habit that would be unremarkable without the knowledge that she had of how little he could really see. She watched him now from the other side of the room, watched his ease in a setting that was eminently foreign to him. The signet ring on his little finger glinted in the light as he pushed his dark hair back, his eyes creasing at the corners when he smiled.

Taris Wellingham was a man who might trace his ancestry back through all the years of history and yet he had conceded the argument to her with grace. She wondered suddenly whether he had done so by choice, as there had been a tone in his words denoting empathy that she found disconcerting.

The quick flash of her husband ‘correcting’ yet another opinion came to mind and she pushed it back, all the laughter and discourse in this room as far from the big Ipswich house as she could ever be.

Lifting her glass of punch to her lips, she dragged her eyes away from the enigmatic and mercurial Lord Wellingham and wished the hour before everybody would leave away.

Everyone was gone. Almost everyone, she amended and looked again to see that Taris still sat on the blue sofa in her salon.

‘I could stay if you want…?’ Elspeth was uncertain as she gazed towards the room.

‘I am a twenty-eight-year-old widow, Elspeth, and sense is my middle name.’

‘Still, a man like that could—’

She did not let her finish. ‘Look at me, Elspeth. A man like that is here merely to speak to me and I am very happy to listen.’

‘You are not as plain as you might say, Beatrice, and sometimes when you argue a point so very cleverly every male in the room looks at you in the way of men who are wanting much more than just words.’

‘A sentiment I shall receive as a compliment. But you forget I have no wish to take any such flattery further.’

‘Very well, then. But I shall be back in the morning to make certain that…’

‘And I shall look forward to the company.’

Bea was pleased when her friend finally allowed her to shepherd her out; turning, she walked into the salon, shutting the door against the bustling of servants clearing away the last of the plates and the glasses in the dining room.

‘Thank you for allowing me to talk to you privately,’ he said and waited as she sat next to him.

‘If this is about my conversation with your sister…’

He raised his right hand and she came to a stop. ‘Did Mr Bassingstoke ever “correct” you, Beatrice?’

Her world spun in a receding dizzy arc as she clutched at the arm on her end of the sofa. Had he seen the movement? For the first time since knowing of his blindness she was glad of it.

‘All my arguments were purely theoretical, my lord,’ she returned, her voice sounding almost normal, ‘and I could easily take umbrage should you think a man might rule me like that.’

‘A lack of sight has some benefits, Mrs Bassingstoke. One of them is the ability to determine the cadence of untruth.’

She was silent.

‘At Maldon you limited our liaison to just one night. I would like to negotiate for another.’

‘One night…?’ Her voice was squeaky.

‘More if you are offering.’ His smile made his eyes dance and the glasses gave him a rakish appearance. His cane lay untouched against his thigh as if, for the moment, he was comfortable and relaxed. Still, he looked much too big for her small salon, a tiger readied to pounce, the amber in his irises predatory. She could not move, could not rise and say nay to any of it, could not remember the promise that she had made to herself of ‘never again’.

The clock on the mantel chimed the hour like a harbinger.

Ding…say yes!

Dong…say no!

Outside she could determine the muffled clatter of a carriage winding home in the lateness.

Ten o’clock. On a Wednesday. Already some lights in the street were out and the transport that had brought him to her door was departed. At his request?

Who indeed might know if she were again to say yes? And freedom was found not only in the choice of a good book and a night alone. Another few moments and the maids would be finished. Easy to dismiss them to their beds and then to go to hers. With him. The very idea of it made her heart beat faster.

‘I am not the kind of woman to depend on this sort of arrangement, my lord. The freedom I spoke of today is important to me.’