Mistress at Midnight (20 page)

‘More than once.’

‘And you will do so again?’

‘Yes.’

At the bareness of her reply Leonora sat down. ‘Tell me why?’

A different tack and unexpected. No longer a child, but a young woman who needed a reason. ‘For years I have been a ruined widow, isolated and alone.’ She held up her hand as her sister began to speak. ‘Alone in the worrying about our family, trying to piece it together, trying to make it survive and I have never allowed myself to think of anything other than that. Until now.’

‘Until Stephen Hawkhurst?’

As she nodded, the next query came. ‘Does he love you?’

‘It is not love we have spoken of, Leonora, but need. He is thirty-one and I am twenty-six. We are not in the first flush of youth and neither of us is unrealistic.’

‘Love is not so proscribed, Lia. I know this now. If he will not make a commitment after all that is between you—’

Aurelia stopped her. ‘Then I still would have known how it can be between a man and a woman. When I am old I will have that magic inside.’

‘And if there is a child?’

‘There will not be.’

‘My God, Lia, I have always believed that
you are the strongest woman in the world and now I know it. But even you could be wrong. Please, please be careful.’

When she nodded Leonora hugged her and left, the lamp by her bed flickering in the draught of the door as it closed.

Hawkhurst frightened people. At first he had frightened her, but she had seen beneath the mask he donned in public. A man who thought of flowers and candles to woo her was not as distant as he might profess and the endearments he had whispered as he held her sobbing in the dark after making love were not the actions of an unfeeling and uncaring man.

Neither was the way he worshipped her body.

And if there is a child?
Leonora’s words came back.

If there was a child she should love it in the same way she loved its father. With all of her body and with all of her heart.

A new beginning.

One hand fell to her stomach, cupping the hope.

Chapter Thirteen

A
urelia took inordinate care with the long lists of numbers before her, balancing this column against that one and rechecking across the rows several times before placing her pen down.

Her bottom lines were being realised, the risks she had taken with fabric lengths and designs, weaves and wefts and colour finally paying off. She could barely believe the profit the company would garner in the next weeks, substantial and open-ended sums of money right down to Christmas. With a flourish she underlined her projected earnings and leaned back.

All the years of work had been worth it. All the doubts and uncertainties and constant
gnawing worries had come down to a business that was prosperous and well managed. She allowed herself a quiet glow of pride before laying her pen on the paper and looking out of the window.

The river’s presence had encroached on all the buildings around Park Street. Shipbuilders, barge-builders, sailmakers, mast-makers and rope-makers as well as sundry other general shipping-related enterprises had made this area their home.

Sometimes if the wind was right she could smell the Thames, but nearly always she could hear the sounds of it: the horns of passing traders, the shouts of the sailors calling, the flap of canvas and the creak of rope. Her world now, comfortable, known and in its own way exhilarating.

Henry Kerslake returned an hour later and he looked preoccupied and flustered, but the most surprising thing of all was that Frederick Delsarte came in after him.

‘You are not welcome here.’ She was surprised her voice was so strong.

‘As I am your business partner, in the very loose sense of the word, I thought you might be more welcoming.’

When she did not reply he laughed. ‘Always the lady. Always the wise voice of reason that Charles was so sick of by the end. Princess Aurelia, with your high-born morals and constant disdain.’

Moving forwards he slapped her, full across the cheek. The force of it made her head snap backwards, her hair falling to her waist in a slow dance of red. Henry Kerslake had gone to stand by the window, looking out. No possible help there. Delsarte’s right hand curled into her bosom, outlining the bounty, squeezing hard. ‘Stay away from trouble. Stay away from society. But most of all stay away from Lord Stephen Hawkhurst. Do you understand? It may also be prudent for you to think of a reasonable price for the sale of your business.’

Fear made her stiffen. ‘It will never be on the market, sir, not to you or any other that might covet it.’

Delsarte kept speaking as though she had said nothing. ‘A reasonable sum should see it in my hands, madam. A fair price given the history between us and your straitened circumstances. Kerslake here has a good idea as to how much it is worth and has allowed me to name a starting point.’

Aurelia glanced at Henry, but he did not meet her stare. Rather he looked away as though he wanted no part of this conversation.

‘The business is solely in my name, sir. Kerslake has no mandate over any selling price.’

‘Take care, then, Mrs St Harlow. Intransigence may only lead to difficulties and with three sisters all needing husbands…’ He did not finish.

‘Is that a threat?’ Caesar pulled against his lead at her tone, straining to get to the newcomer.

‘Take it as you will, Aurelia, but a woman of dubious loyalty is likely to do badly when turned over to authorities for questioning. Besides, Hawkhurst has been watching and waiting for you to make a mistake.’

Mentioning the same poor sum he had stated before, Delsarte withdrew, Henry Kerslake disappearing with him and the door shutting behind them to an awful silence.

Sitting down, she took in a breath. Her cheek ached as did her breast. But all she could think of were Delsarte’s words.

Hawkhurst has been watching and waiting for you to make a mistake
.

The numbers in front of her swam through the tears—small harbingers of a pride that was gone now, drowned in the fear of aloneness.

His skin against hers. The rise of his buttocks as her hands moved across them. The indents on his ribs where bullet holes had punctured and the curling scar upon his thigh. Hawk in the midnight. Magnificent and menacing.

She glanced at the time. Two-thirty in the afternoon. Still hours before she might go to him and be safe. She hated the way she began to shake as her fingers felt the bruised and throbbing skin on her cheek. Dangerous. Isolated. For the first time in a long while Aurelia began to cry.

Someone had hit her. He knew it from the first moment she walked into the hall of his town house, the stain of darkness on her cheek beneath a thick layer of make-up she never wore.

Pulling her into the light, Hawk tipped her chin with his finger so that he might see the damage better. Fury beat at his temples like a drum.

‘Who did this to you, Aurelia?’

Her eyes fell away from his. ‘Freddy Delsarte.’

‘Why?’

‘He came to the warehouse today and warned me to stay away from you. He said you were watching me and waiting for a…mistake.’ Large tears made a pathway across heavily applied powder.

‘I will kill him for this. I swear that I will.’

She caught his hand and held it to her breast. ‘Is what he said true, Stephen? Are you watching me?’ Now she looked directly at him.

‘Yes.’

‘Because of Charles?’

‘You are being monitored because there have been intelligence codes sent through your silk cargo to France and because known dissenters have been seen in your vicinity.’

‘I know nothing of messages in the cargo.’ She tried to keep the thoughts of the letters she delivered to Dr Touillon as far as possible from her mind.

‘Then I am glad to hear it.’

‘My mother is ill and she has sent men to collect some money from me…for a nurse.’

‘And Delsarte knows this?’
Politics balanced on the fine edge of intimacy.
His question unsteadied her and she knew exactly why Stephen Hawkhurst had been sent to Europe on the government’s business. Purpose and resolution defined him, a man of smoke and mirrors, and clever beyond any other she had met.

‘Mama lives in Paris and Delsarte intimated that she may be harmed if I do not co-operate.’

‘Co-operate? How?’

‘Sell my business to him cheaply just as it is beginning to realise profit.’

‘And why would you do that? What hold has Frederick Delsarte over you to even consider doing such a thing?’

Aurelia hesitated. The cracks between them would widen with the truth, but there was little that she could do to change that. ‘In order to make a living my mother turned to the life of a courtesan and as she got older the clients were less willing to pay quite as much. Sylvienne chose a name that was not her own, but I had visited her and…’ She couldn’t go on. It was her fault that any of this had happened, after all, and to add injury to insult Freddy Delsarte had become one of her mother’s lovers, too. He had told her so at the Hawkhurst ball, implying that
he wished to know of her daughter’s charms, as well. The very thought of it made her sick.

Webs wove their way around families and the unprotected were left wide open to all sorts of slander. The anger in her surfaced with the shame.

‘She is dying of syphilis. I could see it in her face then and now I know it in her words.’

She had never told another soul any of this, but the confession poured out of her, the relief of sharing her darkest fear all encompassing. How often had she kept things bottled up inside and brewing with worry?

It was his strength and his certainty that had brought out such a revelation, a man whose opinions she valued and whose advice she might follow. Years of dealing with each and every problem by herself made her voice shake.

‘Shavvon thinks it is you who is implicated in the intelligence sent to France. If we could catch Delsarte and Kerslake instead, you would be freed of it.’

The horror of his revelations had her sitting and Hawkhurst crossed the room, returning with a large glass of brandy.

‘Here, drink this. It will help.’

She did as he suggested, the liquor burning at the back of her throat.

Tonight he wore all black, the clothes emphasising the darkness of his hair and the gold in his eyes. The British Service held her name and the address of her family, her sisters and papa. The images of gallows and dark prisons rose in her mind, the rotting flesh of dissidents and murderers in small dank spaces of despair.

She hated the way she was shaking, all the dreams she had fostered disappearing in the comprehension of a reality that held no mind for hope or love. Yet when his arms came around her, drawing her up into his warmth, the cold of the night lessened and business and politics was pushed to one side—just them against the world, the lies and the truths, the good and the bad. Here, for this little time there was a void in judgement, his breath mingling with hers, his fingers tracing patterns on the thin silk of her gown.

‘Shhhh, sweetheart, it will be fine, I promise.’

Another troth. Another way that she had made things difficult for him. Did he ever tire of such neediness and how was she to manage if he did?

Her eyes flew open. She could not depend on him like this, not surrender all of her fierceness in a moment of exhaustion. Stephen Hawkhurst had never intimated that their relationship could become permanent, nor did he seek a more public display of affection. She came to him in the dark and she left before the dawn, secrecy clouding all contact.

Tonight, with her cheek aching, Aurelia just wanted to be home. She did not have the defences in place that she had once found simple. No, the barriers she had built for years were shifting as passion refused to be tethered any longer, tumbling through sense and responsibility, tearing away duty and replacing it all with a pure and tantalising desire.

Tears pooled at the back of her eyes and the dull throb on her cheek made everything a hundred times worse, though when he leant down and kissed the edges of the hurt she could not help but smile, feather-light kisses of quiet ease and a great deal of concern.

‘If Delsarte touches you again, I will kill him.’

‘And spend the rest of your life in prison?’

He laughed at that, but the heat that had
begun to grow took away any thought of further conversation and when he brought her down to the woollen rug laid before a glowing fire she could see in his eyes twin reflections of flame.

Stephen watched from his window as the cabriolet drove down the road, taking Aurelia away from him, and he fisted his hands against his thigh, wishing that he might have been travelling home with her, seeing her safe.

Caring for her.

He could barely remember what that felt like any more and had not known for a long time, though the deadened anger that had held him immobile since the death of his brother wound its way into his throat, quickened, and he swallowed back thickness.

Aurelia. Even her name was beautiful.

If you did not love, you never lost. If you held people at a distance and took only what was needed, you could survive.

Flashes of their nights together held him still, his head tilted towards something he had missed.

Love. It was not always words that said it.

Love came in the smiles between them
and in the soft honesty at midnight; he Could no longer be blind and deaf to all the things Aurelia was saying when she did not speak. Could he love her back in the way she needed? Could he risk a try?

He was glad his hands shook when he looked down because it showed he still had a damn heart inside him. And he knew he would not sleep.

‘There is someone here to see you, my lord.’ Wilson deposited a card on the bedside table and stood back as Hawk looked at the time on the clock in the corner. Half past ten. He had caught some sleep after all and whatever it was Shavvon wanted it must be important.

‘Send him in.’

Alexander Shavvon looked harried and tired and he was barely in the room before he spoke. ‘Freddy Delsarte, Henry Kerslake and Mrs St Harlow have gone north. They left an hour ago.’