Sophia James - Regency Scandals

But he mustn’t.

He knew he mustn’t. Not until the dawn when the voices were softer and memory did not cut his equilibrium to the quick.

He slid down the wall, his knees drawn up before him. In defeat. The stubs of his severed fingers rested against his knee and he brought them up into his vision as if seeing them for the first time.

‘Sometimes I can feel these fingers … ghost fingers touching things, feeling things. I used to think they’d gone to the place where Melanie was, a little part of me waiting with her till the rest could follow … and now … I don’t want to follow them.’ As he leant his head back, his eyes went to the uncurtained window, where he could see only an unbroken darkness and he hated the lack of control he could hear in his voice.

‘Melanie would have wanted you to be happy again. Laugh again. Feel again.’

‘Would she?’ He stroked his finger down the thin crystal stem of his glass and almost laughed. ‘I remember once in Scotland when she nearly fell into a raging river and I caught her and pulled her back. She said that if anything ever happened to me, she would be sad for ever. For ever. Such a long time … for ever.’

Taris was quiet. Asher noticed he had removed his glasses and put them into his pocket. Seeing with memory. All that his brother was left with now. Sometimes he hated Beau Sandford with such a passion that it worried him. The smarting scars across his back. Taris’s loss of sight. Even in death the pirate haunted him.

‘Go to sleep, Taris. I will be all right.’

‘I could stay …’

‘No.’

He was pleased when his brother left him to his familiar demons.

Emerald strolled back towards Falder after an early morning walk, and caught sight of a light burning low in the little salon off the library as she mounted the front steps. If Asher Wellingham was already up, she would speak with him about yesterday. She should not have kissed him, should not have been alone with him, could not believe what she had done. She, who had always been so circumspect in dealing with the opposite sex. Well, it needed to stop before she did something she knew she would regret and she meant to tell him so right now.

The Duke of Carisbrook was slumped on the floor when she pushed open the door, his back against the wall and an empty bottle beside him. Taris sat asleep in an armchair. Like a sentinel.

Turning back to Asher, she saw that he watched her, the intensity of his gaze startling. He made no move to stand up; with his cravat askew and with the stubble of a twelve-hour beard upon his face, he looked like some dark and dissolute angel.

‘I am sorry,’ she managed. ‘I saw the light from outside and thought I might speak with you. About yesterday.’

‘Perhaps another time would be better,’ he returned softly, and she was relieved to hear a hint of something akin to humour in his voice.

‘You are well?’ She could barely just leave it here.

His eyes flicked to the window where the beams of a new day flooded in.

‘Very well. Now,’ he replied and pushed himself up. Emerald resisted an impulse to help him as he bent over, his hands clamped tightly about his head and holding everything together. She had seen enough hangovers to recognise that this was a bad one.

‘Did you sleep at all last night?’

He shook his head, squinting against the light that caught him squarely from this angle.

A new thought struck her. He never slept. Her mind ran over the times she had found him up, fully dressed, in the small hours just before the dawn.

After the ball. The first night she had searched Falder. This morning. Each time with a glass in his hand and the look of the damned in his eyes.

‘My father had a remedy for too much drink.’ Her resolve to confront him faltered under his vulnerability this morning and his eyebrows arched.

‘A man of many varied talents, then,’ he chided and crossed the room to replace a blanket across his brother that had fallen on to the floor. Taris barely moved as he did so, well wrapped in the arms of Morpheus.

What had they spoken of, Emerald wondered, in the dead of night? What kept them from warmer beds and a more comfortable slumber? Memories? Secrets? Her?

‘Could you concoct this remedy for me?’

She was more than surprised by his request. ‘I’d need herbs and sugar and milk.’

‘We could find those in the kitchen. It’s this way.’

He edged his way around her, careful not to touch, and opened the door. She saw he used the solidness of it to retain his balance.

The kitchen was enormous and extremely well appointed. Ten or so people of all genders, sizes and ages scraped, cleaned, cooked and chopped, the smell of a fine luncheon permeating the air. A woman extracted herself from the others, wiping her hands on her apron as she came forward.

‘Your Grace?’ There was question in her voice. ‘I hope all is well with the food …’

‘Indeed it is, Mrs Tonner. But Lady Emma would like a few ingredients to make a drink.’ He did not say what sort of drink.

‘A drink?’ Amazement overcame the cook’s reserve. ‘You wish to cook, my lady?’

‘I wish to make a potion with eggs, milk and hyssop. And mandrake root, if you have it.’

A smile lit up Mrs Tonner’s face. The secret recipe of Beau’s was not just confined to the wilds of Jamaica, Emerald determined, and followed her to a well-stocked pantry where she quickly found what was needed. A smaller maid produced a bowl and whisk and another a large tumbler embossed with Asher Carisbrook’s initials.

A.W. Not just his initials, either, but the sum of generations before him. Ashton Wellingham. Ashland Wellingham. Ashborne Wellingham.

Thanking the cook, she set to work, flustered when she saw that he meant to stay and watch her. The kitchen was as quiet as the dead, though ten sets of ears were fastened on their every movement and word.

‘Did you make this often?’ he asked as she worked.

Often and often and often.

‘No. Only a very few times when a parishioner was in his cups at church. Apart from that …’ She let the sentence peter out as a vision of Beau downing the concoction in ever-increasing quantities overcame her.

Her father had been a mean drunk and a series of harlots had taken the brunt of his temper.

Mostly.

She was pleased that Asher was not of that ilk. Indeed, drink seemed to mellow him, make him easier to talk with, more vulnerable.

‘Yet you can remember the recipe by heart?’

‘It is a simple one, which you have to drink all at once.’ She handed the tumbler to him as she finished.

He sniffed it and looked up. ‘Is it supposed to smell this way?’

‘Yes.’ She tried to stop laughter as she registered his incredulity but could not quite. ‘Strong liquor requires a strong antidote.’

When he made no move to swallow it she leant across and removed the cup from his hands to take a sip.

‘See. Not poisonous. In fact, quite palatable.’ She repressed a shiver as the aftertaste hit her and hoped that he had not seen it.

‘Palatable?’ He questioned when he had finished. ‘You call that palatable?’ A film of froth coated his upper lip before he licked it away. ‘Come, Emma, and I will show you palatable.’

Once outside, he took a turning that she had not seen before that led to a conservatory almost entirely formed by glass, opening out to a wide and formal garden.

‘My mother’s contribution to the place,’ he remarked as he saw her astonishment. ‘It is a tradition that the Wellingham wives are always good at something. My grandmother was a horsewoman of great repute and my great-grandmother a musician. It is said at night through the corridors of the west wing that you can still hear the haunting tunes of her pianoforte.’ He smiled. ‘Ghosts are mandatory in a place like this, though I have never seen one.’