Ann Lethbridge - Regency Society

The very thought chased away fright and replaced it with a channelled resolve. Quietly asking her maid to allow her some space to talk, she walked over to the shelter of a line of elms and stopped there.

No one was in sight save her servant, and farther off two old men whom she did not know. Five moments at the most, she thought, and took a breath.

‘Your sister-in-law sent an invitation for a soirée at Beaconsmeade. Did you know that she had done so?’

He shook his head.

‘You of all people must realise that I cannot possibly come.’ She kept her voice as low as she might manage it and the frown on his brow indicated thought.

‘Because it might compromise your carefully constructed public persona?’ He stepped back as her glance raked across his, anger and uncertainty and sheer desperation melded with another growing truth. ‘Are you happily married, Lady Dromorne?’

The veneer of civilisation that he had affected here in England was suddenly much less obvious. Eleanor tasted fear as she never had before, because in the bare, cold amber she detected something she had seen in her own eyes in the mirror over the past few days.

Longing .

Longing that even anger and vigilance and sense had failed to dislodge. She stood wordless, the dreadful chasm of loss between them echoing in every breath that she took.

Tell him, yes, I am very happily married , she heard her mind say . Tell him that you love your husband and your life and your place in the world and that any interference from him would be most unwelcome and unacceptable. Tell him to go and to never look back and insist that the history between them was so repugnant she needed no more reminding of any of it .

She opened her mouth and then closed it again, the warm summer wind streaming between them and the silk of her dress touching her skin in the way he had once touched it, inviting passion, igniting lust.

Even for Florencia she could not say the words.

‘Meet me tonight. I have rooms here in London …’ He spoke as she did not.

Pulled from the past into the present, this harsh truth of seduction was a far easier thing to counter.

She could not believe he had said such words to her here in the wind and in the sunlight. A man who would throw away her good name on a whim, never even imagining whom else he would hurt. ‘My husband loves me, Lord Cristo, and I am a wife who applauds loyalty.’

‘Touch me, then.’

Shock filled her eyes.

‘Touch me and tell me that there is nothing at all left between us.’

She held her fists tight against her skirt. ‘The pull of flesh is only a fleeting thing, monseigneur .’ The title she gave him was deliberate, a grim reminder of the misunderstanding that trembled beneath anger. ‘Honour and trust and duty are the tenets that a sensible woman lives by.’

‘And you are sensible?’

‘Very.’ The word was as forceful as she could make it, moulded by her depth of fear.

Unexpectedly, he took three steps back. ‘Logic and reason run a poor second to the heat of passion, ma chérie . Should you relax your guard for a moment, the truth of all you deny might be a revelation to you.’

Pursing her lips, Eleanor allowed him no leeway. ‘I do not think you should presume to believe that you know anything of my fidelity. My life has changed completely since Paris and I am a woman who learns well from her mistakes.’

‘Mistakes?’ He echoed the word, turning it on his tongue as if trying to understand the very nature of its meaning before finding a retort. ‘I have relegated our night together to neither blunder nor error. Indeed, were I to give it a label, as you seem want to do, I might have chanced something very different.’

The glint in his eye was so carnal and lascivious that Eleanor knew exactly where he would have placed it. The smile he gave her showed off his gleaming white teeth.

Biting back impatience, she inclined her head as he gave her his leave without another word, his figure receding into the distance until he was lost altogether when the next corner claimed him.

It was over between them, the truth of circumstance bitingly clear: just a matter of the flesh, easily duplicated in a room for rent by the hour.

Turning, she watched the ducks on the lake in their small family groups. Mother. Father. Ducklings. How it should be. How it had been designed and planned. Florencia knew who her parents were and without Martin, Eleanor might never have made it back to England. Dark days and lonely days. Days when she had wondered if it might not have been easier to simply cease to exist at all. Pressing down on her chest in alarm, she tried to breathe, her composure reasserting itself as the tableau before her took shape. The trees, the birds, the pathways, people now further afield and the distant clatter of hooves.

A good life. Untainted and wholesome. A real life.

Her life .

Not thrilling or adventurous or even passionate, but safe and prudent and certain.

With a wave of her hand she gestured her maid forwards, resolutely ignoring the question in her eyes as she struck down the pathway for home, hating the tears that blurred everything before her. Disappointment lent her gait a tense anger that was almost as unreal as her honour, dissolved under the meaning of Cristo Wellingham’s words.

Meet me tonight. I have rooms here in London .

Only that. Only that.

The words rolled around in the empty corridors of her hope, a bitter pill pointing to the real character of a man of whom she had no true knowledge. It was done between them. Finished. Her nails dug into her palms, causing hurt until she released her grip and opened her fingers to the air.

The dinner at the Baxters’ was unavoidable, as an invitation had been sent and accepted weeks in advance.

It was the first time she had been out in society since the fiasco at the Haymarket Theatre and Eleanor was pleased that the gathering was a small one.

Cristo Wellingham would not be there.

He frequented the more racy events by all the news she was given through her nieces’ fascination with the man. The age of all those present tonight promised to be well over fifty and the host was a devout man who countenanced no form of rudeness or vulgarity. The very thought made her swallow, for if Anthony Baxter had an inkling of her past she would not get a foot in the doorway.

Anger welled. The headstrong exuberance of her youth was hardly a fault that should lead to such consequences and had she not made up for her mistakes ever since with a pious and selfless existence? Hiding everything.

She jolted as Martin came into the room, for she had not heard the whirr of the wheels on the chair.

‘You are so jumpy these days, Eleanor, and in one so young it is rather worrying. You need to get out more, for Florencia is well able to cope without your presence in the house for a few hours.’

In the light of her thoughts from a few moments prior, the criticism stung more than it might have otherwise. ‘I am quite happy as I am,’ she returned, hearing in her retort an anger that was not becoming, but today, with her carefully constructed world in danger of falling apart, any censure rankled.

‘If I could venture on a word, “distracted” might be the one to describe you of late, and it doesn’t suit you.’ He held his cravat out to her and she took it. ‘Would you help me with this?’

She had always tied his cravat, though today she felt irritation as she finished off the last of the intricate folds. She was distracted. Distracted to the point of bewilderment. She pushed down on the feeling as he lifted a box she had not noticed from his lap and gave it to her.