Ann Lethbridge - Regency Society

Marking her exit with a stone she gathered a few of the wildflowers around it and placed them on the top. When she returned to this point she would know to proceed left. Glancing up and down the well-used track once more just to see that no servant had been sent back to help her, she walked into the dimness, leading the horse, and her shape was lost in the shadows.

‘She said she would go directly back and I watched her turn for Beaconsmeade.’

Lady Diana Cameron, Westbury’s sister, was speaking and the shrill panic in her voice was easily heard. Outside the weather was worsening and the clouds threatening all morning had finally broken into rain.

Cristo stepped into the pandemonium, having set foot in Beaconsmeade only ten minutes prior.

‘Lady Dromorne has not been seen since she turned back from our ride at around twelve o’clock. Her sister-in-law was certain that she said she was returning here and the house was able to be seen from the track.’ Beatrice looked a little harried as the parlour clock struck three.

‘Have people been sent out to look for her?’ Cristo felt his own sense of alarm as they nodded.

‘Asher went out an hour ago with some servants but hasn’t returned, though I am certain he will find her.’

‘I’ll take Demeter and see if I can be of some use.’ The property was new to him, too, so he asked for directions that would lead him to the area used for the morning’s ride.

Half an hour later Cristo found a rock that had been newly overturned on the edge of a small track leading farther into the forest. When he dismounted he noticed a few wilting flowers lying on the side of it, the wind having pushed them there out of the way.

Kneeling, he looked for other things. A broken twig and grass that was worn.

Here. She had left the track here. Setting the stone in the middle of the trail as a message to alert the others, he turned his horse into the shadows.

She should never have thought of such an idea, because with all the turns in the pathway she was now well and truly lost and the horse had dug in its feet and refused to move another inch. Goodness, it was already nearly four o’clock and Diana must be frantic by now.

‘Stupid horse,’ she said to him as she sat on a log near a small stream. ‘Stupid, stupid horse.’ The words brought his head up and he looked directly at her, interest written in his soft brown eyes; because of that she laughed, feeling vaguely mean about growling at an animal who just wanted an easy life.

If she left him here and walked on alone would he be all right? Would he follow? She decided to try it, disappearing around a corner and waiting to see if the steed would move.

He didn’t.

Returning, she grabbed at his reins and tried again to drag him.

‘You cannot possibly wish to stay here all by yourself and, besides, it is about to rain.’ As she said it the clouds burst open, sending a downpour across the small glade and pinning her curls to her head and clothes.

‘Now look what has happened,’ she continued, ‘and it is all your fault. Come on. We have to get home before it becomes dark.’

A noise a little way away made her stiffen. Something was coming their way. Some forest predator? Finding a substantial piece of wood near her feet, she lifted it and went to stand at the head of the stubborn horse.

‘It will be perfectly all right. Don’t you worry, I will make certain that nothing eats you.’

She hated the tremble she could hear in her voice and the ache of fright banding her stomach.

It was coming closer through the trees, she determined, along the path she had turned off a moment or so back. Her fingers tightened about the wood.

She was talking to the horse? Telling him it was all his fault and that she would allow nothing to eat him, a stick in her hand of such old timber that it would break into pieces at the very first contact.

If he wasn’t so angry he might have smiled, but the afternoon was darkening with rain, and Eleanor Westbury was hardly wearing anything to warm her save a thin jacket and a piece of lace around her neck. Her hair was everywhere and very wet. If he had not found her, what then …? The very thought of it made him scowl as he strode into the clearing.

Cristo Wellingham was here? In the glade far from anyone with the fading light about them and anger in his eyes. She did not lower the piece of wood, but held it as a barrier between them.

‘People in trouble generally don’t hit their rescuers.’

His eyes were amber brittle as she tried to stop the shaking that had overcome her.

‘Your sister-in-law is, as we speak, imagining you to be in all sorts of trouble.’ His glance took in her sorry-looking mount with a singular understanding of its intractability.

‘How did you find me?’

‘The stone and some flowers! At least you thought to do that.’

‘You walked in?’

‘No. My bay is tethered a few minutes back. I heard your voice and followed the sound.’

He came forwards, but did not stop when he reached her, leaning down instead to check the saddle of her horse.

‘This is the problem,’ he said after a moment, disengaging a sprig of prickles. ‘They sometimes get burred on the skin and hurt with any movement or pressure.’

Straightening, he removed his hat and dusted it against the pale brown of his riding breeches. He was dressed today as an English country gentleman and Eleanor wondered if he would ever stop surprising her. Silence was punctuated only by the call of birds settling in the trees and by the trill of the river water a few yards away.

‘I arrived at Beaconsmeade as the rescue parties were being dispatched,’ he said finally. ‘I am glad it was me who found you.’

The last words were said in a different tone from the others and the skin on her arms rose in response. Pure and utter awareness, no pretence in any of it.

‘Glad?’

‘It gives us some time to talk.’

‘Talk?’ The heat in her was fiery red and she wondered if he could see the blush of it in her face.

‘Unless you would want more.’ He reached out as though to touch her and she stepped back. Not trusting his touch. Not trusting him.

Today he wore a ring on his little finger, the man in Paris creeping back in slow measures here. ‘Honour Baxter said that you had a daughter.’

‘I do.’ She made herself look at him, straight in the eye, as though they spoke of the weather or the lie of the land or some other insignificant thing. Only bravado and confidence would throw him off track.

‘Could I meet her?’

‘Why?’

‘She is almost five and I hear that she is a fair child with dark eyes.’

‘And you think because of it she could be yours?’ She laughed. ‘My mother was a beauty of some note and her colouring was the same.’

‘Your husband looks too ill to father a child.’

‘Now, perhaps, that might be the case. But back then …’

The ending was left unsaid.

‘Honour says the child is named Florencia?’

‘Martin and I lived in Florence for a good few years before coming back to England. It was in compliment to the city that she was named such.’ Pushing the boundaries further, she dredged up sympathy. ‘I am very sorry if you are disappointed or if you had imagined …’

Shrugging the sentiment away, he was closer now, so close she could feel the breath of him against her face when he spoke. Yet still he did not touch.

‘Is your husband kind, Eleanor?’

Martin’s name here under a canopy of trees, here in the wind as the day turned into dusk and the leaves rustled.

‘Of course.’

He smiled at that, the corners of his eyes creasing and showing up the depth of colour in his skin. Not a man who was trapped indoors, nor a man whose muscles and bone were wasting daily. She shook the thought away and concentrated on other things.