Ann Lethbridge - Regency Society

Still, today Ashe had come armed with news. The Dromorne family had decamped into the country, to heal, it was rumoured, and to forget. One of their maids had let it slip to Beatrice’s servant. Eleanor had left before the others with her daughter and sister-in-law, her things packed up in her absence.

To forget .

About him .

Her choice had been made in the aftermath of the fury and he could do nothing save stand by it. He had seen the anger in her eyes and understood exactly what had brought it there.

The silver strands of his daughter’s hair flew like a flag of virtue in his face.

‘I could break you out.’ Ashe’s voice was low-whispered, the knife he carried slipped into the straw on the edge of Cristo’s cell.

‘I could do that for myself, Brother.’

‘Then what stops you?’

He only smiled.

‘I will ride north with the Wellingham lawyers and demand Eleanor and Martin Westbury tell the truth.’

‘And I will deny everything. Eleanor and Florencia stay safe. No scandal. No muck-raking. No gossipy outrage outlining the stigma of her birth and of my part in it.’

‘And what of you in here? How long do you think you can last?’ Ashe turned and drove his fist into the stone. ‘Hell, Cris, you’re more stubborn than Taris ever was, even at his worst of times, and that’s saying something. Besides, if Lady Dromorne does not even have the courage to confess to the whole fiasco I’d say she wasn’t worth the life you seem to want to throw away so carelessly.’

Cristo turned from his brother’s words, the truth in them undeniable.

Eleanor had not come.

She had not even sent a missive to see that he still lived. For all that she might know he could be dangling now on the end of a rope, hanged for a crime that was not his. But even that thought was not quite correct. The crime had been his five years ago when he had taken her for a whore at the Château Giraudon and used her in a way no gentleman should ever use a lady. This was his penance. His punishment. The completion of a debt.

‘So you would sacrifice the Wellingham name for the Dromorne one?’ Asher again, his voice still lowered.

Anger forced his first real emotion. ‘I have sacrificed much in the name of others, brother. This one is entirely for myself.’

‘Guilt is a hard taskmaster.’

The pale eyes of Eleanor raised in supplication from a velvet bed shimmered before him, the wintertime Paris such a long way from a London gaol.

‘No, Asher. It is only easy.’

‘I cannot make him see sense, damn it, and Eleanor Westbury accepts all correspondence and returns none of her own.’

‘Yet if we give the truth of the matter to the law he will never forgive us.’ Taris finished the last of his brandy and poured himself another one.

Bea and Emerald sat with them in the downstairs library of the Carisbrook town house, all their children sent off with their nannies and myriad servants to Falder.

‘Azziz and Toro could get him out.’ Emerald bit at her fingernails as she said it. ‘They could bring him home.’

‘This is London, Emmie, not Jamaica, and a thousand constables would be after our heads should we be implicated. Besides, Cris would hate us for it.’

Beatrice walked to the window. ‘If Martin Westbury dies soon, Cristo might achieve exactly what he wants. A widow of spotless reputation and a child who is for ever seen as the offspring of her husband.’

‘And what if he lasts for years, Bea? What of the charges that Cristo faces right now?’ Taris’s voice was strained. ‘How can we get him out of there and have the charges gone without needing the help of the Dromornes?’

A knock at the door made them all start, and the butler came in with a sheath of paper sealed in red wax and ribboned. It was addressed to the Duke of Carisbrook. Ashe took it quickly and began to read.

‘The suit against Cristo is to be dropped.’

Taris shook his head. ‘Who talked, Ashe?’

‘Martin Westbury. It is stated here that there had been notes sent that had intimated kidnap. Dromorne also said that he had paid Cristo a substantial sum of money to protect his wife from harm given his own ill health, and that all the subsequent mayhem resulted from that bargain.’

‘Let’s hope the fact that he was the only Westbury willing to do anything to save Cristo’s skin might make our brother think twice about his apparent fascination for the fickle-hearted Lady Dromorne.’

Beatrice stood and joined her husband. ‘I cannot believe that she would simply let Cristo hang for an offence that she knew was not his. There must be something we do not know about in all of this …’

Taris held up his hand. ‘Right now it’s our brother I am more concerned about, Bea.’ He lifted his watch from his pocket and felt for the time. ‘Ten o’clock. Could we get him out tonight?’

‘Damned if they can try to stop us,’ Ashe answered as he called for the carriage.

The mist seemed to be clearing, widening, the sweet taste of freedom further away now and pain all that was left of any of it.

She was sick into the bowl held beneath her face, many times, sweat moistening her skin and making her clammy.

‘There, there, Lainie. You will be all right now. It is over. You are safe.’

Martin’s voice. The quiet tones comforting. She held on to the hand he offered. Her lips were dry and the skin in her throat was parched.

‘Water?’ A glass was brought to her lips as he tipped her head to taste it and more clouds cleared.

‘And your sister?’

‘Has gone. I sent her back to Scotland when I realised what was happening. Her husband has promised she will not venture into England again for many years.’

‘Cristo Wellingham?’

‘Is safe. I made sure of it.’

‘And Florencia?’

‘Is at this moment doing her lessons in the schoolroom with her governess.’

When he raised her hand to his lips to kiss it, she saw she was only skin and bone. ‘How long have I been like this?’

‘Two weeks.’

The time had her gulping back fear. ‘Fourteen whole days? What happened after … London?’

‘Diane took you north to an inn and administered laudanum. The doses were so high it took us some time to wean you off it.’

‘Us?’

‘The Dromorne doctor is in attendance.’

Eleanor lay her head back on the pillow and tried to take stock of everything. Where was Cristo Wellingham now? She had no way of asking, however, for already she could see in her husband’s eyes a disappointment that laid every other truth bare.

‘I did not lie to you, Martin, about Florencia. I just did not tell you the name of her father.’

He smiled at that. ‘And if I had asked, would you have told me?’

She considered this. ‘You never did ask.’

Closing her eyes, she felt tears leak between her lids, the tight ache in her throat making talking harder.

‘Nevertheless, I would have appreciated honesty that night you saw Wellingham again at the theatre. Surely then, Eleanor, you might have said something?’

The gap she had always felt between them widened, lies stretching out what little that had held them together. With only a push everything might break and the circles of tiredness beneath his eyes were dark, worry and illness mixed into deep bruises on his skin.

A man caught between the truth of expedience and struggling to do the right thing. His sister’s betrayal, his wife’s shame and his own body’s failings. An honourable man who deserved a lot more than the hand he had been dealt. She reached out.

‘I am so very sorry.’

One finger came across the line of her cheek, wiping away the tears, soft as kindness. ‘I should not wish for our name to be bandied about in the way that any confession could easily let it.’