A Proposition For The Comte

She was thinner than she had been in years, the generous curves that her husband had delighted in at first now lessened. A changed and altered appearance; but it was the inside she truly worried about, for there were weeks when she felt empty save for an all-consuming fury.

It was on the third turn of the room dancing in the arms of Mr Douglas Cummings that she saw him, standing over against the wall and surrounded by people. She felt her footing falter.

‘Are you quite well? We can sit this dance out should you wish it.’ Cummings’s words held question.

‘No, it was only a misstep.’

Her voice sounded off even to her own ears, but she wanted to pass by again to make sure that it was truly her mysterious stranger and the best way to do this was by using the waltz.

She tried to smile and concentrate, on Cummings, on the dance steps, on her heartbeat that sounded louder and louder in her ears. Then he was in sight again, twenty feet away, speaking with a woman whose hand rested in a daring fashion across his chest.

There was no sign at all of the wound above his right ear. Tonight his hair was en queue, tightly tied back, and was much longer than anyone here wore theirs. He looked different from the man who had been pale and drawn and trussed up in a nightgown in her house.

He looked magnificent.

Who was he?

As though she had spoken out loud he looked up and their gazes caught across the space. Shocking. Unfathomable. For the first time in a long, long while Violet felt her body rouse into heat. Breaking the contact, she turned back to her dancing partner.

‘There are many people here tonight, almost a crush.’ If each word held a quiver, Cummings had the good grace not to comment upon it.

‘It’s the speciality of the Creightons. Invite anybody and everybody and hope that in the mix there is scandal and mayhem. They thrive on it and it is why the invites are so sought after.’

‘A dangerous logic?’

‘And yet everyone turns up because it is mesmerising to see the risk of chaos in action.’

Her head felt light and she clutched at Cummings’s hand more tightly than she meant to. Would there be some repercussion this evening to the man with the scar on his chin? Were there others here tonight who might know of the fracas in the boarding house on Brompton Place? More than a fracas. A murder. Over two weeks ago now which could indicate some sense of safety?

She did not recognise any of the men who stood in the group around him. The ladies were some of the most beautiful women of the ton and the ones whose reputations were not quite solid. The stranger gave off the same sort of air, one of danger and risk and plain pure sexuality. The connection shocked her.

‘I think perhaps I might sit down now, Mr Cummings, if you do not mind.’

When she peered back at the group in the corner she saw that his interest had once again been taken by the woman beside him and he was laughing at something she’d said, the lines in his cheeks deeply etched.

Dismissed and forgotten. Perhaps he truly did not recognise her or perhaps he did and wanted no reminder of that particular peculiar evening. Both possibilities left her with no avenue of further discourse.

Antonia swept into view beside her even as Violet sat.

‘Did you see the French Comte? You must have noticed him. He is over by the pillars at the far side of the room?’

‘Who?’ An inkling as to just what Antonia was going to say raced through reason.

‘The Comte de Beaumont, of course. The man I was telling you of. I saw you looking at him so do not say you weren’t. Is he not just the most divine creature you have ever laid your eyes on?’

Her stranger was the Comte de Beaumont? The man recently come into English society and sending all its ladies into swoons?

Such a realisation was shocking, but beneath this truth other things were solidifying. He was unmatched, but he was also full of a darkness that could only hurt her.

‘My brother said he saw him going into one of the wicked opium dens in town. To partake, do you think?’ The shock in Antonia’s eyes was underlined by excitement.

Harland had used laudanum in the last years of his life, too, as an aid to his gambling losses, the sickly-sweet smell still inclined to make her feel ill. The dream weaver, he had called it, as he’d tried to foist it upon her.

‘It might loosen you up, Violet. You used to be so much more fun than you are now.’

He had said other things, too; an undertone of bitter recrimination in each and every word.

With determination she pulled her thoughts back to this minute, the gentle three-point melody of a waltz in the distance and the chandeliers above twinkling in long lines of muted light. The beauty and energy of the room swirled around her. Here nothing sordid or ignoble could touch her. Here she was beyond reproach and lauded.

The vanity of such a thought worried her, but she tossed that aside.

Could the Comte de Beaumont have murdered a man a few moments before she’d found him? There had been blood on the blade in his boot and much more on his clothes.

‘The Frenchman is a man of secrets, would you not say, for there are whispers that in Paris his family escaped the Terror unscathed and are rich beyond imagination.’

‘Anything can be said of anyone, Antonia, yet that does not make it true.’

Her friend smiled. ‘Still, is there not something about him, Violet? Some tempting beauty? Lady Catherine Osborne obviously thinks so, for look how she hangs on to him as if she might never let him go.’

Making no effort to turn in that direction, Violet wished that her friend would show the same sort of reserve.

‘His mother was English. One of the Forsythes from Essex, although she passed away a good few years ago in France. His father is still hale and hearty. Duc de Lorraine-Lillebonne is his title as he hails from that ancient family.’

Lineage and wealth. No wonder the Comte was being fêted by all the women of the ton. But why then had she found him lying wounded on the side of a cold and midnight road, a man who had given her no name by which to place him?

Secrets. They hung across his shoulders like a heavy mantle; she could see it in the way he held himself and in the quiet watchfulness of his person. Perhaps it took one to know one, she also thought, wondering if her own mistruths were so very easily noted.

The sound of the orchestra tuning up for another dance caught at her attention and she smiled. The quadrille. More usually on any given night her dance card would have been full, but because she had been so late in arriving this evening she had not even taken it out of her reticule. She was pleased that she hadn’t, for it meant she could leave earlier and without comment.

Antonia knocked at her arm. ‘De Beaumont is coming this way with my brother. Smile, Violet, for you have the grimace of one marching to her death instead of feasting your eyes and appreciating true masculine beauty.’

Gregory MacMillan was all eagerness as he reached them. ‘Comte de Beaumont, may I present my sister, Lady Antonia MacMillan, and her great friend Lady Addington. The Comte is recently come from Paris and has asked me for an introduction to the two most beautiful women in the room.’

When Violet looked up she could see that the flowery words of Antonia’s brother were just that. The Comte de Beaumont looked as surprised by the sentiment as she had been.

‘I am pleased to meet you both.’

So that is how he wished to play it, the recent history between them discounted. With a small tip of her head she noticed that Antonia was doing her very best to crawl up against the newcomer. ‘I do hope that you are enjoying your sojourn to London, Comte?’

The flirtatiousness in her tone made Violet wince.

Please, God, she thought, let this finish. Let him move away before the dancing begins in earnest. Let him tip his head and leave us behind.

‘It is a city I do not know well any more, I am afraid, Lady Antonia. A city of contrasts.’

Dangerous and bustling. Lies and truth. Gunshots and dancing. Coyness and peril. Life and death. Love and hate. Light and darkness.

He did not now exhibit any semblance of pain or discomfort and the scar across his chin looked almost pale, lost in the dim light of candelabras.