A Proposition For The Comte

‘You deserve a good man to walk in life beside you, Violet, and I pray nightly to the Lord above that you might yet find one.’

This was a conversation that had been ongoing across the past twelve months between them, but tonight Violet was irritated by it. ‘I have attained the grand old age of twenty-seven, Amara, and I am not on the lookout for another husband. Thank goodness.’

That echo of honesty had her sitting up straighter, the wedding ring on her left hand catching at the light.

She remembered when Harland had placed it on her finger under a window of stained glass and beside a vase filled with lilies.

She’d never liked the flowers since, the sheen on waxy petals somehow synonymous with the sweat across her new husband’s brow. Avaricious. Relieved. A coupling written in law and not easily broken. Her substantial dowry in his hands and her father standing there with a broad smile upon his face.

The carriage had now slowed to pass through the narrow lanes off Brompton Road and then it stopped altogether—which was unusual given that the traffic at this time of the early morning should have been negligible.

Pushing back the curtain, Violet peered out and saw a man lying there. A gentleman, by the style of his clothing, though he was without his necktie and was more than rumpled looking. Unlatching the window, she called out to her driver.

‘Is there some problem, Reidy?’

‘It’s nothing, my lady. Just a drunk who’s fallen asleep on the throughway. The young footman is trying to remove him to a safer distance as we speak. We shall be off again in a moment.’

Violet glanced down and saw the half-truth of such a statement, for the Addington footman was a slight lad who was having a good deal of trouble in dragging the larger man to safety. The glint of dark blood caught what little light there was and without hesitation she opened the door and slipped out of the carriage.

‘He is hurt and will need to be seen by a doctor straight away.’ A heavy gash in the hairline above his right ear had spread blood across his face and there was a bandage wrapped about the top half of his left arm. His eyes opened at the sound of her voice, but she had no true picture of his visage in the midnight gloom.

‘I...will...be...fine.’ It was almost whispered, irritated and impatient.

She bent down. ‘Fine to lie here and die from loss of blood, sir, or fine to simply freeze in the cold of this night?’

Her driver had brought forth a light and the stranger’s smile heartened her. If he was indeed dying, she did not imagine he would find humour in anything. Laying one hand across his own, she felt it to be frozen.

‘Bring him into the carriage. Owing to the lateness of the hour and the falling temperature, I think it wise to deliver him home ourselves without further ado.’

With a struggle the servants righted him and Violet saw that he was tall, towering a good way above her own five foot six.

He swore in fluent French, too, a fact that made her stiffen and take in breath. Then he was sick all over his boots, the look of horror on his face plain.

‘Find the water bottle and sluice him down.’

Her driver’s frown was heavy. ‘It seems the man might be better left to go his own way, my lady.’

‘Please do as I say, Reidy. It is cold out here and I should like to be inside the warmth of the carriage.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

The water soaked her own silken slippers as it tumbled from the man’s Hessians on to the icy street. As the stranger wiped the blood from around his mouth with the fabric of his sleeve, a scar across the lower part of his chin was much more easily detected.

He looked like a pirate dragged in from battle, dangerous, huge and unknown, his dark hair loose and his eyes caught in the half-light to gleam a furious and glittering gold.

‘Where do you live, sir?’ She asked this question as soon as she had him settled, instructing her driver to wait and see which direction he required.

But even as he coughed and tried to speak his eyes simply rolled back and he toppled against the cushioned leather.

‘We will make for home. He needs warmth and a physician.’

‘You are certain, my lady?’

‘I am. Mrs Hamilton will see that I am unharmed and the young footman can join us inside. If there is any difficulty at all we will bang loudly on the roof. In his state, I hardly think that he constitutes a threat.’

As the conveyance began to move, Violet looked across at the new arrival. She thought he was awkwardly placed, the stranger, his good arm caught in an angle beneath him. He held a weapon in his pocket and another in the soft leather of his right boot. She could see the swell of the haft of a blade.

Armed and unsafe. She should throw him out right now on to the street where another might find him. Yet she did not.

He was wounded and the strange vulnerability of a strong man bent into unconsciousness played at her heartstrings.

It had begun to sleet, too, the weather sealing them into a small and warm cocoon as they wound their way back to her town house. Soon it would snow hard for the storm clouds across the city last evening had been purple. Further off towards the river, bands of freezing rain blurred the horizon. She shivered and then ground her teeth, top against bottom with the thought of all that she had done.

Impetuous. Foolish. How often had Harland said that of her? A woman of small and insignificant opinion. A woman who never quite got things right. Amara was observing her with uncertainty and even the footman had trouble meeting her eyes. The price of folly, she thought, yet if she had left him he would have died, she was certain of it.

Arriving home, she bade her servants to help the driver to carry the man in and sent a footman off to fetch the physician.

‘At this time of night he may be difficult to find, my lady.’

‘All I ask is that you hurry, Adams, and instruct the doctor that he shall be paid well when he comes.’

Placing her guest in a bedchamber a good few doors down from her own, Violet ignored Amara’s qualms.

‘He does not look like a tame man,’ her sister-in-law offered, watching from the doorway. ‘He does not quite look English, either.’

She was right. He looked nothing like the milksop lords they had waded through tonight at the Barringtons’ ball. His dress was too plain and his hair was far longer than any man in the ton would have worn theirs. He looked menacing and severe and beautiful. Society would tiptoe around a man like this, not quite knowing how to categorise him. Left in a bedchamber filled with ruffled yellow fabric and ornate fragile furniture he was badly misplaced. His natural home looked to be far more rudimentary than this.

‘Clean him up, Mrs Kennings, and find him one of my late husband’s nightshirts. The doctor should be here in a short while. Choose others to help you.’

The clock struck the half-hour as she walked past the main staircase to the library. She no longer felt tired. She felt alive and somewhat confused as to her reaction to this whole conundrum.

Harland had insisted that every decision had been his to make and she had seldom had a hand in it. Tonight there was a sort of freedom dancing in the air, a possibility of all that could be, another layer between who she had been and who she was to become.

If the servants wondered at her orders they didn’t say, obeying her and refraining from further query. Power held a quiet energy that was gratifying.

A knock on the door of her library a few moments later brought a footman inside the room with an armful of weapons. ‘Mrs Kennings sent me in with these, my lady. She said she thought they were better off here than on the stranger’s person. The doctor has just arrived, too.’

‘Ask him to come and see me when he has finished then, Adams. I shall wait for him in here.’

‘Very well.’

She noted the armaments were many and varied as she looked over the array on the table. A flintlock pistol made of walnut and steel sat before her, the brass butt plate catching the light. A well-weighted piece, she thought, as she lifted it and wondered at its history. A selection of knives sat to one side: a blade wedged into rough leather; a longer, sharper knife with a handle of inlaid shell; and a thicker, broader half-sword, the haft engraved with some ancient design.

The tools of his trade and a violent declaration of intent. Such a truth was as undeniable as it was shocking. This man she had helped was a dealer in death, a pillager of lives. She wondered how being such would have marked him. Perhaps at this very moment Mrs Kennings was lifting away the fabric of his shirt to show the doctor the scars written on his skin as a history.

She was sure it would be so. A darkness of blood was smeared across the dull grey of the sword’s steel where it had bitten into bone and flesh only recently. She imagined what the other opponent might now look like and crossed to the cabinet to pour herself a brandy.

She had not drunk anything stronger than a spiced punch in all the years of her marriage. Now she found herself inclined to brandy for the spirit took away some of her pain, though she was always careful to drink alone. The brandy slid down her throat like a warm tonic, settling in her stomach and quelling her nerves.