A Proposition For The Comte

The woman peering at him was beautiful. He hadn’t seen such colouring on anyone before, with her green-grey eyes, stark white skin and hair that fell around a finely sculpted face in a blaze of red glory. She also looked uncertain, her full lips parted and the tip-tilt of her nose above giving her the appearance of an angel newly delivered from Heaven. A sun-kissed one at that, given her freckles.

Shaking his head hard, he imagined her as an illusion resulting from the blow to his temple and the shot in his side, but when he looked again all the parts of Violet Addington were still assembled in such a startling comeliness.

Violet. She suited her name. Delicate. Unadorned. Fragile. A hint of steel was there, too, as well as a baffling openness.

Lady Addington? Why would she be in a bedchamber with him across the depths of a frigid London night wearing a dark green high-necked ballgown with her hair down?

Nothing quite made sense.

‘Why are you here with me alone?’ He did not wish to give her his name for it meant some involvement in his life that she could not help but be hurt by. He was pleased when he saw her measure the truth of his reticence and look away. If he could have dragged himself off the bed and got to the door there and then, he would have, but nothing seemed to be working properly and he was so damnably tired.

‘You were reading me a story about the Spartans?’

She smiled. ‘I imagined you might enjoy it. You look a little like one of those ancient warriors yourself.’

‘In an embroidered nightshirt?’

‘Oh, it’s not your clothes I am speaking of, but your disposition. One would need to be more than dangerous to be allowed within their ranks. It’s a certain peril, an expectation, a darkness that does not allow in the light.’

‘Well, you’re right about that at least.’

Shadows crossed her face, a frown marking a line on her forehead. ‘I should probably leave you to sleep.’

He closed his eyes momentarily as he nodded and when he opened them again she was gone.

She barely slumbered that night, but lay tense and fidgety in her bed, listening for any sound of movement, but hearing none at all from his chamber at the end of the corridor. Was he asleep or did he lie there as she did, eyes wide open with expectation?

He had not wanted to give her his name which meant there were secrets he wished hidden. His weapons were back at his side now and she wondered if that was a safe thing to have done for the well-being of her household. But his query as to whether anyone had followed them also rang loud in her head.

Did he expect more trouble? Was he a man whom others could be hunting even at this moment along the wealthy streets of Chelsea and Knightsbridge? If peril were indeed to arrive at her door would he be able to protect them all? Or was he the peril?

The clock in her room beat out the hour of four and still she felt sleep far away. Once she had seldom slept at all through the night, day after day of restless slumber ending only when her husband’s factor had come up from the stables with a solemn face to pronounce Harland dead from an accident.

Nowadays she slept a little better, if not dreamlessly, the city enveloping her with its noise and its toil; the sort of rest that had taken the circles from beneath her eyes. The dragging lethargy was gone, but often she felt the self-blame of doubt.

Could she ever regain the girl she had once been before her marriage, the one who had thought the world open and good and fair? The one who was not so scared of life?

She turned her wedding ring on her finger, wishing she could simply tear it off and be done with memories, but there were expectations here in society and requirements for grief, even if the emotion did not exist in her. She could not expunge the memory of Harland completely from either her person or from the town house without such vehemence tossing up questions. Questions she could ill afford to answer.

She felt old and dried up, today’s unexpected ending so out of the ordinary that she was certain it would all finish badly, just as everything else in her life so far had.

The stranger had been hurt many times, the doctor had said and so had her housekeeper, for his skin was marked with years of violence. The stillness in him magnified his danger, too, his observation menacing. He gave an impression that he was just waiting for his time to strike, marking out his territory, lying there injured and pale but with watchfulness alive in his eyes.

It was as if she had invited a Bengal tiger to sit down with her for supper. She could already feel the damage he might leave for he was far from tame, perhaps temporarily muzzled and bridled by his substantial injuries, but undeniably perilous. She would be a fool to think otherwise.

The anger in her rose and sleep seemed a long way off.

She woke up with a start, her heart pounding, and the clock at her bedside pointing to the late hour of ten. Was he dead? Had the doctor come again? Was the world changed in a way that might make everything different? Why had no one woken her? All these questions went around and around as she sat and rang the small silver bell to summon her maid.

Edith came with her usual bustle, though this morning she had news to impart. ‘When Mrs Kennings went in early to check on the newcomer the bed was made and the gown was folded. The junior maid said he was not in bed when she came to stoke the fires just after six, my lady. She said that he was a neat and tidy guest, though, and that he left you a note. I put it in my pocket here to give to you the moment you woke so that it would not be lost.’

With trepidation Violet took the paper, seeing how intricately the note had been folded in on itself. Her name lay on the outside. She waited until her maid left to fossick around in her dressing room for the day’s adornments.

Violet

It was written with a sharpened piece of charcoal from the fireplace in his room. Carefully she opened the missive so as not to tear the paper.

Thank you for your help. I will not forget it.

It was unsigned.

The hand was bold and sloped, the f’s tailed in a way that was foreign to an English way of writing. He’d underscored the word not as a means of emphasising its importance and somehow she believed him, for he hadn’t given the appearance of a man who might forget a promise.

Edith stepped back into the room, clothing across her arms and her expression full of curiosity. ‘I don’t know why he left so quickly, my lady, for the downstairs girl said there was blood on the handrail of the stair balustrade so he was hardly well.’

‘Let us hope then that he got to his home safely and is being cared for by his own family as we speak.’

Even as she gave this platitude she wondered if he would have a family. He gave the impression of detachment and isolation, a man who had walked the harsher corners of the world and survived. Alone.

He’d been dressed as a gentleman and had spoken like one, too. Had she the way of his name she might have made enquiries, but she shook away such a thought. If he had wanted her to know him, he would have given it and when he had made a veiled reference about others who might have followed him she had sensed his preference to remain anonymous.

She had finally got her life back on track and she did not wish to derail her newly found contentment. Better to forget him. Better still, maybe, to have never stopped and picked him up in the first place, but she could not quite make herself believe in this line of reasoning. The snow outside today was thick and the temperatures had plummeted. If he had been left all night out in such conditions she doubted he would have been alive come the morning.

Later that evening, sitting with Amaryllis in the downstairs parlour, Violet tried to concentrate on the piece of embroidery she was doing of a rural scene with a thatched cottage near a river, the garden full of summer flowers before it. The fire was bright and warm, the embers sending out a good deal of heat. Outside she could hear the occasional carriage passing, their noise muffled by at least four inches of newly fallen snow. Usually she loved this kind of quiet end to a winter day, with the darkness complete and a project in hand. Tonight, however, she was feeling restless and agitated.

‘My lady’s maid said that the marketplace was full of gossip this morning.’ There was a certain tone to Amara’s words that made her look up.

‘Gossip?’ Violet was not one to enjoy the whispers of tittle-tattle, but after her badly broken sleep she could not help but ask.

‘It is being said that there was a fight last night in a boarding house in Brompton Place that left a man dead. A gentleman, too, by the sounds. Seems the man had his throat cut. Brutally.’

The hint of question in her sister-in-law’s voice demanded an answer.

‘And you think the stranger we brought home may have had something to do with this?’

‘Well, we did find him at one end of Brompton Place and there was blood on his clothes, Violet. He also carried multiple weapons. God, he might have done away with us all in our beds had he the inclination for it and then where would we have been?’

Violet stopped the tirade as soon as she could. ‘Did anyone in the marketplace have an idea of the dead man’s name or occupation?’

‘I do not think so. It is understood that he was from the city and that he had a gun found beside him and a full purse in his pocket.’

‘It was not taken by whoever had killed him?’

‘That’s the way of it. It was violence the murderer was after, not the money, it seems. I suppose there are men here like that, men who live in the underbelly of London and in places we would have no knowledge of. Maybe he wanted to silence the other so that what was known between them should never be allowed to escape and it is a secret so terrible there will be repercussions everywhere.’

‘I think you have been reading too many books, Amara. Perhaps it was simply an argument that got out of hand.’

A sniffle alerted her to stronger feelings. ‘I feel scared, Violet, for an incident like this brings everything that much closer. What if they find out about us? What then? This could all happen again if we are not cautious.’