Mistress at Midnight

‘A woman who does not know her true worth is a rare and valuable thing.’ His voice allowed no tremor of falsity and when she turned towards him the breath left her body, his expression exactly the one she had seen at Taylor’s Gap: lust and want beaten back by will.

Breaking the contact, he fisted his palm against his thighs so that every knuckle stretched white. the scars on his knuckles stood out as raised edges of knotted flesh.

He swore soundly, the frustration expressed coursing between them. She should have bidden him to let her make the rest of the journey alone, should have replaced her gloves with a stern reprimand and ordered him from the carriage. But she could not. Instead she sat there, too, the silence growing as an ache, her hands bare in her lap and cold, her head heavy against the cushioned velour of the seat. For twenty-six long years she had imagined exactly this, a man who might transport her from the tight restraint of her life and deliver her into temptation.

His eyes glinted in the dark when she chanced to take a look, the bleakness in them shivering through green.

‘Your husband had questionable friends, Aurelia. Take care that they do not become your own.’

He would warn her even given the public perception of her part in Charles’s murder. Gratitude rose unbidden.

‘I live a simple and quiet life with my father and sisters. There is little in me that could be of interest to anyone.’

His laugh was menacing. ‘Somehow I doubt that entirely.’ The residual feeling existing between them since their kiss thickened. What on earth was happening to her? Hope drove into a veiled anger.

He would never be hers. It was written in exactly who she was. As she moved away carefully, the space between them became bathed in a pool of light reaching in from outside and when she saw that they were back in Upper Brook Street the relief was indescribable.

Braeburn House. The horses slowed to an amble and then stopped as Aurelia stretched the fabric of her unworn gloves out whilst deciding exactly what it was she would say. There were so many things that she might have told him, but in the end she settled on the one that would keep her family safe.

‘I relinquish you from any bargain that stands between us, my lord, and I realise that my insistence on an invitation to your ball was both forward and foolish.’ she enunciated the words very carefully and hoped that the need in her was not as visible as she thought it might be.

‘Your sister and Rodney Northrup may not say the same, Mrs St Harlow.’

The words were cold and stilted, none of the delight of the evening held within them, and as if to underline his desire to have her gone he simply leaned across to the door and flipped the handle, gesturing to one of his servants to help her alight.

He should not have been alone with her, jammed into the small space with the warmth of her skin and the rapid beat of her heart searing into all his good intentions. Aurelia St Harlow was his cousin’s widow and he was all but promised to Elizabeth Berkeley.

The anger in him grew along with a more unfamiliar frustration as he ran his fingers across his face, hating the way he was never able to hold them still. The night had left him wrung out and tired with the wax and wane of emotion and he still had a great deal of it to get through before everybody left. He wished that the hour was later and that the throng who danced and laughed in the Hawkhurst town house could have been gone, especially the Berkeleys. He did not have the energy to deal with Elizabeth’s unrelenting innocence in the light of his thoughts in the carriage, or the hopeful encouragement of her mother. He also knew that as the host he should not have left the party, but the opportunity for time alone with Aurelia St Harlow had been too enticing.

Cassandra Lindsay greeted him as he walked back into his downstairs salon a little time later.

‘Lady Elizabeth has been asking after you, Hawk. I said that I had seen you in conversation with Lord Calthorp and that you were heading towards the library.’

Sometimes, Hawkhurst felt Cassie knew a lot more than she let on.

‘Business,’ he returned and took a drink from one of the passing waiters as Nat and Lucas joined them.

‘The St Harlow widow is gone, then?’ Luc asked. ‘She looked nothing like the sort of wife I imagined Charles to take.’

‘What had you imagined?’ Nathaniel asked the question and Stephen was glad for it.

‘Someone of less substance, perhaps.’

‘Leonora Beauchamp spoke very highly of the sister, too,’ Cassie put in. ‘There are two other younger sisters, by her account, who will be out in the next few years.’

‘And the father?’ Stephen did not want to ask the question, but found himself doing so.

‘Sir Richard Beauchamp. He keeps to himself and seldom ventures into town. He is known as somewhat of an eccentric academic, a man of few words and little animation. Mrs St Harlow drives him around the park on a Monday afternoon straight after the luncheon hour, but they rarely stop to socialise with anyone.’

‘I get the feeling she is not quite the woman that society paints her to be.’ Lucas’s smile was puzzled.

‘If she wore a dress that showed off something of her very fine figure and a style that enhanced the vivid red of her hair she could be an original. Where on earth do you think she got the black gown? It looked like something a dowager would have worn back in the Regency days.’ Cassandra addressed the query to Hawkhurst, who shrugged it off as he watched his uncle thread his way through the room to join them.

‘I cannot find her anywhere, Stephen. Mrs St Harlow is quite gone.’

‘That is because I ordered a carriage to take her home, Alfred.’

‘Your man said that you were in it, too.’ Opaque eyes glinted in the sort of wily knowledge few understood his uncle to have retained. He was pleased Elizabeth was speaking with her mother a little way off, though he knew from the flare in Cassie’s eyes that she would make much of the revelation when she was able. Both Nat and Luc displayed no trace of hearing anything.

A careful neglect, he surmised, and turned his attention back to Elizabeth Berkeley as she joined them.

‘Your ball is becoming the very crush of the Season, my lord. I have never in all my life seen so many of the ton in one place and dancing.’

Stephen smiled, Elizabeth’s bright and happy reflection making him relax. ‘Lady Lindsay and Mrs Clairmont had a great deal of say in the organisation. Any success owes more to their management than my own.’

‘Mama says that it is a rare man who can inveigle so many to attend in the first place, and the supper was magnificent. Why, there are people here I have not seen venture out to any other soirée all Season.’

‘The power of a fortune is not to be easily underestimated, Lady Elizabeth.’ Nat’s tone was laconic.

‘I said exactly the same to my friends, Lord Lindsay, and they were all in agreement.’

‘Then I rest my case.’

Elizabeth’s fluster made Hawkhurst want to laugh, her innocence no match for the cynicism of his friend, but he did not because in the admission of such naivety another quandary rose unbidden. Could he really live for ever in the shadow of such unimpeachable trust without wanting more? The quick burst of risk? The enlivening rush of a gamble?

Leonora Beauchamp swept by them in the arms of Rodney Northrup at that very moment, all blond curls and youthful exuberance, the waltz giving them an excuse for closeness that no other dance managed to.

‘She is so very pretty,’ Elizabeth’s mother tapped her fan closed against her arm. ‘It is a shame that she comes tarnished by the reputation of her oldest sibling. My husband says if she had sense, Mrs St Harlow would leave society altogether and never return.’

Truth. How skewered it could become. Aurelia had risked everything for her sister’s welfare and none would ever know of it. He smiled, for ‘leaving society altogether’ might have been her most ardent wish.

A group of Elizabeth’s friends now stood beside her. He could tell that they had heard the words uttered about his cousin’s widow because the look of agreement and gossip was written full on their faces. Excusing himself summarily, he went to find a drink.

Aurelia sat in the downstairs salon near the hallway on a chair that was hard and straight, waiting for Leonora to come home. It was later than Lady Lindsay had promised it would be and she felt an exhaustion rise up that made her bone-weary. The clock at the other end of the room pointed to the hour of one, and she knew John, their servant, was waiting and then he, too, could find his repose.

He had left the lights burning this evening at her request, which was an expensive luxury, and they both watched the shadows at the window, listening for a noise. Finally it came.

‘They are here, ma’am.’

Nodding, she watched as he took a lamp and went out to greet the carriage. The laughter and the voices were joyful, Leonora’s particularly so, as she bid her companions goodnight.

A few moments later her sister was back inside and the large front door was closed against the darkness.

‘I have never in all my life had such a wonderful night,’ she trilled, turning on the floor as though she was still dancing with an imaginary Rodney. ‘Mr Northrup will come and call on us tomorrow, I am certain of it. Oh, Lia, you are the most caring sister in the whole world to have procured such an invitation for me.’

Her overt enthusiasm only had the effect of making Aurelia feel older and more tired and she was glad when Leonora bade them good evening and went to find the twins in their beds. To regale the whole episode to them, she supposed, and hoped that they would not wake Papa in their excitement.

John doused the flame of the lamp, his brow lined in worry.