One Unashamed Night

They were coming.

People were coming.

Binding his hair into a tight queue, he stood with his face against the sky and waited, the hat that he had borrowed from the younger man in the carriage pulled down across his forehead, shading his eyes from other prying ones.

‘A rescue party will be here in five minutes,’ he warned, his voice distant. He could not help it. This was a place he had no knowledge of and the daylight was upon them. If he walked towards her, he might trip on a misplaced object and his brother had described to him in detail the opaque clouds in his left eye.

He did not wish for Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke to see that. He did not want her to know that he was a man who functioned best only in the darkness, a man who depended on his trusted servants and the familiar shorelines of his home. Risk free and easy.

‘You can hear them?’ she asked and he merely nodded. ‘Well, I can make out nothing at all and I always thought myself rather accomplished on hearing things that others could not.’

She sounded nervous and a little desperate, the higher tones of a frantic embarrassment clearly audible.

Why?

She was a widow after all and far from her first flush of youth and the night they had spent together had been completely consensual.

Perhaps it was the sheer worry of having others come to judge her in the predicament she now found herself in, for co-habiting overnight with a man would be considered racy even in his circle of friends and Mrs Bassingstoke sounded more like someone at home in the country.

His fist beat against his thigh as he pondered options. ‘I will disclose our sleeping arrangements to no one, Mrs Bassingstoke. Perhaps that will put your mind at rest.’

‘Indeed, Mr Wellingham.’ He was bothered by the worry in her words. Hardly above a whisper.

‘And if you could be so good as to fashion a nest in the hay that would only leave room for one person, then that should help this charade further.’

He listened as she did as he had suggested before sliding down to sit against the wall. Two people sheltering at either end of the barn and fully clothed! He hated the small catch he could hear in her voice as she began to talk again.

‘Are you based in London, sir?’

He shook his head. ‘More often than not I am away from it,’ he returned.

‘I see.’ He heard the deep intake of breath as she contemplated his answer. ‘So if by chance I should catch sight of you in the streets…?’

‘Your reputation would stay safer should you ignore me altogether.’

‘Ignore you altogether.’

Echoed. Lonely. Taris wished he might take his words back and replace them with other, softer words, words that did not decimate any contact with such a final thrust. But there was nothing he could do, not here, caught at the mercy of everyone, a man who was not able to even find his way to the edge of a small barn without falling.

His rejoinder cut into the quick of Bea’s self-esteem. Of course he would not wish for a plain woman of little attraction to be vying for his attention. Questions would be asked, after all, and she was hardly the sort who would be able to shrug them off with an inconsequential ease.

Ever since waking this morning he had barely glanced her way. Once had been enough, probably, to determine her mousy-coloured hair and her unremarkable eyes, let alone anose that was hardly retroussé and a chin that was much more defiant than was deemed fashionable.

Plain!

She had never felt the condition with such an agony and the ache of rejection was wretched. Taking a breath, she tried to exhale in a calm and dignified manner. Frankwell might have robbed her of youth, but a will that had been long bent was again firming, and the gift of independence was something that she could cling to. She had both gold and land and the means to be beholden to no one. Ever again! It was at least a start.

Swallowing, she stood, the group of people coming on horseback now visible, the men they had spoken to last night joined by a good many others, society folk, their dress rich and ornate.

When they finally came within ten yards of the barn the most beautiful woman Beatrice had ever seen in her life slid from her steed and ran.

Taris. Taris. Oh, thank God.’ Her eyes were flooded with tears and the chignon in its net had slipped, allowing a halo of blonde silken curls to fall in riotous abandon down to her shoulders as she flung herself into his opened arms.

‘My God, we thought we…had lost you…we thought you had been swept away in the storm or buried beneath the pile of snow and the hailstones…have you ever seen such hailstones…?’

The tirade stopped only as turquoise eyes came level with Bea’s, interest stamped across uncertainty.

Taris Wellingham turned finally in her direction, his amber gaze running quickly over her as though only just remembering that she was indeed still here. ‘Emerald Wellingham, meet Mrs Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke.’

Emerald Wellingham?

He was married? My God, he had lied to her, lied about everything…

‘She is my sister-in-law.’

Relief made the world bend in a strange way and Bea placed her hand against the wall to steady herself. Taris Wellingham neither came forwards nor commented on her instability and the callous indifference in his eyes confirmed her deductions. She meant nothing to him. She was just a warm and docile body with whom a freezing night had been passed more quickly. But at least he was not married!

She felt the turquoise gaze of the newcomer take in her dishevelled clothes and the hay that was stuck to them, summing up her character in the clues that lay all around.

A plain woman who would take the chance of an unexpected night with a man who looked as beautiful as this one did.

Shame battled with anger and both were over-taken by surprise as another man with a look of menacing danger joined them. Beatrice noticed he had a rather pronounced limp.

‘We travelled up from London at first light when you failed to come to Park Avenue. Emerald had a feeling about it all and would not be fobbed off with any excuse.’

‘It was the storms that made me uneasy, Taris, though Asher said I should not be concerned…’

Asher and Taris Wellingham? The names were suddenly horrifyingly familiar to Beatrice, for she had read of them across the years, two brothers who had ruled the ton with their wealth and escapades.

Falder Castle was their seat and they were the direct descendants of the first Duke of Carisbrook and if memory served her well Taris Wellingham had recently acquired extensive properties in Kent. Her cheeks burned with the growing realisation of how far she had trespassed into a world she knew nothing of and all she wanted was to be gone from this place, removed to one of the carriages that she could see now pulling up to the barn, further faces turned towards her, questions in their eyes.

‘The weather will be upon us in the next few moments, my lord, if we do not hurry from here.’ A tall thin man had come to the side of Taris Wellingham and she was bemused by the way he threaded his arm through that of his master.

The woman Emerald seemed as protective, her hand coming into his on the other side as they turned for the coach. She was amazed that Taris Wellingham allowed them to shepherd him in such a manner and was about to say something when his brother gave an order to the servant next to her.

‘See to the woman, Forbes.’ The young servant nodded even as the Wellinghams disappeared from view.

She could not believe it. He would not even tarry to say goodbye after all that they had shared?

The sound of a door shutting and a call to the horses answered her query. Then the beat of hooves and a quickening pace, the contraption lost to the whiteness of the landscape and the newly falling snow.

Gone.

Finished.

‘If you would come this way, miss, the others are in the coach…’

‘Others?’