Mistress at Midnight

‘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.

‘The young gentleman was adamant about shepherding Miss Leonora in until I told him that your father had been ill with the influenza, Miss Aurelia, but he seemed most anxious to visit.’

‘Then let us hope he does not stay long.’

‘I sometimes think, ma’am, that it is my family who has made everything impossible for you and that it would have been better had we just disappeared—’

She didn’t let him finish. ‘The court came to the conclusion that no one was to blame save Charles for his own death, John. It is my opinion that they were right.’

‘Without your help they may have come to another decision altogether.’ His face held the agony she had become accustomed to seeing there—an old man with the weight of secrets and sadness upon his shoulders. She recognised his anguish as the same emotion that crouched inside of her, waiting to pounce, biding its time.

‘And any other decision would have been an erroneous one, given all the facts.’

The older servant bowed his head and nodded before going to check that the doors were fastened. He had aged considerably in the years since Charles had been dead, but then so had she, his influence still lingering long after his demise.

Of a sudden she felt light-headed and dizzy. She had not eaten anything at the Hawkhurst ball and had been too busy helping finish the last stitches in Leonora’s gown to take succour at lunchtime, and here was a stranger who would be back knocking at the door of Braeburn House in only a matter of hours.

Had she made a huge mistake by petitioning Lord Hawkhurst for the invitations? She shook her head. No, there was nothing else she could have done and with careful management the whole thing could still work to their advantage for Leonora had been more than taken with Rodney Northrup.

It could have been a lot worse. Cassandra Lindsay’s brother seemed a kind man and the influenza that John had mentioned was also inspired. No one would expect Papa to appear downstairs for a good week or two at least.

Looking around, she was pleased they had kept a hold of some of the better furniture, though there were places where more expensive artefacts had once languished. The missing pieces were her inheritance, mostly; she had been careful not to strip the house of those things Leonora, Harriet and Prudence held dear.

They were finally gone, the last of the guests on their way home at almost five in the morning. Hawkhurst imagined the first flush of dawn on the eastern horizon as he climbed the stairs to his bedroom on the first floor.

He had met his agent and exchanged the papers, easily and secretly. He had watched Delsarte and his group, too, for there were rumours of an involvement in clandestine activities that the British Service wanted some measure of. Aurelia’s contretemps with Delsarte came to mind, his mission of watching the lord and his minions suddenly at risk. The personal and the professional were beginning to impinge on each other and he knew he would need to be more careful. Ten years of stellar service to his country were not to be taken away on a…whim. Hawk frowned at the word as he lay down, kicking off his shoes and watching the play of light and shadow outside through his undrawn curtains.

‘Aurelia St Harlow.’ He whispered the name into the darkness, listening to the sound of it return to him like some forbidden music.

Elizabeth Berkeley was softer and more familiar, yet it was not to the blond ringlets and pale eyes that his mind wandered as he remembered his cousin’s widow writhing against him in the dusk.

He wanted to kiss Aurelia and feel again what he had once, the sharp and unexpected delight of lust surprising him, for it had been many a year since he had known the sort of quickness that she inspired. The anger at such a demented fantasy had him sitting upright.

She was a woman who was said to have killed his cousin and got away with it, the whispered gossip of society following her every step. She would be forever ostracized and dismissed. He breathed out with a heavy force of air, for years of being a rolling stone had worn him away, homeless and searching, the shadows now thick harbingers of all he had become. He needed the security of a warm and easy home. He needed goodness and humanity and mercy to heal his demons, crouched now closer than ever. Taylor’s Gap had been a warning of his precarious state of mind and he knew he had to be more careful for with only a little push he might lose the touchstones altogether.

He opened a drawer on a small cabinet beside his bed and took out a box. A golden timepiece lay inside. His brother’s. Stopped at the moment of his death. The claws of grief had him standing and he made his way to the seat by the window to watch the heavens, a distant glimmer of light claiming the darkness to the east as dawn finally broke.

Alone. For so long now. The burden of it all made worse by his need for an heir. He swore as the hallowed legends of the Hawkhurst family wrapped around his chest so tightly he found it hard to move. The scent of violets felt close and his leg ached in the early morning cold.

Chapter Five

‘No, Papa, you have to eat your breakfast.’

Aurelia had had three hours’ sleep last night and she swallowed down irritation as her father refused to open his mouth, her eyes straying to the clock on the mantel. Eight o’clock already. She hoped Mr Rodney Northrup would not come calling until well into the afternoon, although she could already hear Leonora preparing herself for his visit.

‘I want to read, Lia. I want to sit and read.’ His hand came out and she smiled when warm fingers curled into her own. It had been two years since the father they had known had been largely swallowed up by a stranger that they did not, but sometimes like now there were the old glimpses of him.

‘Eat the egg, Papa, and then I will take you into the library.’

When he finally allowed her to feed him she breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Leonora has a beau coming to see her this afternoon. His name is Mr Rodney Northrup and he is a friend of Lord Hawkhurst.’ Aurelia always told him the news of the house each morning just in case he might take something in.

Prudence joined her after a few moments, her youngest sister’s face alight with anticipation, her hair a golden froth of curls.

‘Leonora says Rodney Northrup is the most handsome boy she has ever met, Lia. She says that he danced with her all night and sat close beside her in the carriage on the way home. She also mentioned that you had had a waltz with the menacing Lord Hawkhurst. Could you not have refused him?’

‘Hawkhurst?’ Her father spluttered the name. ‘Charles knew Hawkhurst?’

‘Indeed, Papa, he did.’

Prudence’s eyes widened. ‘Did Papa just understand us, Lia?’

Aurelia waited to see if her father would say more, but silence seemed to have claimed him again as he sat and fiddled with a spoon and a fork.

‘There are glimmers of comprehension still, Pru, although we have to expect that they will become fewer and further between, but enough of all this for now. Tell me, what is Leonora wearing today?’ The topic distracted her sister completely and as she talked excitedly about a silk gown trimmed with lace, Aurelia wandered her own pathway of thoughts.

Would Stephen Hawkhurst accompany Rodney Northrup? She hoped that he would not. Please, God, let him not come, she prayed over and over, jolted from her musings as her sister asked a question.

‘Did the invitation to Lady Lindsay’s country party include Harriet and me?’

‘As you have not even come out yet I should doubt it very much!’

‘But we are almost seventeen, Lia. Could we not at least plan a time when we should be able to accompany you to such things? We could borrow the older gowns Leonora no longer fits. It won’t be expensive.’

The plaintive tone in her voice had Aurelia taking a breath. When would it ever be easy? The silks were beginning to pay, but their debts were still substantial.

She should be at the warehouse now, sorting through fabric, but this visit by Cassandra Lindsay’s brother meant that she needed to be at home today, chaperoning her sisters as there was nobody else to do it.

As she closed her eyes the exhaustion she had felt last night was there again this morning so, after finishing her father’s leftover breakfast, she poured herself a glass of milk. If she became ill then the whole game was lost. One mistake and her father’s second cousin would be in to claim Braeburn House, leaving them homeless and penniless.

The horror of such a thing happening was not even to be considered and she stood to help her father back to the library. He did not understand what he read any more, but he enjoyed holding the books. She would instruct his maid to keep him there until after the visitors had gone, influenza giving her a good excuse for his absence.

Rodney Northrup was accompanied by his sister and they arrived well into the afternoon.

They were all in the downstairs salon when they heard the sound of a carriage stopping. Prudence ran to the window to be roundly growled at by Leonora who wanted everything to be simply perfect. Harriet rolled her eyes at Aurelia as they all took their seats again and listened to the approaching voices.

He was not with them! Relief flooded into Aurelia’s whole body. Hawkhurst had not come with his golden eyes, night-dark hair and menacing certainty. She unclenched her fists, removed her glasses and found herself smiling as Cassandra Lindsay and Rodney Northrup were shown into the room by John.

‘I hope we did not keep you waiting at all.’

‘You are right on time, Lady Lindsay,’ Aurelia returned, her sentiment not echoed in the face of both Prudence and Harriet.

‘Oh, please call me Cassie. All of my friends do.’

Without waiting for a reply she clasped Leonora’s hands next. ‘Rodney has been most keen to come today, my dear, and with you looking so pretty in pink I can well see why. Your two sisters mirror you in their pastel hues.’ She waited as Aurelia introduced the twins, their curly blond hair catching the light from the window.

‘I did not realise your sisters were almost all of the same age, Mrs St Harlow.’

‘Prudence and Harriet are nearly seventeen. They will come out next Season.’ Aurelia did not quite feel comfortable using Lady Lindsay’s first name and so did not add anything else at all.

‘And your father?’

‘Is indisposed at the moment with the influenza. He is in bed and has been for the past few days.’

‘Then let us hope he makes a good recovery with no lingering bad effects.’

In answer Aurelia smiled, the lies falling bald into the room between them. It had been so long since any stranger had set foot in Braeburn House and the need for lies made everything dangerous. Her eyes strayed to the clock. How long did one of these visits usually last for? She hoped it might be quick.

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