A Secret Consequence For The Viscount

And when her blue eyes met his, he saw the tears that streamed down her cheeks, sorrow, anger and grief written all over her face.

He touched her then. He took her hand into his own to try to give the coldness some warmth. A small hand with bitten-down nails. There was a ring on the third finger, encrusted diamonds in gold.

‘Was he a good man, your husband?’

‘I thought so.’

‘Then I am sorry for it.’

At that she snatched her fingers from his grasp and turned. She was gone before he could say another word, a shadow against the hedgerows, small and alone.

Why had she asked him here? What had she said that could not have been discussed in the breakfast salon in the morning? Why had she risked such a meeting in the very dead of night just to ask of his health?

Nothing made any sense.

* * *

Everything was now dangerous.

Nicholas being here, the desperate people who were chasing him, the new man he had become at the expense of the one he had been.

She barely recognised him inside or out. He looked different and he sounded different. Bigger. More menacing. Distant. And yet...when he had taken her hand into his she had felt the giddy rush of want and desire.

‘Nicholas.’ She whispered his name into the night as she sat by the fire.

‘Amnesia.’ She breathed the word quietly, hating the sound of it.

Lucy had been her priority for all the years of their apartness. She had risked her social standing, her family’s acceptance and her future for her daughter and if there was even a slight chance that Nicholas could place her in danger then Eleanor was not prepared to take it.

He had said the perpetrators had attacked him three times already and had looked as though he expected a fourth or a fifth or a sixth. What was it she had heard him say to her brother just a few hours ago as she had over-listened to their conversation in the library?

‘But it is dangerous, Jake. If anything were to happen to you or your family...’

If she told him the truth about that week before he disappeared, would he want to be back in their lives? Did she want to risk telling him of their closeness, knowing so little about him? He was a stranger to her now, so perhaps she should wait to discover what kind of man he was before revealing a secret so huge it would change all their lives for ever.

These thoughts tumbled around and around in her mind, going this way and that. If he had just looked at her for a second as he used to, she knew she would have capitulated and let him know everything. But this new Nicholas was altered and aloof, the indifference in his eyes crushing.

Lucy was now her priority. As a mother she needed to make decisions that would protect her child. She had not told another soul about her relationship with Nicholas. Jacob had been distraught from the loss of his friend and she thought he might not cope with another heartbreak and scandal. She had never seen her brother so broken.

And so she had told her family nothing of the father and lover and instead, with their help, had removed to Scotland and away from prying eyes.

Goodness, those years had been hard, she thought, and shook her head. She had been so lonely she might have simply died, there in Edinburgh in the house Jacob had set her up in waiting until she could return to Millbrook for the birth of her child. A terrible secret, a dreadful scandal and all the hope of what could have been disappeared as completely as Nicholas Bartlett had.

Blighted by her own stupidity, she’d lived in sadness until the first look at the face of her daughter had banished any regret.

On her return she found Jacob had concocted a story of a husband who had died and that she was now a grieving young widow with a small child in tow. She had become Eleanor Robertson at the stroke of a pen, the name being a common and unremarkable one, though she never thought of herself as such and used Huntingdon when signing letters to anyone she knew well. Oh, granted, she realised that many people did not believe such a fabrication, but nobody made a fuss of it either. She was a duke’s daughter with land and money of her own and in the very few times she’d returned to the city she found the few friends she still did have to be generally accepting of her circumstances.

A fragile existence that only took the renewed appearance of Nicholas Bartlett to break it down completely. But this missing week seemed well established in his mind and he himself had said it had been a month since any recall had returned.

Which meant no other memories had crept back in. She did not know enough about the state of amnesia to have a certainty of anything, but tomorrow she would go to Lackington, Allen & Co. and look up the files under the medical section of the library. Knowledge would aid her.

Perhaps she could help him redefine his memory. But should she? Would her presence at his side, even in that capacity, put her own self into danger?

She needed to wait, she thought. She needed to see just how the next few days turned out in order to make an informed decision about her and Lucy’s future.

He did not wear his crested ring any more. He did not smile as he used to. She wondered if he was financially strapped with his hair and his clothes and his scuffed old boots. There had been talk of his inheritances passing on to his uncle given the number of years of his being away. Perhaps being presumed dead even negated legal rights to property?

Many had thought him dead, after all. She had heard it in the drawing rooms of society and in the quieter salons of the ton. The dashing and dissolute young Viscount Bromley’s disappearance was mourned by myriad feminine hearts and the gold coins he had lost in the seedier halls of London’s gambling scene had only added to his allure. He was now touted as a legend whose deeds had only been enhanced by the mystery surrounding him.

Eleanor could not even imagine him in society looking like he did now. No one would recognise him. People would pity him. The scar at his cheek, the injured hand and the uncertainty. He would be crucified within the hallowed snobbery of the ton!

How could she protect him?

By staying in London and being there to pick up the pieces, perhaps? By sending Lucy home to Millbrook House with her nanny and maids tomorrow until she was certain which way the dice tumbled?

Oh, God, now she was thinking at the opposite spectrum of what she had started to decide. Stay away from Nicholas entirely or try to protect him? Which was it to be? Which should it be?

Underneath her thoughts a small flame flared, then took and filled her whole body with gladness. These arguments were all academic because now he was alive to her again. Nicholas Bartlett, Viscount Bromley, was not dead. He was here and breathing, the past covering him like a dull shroud, but nevertheless still quick.

Everything was possible whilst life bloomed and her brother and his friends would not desert him. She knew that from what Jacob had said. Placing her hands together she prayed.

‘Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you...’ Thessalonians again. She murmured the scripture into the silence with an emotion that she found both comforting and worrying.

Tonight she would dream of him just as she had done a thousand times since he had disappeared, his arms around her body and his warm lips covering her own.

But this time it would be different for he was no longer just a ghost.

* * *

Frederick’s carriage collected him the next morning well before the luncheon and when he arrived at the home of the Challengers in St James’s Square, Nick understood just how happy his friend was these days.

Georgiana, Fred’s wife, was gracious and welcoming even with the house in an uproar as it made itself ready for the evening’s entertainment.

‘It is a pleasure to meet you, Lord Bromley.’ A real smile touched her blue eyes and although she did not look at his scar, she did not look away from it either. ‘I have heard much about you for Frederick has spoken of you so very often.’

‘I hope he concentrated on my good qualities rather than the bad ones.’ He tried to keep his tone light.

‘The wildness of youth is never easy, I fear, and often misrepresented, but rest assured my husband has missed you.’

In such wisdom Nick detected that Georgiana’s life might have had its own complexities and he wondered about her story.

* * *

Half an hour later when he and Fred were alone in the library and a drink had been poured, Nick put his head back against the leather rest of a large wing chair and took in breath.

‘Your wife has the knack of making this all look easy,’ he said finally. ‘A house of things being both interesting and alive, but without the chaos of your upbringing? Where did you meet her?’

‘I first saw her at Vitium et Virtus late one night when she was auctioning off her virginity to the highest bidder, wearing nothing more than a silk concoction that was barely decent.’