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So he felt it, too, this breathless intensity taking all that was ordinary and commonplace away and replacing it with…what? She stopped, searching for the right word, but it would not come in the way she wanted it and so her mind moved on.
He was due to marry one of the most beautiful debutantes of the Season and she was an outcast, for ever shut away from proper society. Nay, there could be nothing at all between them and to dream otherwise would only lead to the disappointment she had already experienced too much of.
Stephen stalked into White’s club in St James’s Street, barely noticing the surroundings of plush leather chairs and numerous chandeliers. All he wanted was a drink to wipe out the desire that coursed through him and the irritation of Catherine Allum’s untimely interruption.
Pure lust had made him admit that which should have been unspoken, but he wished he had kept his mouth shut even whilst imagining Aurelia’s flame-red hair lying across his loins, the heavy abundance of her breasts in his palms and his mouth.
Swearing roundly, he took a seat by the fire, draping his legs with his frock coat so that others might not see the swelling he could feel pushing against superfine.
‘A difficult day?’
He had not thought the seat opposite to be occupied, as it was turned at an angle away from the fire, but with a scrape of wood on parquet flooring Lucas Clairmont swivelled his chair, brandy being warmed by carefully cupped hands.
‘You have the look of a man who has sparred with the opposite sex, Hawk, and lost. My bets are the lady in question is the enigmatic Mrs St Harlow for I doubt the timid Lady Elizabeth Berkeley could raise such a high temper in anyone.’
Despite his dilemma Stephen smiled and accepted a glass of the same drop from a passing waiter, draining the contents before trusting himself enough to speak. ‘I met Mrs St Harlow unexpectedly at Hookham’s library and I offered to bring her youngest sisters out with the help of Cassandra Lindsay. They are twins.’
‘A very generous offer.’
‘And one she wanted to refuse.’
Laughter made Stephen wish that he had said nothing at all. ‘Only a good woman can get under your skin in that way, Hawk. My wife, Lillian, has the same capacity to make me wild with both fury and desire and all at the same time.’
‘I never said that was how I felt.’
‘Not in words, maybe, but there is something about your demeanour since the ball that is different… .’
‘It is provocation and exasperation, Lucas, and it all comes down to the impossible Mrs St Harlow.’
Luc finished his drink in one unbroken swallow. ‘Nay, it is the unexpected comprehension of feelings only few inspire, Hawk. If you listened to what’s left of your heart, you might just hear the music, and if you do it will probably save you.’
‘Lillian has turned you into a romantic, Luc, and your advice is completely without sense.’
But the strong liquor soured at the back of Stephen’s throat. For the first time in his life he did not know exactly what to do with a woman and it worried him. All of Luc’s talk of salvation rankled, too. Only innocence and purity might beat back the demons that consumed him and Aurelia St Harlow was no fresh-faced ingénue. His ruminations were interrupted, however, by Luc’s further rhetoric.
‘I ran into Lady Berkeley an hour or so back. Her daughter is most distressed that she may have offended you in some way at your ball. She has not heard from you since, it seems?’
‘I have been busy.’
Leaning forwards Lucas lowered his voice. ‘There is something else that I think you ought to know about your cousin’s mysterious widow, Hawk. She visits St Bartholomew’s Hospital once a month to speak with a doctor named Giles Touillon.’
‘French?’
‘Indeed.’
The world spun inwards. Lord, Shavvon had sent him to the warehouses in the Limestone Hole to find a French connection and a disenfranchised traitor. Could Aurelia St Harlow be the leak? After a lifetime of spying Stephen had ceased to believe in the benevolent nature of mere coincidence. It was always so much more than that.
‘You look…odd, Hawk. Are you well?’
‘Very.’ Stretching back in the chair, he smiled. Even before Lucas he erected barriers. The thought made him sadder than it ought to. ‘If you see Lady Berkeley in the next day or two, Luc, could you tell her I shall call upon them at the end of the week for I have been summoned away north.’
‘Problems at Atherton?’
‘Life is always demanding its pound of flesh,’ he returned, feeling in the answer that he had not quite lied.
A few hours later Hawk walked through the maze of alleyways between Katherine Street and Drury Lane, the stench of this poorer part of London rising in his nostrils. A woman’s fan brushed his face and he warned her away, the age-old code of the streetwalker’s offer lost in a smile where both gums and teeth had been eaten up by the mercury cure.
He was glad he had come in the guise of a sailor, the homespun of his clothes attracting little attention as he pulled the hat he wore further down upon his forehead.
Knocking on the door of a house on the corner of one of the small intertwining streets, he waited. Within a few seconds the bolts were slipped and he was allowed through, heavy locks refastened behind him.
‘Phillips said ye’d come.’ The man before him was small and wiry, a shock of red hair topping a freckled face.
‘He’s left the papers, then.’ Stephen’s words were tinged with the accent of the same slums.
‘I need the words first. The ones you’d know to say.’
‘Angliae notitia.’
A lamp flared and the corners of the modest room were bathed in light. A woman sat to one side on a small stool with a baby asleep on her lap.
‘Not a peep, mind, to anyone. If you talk, me wife and I, we’re as good as gone.’
‘I understand.’ Hawk brought the coins from his pocket, the profile of the Queen etched in bronze. ‘There’s more where this came from if you have anything else.’ A flash of greed told him that the red-haired man probably did. Settling back, he crossed his legs in front of him. Experience had taught him patience in any negotiation and the art of biding his time. Information gathering had its own set of intricate rules, after all, and the first of them was to feign indifference.
‘The one they call Delsarte and his cronies have been hanging around the warehouse. I ain’t seen the woman do nothing with them, though. She just goes late back to that fancy home of hers up in Mayfair when she has finished and returns in the morning. As early as sin, I should say.’
‘Have you ever seen her talking with them?’
‘No.’
Stephen’s glance went to the girl sitting to one side, but her eyes were cast downwards.
‘There is something that I heard Delsarte say…’ Stopping, he waited for a timely reminder and Hawk handed him another handful of coins. ‘He said that he was going to Paris and that there was more money in it than this business could provide him with. Then the rain came down heavy so’s that I couldn’t listen no more. The woman he was talking to was from Mother Spence’s place down Katherine Lane. A big dark-haired girl with patches, rouge and a long scar down her forearm. She might know more if ye asked her, though ye’d have to be careful as she was hanging on to him like he was a gift or something.’
‘Did you get into the warehouse to look over the files?’
‘No, not a chance to. The dog stops you when there’s no one in. A big monster of a hound that lets everyone know he’s there. I heard them mention a boat, though, last week, when I was following them home from the Black Boar. The Meridian. I checked and she’s in at St Katherine’s Dock.’
‘You’ve done well.’ Standing, Stephen placed a silver shilling on the table before him. ‘For the babe,’ he said as he collected his hat and left.
Nathaniel Lindsay was waiting for him in his library when he returned after eleven o’clock, and he had already finished a large amount of his best bottle of whisky.
‘You are still at the game, then?’ His eyes passed over the homespun as Stephen took off the woollen overcoat and hat.
‘If you come uninvited, you have to take what is here without comment, Nat.’ Finding a glass, Hawk poured himself a generous drink, pausing to enjoy the smooth taste of the golden liquid.
‘Cassie sent me.’
‘Why?’
‘She thinks you need a talking to over your choice of women.’
‘I thought your wife approved of Elizabeth Berkeley?’
Laughter echoed around the room. ‘You would devour everything about that poor chit within a year, Stephen, and curse yourself for doing so.’
‘Indeed?’
‘Women are like this whisky, my friend. Find a full-bodied and complicated brew and it will suit you for ever. It worked for both Luc and me.’
The words fell into the silent warmth of the library, soft harbingers of persuasion. ‘You are saying that the basis for a good marriage is a complicated woman?’
Nathaniel’s hands flailed in the air. ‘I am saying that I am worried about you, Stephen. All this…disguise and deception. It is making you sadder than you need to be.’ He paused for a second before carrying on. ‘Remember when your parents died and we were at school? How old were we then? You and Luc and I?’
‘Thirteen.’
‘Thirteen. And we said that we would always be family from then on. We made a promise cut into the skin at our wrists.’ Pulling up the sleeve on his arm, he traced one finger over a thin white line. ‘I pressed too hard and ended up in the clinic and you slept on the floor beside me for a week. I think if you had not been there holding my hand in the cold of the night I wouldn’t have survived. Now it is my turn to make certain that you survive.’
With a frown Stephen looked down at his own hands, the nails filled with dirt from where he had scraped them along the earth on the driveway before his foray into the dark alleys off St Katherine’s Row. Placing his drink down, he stood, walking to the window to look out into the darkness.
‘I have already told Shavvon I am leaving.’
‘When?’
‘After this…case.’
‘Your brother would be pleased were he still here.’
‘Considering he died for the same cause that I am quitting, I highly doubt it.’ The ferocity of the words surprised Hawk.
‘Which is the sole reason that you have stayed in for so long. Daniel was killed because he didn’t listen to reason just as you are not doing now.’
‘No. He died because I didn’t protect him.’
‘You took a bullet in the thigh and spent a good portion of that summer in a coma and have limped ever since, for God’s sake. Your brother died because neither he nor you could outrun bullets fired by a crazy Frenchman with little in the way of integrity. You did your best to save him, Hawk, and you have paid the price in pain ever since. It’s time to let it go, let it all go and find the life Daniel was never able to live. It would not be a betrayal.’
Betrayal?
Life in the British Service had in effect once saved him, giving purpose and family to two young boys left without either. With their parents gone, Daniel and he had been rudderless until the steady sure hand of responsibility and duty had guided them on to a path which was significant and worthy. Such initial fealty now caused Hawk’s conscience to burn, yet beneath, another need blazed brighter.
Aye, betrayal came in many forms.
That thought made Stephen look up. If he didn’t change, he would die. Soon. Like his brother, disappearing into the hazy and shadowed world of espionage.
Today in the company of Aurelia St Harlow he had been honest, a chance taken without thought of recompense or reprisals. He had told her exactly what he thought lay between them and he had seen the answering flicker in her eyes—an unconstrained candour budding like green leaves from a bare and frozen branch in the first days of spring. New life. New hope in the peace of truth.
Outside, a shooting star fell from the heavens and for the first time since Stephen was a child he took a moment to wish upon it.
When he called upon Nat and Cassie two days later Aurelia St Harlow and her sister Leonora Beauchamp were ensconced in the small blue downstairs salon with Cassandra and her oldest sister, Maureen. Lady Delamont, the St Auburns’ London neighbour, was also in attendance, a surprising fact given that Aurelia’s reputation was hardly salubrious.
‘Stephen.’ Cassie crossed the room and drew him in before he could escape. ‘Nathaniel said you might drop by and he instructed me to keep you here until he returned. Something about “a full and bodied brew”, he said, though goodness only knows what that might mean. You know Lady Delamont, of course, and you remember Mrs St Harlow and her sister Leonora Beauchamp from your ball the other evening. Maureen is up for a week to stay with me, too.’
‘Good afternoon, ladies.’
Leonora smiled at him and moved over, giving Stephen no choice but to find a seat in the middle of the sisters. Aurelia did not look at him.
‘I’m glad you have returned early from your journey north, Hawk,’ Cassie said, with the vestige of a question.
Lady Delamont laughed and joined in the conversation. ‘Lady Berkeley will be pleased, Hawk. The youngest Berkeley daughter is hoping to snare a husband before too long, I hear, and your name is amongst the mooted candidates for a dinner she has planned. A nice gal, Elizabeth, with good manners and a pleasing conversation. She will make someone a loyal and malleable wife.’
Somehow the words did not sound like praise and, chancing a quick look at Aurelia, Stephen saw how her hands had tightened on the velvet reticule in her lap.
‘Oh, Hawk’s name is on all the lists, Deborah.’ Cassandra swatted away the gossip easily and began to speak instead of the gowns she had particularly noticed at his ball. In the ensuing chatter Stephen was able to turn and speak privately to Aurelia for the first time. Today her hair had been tightly plaited so that the redness looked darker. A small pin embellished with a ceramic flower sat above her ear.
‘For a woman on society’s blacklist, you seem to be garnering a good number of invitations.’
Deliberation laced a small anger. ‘As soon as my sisters are paired off I am certain I shan’t get another one, my lord.’
‘If you throw off the black shroud you might be surprised, Mrs St Harlow. The swatch of scarlet I saw you holding the other day, for example, would suit you admirably.’
The look on her face was dubious. ‘Red against red, my lord?’
‘Too tempting?’ Stephen enjoyed the glint of confusion in her unusual eyes and, stretching out, he allowed his thigh to touch hers. She moved back as though she had been burned, leaving as much space between them as was possible, her left side plastered tightly against the armrest.
Her reaction was ridiculous. She knew that it was, but it was as though her body almost sizzled when he touched her. Please God that he might not have perceived her response, that he might not have noticed.
‘Your father is looking well, Mrs St Harlow.’ Lady Delamont leant across and spoke loudly. ‘I always thought it a great pity when your mother left him. Sylvienne was very like you to look at, my dear, with her red hair and that quiet air of caution. I hear she lives in Paris now?’
‘She does.’
‘Surrounded by luxury and various beaus, no doubt? She had every eligible suitor in London after her in the Season, an original with a brain to match. Do give her my regards next time you see her.’
‘I shall indeed, my lady.’
Aurelia’s smile felt as artificial as her words. the last time she had visited Mama, Sylvienne had clung to her like a child needing comfort, the high price of her numerous lovers scrawled in heavy payment across her face. Abandoned by society. When she had asked after Papa the undercurrents of regret could be clearly heard in her question.
Perhaps she and her mother were more alike than she thought. Her mama had chosen to leave the right man and she had chosen to stay with the wrong one.
Unlucky in love.
The tiny phrase clung in her mind and Aurelia took in breath. She could not afford to let her guard down and Stephen Hawkhurst wasn’t a man to be played with. He was dangerous and powerful and menacing. Even here, sitting still amongst a group of women she was aware of a thrumming authority, a man who had fought in wars and lived.
Aye, survival had a certain note of guilt that isolated one and made mockery of small concerns. It also brought a sadness that was palpable and haunting, the vestige of dark things that were never spoken of again.
Leonora’s laughter dragged her from her thoughts.
‘I should love to come, Lady Delamont, and I am certain my sister would, too.’ Aurelia’s heart sank. ‘A masked ball, Lia. What could be more exciting?’
