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It was on the third turn of the room dancing in the arms of Mr Douglas Cummings that she saw him, standing over against the wall and surrounded by people. She felt her footing falter.
‘Are you quite well? We can sit this dance out should you wish it.’ Cummings’s words held question.
‘No, it was only a misstep.’
Her voice sounded off even to her own ears, but she wanted to pass by again to make sure that it was truly her mysterious stranger and the best way to do this was by using the waltz.
She tried to smile and concentrate, on Cummings, on the dance steps, on her heartbeat that sounded louder and louder in her ears. Then he was in sight again, twenty feet away, speaking with a woman whose hand rested in a daring fashion across his chest.
There was no sign at all of the wound above his right ear. Tonight his hair was en queue, tightly tied back, and was much longer than anyone here wore theirs. He looked different from the man who had been pale and drawn and trussed up in a nightgown in her house.
He looked magnificent.
Who was he?
As though she had spoken out loud he looked up and their gazes caught across the space. Shocking. Unfathomable. For the first time in a long, long while Violet felt her body rouse into heat. Breaking the contact, she turned back to her dancing partner.
‘There are many people here tonight, almost a crush.’ If each word held a quiver, Cummings had the good grace not to comment upon it.
‘It’s the speciality of the Creightons. Invite anybody and everybody and hope that in the mix there is scandal and mayhem. They thrive on it and it is why the invites are so sought after.’
‘A dangerous logic?’
‘And yet everyone turns up because it is mesmerising to see the risk of chaos in action.’
Her head felt light and she clutched at Cummings’s hand more tightly than she meant to. Would there be some repercussion this evening to the man with the scar on his chin? Were there others here tonight who might know of the fracas in the boarding house on Brompton Place? More than a fracas. A murder. Over two weeks ago now which could indicate some sense of safety?
She did not recognise any of the men who stood in the group around him. The ladies were some of the most beautiful women of the ton and the ones whose reputations were not quite solid. The stranger gave off the same sort of air, one of danger and risk and plain pure sexuality. The connection shocked her.
‘I think perhaps I might sit down now, Mr Cummings, if you do not mind.’
When she peered back at the group in the corner she saw that his interest had once again been taken by the woman beside him and he was laughing at something she’d said, the lines in his cheeks deeply etched.
Dismissed and forgotten. Perhaps he truly did not recognise her or perhaps he did and wanted no reminder of that particular peculiar evening. Both possibilities left her with no avenue of further discourse.
Antonia swept into view beside her even as Violet sat.
‘Did you see the French Comte? You must have noticed him. He is over by the pillars at the far side of the room?’
‘Who?’ An inkling as to just what Antonia was going to say raced through reason.
‘The Comte de Beaumont, of course. The man I was telling you of. I saw you looking at him so do not say you weren’t. Is he not just the most divine creature you have ever laid your eyes on?’
Her stranger was the Comte de Beaumont? The man recently come into English society and sending all its ladies into swoons?
Such a realisation was shocking, but beneath this truth other things were solidifying. He was unmatched, but he was also full of a darkness that could only hurt her.
‘My brother said he saw him going into one of the wicked opium dens in town. To partake, do you think?’ The shock in Antonia’s eyes was underlined by excitement.
Harland had used laudanum in the last years of his life, too, as an aid to his gambling losses, the sickly-sweet smell still inclined to make her feel ill. The dream weaver, he had called it, as he’d tried to foist it upon her.
‘It might loosen you up, Violet. You used to be so much more fun than you are now.’
He had said other things, too; an undertone of bitter recrimination in each and every word.
With determination she pulled her thoughts back to this minute, the gentle three-point melody of a waltz in the distance and the chandeliers above twinkling in long lines of muted light. The beauty and energy of the room swirled around her. Here nothing sordid or ignoble could touch her. Here she was beyond reproach and lauded.
The vanity of such a thought worried her, but she tossed that aside.
Could the Comte de Beaumont have murdered a man a few moments before she’d found him? There had been blood on the blade in his boot and much more on his clothes.
‘The Frenchman is a man of secrets, would you not say, for there are whispers that in Paris his family escaped the Terror unscathed and are rich beyond imagination.’
‘Anything can be said of anyone, Antonia, yet that does not make it true.’
Her friend smiled. ‘Still, is there not something about him, Violet? Some tempting beauty? Lady Catherine Osborne obviously thinks so, for look how she hangs on to him as if she might never let him go.’
Making no effort to turn in that direction, Violet wished that her friend would show the same sort of reserve.
‘His mother was English. One of the Forsythes from Essex, although she passed away a good few years ago in France. His father is still hale and hearty. Duc de Lorraine-Lillebonne is his title as he hails from that ancient family.’
Lineage and wealth. No wonder the Comte was being fêted by all the women of the ton. But why then had she found him lying wounded on the side of a cold and midnight road, a man who had given her no name by which to place him?
Secrets. They hung across his shoulders like a heavy mantle; she could see it in the way he held himself and in the quiet watchfulness of his person. Perhaps it took one to know one, she also thought, wondering if her own mistruths were so very easily noted.
The sound of the orchestra tuning up for another dance caught at her attention and she smiled. The quadrille. More usually on any given night her dance card would have been full, but because she had been so late in arriving this evening she had not even taken it out of her reticule. She was pleased that she hadn’t, for it meant she could leave earlier and without comment.
Antonia knocked at her arm. ‘De Beaumont is coming this way with my brother. Smile, Violet, for you have the grimace of one marching to her death instead of feasting your eyes and appreciating true masculine beauty.’
Gregory MacMillan was all eagerness as he reached them. ‘Comte de Beaumont, may I present my sister, Lady Antonia MacMillan, and her great friend Lady Addington. The Comte is recently come from Paris and has asked me for an introduction to the two most beautiful women in the room.’
When Violet looked up she could see that the flowery words of Antonia’s brother were just that. The Comte de Beaumont looked as surprised by the sentiment as she had been.
‘I am pleased to meet you both.’
So that is how he wished to play it, the recent history between them discounted. With a small tip of her head she noticed that Antonia was doing her very best to crawl up against the newcomer. ‘I do hope that you are enjoying your sojourn to London, Comte?’
The flirtatiousness in her tone made Violet wince.
Please, God, she thought, let this finish. Let him move away before the dancing begins in earnest. Let him tip his head and leave us behind.
‘It is a city I do not know well any more, I am afraid, Lady Antonia. A city of contrasts.’
Dangerous and bustling. Lies and truth. Gunshots and dancing. Coyness and peril. Life and death. Love and hate. Light and darkness.
He did not now exhibit any semblance of pain or discomfort and the scar across his chin looked almost pale, lost in the dim light of candelabras.
But Antonia had not finished with all her questions. ‘I have heard you have bought a house in Sussex, my lord, and a very fine one by all accounts.’
‘Indeed. I was down south for a few weeks last year and purchased it on a whim.’
A whim?
The Comte de Beaumont did not look like a man who ever acted upon whims. Light and fancy things, whims. When he saw Violet smile at such a musing his eyes darkened.
‘Would you like to dance, Lady Addington? I think I can just about remember the steps of the quadrille.’
She could not refuse under such close perusal, though Antonia did not look pleased at all.
Within a moment he had shepherded her on to the floor, the touch of his good arm burning into her back. When they stood to face each other she was lost for words.
‘Thank you.’ His voice was low and quiet.
For the lie? For the dance? For not calling in at the Home Office and telling them her story in detail? For standing there and pretending she did not know him? For rescuing him from certain death on a frozen night?
‘You are welcome.’
Here was not the place for more with the cream of the ton present, as their love of gossip and scandal could ruin him. Violet wondered if de Beaumont held a knife in his pocket even under the lights and among the rustle of silk. She decided that he must.
‘You have made quite an impression in society since arriving in England, Comte de Beaumont. Everyone is talking of you and you have not been here long.’
‘A daunting thing that, Lady Addington, given our circumstances.’
‘I received your note.’ She whispered this, just in case.
‘And I meant every word on it.’
She felt the tightening of his fingers against her hand, a small and hidden communication. Barely there.
‘Why?’
Suddenly she no longer wanted to be so careful. If he had murdered a man the other week he was not someone she should encourage. But then again if he hadn’t...
‘When someone saves your life there is a debt owed.’
‘And when someone takes a life it is just the same.’
‘Touché,’ he whispered as the dance pulled them apart into the arms of others.
When he returned she felt a giddy sense of place, but firmly squashed it down as his arms linked with her own.
‘Do you try to make yourself unattractive, Lady Addington?’
She nearly missed her step.
‘The turban does not suit you. Neither does the gown.’
The shock of such an unexpected and personal remark ran through her unchecked. ‘My dressmaker would be distraught.’
‘How old is the woman?’
‘Pardon?’
‘The female who fashions your garments? What is her age?’
Violet frowned, thinking of how hard she had worked all week to modify her ancient gown with her lady’s maid to make it presentable. She had never been offered a budget for clothing when she had been married and now even making ends meet was hard. Harland’s heavy gambling had all but ruined them, the town house the only thing as his widow she had been able to save unencumbered. There had certainly not been enough left for a refurbishment or for new gowns.
‘I think you should hardly be—’
He interrupted her.
‘Tell her to find a dark blue velvet and to slash down both the neckline and the sleeves. More is not always better,’ he added and she saw a definite twinkle in his eyes.
‘The Parisian love of decadence might not suit the British mentality.’
‘And you think the Puritan look does? Look around you. Others show much more than an inch of skin. You are still a woman beneath the heavy serge and one with gentle curves. I felt them when you helped me up from the frozen street.’
‘A gentleman does not mention such things, sir.’
‘Yet it seems to me you need to hear them, my lady. You are hiding yourself and I am wondering why?’
This sort of conversation was one she was unpractised at, though the tone of it was exhilarating.
‘Is every young lord in Paris tutored in this art of shallow flattery?’
‘I wasn’t at school in France.’
‘Oh.’ She was surprised by his answer.
‘I went to Eton and then on to Oxford. A proper English upbringing with all my manners minded.’
‘But then you left. You went home again?’
‘Home,’ he repeated, ‘is often not where one expects it to be.’
‘You talk in riddles, my lord, and I comprehend that your dancing style is so much more proficient than my own. Do not ask me to stand up with you again because I shall refuse.’
‘Because you would worry about the opinions of those around you?’
‘Oh, indeed I would, sir. If you do not realise that, then you fail to know me at all.’
‘A disappointing honesty.’
‘And there are so many more of them.’
‘Violet.’
‘Yes.’ She jumped at his informal use of her name.
‘Stop talking and dance with me.’
When he pulled her closer and his arms led her into steps she had never before learned she wondered if perhaps he was a magician making gold from clay, making flame from ashes.
‘Will you be in London for long, Comte de Beaumont?’ She asked this as the music slowed a few moments later.
‘I hope not.’
‘You will return to Paris, then?’
‘No.’
Her effort at small talk faltered back into silence and on the final flourish of the violin he dropped her hand and bowed at her solemnly. Then he was gone.
Violet found Antonia with two of her other friends and joined their small group. She would have simply liked to have walked to the door and left, to have found her carriage and retreated from the battle. For that is exactly what this meeting had felt like. As it was, she would need to wait for Amara’s return from wherever it was she had disappeared to because she knew there would be questions otherwise.
It seemed that any conversation with the unknowable French Count always spiralled into uncertainty. She felt the anger of him, too, the hidden man under the urbanity of the more public one. His hands were not soft. They were the hands of one who had toiled and worked hard. He smelt of both brandy and lavender, the two scents combining into a wholly masculine flavour.
His sense of humour worried her the most. She knew that he watched her for she caught his glance across the room and hurriedly looked away.
What could he want? What did she? She wished suddenly that they might have met in the park, sheltered by the greenery from the eyes of others. And then what?
Lord, what was happening to her? For six years she had been frozen into shame and woodenness, any sense of the intimate pushed away firmly and resolutely. Yet just with one small dance it was as if a dam had been breached, allowing life to begin again, to green and blossom.
Le Comte de Beaumont probably had not even realised he was doing it. He was a man who would be overrun with feminine company, a male who would understand exactly his effect on the opposite sex.
She was twenty-seven years old, after all, and not a debutante filled with hopes and fantasy. She frowned, remembering Harland. He had swept her off her feet within a month and she had never thought to question all the things that did not quite add up about him.
Well, here was another man where nothing about him truly made sense. A wealthy foreign aristocrat in London and looking for what? He had said that he would not be here long and yet he had purchased a place in Sussex? A further question. The top portion of the third finger on his right hand was missing, a scar attesting to the injury.
A man of war, she thought, but not a soldier.
The settle of coldness within her began to build just as a shout of anger and challenge rang out from his direction.
‘You think that you can get away with this, you French bastard, just walk in here and have society at your feet?’
The shorter fellow standing before de Beaumont had pulled himself right up into the Comte’s face and had raised his voice in a threatening manner.
‘You are more than inebriated, sir, and most irritating with it. Perhaps you should go away?’ These words were strained and less than flattering, the Comte’s accent all perfect English privilege and wealth.
But the other man was not backing off, whether by reason of hard liquor or of poor judgement, and she watched him raise his fist and slam it directly into the mouth of the Frenchman.
A general gasp emanated all around them and there was a skittering as those in the burst of violence rushed out of the way, the exodus bringing her in closer to the action. It was easy to see the fury on de Beaumont’s face.
Another assailant spun into the fracas, but the Comte simply caught his hand and twisted it, the aggressor screaming in pain. Then everything disintegrated as further punches were thrown. Suddenly the whole side at this end of the room seemed to be involved in a brawling fight.
This would never have happened in any other social situation of the ton, but those here this evening were a varied lot and the chance of a fight seemed to be exactly what they were waiting for.
De Beaumont looked more than at home and he was a most proficient adversary, for he shook off his assailants while barely breaking a sweat.
Violet shouted out a warning as a further man came from behind him, but already Antonia was pulling at her arm.
‘Come, Violet. It is dangerous to be so close. There is no sense here—’
She did not finish, for there was the crash of a body hard against their own and then dizziness. When Violet put her hand up to her head she felt a sizeable lump and she straightened her silk turban with shaking fingers.
The room stood still, a slow-motion dance of eyes turning, the floating yellow fabric ballooned against each wall strange and blurring. Sound seemed diminished and distant and she was having difficulty in breathing.
Tilting her head, she saw the Comte watching her, blood on his lip and fury in his eyes. Then Antonia grabbed at her and lead her away.
‘Are you hurt, Violet? My goodness, I have never in my whole life seen such a terrible thing.’
Her head ached and she was dizzy, but she did not wish to make a fuss. Amara was at her side now, too, shaking her head.
‘We should not have come here—I knew it. The Creightons have little taste and even less sense. We should leave straight away.’
With a ringing in her ears and a feeling of nausea rising, Violet did just as they both wanted her to and turned for the door.
The French Comte had disappeared and she thought that he would just have to take his chances even with a recent bullet wound to the side. Only a few weeks had passed since his being almost dead and she imagined that he might have had the sense to lie low and recover. The beautiful woman he had been attached to was nowhere to be seen, either, so perhaps they had both left together? That realisation was surprisingly hurtful and she quickly shook it away.
Violet awoke in her room just as the clock outside in the hallway struck three. The Comte de Beaumont sat on the chair beside the bed, watching her. Surprisingly, she felt in no danger at all.
‘I am sorry for what happened tonight.’
Violet held up her hand as though to stop any apology.
‘How did you get in?’
‘Your locks are very flimsy. It would be safer to have them changed.’
Ignoring that, she sat up further. The evening before had been like a small window into the life of a man for whom violence was a common theme and she could scarcely believe that he was here. ‘Who are you?’
‘Aurelian de la Tomber. My friends call me Lian.’
‘And am I that? A friend?’
‘You tried to help me a few hours ago. Why?’
‘Help you?’ She was stalling for time and he knew it.
‘By calling out. By warning me. By involving yourself in something you should not have.’
‘Because you are dangerous?’
‘Completely.’ One word ground out slowly. One word that didn’t seem quite so English now. ‘And you got wounded because of it.’
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