Society's Beauties: Mistress at Midnight / Scars of Betrayal

Chapter Six

Alexander Shavvon was unhappy as he paced up and down the small room.

‘France needs to be contained and yet all information suggests otherwise, for already Louis Napoleon has expanded into IndoChina. If Lord Palmerston is not careful the Entente Cordiale fashioned under Guizot will return to bite the hand of the one that feeds it.’

Hawkhurst was not as certain as Shavvon of the direction of Francophile expansionism and fault. ‘If I were determining policy, I would be keeping an eye on Prussia and the Germanic states, sir. All of my reading suggests the prospect of a United Germany, which would be a lot harder to contain than a beaten France.’

‘Your uncle, of course, might not agree with you, Lord Hawkhurst. He knew first-hand the might of Napoleon and if we had not defeated the dictator at Waterloo, England would be a very different place now.’

‘Perhaps it is becoming that different place already.’

‘Talk to Alfred and see just what it is France is capable of and you might change your mind. You are too young to remember the fear engendered by our nearest neighbour in the Peninsular Campaigns, but it was a hit-and-miss affair as to which way it went and the British would never again wish for the like.’

Such stilted discourse made Stephen wary and he knew that his days in the clutches of the British Service were numbered. He had ceased to be a citizen of the brokered threat Lord Palmerston seemed to endlessly foster and all he wanted was the chance to head to one of his remote family estates and live life.

Well and quietly, walking into a future with nothing tied back into the past. Nothing sordid and chancy and dissolute!

He breathed out hard as the face of Aurelia St Harlow came to mind. She wandered into his dreams at night, too, now, when his mind was least resistant and the call of her body against his at its most apparent, the generous heaviness of her bosom well remembered. Swearing under his breath, he concentrated again on what was being said by Shavvon.

‘Frederick Delsarte and his mob have been seen hanging around a warehouse in Park Street in the Limestone Hole area and they have known associations in Paris. It seems they may be using the legalised trade of cloth to send and receive information.’ He handed Stephen a sheet of paper with the details on it. ‘Those who are helping him do so probably have some French connection and imagine themselves hard done by by the English Government. If we can catch them in the act, we can string them up, quietly, of course, and with as little public awareness as possible.’

Hawkhurst nodded. It was always the same, this game of espionage played out behind the scenes of a virtuous and wholesome society, the dark secrets of corruption snapped off before they had the chance to taint it.

His world.

Sometimes he wondered if he would ever truly be able to struggle back up into the one people like Elizabeth Berkeley inhabited, untouched by any iniquity.

‘If you can manage to get into the channel of communication, let me know before you shut it down.’

‘So you have time to turn the other cheek?’

Shavvon began to laugh. ‘You are the best agent we have, Hawkhurst. I don’t want you lost.’

Lost like his brother and all the others he had started with. For a while now Stephen had wished the end would come, quickly, in the shape of a bullet, neither painful nor lingering, just a true clear shot and then nothing. If Shavvon recognised such ennui, he did not say so as he turned to the pile of papers on his desk. Expedience had the look of a careless nonchalance and Hawkhurst was so very tired of it, this lie of his life, foundering in the shallows of evil.

‘One day soon I will not be back.’ The words were quietly said as he let himself out.

Henry Kerslake was late and worry gnawed as Aurelia waited for him. It was cold and what light there was would soon begin to fade. If he did not come within the half hour she would leave for home, for her father had been ill this morning and she was wanting to see that the fever he had woken with had not worsened.

Her teeth bit at her nails and she fisted her fingers when she realised what she was doing. Agitation had marked many areas of her body now, she thought—her hands, her stomach with a constant nervous ache and her face, the tension written deeply into lines of ugliness.

Beautiful. Hawkhurst had called her such, but he was a man who had wanted more when he said it and what male would not use falsity in such a situation?

She shook her head hard at this errant nonsense for where was such an idea leading? She had been mortified by both her reaction to his kiss at Taylor’s Gap and her heightened sense of Hawkhurst as he had sat with her in the carriage. Charles’s betrayals were stretched thin across the veneer she had so successfully erected and she knew that any break would destroy everything in the same way that it had once before.

The sweet smell of opium smoke curling from a pipe and Charles’s eyes upon her, glittering bright and furtive. She had allowed him the right to pull the gown away from her breasts so that flesh spilled out into the air, cold in the autumn evening. She had trusted her husband, relied on his honour and his principles, the band of gold around his finger denoting all that she had promised him.

Foolish false troths. It had taken her only one night to understand his depravity.

The noise of feet made her turn and, as the door opened, she saw that Henry Kerslake had finally arrived. He looked distracted and tired, the large bag he carried over his shoulder rubbing a dent into his over-cloak.

‘The jacquards took longer than I had imagined they would to sample. Although the punched cards make the patterns more intricate, they are slow to set up.’ Opening the buckles on the bag, he brought out a swathe of cloth, flowers and leaves that owed much to the influence of Japan spilling forth.

‘Godwin had his hand in the design, Mrs St Harlow, but I have strengthened the colours myself. What do you think?’

‘The stylised motifs are…unusual, though the Oriental taste is gaining in attraction.’ To her eye the shades were too lurid and the shapes too foreign, but her own Louis schemes garlanded in blossom were falling in demand and she knew that they had to widen their range.

‘No one else in Macclesfield is doing anything like it yet, so if we hit the market quickly we will be ahead of them all.’

His sentiment heartened her. With the mooted reopening of the trade routes to Japan, interest in the East had escalated and the furniture being turned out by eminent manufacturers reflected the change. She had begun to see bamboo used in the new mass-produced chairs and tables, something silk patterns such as these ones would complement exactly and she was enough of a businesswoman to understand the necessity of diversity.

Renaissance splendour, Gothic arches, gilded rococo boiseries, French roses and now a simpler lightness from a country far from Europe. Her own designs stood alongside those from the more famous houses, but with the limited time she had to produce them she was beginning to depend on Henry and his ‘fashionable finds’ more and more. The thought concerned her, for if she lost control, everything would be forfeited.

There was nothing to be done, however, and as a woman she was bound to use a man as a front-person no matter how liberal-minded those she was doing business with purported to be. Victorian sensibilities could not be changed in a moment, even though the rumblings of emancipation were beginning to be heard more plainly.

Not for her, though, the luxury of free hours to pursue a lofty cause all in the name of womanhood. Time was her enemy and had been for a long while, though she was becoming most adept at using it more effectively.

‘Put the Little Street Mill into the production of the Japanese-patterned silks and keep the Chester Street Mill producing the French-styled roses.’

Henry Kerslake did not look pleased. ‘You might regret not moving more quickly upon this matter, Mrs St Harlow.’

Irritation bloomed at his criticism, but the relationship between her and Henry Kerslake had been foundering just as certainly as their profits had been increasing. Another few months and she could sell the business at a good advantage. Aurelia was more and more desperate for that time to come.

‘I met a man on the way in who was asking questions about the sort of cargo we bring in here each month. I told him what I knew and he went on his way.’

‘Did he talk to others around here as well?’

‘I don’t know.’

Aurelia felt rattled by the news. A few of her designs had gone missing lately as had a book of invoices detailing payments pending, the new contracts secured detailed in pounds and pence. Could this person have had something to do with that? Perhaps another mill was on the prowl to see what it was they were to produce next. They had been lucky in their choices of design so far and mayhap this had been noticed by a less successful venture.

Some mills had failed even in the four years she had been in business, their warehouses empty and still, the slumps and booms that were so much a part of the English silk industry taking their toll. She wished there could have been someone to talk over these problems with, someone to give her guidance and advice, but her father’s mind had long since dwelt in a place where no one could reach him and her three sisters’ world encompassed none of this. Realising she was again biting her nails, Aurelia stopped. She would place sturdier locks on all of the doors and pray that such measures would be sufficient deterrent.

Henry Kerslake was not quite finished, however. ‘The stranger had that unmistakable air of wealth about him, if you ask me, Mrs St Harlow.’

Shock reverberated through her. ‘What did he look like?’

‘Tall with dark hair and he moved in the way of a man who knows exactly where he is going.’

Lord Hawkhurst? Could it possibly be him? Had he been making enquiries about her that had led him back here? Danger made her breath shallow, although underneath some other small feeling blossomed quietly. She might see him again. He could be here right now, outside somewhere watching. Her glance went to the window, but there was only stillness, the grounds around the warehouse empty.

Fingering the silk on the table before her, she tried to settle back into some sort of work, but the colours and patterns swam into nothingness and all she could see were the golden eyes of a man who had begun to invade her night-time thoughts.

She was therefore pleased when Henry looked at his timepiece and packed up his things, in preparation for a meeting in town with one of the suppliers of buttons.

‘I have left orders in the box for you to sort through, Mrs St Harlow. Dickens & Jones want extras of the fine, blue, handmade shawls for their shop in Regent Street. Perhaps we might need to employ more staff at Chester Street to cope?’

Aurelia winced. Another problem that she would have to deal with quickly. Was there no end to her worries today? She was pleased when Kerslake left and a rare silence enfolded her.

She did not feel like working, fidgety nervousness making her stand, a prickling feeling raising the fine hair on her forearms. She was still at the window a few moments later when a knock on the door took her attention. Thinking it to be Kerslake, she opened it, but it was not him, and the air that she had just breathed in congealed at the back of her throat.

Chapter Seven

Mrs Aurelia St Harlow stood before him, a swathe of scarlet silk in her hands and wearing the same black dress Stephen had seen her in every time he’d met her.

‘You?’ Her voice could not have been more shocked, her mismatched eyes widened and fearful. ‘What are you doing here?’

Hawkhurst had to smile at that because the question was exactly the one he was about to ask her and because there was no earthly reason why a well-to-do lady should be lurking in the run-down buildings on the back streets of the Limestone Hole warehouses.

Save one.

‘You work here?’ Everything had just got a whole lot harder and the mission he had been sent on by the Service was in danger of being compromised entirely. His glance took in the bolts of fabric and the squares of colours and designs that littered a large wooden table in the middle of the room. Ledgers were piled up five high in a bookcase beside it and further off in one corner a dog stood chained to the wall, his teeth bared in grisly defiance.

‘Down, Caesar!’ The animal crouched uncertainly at her command, flecks of spittle around its jawline. Stephen got the feeling that if it could forsake its chains it would be at his throat in an instant; much like its mistress if the look on Aurelia St Harlow’s face was anything to go by.

‘A nice pet,’ he drawled and stayed where he was.

‘Protection,’ she returned, the anger in her eyes boding badly. She neither asked him inside nor shut the door to keep him out.

An impasse. The sky solved the situation by suddenly opening, rain scudding in the wind towards them across the line of brick buildings drenching everything, and she allowed him through. The dog rose again on its haunches at his movement forwards, a low growl filling the room.

‘He is not used to visitors.’

‘I will stand by the door, then.’

‘It might be wise.’ When she smiled briefly the lines of worry melted into radiance and he drew in breath. God, Aurelia St Harlow’s beauty held a sensuality that always surprised him and, doffing his hat, he placed it in front of his tight trousers, the effect she had on his anatomy singular and strong. Irritation mounted.

‘I cannot remember my cousin delving into silks.’

‘That is because he didn’t.’

‘You are saying this is your doing?’

‘My father’s family have manufactured silk buttons for a hundred years. It is in the Beauchamp blood.’

‘And he approves?’

The quick tilt of her head worried him. She looked momentarily disappointed.

‘Women these days are less likely to seek authorisation from the men around them, Lord Hawkhurst, for there is a new movement afoot that allows for women’s emancipation. My late husband would have been more than horrified at any such thought, but there it is; I can work in any field of industry that I am competent in and no one can stop me.’

‘Indeed?’ The idea was beginning to occur to him that she was the most fearless female he had ever met. He could not even begin to imagine ladies such as Elizabeth Berkeley and her ilk secreting themselves in such a dangerous part of London with an animal who probably had feral wolf in its bloodlines.

A grimmer thought also surfaced.

Could she be the one sending information to France through the textile channels from England? His agent had been most specific that this office was the one from which the package of coded information had first come. He changed his tack entirely.

‘Cassandra Lindsay was impressed by Leonora. She imagines her youngest brother to be in love.’

‘Are you warning me, my lord?’

Hawkhurst felt a glimmer of respect for a woman who picked up so very quickly on the things said beneath other words. ‘The marriage of your sister into a family of great note is something you have your heart set on. Nathaniel, however, would not thank me if there were secrets in the Beauchamp household that would cause even the slightest consternation to his wife. Or to his name.’

‘There are not.’

Her scent filled the room, the particular aroma of violets and freshness.

‘Yet I am trying to understand why a lady of means might wish to spend her days in a dusty warehouse sorting silks.’

Colouring, she looked away, guilt marking the movement.

His cousin’s widow had French blood, giving her the will to help a country that was her mother’s. She had told him her mother’s nationality when he had first met her. The money in the business of secrets could also be substantial. Charles’s estate had been sizeable as had her father’s family’s, but perhaps there was more at stake than riches. English society had in effect thrown her out on her head at the unexplained death of her husband and revenge was sweet in anyone’s language.

Ice formed in his veins.

‘It is most unusual for a woman of society to be involved in such endeavours.’

‘Oh, one gets tired of tapestry and crossstitch, my lord, and as I always liked design I thought to try my hand at something more challenging.’

‘You did not think to do this in a more conducive setting.’ He looked pointedly at the dog.

‘I am quite safe, Lord Hawkhurst, despite all you might think.’

‘Do you work here alone?’

‘No. There are two of us. My partner in the business, Mr Kerslake, has just left.’ A blush darkened her cheeks.

‘Kerslake is the man I spoke to earlier, I presume?’ She nodded at his question and remained silent as he remembered the fellow. Ambitious. Good looking.

Damn. Perhaps there was more than a working relationship between them, ensconced as they were in a room far from the watchful eyes of others.

Her hair was uncovered today and the red in it was astonishing. He wanted to cross the space between them and hold the colour to the light, a flame of scarlet much the same shade as the silk trailing from her fingers. Here in the docklands, she was as far from the woman he had kissed as she could be, independence and the uncompromising strategies of business guarding any softer words.

She wanted him gone, too. He could see this from the way she tapped her foot against the floor, like a musician might measure the time in a song until it was finished.

‘I would prefer it, my lord, if you could keep the knowledge of my small concern here to yourself.’ She breathed out a deep sigh to punctuate her dilemma, her brow heavily creased and her shoulder drooping.

‘And why should I do that, Mrs St Harlow?’

‘Society finds unconventional women…perturbing. And it has been my experience that what they don’t understand they generally also do not like.’ The tone of her voice mimicked that of Elizabeth’s friends, breathless and wavering. He laughed, the sound filling the room around them and the vulnerable and dejected air of a second ago disappeared into plain anger as her eyes flinted.

Hawkhurst swore under his breath. A self-effacing timid demeanour did not suit Aurelia St Harlow at all, this Boadicea of the Victorian drawing rooms who fought for an advantageous alliance for her younger sister despite a reputation that would have kept others as far from any public communion as they could go.