Page 29 of A Secret Consequence for the Viscount
He shook his head.
‘Every act within Vitium et Virtus has always been consensual. People are there because they want to be. No one is forced.’
‘A morality within the scandalous?’
‘Exactly.’
And right then and there Eleanor knew what she had missed the most when he had disappeared. It was this, this conversation that was more real to her than any other thing she had ever felt. Every single part of her was more alive in his company. Her body. Her brain. Her heart. Her soul.
He made her fascinating and brave and clever. Effortlessly.
‘After meeting with a few people, I don’t think my uncle was the one who paid people to follow me to the Americas.’
The bubble burst. Real life rushed in like a blast of frigid cold air, enemies poised again at every bend in the road.
‘How could you know this?’
He didn’t speak, but she could see the answer in his eyes, on his cheek and in the guarded quiet of his posture. He had not just waited for such information to trickle slowly down to him, but had gone to actively seek out the truth. Gone presumably into the poorest parts of London that few aristocrats would feel comfortable to be. Except him.
There was a certain respect in such an action that she could not help but feel. But to pretend joy and eat ice cream?
To laugh at the fussy decorative moulds and sip at tastes inconsequential and unimportant when there was an enemy afoot who wished him harm in such magnitude?
She wanted to throw herself down on the plush leather seat of his carriage and sob because a day that had begun with such promise was now falling into complete disarray.
* * *
Damn it. He should not have said a thing about his suspicions. Now Eleanor Huntingdon was looking as though she might hurl herself out the window before the carriage stopped just to escape from his company.
He could not believe he had told her any of this. Usually he clammed up about affairs that were even remotely personal, but the laughter and ease of the conversation had been beguiling and he had let his guard slip.
There was no easy way to say that he was damaged and reduced in value, the spoiled and harmed product of years of fear and danger written inside him like a story. Any fineness he might once have had was diluted by experience, weakened by a lack of trust and diminished by an absence of honour.
Nick could still feel the stranger’s neck in Shockoe Bottom breaking under his grip, the shameful truth of death by his own hand making him swallow down bile.
Like an apple in a barrel, rotten to the core. ‘Please, God, do not let me hurt Eleanor. Please, God, keep her safe.’
He recited this beneath his breath as she turned away, the sky through the window about as bleak as his mood. He needed to throw off these maudlin thoughts, or she would decide to return home. There was probably only so much of him that even an angel like Eleanor Huntingdon could take.
The anger and shame reformed into effort.
‘Would you like a walk first on the square before we go in for tea? We could stroll around the pathways. Is that something we did before?’
‘No.’ Her voice was hesitant.
‘Good. Then let us make some new memories before remembering the other ones.’
Her coat and hat looked warm and her boots sturdy. A small walk in the cold might reinvigorate them both and shake the cobwebs from their worries.
He smiled because suddenly he remembered his mother saying that to him and when Eleanor caught his glance she tentatively smiled back. He wanted to make her laugh again and talk again, her truths revealing a woman who’d been saddened by life. He wanted them both to forget what had been and to concentrate on now.
He would ask Jacob more about her dead husband when they were alone next time and if he gave back flippant answers as he had before he would confront him further.
‘Virginia was a place that winter took to with a vengeance,’ he said as they exited the carriage and began to amble around the small neat square. ‘But the coldest region I’ve ever been to was Caribou in northern Maine. It’s close to Lower Canada where the air sets up in Hudson Bay and is sent southwards. If you happen to be in a river valley sleeping rough you’ll know well sure by the morning that you should not have been there.’
‘Were you? Sleeping rough, I mean.’
‘For a good week. I was on one of the trails hunting at the end of autumn and had not expected it to turn to cold so quickly.’
