Page 30 of A Secret Consequence for the Viscount
‘A different life, then. One you would never have had if...’ She stopped and he liked her confusion.
‘I was probably insufferable, the man you knew before?’
She laughed at that and gave back a query of her own. ‘Why would you say that?’
‘My gambling debts were rising and I could see no way out. That was one of the last things I remembered before I couldn’t, arguing with my uncle about the sums I owed. Hardly auspicious.’
‘I agree that you were reckless and wild, but there was something else there, too. Something honest. If there hadn’t been I doubt I would have stayed around to bother.’
‘Perhaps you were trying to save me even then?’ He said this as a jest and she hit him lightly on the arm in return before she realised it was the injured one. Then he had to stop and listen to five more minutes of apology.
‘You owe the world nothing, Eleanor, and remorse should always have its limits.’ He could tell she was listening as she tipped her head. ‘Regret is not an easy emotion to live by and if things do not turn out quite as you expect them to, then you need to shape your world to make sure that it does.’
‘Do you do that?’
‘I try to. Since coming home I try to forget what once was.’
‘You have reshaped your life?’
The small line between her brows was deep and because of this he gave her back something of his truths. ‘Not entirely, but the pieces still lost to me will return. I know it.’
The tea shop on the south-east corner had now come into view and as expected it was half-empty, the cold driving the clients away. As they walked inside the man who met them asked if they had a preference for where they wanted to sit. Eleanor gestured to the table by the window.
‘We sat here last time?’ Nicholas said this as they were seated, the green and gold baize chairs small and dainty.
‘A lucky thing it was, too, for a group had just moved off when we came and it was very busy. The summer view was better.’
‘Yet Berkeley Square still holds its charm.’
He was careful with his words because so far none of this was in any way familiar.
‘Tea for two, please.’ She smiled at the waiter as she gave him back the menu.
‘A simple choice. I was imagining the pineapple delicacy you told me about.’
‘I was teasing you, Lord Bromley. We were only here briefly for we were en route to Bullock’s Museum.’
‘We shall go there tomorrow, then? I will pick you up at eleven.’
When she nodded Nick let out the breath he had not realised he was holding. Another outing. Further conversations. With the light from the window falling across her face he thought Eleanor Huntingdon was by far the most fascinating woman he had ever laid his eyes upon.
‘We spoke of animals last time because there was a black spaniel sitting at that table there.’ She gestured to a vacant setting over by the wall. ‘You said you had had a dog most similar when you were young?’
The feeling of loss hit him so forcibly Nick thought he might have fallen off the chair had his hands not curled to the seat.
‘I spoke of him?’
A frown marred her forehead. ‘Are you remembering things? I think you said his name was Vic.’
The horror of what had happened to the animal made his heart beat quicken. Vic. Victor. Victory. His father had named him after the Siege of Bangalore in 1791. Another thought hit him like a sledgehammer.
‘How close were we, Eleanor?’ He’d never told another about the dog, its death one of the defining and terrible moments of his childhood.
* * *
Nicholas Bartlett looked at her directly as he asked his question; a question Eleanor had been expecting given the nature of her plan so she’d concocted exactly the right answer.
‘We were friends.’
