Page 45 of A Secret Consequence for the Viscount
Eleanor stood there in the dim winter light and wished with everything she had that he might remember.
* * *
Something had happened here in this room last time. He could see the shadow of it in eyes remote with memory. He touched her lightly.
‘The scent in the bracelet is violets. Your scent. Why did you give it to me?’
‘You had told me of how you had lost your parents and I wished to make you happy again.’
‘My parents?’
‘You said you played the piano sometimes to remember them. You said you felt them close just there on the other side of the music.’
Shock tore through his equilibrium.
‘You said sometimes when you could not sleep you played theMoonlight Sonataby Ludwig van Beethoven to try and reach them and you felt you did.’
His sudden loud curse shocked her.
‘Are you ill?’ Worry clawed into her words as he held on to the table, his knuckles white.
‘It’s just a headache. The same one I have had ever since...’ He stopped.
His emotions since the incident at Richmond had been more distant than he remembered them. But now the sharp edges of feeling returned forcibly and all he wanted to be was alone.
* * *
At the Bromley town house an hour later he poured himself a stiff whisky. He could not work out what was happening, for the threads of the conversation between himself and Eleanor were as entwined and complicated as the pattern in the bracelet. Triple stranded and double braided.
Why should he have told her of his secrets when he had not even confided in Jacob, Oliver or Frederick?
The answer, of course, was simple.
He had known her far better than she’d ever admitted, not just as her brother’s friend, as she’d said, but as something more important. He’d hurried her home to Chelsea from Lackington’s with all the speed of someone on the verge of a collapse.
He swore roundly and hated the shake in his hands. He’d been an irresponsible and pleasure-seeking youth, distracted by both gambling and women. He could not even imagine how the Eleanor he knew now might have tolerated such weaknesses.
He hoped she had not known of his mounting debts and of the ugly characters from London’s underbelly who had frequently come knocking at his door. He prayed he had not tried to sleep with her.
Jacob’s voice interrupted his reveries.
‘Good to find you home, Nick, because a message came for you this morning and the one who delivered it said it was urgent. A poorly dressed man by the sounds of it and a fellow who my butler said he would not like to meet in the darkness? A colleague of yours?’
‘Have a drink, Jake.’
He was glad when his friend sat down.
‘Remember I told you of my uncle’s involvement in my disappearance? Well, the information on the payment to those who cornered me in the alley behind Vitium et Virtus came from a man in a tavern in the docklands. He runs a protection racket, but seems to have extended his area of business into the art of kidnapping for a generous sum of money.’
‘And Aaron Bartlett paid it?’
‘He did. He’d had designs on my title and inheritance since the beginning and given the scandals surrounding the club he used his chance to have me gone.’
‘And this new message?’
‘I asked the ringmaster to put his ear to the ground to see whether he could find any trace of those who had followed me to the Americas. He was certain it was someone different from my uncle, someone with a lot more money.’
‘And you think he has found this person?’ Jacob handed over the sheet of paper sealed with wax.
