Page 34 of A Secret Consequence for the Viscount
A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance.
She wondered which time it was now for her.
* * *
The place was as odd as she had remembered it, she thought, as she walked through the solid Egyptian doors of Bullock’s Museum in Piccadilly. The inside was even stranger, large stuffed animals in a fenced-off enclosure and trees towering above that looked as if they came from some ancient and long-lost world.
Nicholas was waiting next to a glass case, glancing not at the artefacts but at the light that spilled in through the window above him. The sight caught at Eleanor with a poignancy that made her stop still and simply watch. He looked as out of place here as he had done at Gunter’s, the danger in him only thinly veiled and a sense of carefully checked distance overlaying that. He had not seen her yet, one arm held against his chest as though it was painful, the opposite hand anchoring it.
Mr William Bullock’s artefacts were many after a lifetime of travelling abroad and Eleanor wondered what Nicholas Bartlett’s treasure trove might look like had he gathered small tributes from all his years in the Americas.
He seemed like a man who travelled light. Her brother had said he’d had one small leather case with him when he had come straight from the ship to the door of Vitium et Virtuson Boxing Day.
He had caught sight of her now, the wounded hand replaced at his side as he walked over. It shook slightly against his thigh.
‘Surely this museum brings back some memories?’ She said this when he stood next to her, hoping that humour might lighten the mood. ‘The naked Hottentot Venus smoking a pipe and the Polish dwarf are not sights easily forgotten, after all. If anything were to jolt your memory, it might be them.’
He laughed at her words, all the lines on his face softening. ‘Did you make me laugh like this before, Eleanor?’
The world around her stopped, just slowed down and stood still because there was a look in his eyes that she recognised. A hunger that made his dark eyes darker.
‘I think that perhaps I did.’
He glanced away then, a frown deepening as he moved back a pace.
* * *
His lack of memory was more irritating today than it ever had been before because he knew suddenly he would have found Lady Eleanor Huntingdon as charming and fascinating six years ago as he did at this moment and he did not know what he had done about that fact.
Had he kissed her? Had he taken it further? That thought made him step away just so that he did not reach out because he could not trust himself as to what might happen next. The memory of the women he had bedded in the Americas also sat there in the equation. He was damaged goods. Eleanor deserved a man who was exemplary in every way, not one whose life had been marred irreparably in the messy business of surviving and who still did not know if he brought danger to those he had contact with.
He needed to keep things light to allow her an escape. A sign at the doorway gave him a subject.
‘Napoleon’s travelling carriage is here at the museum?’
The flare in her eyes dimmed at his query.
‘The French General’s personal belongings have been a very popular exhibition by all accounts, my lord.’
‘A gamble that has paid off, then?’ He was barely thinking of Bullock as he said these words and he had the impression that she might have known this. ‘The risk of the unknown to fill one’s heart’s desire?’
‘There is also a nightgown, a set of pistols, his boots and a cloak amongst other things. With the numbers who have come to view them it’s said that Bullock has made a small personal fortune from the ticket sales. Many people have been speaking of it and I have only heard interest and fascination.’
Her words ran on, one over the other, giving an impression of nerves. He thought he had never met a woman who was more fascinating. They were passing tall cabinets now which were full of more of the sort of insects he had seen before in the front room.
‘Your eyes are exactly the shade of that butterfly wing, Lady Eleanor.“Morpho paleides”.’He read this slowly. ‘One of the largest butterflies in the world apparently with wings of iridescent blue on one side and an ordinary brown on the other. It allows the insect the ability to disappear at will if you like. A camouflage against predators?’
The sort of disguise she used, he thought. At Frederick’s soirée she had looked unmatched in a deep blue gown. Today she sported a coat of dull beige, an ugly hat jammed tightly over her head. Why?
‘I have always been careful.’She had told him this in the carriage as they had made their way to Berkeley Square.‘So careful that perhaps...’She had not finished.
So careful that perhaps life had passed her by? A beloved husband whom she pined for and a daughter who had kept her away from the London social scene? So careful that she saw him as only a risk?
‘How old are you now, Eleanor?’
‘Twenty-four. Almost twenty-five.’
She said it as if it were a great age and he smiled.
