Page 47 of A Proposition for the Comte
Important considerations and large reasons to succeed, she thought, watching the black indifference in his eyes. There was threat there, too, bound in his words.
‘Mountford said the very same thing of you.’
‘I don’t imagine it was enunciated in a particularly flattering way. We have crossed paths only briefly, the Minister and I, but it has never been easy.’
‘He advised me today to keep well away from you.’
‘A bit late for that, I think.’
It was the first personal thing he had said to her and she stood still, waiting.
‘You probably should take his advice.’ His voice was deep and cracked. A voice tonight with a great deal of wariness on its edge.
‘Should I?’
His hand slid across the line of her chin though the expression on his face did not match the gentleness of his fingers. There was cider on his breath and in his clothes sat the smell of the river.
‘I am not who you think I am, Violet. I am a much darker man than the Comte de Beaumont who appears in society and those who know me also know never to cross me.’
The shock of his words had her turning. He was a spy who might decipher everything on only small and tiny clues and Amaryllis and her sons would be gone in two days, away from British law and injustice, away from paying so completely for the death of a man who had abused them.
‘Cross you? Why would I do that?’
She was glad her voice sounded strong. The fury in her was building by the second, but alongside that came caution.
‘Your husband stands right in the very centre of everything. He was a greedy and immoral man by all reports and had been watched by the Home Office here for the last year of his life. They suspected he had French sympathies, though I doubt even Mountford knew the extent that they were a blind for his own bottomless greed.’ He stopped for a moment and then went on. ‘But perhaps you did and, with your knowledge of gold markings and its properties, you helped him hide it. In ornaments at first and then...somewhere else.’
‘You are wrong. Everything you say is wrong.’ She hated him at that moment because she had expected so much else from him. Gentleness. Compassion. Thankfulness after a whole night of loving.
‘If I were to further guess at the truth of your fear, I’d say it’s because you weren’t the person who really killed Harland Addington in the stables. I imagine, however, itwasyou who then led the most difficult stallion into the stall. After doing that you would have gathered the murder weapon and, using the cover of darkness, thrown it as far as you could into the lake at the foot of the gardens before the manor.’
The thought hit Violet then that Aurelian de la Tomber was like no other at all. No wonder he had walked through Europe unchallenged with a mind that could place all the small disparate variables of life into one whole and perfect pattern. Amaryllis’s future sat so firmly in the palm of his hand it made her feel sick.
‘You are wrong, my lord, in your summations and I want you to leave.’
For now this was all that she had, this chance of distance. Two days till Amaryllis took ship to Rome. Forty-eight hours before her sister-in-law’s safety was assured.
She was pleased when he tipped his head and did just as she had asked.
Aurelian watched Cummings’s house for the rest of the night, perched in the space between a stone wall and a small evergreen. He’d learned how to sit still and focus for as many hours as he needed to, a training honed in the harsher war zones of Napoleon’s push into Spain. To block everything out, except for specific visual and observation skills, required effort. With such a quiet and solitary life, he often felt others saw only the danger in him, the softer parts lost in the expectations of intelligence.
He blocked out the fury of Violet’s untruths. Sex was a double-edged sword after all, for it cleaved the body together while leaving the mind open to question.
Why had she offered her body to him yesterday and why had he come into her arms with such relief? The light around her was a part of it, that he knew, but there was also distrust burning between them. Untruth had a certain sound and he’d heard it many a time.
He’d peered in the downstairs window, too, before he had climbed the vine and noticed that the ornament was gone, another ivory bust in its place. The portrait of Harland had been replaced, as well, a peaceful rural scene resting in its stead.
She’d been prickly and distant tonight, but she was also as sensual as hell. The nightgown she had been wearing hugged her bosom, outlining generous breasts and a thin waist. It had been an effort to look away and then leave when all he had wanted to do was take her and be damned any consequences. He shook his head at the thought and concentrated on the job at task.
Having slept in fifteen-minute quotas, he woke into stillness and in the very early morning the door to Cummings’s quarters opened and a woman stepped out. Alone. A carriage collected her, a conveyance with two well-bred horses, a driver and a footman. Every detail was noted. Her dark hair, the walk, her voice as she bade the man on the box to take her home.
The time of departure pointed to a liaison and her face was imprinted on his mind as he sifted through memory. Peter Flavell had mentioned a woman of means in the company of Miller. The dice rolled into place. Too many clues to be simply chance, for he was sure that this was Mrs Antoinette Herbert and he would visit her later in the day. It was past time to break this game wide apart to see in which direction the rats scurried for cover.
Aurelian took a hackney to the house in Kensington in the early afternoon after a quick snatched hour of sleep.
Mrs Herbert was sitting in her downstairs parlour, drinking a fine brandy, when he was shown through by her butler. She was not as young as he might have thought initially and she did not look in the slightest bit surprised as he gave her his name.
‘You expected me?’
