A Secret Consequence for the Viscount

by Sophia James

Nodding, she looked away, certain that he must now move on and surprised when his hand covered her own.

  ‘Gossip has it you are an experienced and generous woman and he is a cad and a spendthrift. If you would like to pass some time in my company, I am certain you would not regret it.’

  Snatching back her hand, she stepped away. Was this person mentally sick? Could he hurt her? Should she run? Nicholas was back now and her first thought was that he had not waited to collect their chestnuts. Her second was more along the lines of amazement. He looked nothing at all like he usually did, the disdain in his face showing every feeling.

  ‘Get away from her, Bowles.’

  Nicholas’s hand was in his pocket now and Eleanor had the impression that he might have held a weapon there. In the mood he was in she was more than certain he would use it should this stranger be difficult.

  The fury in Bowles was magnified as he spat out his words. ‘Bromley. I had heard you were back, of course, but I scarcely believed it. Back from the dead like a cat with nine lives, though I have to say your appearance is altered for the worst. More contretemps in America? The result of your arrogance and your reckless testing of boundaries?’

  ‘Stay away from me and from my friends. If you decide not to take this advice, then expect retribution.’ Nicholas spoke quietly but there was a threat in every single syllable that was unmistakable, the echoes of an old hatred more than evident. He’d gained control of himself now, a stillness in him that was decidedly menacing and any emotions upon his face well hidden.

  All fight seemed to go from Bowles and he turned on his heels and left them, the tap of his shoe plates distinct against the stones on the ground.

  * * *

  Nicholas bit back a curse. What the hell was Nash Bowles doing talking with Eleanor? He didn’t want that crawling amoral mongrel anywhere near her, his mind returning to the woman he’d found the bastard with in a back room of Vitium et Virtus just before he had disappeared all those years ago.

  Nick had seen exactly what a madman was capable of then, the lines of carefully placed cuts on the girl’s bottom weeping blood.

  ‘It’s a place of fantasy,’ Bowles had shouted, his fists flying. ‘And you have no business being in here and spoiling it. She’s a serving maid, for God’s sake, and will be well pleased with the trinket I shall leave with her as payment. Besides, the pleasure of pain is underrated.’

  His victim’s face told him exactly the opposite.

  ‘Is that true?’ As he’d asked the small dark girl this question she had simply shaken her head and burst into tears, trying to pull her clothes up to cover her shame in the process. There were more wounds on her fingers.

  Without another thought Nicholas had picked up a much thinner Bowles by the scruff of his neck and thrown him out the front door, uncaring of his lack of dress and his plethora of threats. He fell in an untidy heap on to the pavement below.

  ‘Never come back. If you do I will kill you slowly with as much pain as I can administer.’

  ‘You will regret this, Bromley,’ he had replied. ‘See if you don’t.’

  Nick had laughed at that and lifting the small knife that the other had dropped threw it in an arc so that it landed within an inch of Nash Bowles’s right hand.

  ‘The only thing I might regret is not aiming that blade squarely into the space between your legs.’

  That day long ago morphed into this one as Nicholas felt a warm hand tuck into the crook of his arm, his mind brought abruptly back from the past to the present.

  The wind had risen and the grasses under the trees were being tossed in a silky blanket.

  ‘I thought he might even have tried to drag me off with him.’ Eleanor sounded breathless. ‘I think he is deranged.’

  ‘I am sorry. He won’t hurt you.’

  ‘He has hurt others?’

  ‘Many, probably.’

  ‘Then what is it he wants from you?’

  ‘Revenge or the promise of silence? He is a bully and a coward and as he was interested in a stake of Vitium et Virtus for himself he was always hanging around the club.’

  Her teeth were worrying her top lip. ‘He would be a horrible person there, for there is something frightening about him, something broken.’

  ‘You are right and I have first-hand knowledge that he does not truly comprehend the notion of a line between yes and no. He was an only child and more than spoilt so he imagines the world should be exactly as he should want it.’ Nick breathed in deeply, trying to disperse the alarm he had felt when he saw Eleanor with Bowles. If she were to be hurt because of his past...?

  ‘Will you play a part in the club’s running now you are back?’

  ‘No. I’m thinking of giving my share to the others if they want it.’

  ‘I doubt Rose would like to see my brother more involved. The same might go for Georgiana and Cecilia.’

  At that he laughed, the worry of the past few moments dwindling as he saw her smile. ‘For a club steeped in secrecy there are now many who know the names of its founders.’

  ‘Frederick’s youngest brother keeps harping at them all for the chance of it, too. He is just finishing at university and is as wild as the rest of the chaotic and out-of-control Challengers. You might consider him? He’d undoubtedly be perfect.’

  As she moved closer it was as if everything in the world was better. He liked her near. He liked the way it felt when her thigh came into contact with his own as they walked across the grass.

  He liked her questions and her truth. He liked how she had put all the facts of things together to come up with a portrait of now. He liked how she made him happy.

  If he had Eleanor Huntingdon in his bed he would feel as if he could conquer the world.

  He cursed under his breath and decided such invented fantasies might rival any thought up in the passion of the moment at Vitium et Virtus.

  * * *

  She felt him withdraw, just as he had done every other time they had come closer. Did he think she might deceive him in some way or harry him into making a decision he would come to regret.

  Nash Bowles had riled him and yet it was more than that. Nicholas Bartlett’s touch was tight as he took her arm and turned towards the road, chestnuts forgotten in his haste to be away. He also vibrated with an anger that was unfathomable.

  ‘What did he do to you? This Bowles?’

  He needed to talk so when silence was his only answer she kept on speaking.

  ‘In the times that I thought the world was landing on my shoulders I realised confiding in someone trusted is often a helpful thing.’

  His glance came around to her, wary and suspicious, full of the ghosts she could only guess at. The damage on his face today was so very easily seen in this light. She could imagine the force of the blade that had come down upon him and the pain he must have endured afterwards.

  ‘Jacob was my confidant and he was a good one, too, because he mostly listened. As you are. To me, I mean. Listening.’ Now she was flustered, his very presence warming her insides. It was confusing, this strength he had, this power to make her unsettled. She could not remember it before.

  Finally, a smile curled at the end of his lips. ‘I doubt some of my stories would allow you to sleep at night, Eleanor, were I to unburden myself of the past. You might be well pleased never to hear them.’

  But she did not allow him that excuse. ‘After being ill in the home of the Reverend in Boston, where did you go?’

  ‘South.’ The word was flat and quiet.

  ‘Because you had to leave?’

  ‘The Reverend had a daughter. A small child called Emily. When I was walking along the cliffs one day she followed me and was hurt.’ He swallowed and she could see the strength of emotion in the grinding action of the muscles in his jaw. ‘She was pushed
,’ he finally uttered.

  ‘So you went south to protect them? To draw off the one who had pushed her. Was it the same man who hurt your arm and face?’

  ‘I hope so because he is dead. I killed him.’

  He looked at her directly as he said this, refusing to allow for misinterpretation, ensuring her understanding in a way he had not when they had talked during the waltz at Frederick Challenger’s party. There was no line of apology or uncertainty anywhere. She could imagine a weapon in the ruined fingers of his left hand raised against evil. She hoped the death had been quick. Nicholas Bartlett was a warrior wrought from the softer bones of an English aristocrat. How different would he feel from each and every other coddled lord of the ton? A man who had been places not one of them would have the misfortune to venture or the endurance to see himself safe. She could not quite leave it at that, though.

  ‘Would he have killed you?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘The man who hurt you. Would you have been dead had you not fought back?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Then my opinion is that evil does not deserve to win out under any circumstance and he warranted his fate.’ Her words held that certain conviction she heard herself use in some of her dealings with her daughter. An unequivocal truth. An unarguable logic.

  She watched him run his hand carefully through his hair, pushing the long and untidy fringe from his face. ‘I am glad, Eleanor, that you have been safe here in England.’

  Safe? Six years of the cutting words of others. Six years of pretence. Six years of lonely isolation. Six years of carefulness tempered by politeness and manners. She was so safe she could scream with the cloying breathlessness of it. Better a cut like his to the very bone and then an ending. Quick. Final. Though in all honesty it seemed that the wolves might still be circling.

  A small summer house hidden amongst the trees to the left of the path suddenly caught her attention. They had come here once in their effort to find quiet and out-of-the-way places and although the green shields of the summer trees were no longer in place the park was also far less peopled in winter than it had been back then.

  ‘I want to show you something,’ she said and was pleased when he followed her over the grass and came up the steps to the circular platform which sat above the Serpentine.

  Greyness surrounded them. The sky. The water. The trees with their mottled winter bark.

  Nicholas had to duck as he came beneath the boarding around the roof and she smiled at him even as she shivered with the cold.

  ‘This whole winter has been freezing.’

  She felt him there next to her, touching warmth along the length of their arms. A small intimacy in a large landscape and a connection that felt so right and true she made no attempt at all to pull away.

  * * *

  She was shaking.

  He wanted to bring her full into his warmth, but he also did not wish to frighten her.

  ‘I should have remembered the chestnuts,’ he said and liked the way she laughed. ‘But I do have this.’

  Pulling his flask from a pocket, he screwed open the top. ‘It will warm you up at least.’

  When she took it she sniffed at the top of it in a way that told him she did not quite trust what was inside.

  ‘Is it strong?’

  Before he could answer she took a swallow and began to cough, the purity of the liquor making her hand the flask back.

  ‘Scottish whisky and the best my uncle could buy.’

  ‘I have heard it said that Aaron Bartlett has left the country having taken money from the Bromley coffers.’

  ‘In truth I don’t care what he took, it’s only good to be rid of him. Bromworth Manor is being cleaned of his presence, just as the town house was, and soon there will be nothing left of his legacy there at all. His son has followed him by all accounts so there is another worry gone.’

  He tried to keep the bitterness from his words, but did not think he had succeeded when Eleanor looked at him with sorrow in her big blue eyes.

  ‘How was your guardian related to you?’

  ‘He was my father’s brother and I hated him right from the start. He was never a kind man or a good one and young children, for all their innocence, easily recognise duplicity when confronted with it.’

  There it was again, a truth he had given to very few others. His hand tightened on the wooden handrail that he leant upon, but he liked how her warmth fastened him to goodness and hope. An anchor to a world he had been gone from for so long.

  With Eleanor the shadows lightened and the demons that rode on his shoulders daily were less heavy. Frowning at his flowery thoughts, he scuffed at a broken baton at his feet.

  ‘Do you have any family left now? Anyone at all?’ She looked stricken as she asked her question.

  ‘None.’ The word was bare of emotion. He no longer craved the tie of blood as he once had as a child and even as a youth.

  ‘You could share mine, then. Grandmama is most adamant that she needs to keep an eye on you and you have always been Jacob’s best friend.’

  The sweetness of her offer astonished Nick, though he did wonder where she herself stood on the spectrum. He suddenly wanted to kiss her, to bring her into his arms and take her mouth in a hard stamp of ownership and possession. The feeling was so strong he turned and moved away, a flurry of freezing cold wind and rain aiding his want to escape.

  ‘Come, Eleanor, I think I should take you home.’

  Chapter Eight

  The town house was cloying. Nick thought that as he wandered the environs of his library later that same day, picking up this and that as he went.

  A racing broadsheet. A book on sexual positions from the East. A lewd statue of the female form made of ebony. He truly could not remember buying this even with the return of his memory. Had he actually paid money for such a thing and liked it?

  His servants had emptied the rooms of his uncle’s possessions and taken out all the objects that Aaron Bartlett had brought into the house.

  What was left was surprisingly meagre. There were barely any books to read and the numerous gambling dices, cards and tokens lying on various shelves reminded him exactly where his interest in life had mostly lain.

  And he had been so bad at it, too. To put all that effort into something that he had so little aptitude for amazed him.

  A small bracelet plaited of coloured thread inside a box on the mantel held his attention because it was so out of place. Why would this be here? He measured the strands against his own wrist and worked out it must have been the possession of a female he had known. This puzzled him more than anything.

  His taste in women had been eclectic and varied, but he had usually escorted well-connected young ladies of the ton or the high-flying courtesans from Vitium et Virtus. All these ladies he knew preferred diamonds.

  Lifting the small circle to his nose, he took in breath. A faint smell of violets. A wave of heat hit him forcibly. Lady Eleanor Huntingdon?

  Nothing made sense and yet everything did. He could feel her here through the fog, laughing at him, egging him on, sitting with him before the fire, her hands firmly entwined in his own.

  Was this a hope or a reality? He could not grasp the essence of it and his damned headache was worsening just as it always seemed to when he tried to force memory.

  Voices outside had him turning, the small plaited bracelet tucked carefully into his trousers pocket.

  ‘Mr Gregory, sir.’

  Oliver came in, a broad smile on his face.

  ‘I missed you at Fred’s the other night, Nick, and thought perhaps we could catch up now for a drink. I also brought back a book you’d leant me just before you disappeared.’

  Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe was in his hands, the burgundy-leather cover familiar.
<
br />   ‘At least I had one tome in my possession that was worth reading. I remember this.’

  ‘So the whole of your memory is back?’

  ‘Not quite all of it.’

  ‘Jake said you are certain it was not your uncle who had followed you to America and that you had been out looking for clues as to who else held a motive. Is that where you got the bruise on your cheek?’

  Oliver had always been the one to notice if things were not quite as they should be. ‘Bartlett didn’t send anyone overseas. I know that much, though he did mean to drown me in the Thames. He is a man of small vision like his son. I doubt if he could have come up with a plan that encompassed searching for me across years and oceans. If I can remember the last week before I disappeared, then perhaps I might remember other men...’

  ‘I saw you on one of those days with Jacob’s sister outside Fortnum and Mason’s in Piccadilly. She might have some ideas to help you.’

  ‘She is already.’

  ‘Is what?’

  ‘Helping me retrace the moments.’

  ‘Does Jake know of this?’

  ‘I’m not hiding anything.’

  Oliver frowned. ‘Eleanor was broken completely when she returned from the Highlands.’

  ‘I thought she had resided in Edinburgh.’

  ‘No. Her husband was some sort of a northern laird up by the western coast. He was drowned apparently in a boating accident in the autumn a year or so after you left and Eleanor returned home to Millbrook House. She has a young daughter so we do not see her much in London now, which is a shame. There was also some talk that she never married the fellow at all though Jacob soon put paid to such gossip.’

  Such a varying account floored Nicholas, for it was nothing at all like the facts Frederick had regaled him with. All this supposition was quite patently hearsay and Nick wondered at the true story. Still, if Jacob had not told Frederick or Oliver of it he doubted it would suddenly be related to him.

  But why the secrecy?

  His hand slipped into his right pocket and he felt the threads of the bracelet and its beads beneath the pads of his fingers. Tomorrow he was taking Eleanor to Lackington, Allen & Co. in Finsbury Square and he’d always liked the look of the façade of the place. She’d seemed tense when he had asked her of their next destination and he had wondered if anything had happened there between them to make her feel this way.