Society's Beauties: Mistress at Midnight / Scars of Betrayal. Sophia James
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the glasses. Her eyes are the most surprising of colours. Different shades,’ she continued as neither her husband nor Stephen spoke. ‘I wonder why she hides herself beneath yards and yards of shapeless black bombazine.’
Nat began to smile. ‘What are you trying to tell us, Cassie?’
‘Secrets linger in Mrs St Harlow’s eyes like ghosts and she is careful with every single thing that she says. Charles, of course, was difficult, so that may be part of it. But there are other things, as well. The same servant who greeted us at the carriage after the ball last night took our coats, provided us with tea and showed us out.’
‘You think they are short of money?’ Hawkhurst made the observation.
‘The house is furnished well and is one of the prettiest properties in all of Mayfair, so that possibility seems remote. There was an odd sound whilst we were there, though. A howling if I had to name it. Mrs St Harlow said that they had just taken over the care of a small puppy and were trying to train the animal. Her sisters looked less than comfortable with the explanation, however, and I got the feeling they were relieved to see us go. Not Leonora, of course. Rodney and she existed in a space all of their own and I have never seen my brother so happy.’
‘Is it wise to encourage him, do you think?’ Nat asked the question.
‘You refer to Mrs St Harlow’s past, no doubt, and the unfortunate accident at Medlands.’
‘It was widely known that they were not happy. Charles had apparently said something of his wife expressing her desire for his early demise not long before he died. His friends testified that she harassed and badgered him all of the time, a woman who was never content with all the gifts that he was showering upon her. By all accounts from the London jewellers and suchlike, there were many.’
‘Which friends?’ Stephen joined in the conversation.
‘Freddy Delsarte and his cronies were amongst their number, if I recall.’
‘Delsarte waylaid Mrs St Harlow at the ball. She had bruises on her wrist from his grip.’
‘Perhaps he is another of her disenchanted lovers, then. The parties they held at Medlands were notorious.’ Nat used a tone that was unusual. Stephen had heard the same cadence when information was being extracted from a difficult informant, the undercurrents of deception held within.
‘I thought it brave of her to even attend, Hawk.’ Cassie’s voice resonated with a definite query.
‘She has three sisters to marry off. That would make a warrior out of any woman.’ Hawkhurst remembered her antics above Taylor’s Gap.
‘Yet she makes no effort at all to give her side of the story. If she was pardoned by the courts, she must be innocent.’
‘Or she had a good lawyer,’ Nathaniel interjected and Stephen could hear his impatience with the whole thing. ‘Charles was a man who none of us liked and Mrs St Harlow is a woman whom society detests. Perhaps they suited each other entirely.’
‘I don’t think I detest her,’ Cassie interrupted. ‘I think, under other circumstances, we might have been friends. You had a waltz together, Hawk. What do you make of her character?’
She kisses well and goes to pieces on the smallest of caresses.
He wondered what would be said should he voice such things and remained quiet.
‘I barely know her.’ Stephen did not wish to be drawn into Cassandra’s wiles by admitting more and when the conversation meandered on to other topics, he was pleased.
On Monday afternoon, despite willing himself not to, Hawk found himself in the park watching for the conveyance containing Aurelia St Harlow and her father. Why he did not just dismiss the woman from his notice was beyond his understanding but there it was, logic lost beneath a will that had forgotten what was good for him.
He did not have long to wait before they came, Aurelia in her black bombazine with a matching hat and her father tucked in beside her in the open landau. She chatted and laughed, the driver on the front box dressed in the livery of the stables complex in Davies Mews and the horses a well-matched pair of greys.
The senior Beauchamp must be a gifted conversationalist, Stephen thought, as he caught her laughter on the wind, for he had never seen Aurelia St Harlow look so animated. He hated the way his body responded to the sound and bit down in irritation.
Below this thought, however, another one less generous tumbled, born from his years of observing people closely, he supposed, and from a lifetime of finding the wrong in things.
He could not see her father’s lips moving in the spaces when his daughter did not speak and though he craned forward to watch more closely as they returned around the path for a second time, he was beginning to get the feeling that the gaiety of this carriage ride was a sham.
For whom? His eyes took in various lords and ladies gracing the park, the busiest time of the day, and although other conveyances slowed down to speak to those who might hail them, the Beauchamp carriage maintained a steady speed and a one-sided conversation for three whole passes around.
Then it simply left, gliding through the gates with all the grace of a completed outing, the horses perfectly in time and undoubtedly barely stretched.
Would Aurelia St Harlow never stop surprising him and why would she be bent on such a show?
Rodney Northrup chose that moment to saunter over towards him. The lad looked happier than he had looked for a long while and Hawk guessed his joyous admiration of Miss Leonora Beauchamp to have some hand in such newly found cheerfulness.
‘Lord Hawkhurst. I have not seen you here before at this hour of the day. You have just missed Mrs St Harlow and her father. They left not more than a brace of minutes ago.’
Stephen decided to play along. ‘I had heard they frequented the park on a Monday. I expect you were here to catch sight of the sister…Leonora, is it not?’
‘Oh, Miss Leonora never accompanies them. It is always just Mrs St Harlow and her father.’
‘I see,’ Stephen returned. And he did.
With only the two of them in the carriage no one would stop to talk. Curious acquaintances would be a danger to any hidden secret and as Aurelia so religiously rebuffed anyone who might offer more than a glance, she and her father stayed safe from closer attention. Was Braeburn House entailed? No one had seen Richard Beauchamp in any company save that of his daughter in years. Could Aurelia St Harlow have kept any intimation of her father being ill a secret to protect the inheritance of her three unmarried sisters? Such a shield was exactly the sort of thing he knew she might have held on to, safeguarding any change detrimental to her siblings’ chance of a good marriage. Braeburn House was a prosperous address and the affluent and moneyed of the ton would easily be impressed.
He wished then that he might have stepped forwards and seen what it was she would have done. Part of him imagined the driver to be instructed by her to merely run down anyone who had the effrontery to approach them. Hawkhurst swallowed back chagrin and listened to Rodney.
‘Cassie said that You should be receiving an invitation to her party and that you were to make sure you come. You have missed many of her soirées, she said, and she wants you to be at this one.’
Normally he had no interest in such gatherings and avoided them like the plague, but she had mentioned the same celebration to Mrs St Harlow at his ball and by her account the invitation had been accepted.
He shrugged and looked away, watching as other carriages pulled up and down the concourse and wishing he might see the only one that had caught his attention return.
Aurelia had seen Hawkhurst standing against a gate on the path on the far side of the park. She knew it was he by his stance and the breadth of his shoulders and by an awareness that disturbed every part of her no matter what distance lay between them.
Nerves had made her more animated than she usually was