Chapter Eight

      Aurelia met Stephen Hawkhurst in the library in Bond Street on Tuesday morning, almost falling over him as she rounded one aisle. His height and strength in the smallness of Hookham’s seemed out of place here, a warrior amidst the formality of Society’s quieter pursuits.

      She wished she had worn her light blue dress, as even to her own uncritical eye the black bombazine did her skin little favour. Pushing such ridiculous vanity aside, she waited, for after their conversation at Park Street there could be little he wanted to say to her ever again.

      ‘I hope your father’s influenza is abating, Mrs St Harlow.’

      So that was how he would play it. She felt her cheeks flush red. ‘Indeed it is, my lord.’ Her hands clutched a book of flowers drawn as lithographs on to thin tissue and further afield she noticed a couple of women looking their way.

      Nay, his way, she amended, their expressions having the same sort of interest she had perceived on most of the female guests at his ball.

      When he beckoned her to follow him towards the end of the room she went uncertainly, pleased that the onlookers were blocked from her view by a tall shelf.

      ‘I have been giving the…situation with your father some thought.’

      Shaking her head, she turned to leave, but he caught her arm and held it, the grip of his fingers allowing her to go nowhere.

      ‘Could you speak with your cousin and gain his approval in ensuring your family’s living situation is more stable? Surely if such a thing were to leave you destitute the man might consider such an action.’

      ‘Or he might throw us out tomorrow.’

      ‘He seems reasonable enough.’

      ‘You have checked up on him?’ Horror and anger made her voice rise a good few octaves.

      ‘Mr James Beauchamp has a name for being a fair and equitable man.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘He is also a friend of Rodney Northrup’s.’

      ‘One can be a respected man or a beloved friend and still have a penchant for that which has never been enjoyed.’

      ‘From where I stand there seems more than enough to share and I am certain your family would be relieved to see you at home a little more often.’

      ‘No.’ The single word was louder this time as she broke off contact between them, danger sprouting from such intransigence. Did Lord Stephen Hawkhurst really expect just to waltz into her life and change it as if it were a knitting pattern, easy and simple? She knew what would happen next. Of course she did. If Mr James Beauchamp came to the house in the guise of a distant cousin inclined to help, everything would change.

      They would all have to be grateful to him and the whims of an unmarried twenty-seven-year-old man might include the wish for a wife. Then Leonora or Prudence or Harriet would be sacrificed for the greater good of the family, and each of them would go without a whimper to protect her. She knew this as truly as she knew the night followed the day because all year the whispers she heard when the others thought she was not listening had been about their worries for her.

      Aurelia works too hard. If only we could find a way to help her.

      Well, the silks were beginning to pay and the new completed designs were beautiful and different. Another few months and everything would be possible. the only tripping block stood before her in Hookham’s lending library in the large form of the implacable Lord Stephen Hawkhurst and he did not look pleased.

      ‘How many other sisters do you have?’

      ‘Two. Prudence and Harriet are twins.’

      ‘Do they look like you?’

      ‘No. They are much prettier, for they favour Leonora and—’

      A ripe swear word broke off her sentence.

      ‘Charles was a man who appreciated beauty in women. Surely he let you know of the qualities in yourself that he admired?’

      ‘Oh, indeed he did.’ She took away the sting in the words by sheer dint of will. He admired women who would do things in the bedroom that even prostitutes in the East End of London might have blushed at and he had simply abandoned her on his estate in the far north when she had refused to take part in any of it. Even the servants he had left her with had been instructed to be of as little help as possible until she came around to understanding what the words ‘I promise to obey’ meant in their hastily completed marriage.

      The first few nights alone had been the worst. After that she had thanked the Lord for the distance between her new abode and her new husband and for the independence that naturally followed. Aye, her freedoms had been hard won and she was not about to give them up now to anyone.

      ‘Such problems are mine to solve, my lord.’ Aurelia could barely get the words out, so desperate was she to escape, and the headache she had had all morning began to play upon her vision. ‘The silk trade is shaping up well and in a few months I am certain I shall be—’

      ‘Dead and buried by the looks of the dark rings beneath your eyes.’

      Glancing down, she resisted the urge to lift her fingers to her face. She had hardly slept for days, the difficulty of everything increased somehow by all the consequences of the Hawkhurst ball. Leonora and Rodney. Cassandra Lindsay and her invitation to a country-house party. The carriage ride home where she had understood for the first time in her life what it was to be attracted to a man.

      Not just any man, either, but this one before her, his eyes filled with certainty.

      ‘What if Lady Lindsay brought your sisters out and I footed the bill?’

      Aurelia could not believe what she had just heard and shock made her step back.

      ‘I could never accept such an offer.’

      ‘Why not? You were married to my cousin and as the head of the Hawkhurst family I would be most remiss to leave you floundering financially as a widow.’

      ‘I am hardly a relative you might be expected to nurture, my lord, and people would talk.’

      ‘They talk now, Aurelia.’

      His eyes were softened in the grey light of a gloomy London afternoon and she thought he had never looked more beautiful.

      ‘I should tell you that Cassandra Lindsay broached the subject with me yesterday. She has met your sisters, apparently, and was most impressed by them.’

      ‘Oh.’ The wind was taken from her sails as she tried to decide exactly what to do.

      Turning away, she looked out of the window, a squally rain shower pushing a