One Illicit Night. Sophia James

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ measure of a man’s worth is a testimony to that fact.’

      ‘How cruel you are, Lainie.’ Sophie’s tone was soft. ‘But your insult must also apply to the other young ladies who were at the Brownes’ last night.’

      ‘When is this demigod next in circulation?’ Martin’s question was threaded with humour.

      ‘Tonight. There is a large gathering at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. A comedy by James Planché is showing and it is supposed to be very good.’

      ‘Perhaps we should go?’ Martin’s voice sounded stronger than it had in a while, but Eleanor began to shake her head, a vague disquiet building behind her smile. Something was wrong, she was sure of it, and yet she could not put her finger on just exactly what it was.

      ‘Please, Eleanor. It has been ages since we all went out and if Martin feels up to it?’

      ‘Of course! Our box has been severely neglected of late, and I am sure your mother would also enjoy the outing, Sophie.’

      Cristo watched the rain from the window of his house overlooking Hyde Park. Summer rain slanting across the green grass blurred the paths that crossed the common.

      He lifted the brandy he had brought with him from Paris and took a liberal swig straight from the bottle. His brothers would be here soon and he would need all the succour he could muster. He wished he could have cared less than he did about what it was they might say to him, but the wildness of his youth had alienated him entirely and they had probably been as happy as his father to know he was leaving England. His father’s first letter to find him when he eventually reached Paris had made certain he understood that returning to the family fold was not an option. The memory still hurt, but he shoved it aside. He could help none of it and what was done, was done.

      Only masquerade. Only deception. England and its airs and expectations made him take another good mouthful of brandy and then another. He should not have come back, but ten years on foreign soil felt like a lifetime and the soft green heart of England had called to him even in his dreams.

      ‘Would you be wanting your black cloak, or your dark blue one this evening, my lord?’

      Milne, his butler, held a cape on either arm.

      ‘The black, I think. And don’t wait up for me tonight, for I shall be late.’

      ‘You said the same yesterday, my lord. And the night before that.’

      Cristo smiled. Milne’s frailty worried him, but the old man had too much pride to just take the substantial amount of money that Cristo had tried to give him and retire. Paris had aged him, too. Just one more blame resting upon his shoulders with the shady dealings in the Château Giraudon, sordid repayment for Milne’s devotion and loyalty and belief. In him. It was a relief to leave it all behind.

      ‘My brothers should be here within the hour. If you could show them up.’

      ‘Yes, my lord.’

      ‘And if you could ask the housekeeper to prepare tea.’

      ‘Yes, my lord.’

      He placed the bottle of brandy on his desk inside a cabinet and closed the doors. Alcohol was one of the factors in his lengthy estrangement and he did not wish for the evidence to be anywhere on show. Tea seemed an acceptable substitute.

      The cravat at his throat felt as restrictive as the dark blue waistcoat lying over his crisp white shirt and the new tight boots hurt his heels.

      ‘Asher Wellingham, the Duke of Carisbrook, my lord,’ Milne announced, ‘and his brother, Lord Taris Wellingham.’

      Cristo stood as the two men walked into the room, a scar that ran under Taris’s left eye giving the first cause for concern, though Cristo showed no evidence of it as he waited for speech. Asher and Taris looked older and harder. Neither smiled.

      ‘So you are back.’ Ashe had never been a man to beat around the bush.

      ‘It seems that I am.’ Cristo didn’t care for the cautiousness he heard so plainly in his words, but the distance between them was measured in a lot more than the few feet of his library floor.

      ‘You have blatantly ignored our many efforts to stay in touch with you,’ Ashe reminded him. ‘Over the years the notes you sent back indicated you held no fondness at all for the name of Wellingham or indeed for us. Yet here you are.’ Each word held a sharp undercurrent of blame.

      ‘Are you well?’ Taris spoke now, a note in the question that unexpectedly tipped Cristo off balance.

      ‘Very.’ Even in the many skirmishes of Paris his heart had not beaten so fast.

      Asher looked around the room, taking in the lack of ornamentation, he supposed. Or of belongings! Taris’s glance, on the other hand, never wavered once.

      ‘Alice always hoped you would return.’ Ashe again. The barb tore at Cristo’s composure and he looked away.

      Alice! The only mother he had ever known. Damn them. He felt the hand in his pocket grip the skin on his thigh. Damn England and damn family. Damn the hope that had never been extinguished, even in the most terrible of times.

      ‘As it seems you are here to stay, I have arranged your introduction back into society and the family fold in the guise of a theatre visit. With a lot of darkness and distraction we should at least look as if we enjoy being a family and if this is going to work at all, appearances matter.’

      Ashe’s irony was so very easily heard.

      Cristo nodded, not trusting himself with more. He had left England vowing never to return, his wild ways at Cambridge inflaming loyalties and stretching the already-frayed love of his family. He had never fitted in, never dovetailed into the strict and rigid codes his father had laid down and when everything had finally unravelled after Nigel Bracewell-Lowen had died in the cemetery in the village near his home, Cristo’s father had been the first to tell him that he was not a true Wellingham, or a legitimate son of Falder.

      Cristo swallowed back the bile of remembrance as he remembered his father’s final tirade. Ashborne had dallied with a French woman on his travels, a small meaningless tryst he had said that was ‘ill-advised, wrong-headed, inappropriate and more than foolish’. The words still had the power to hurt even all these years later, for what did one say to a parent so condemning of his very conception and of the woman who had birthed him?

      The other side of the coin had also held damage. Alice, his stepmother, had taken him in at Falder and loved him like her own and if a whisper of his true parentage was ever mentioned he had not heard of it. The three-month-old Cristo de Caviglione had become a Wellingham, his name written into the family Bible by Alice’s very hand. She had told him that much later when the tensions between him and his father had resulted in the truth being thrown in his face and she had hurried to London to plead with Cristo to stay.

      Love and anger entwined in deceit, and now a different duplicity. Cristo hated the beaded sweat on his upper lip as his oldest brother outlined his plans for the evening.

      ‘Our wives shall also be accompanying us to the theatre.’ The tone Asher used was so very English.

      Emerald Seaton and Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke! Cristo had kept up with the family gossip while СКАЧАТЬ