Regency Society Collection Part 1. Sarah Mallory

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СКАЧАТЬ her side and she shifted her position to accommodate the ache. To the left some twenty yards away the man from Paris and another stood talking, a pile of money stacked between them on a table.

      Florencia shook in fear, hot tears running onto her silken dress and shadowing the yellow.

      ‘It will be all right, Florencia. I promise.’ Sometimes lies were a balm to truth but the terror in her was growing with each passing second.

      ‘The man gave me a bon-bon.’ She raised the sticky sweetness up, wailing as Eleanor knocked the treat from her hands and it rolled across the floor, collecting dust and wheat grains and fibre.

      ‘You must not eat anything they give you,’ she said even as she sidled to the right. There had to be something here she could hide, some solid sharp object that would allow her at least a moment of surprise. She found it in a hook embedded in a sack of grain, the shaft of it threaded with rope. When she tested the point, blood welled on the pad on her finger. If anyone touched Florencia, she would gouge out their eyes. She swore she would as she fitted the weapon into her palm.

      Noises from outside made her start. A crash and some swearing and then the door was flung open, a voice she knew rising above others further out.

      ‘Where is she?’ The sound of a gun firing and then the stench of powder curling into the room!

      Florencia screamed, frozen in terror, her dark eyes like two holes in her pale face, and then Cristo Wellingham was there, the boot of his heel through the door and the shot fired, loud and fierce, no quarter given. It was the metal shield he carried that had saved him, Eleanor realised later, though how he had known the man might aim for his head and not his chest …

      Two knives flew almost in unison and then there was silence, the smoke curling as Cristo’s eyes met her own, dark amber cold as steel.

      ‘Eleanor?’ Her name? She could see him say it, but there was no sound, only his mouth opening as the distance between them closed. Two feet and then one. Her face damp with blood and sweat and tears as she came against him, Florencia in her arms.

      Her heartbeat was dull in her head and then they were outside in the rain, heavy and cleansing, the chill of it washing away all traces of death.

      She grabbed at her daughter, hands threading through silver and silver, hardly knowing where one of them began and the other one ended. As sound returned his words were not in English but in French, quiet and honest and infinitely calming.

      ‘It is over, Eleanor. You are safe.’

      Nodding, she stayed there in his arms until her breathing softened. When she finally pulled away she saw his eyes were full of a pain that had nothing to do with the physical as he gazed at Florencia.

      ‘You would not have told me?’ His injured hand reached out for the silver in her hair.

      Still in French. A protection, she realized, against his daughter listening. The muscles in his arms showed through the material in his jacket. Powerful. Strong. She watched as he touched Florencia for the very first time, infinite care and love in the movement.

      ‘Tell me that you would have told me, damn it. Eleanor. I need to hear at least that.’

      His eyes were closed now and the muscle on the side of the jaw rippled in tension.

      ‘No. She is mine, Cristo, because to say anything else would be to destroy her. Don’t you see that?’

      The shadows in his eyes when he opened them again were bruised with both anger and want.

      ‘Yet by saying nothing you destroy me?’

      Her bottom lip quivered as the challenge registered. A choice, then? A man who had walked in the shadows of the world and whose sins were coming back to be visited upon those all about him, dangerous, perilous, the fortunate outcome of the evening’s happenings only decided by a miracle! He had killed two men right in front of her eyes and never blinked once.

      Pulling back, she broke contact, the guilt of another feeling sticking in her throat.

      ‘The man you killed was from the Château Giraudon. I remember him as the one who hurt my thigh.’

      He nodded. ‘Etienne Beraud. He was a French spy.’

      ‘As you were an English one? If anything had happened to Florencia because of our past … because of your past …’

      Reality crashed in and his eyes acknowledged her withdrawal. Already the sounds of others were coming closer, the real world of London and its people, running steps and voices of authority. The constabulary. She saw the shape of their hats even as Cristo Wellingham drew away.

      ‘Our coachman followed the carriage on foot to the docks after you were taken in the park, Lainie, and when he saw where they had stopped he came back to tell us.’ Her sister-in-law’s arms were firmly around her, helping her into the Dromorne conveyance, and settling a blanket across both her and Florencia’s knees once inside. ‘Martin was beside himself, of course, and had to be sedated, but I sent for the constabulary and we came straight here. I would not have believed it was Cristo Wellingham who took you until I saw him pulling at you, trying to make you stay. He will be hanged for this, of course.’ Diana’s voice was flat. ‘He will be hanged and drawn and quartered for the kidnap of a lady and her child, and God knows what it will do to the Wellingham family name.’ Barking out an order to the driver, she shut the door with a clang.

      ‘No. It was not him … it was not Cristo Wellingham who did this. He saved us, Diana. He came and saved us.’

      ‘Why?’ Her sister-in-law’s eyes had narrowed, the gleam in them deadened with the confession. ‘Why would he do that, Eleanor? Why would a man with whom you have had very little contact risk his life to save yours?’

      The truth was caught again in choice. Spare her reputation or save Cristo’s life.

      ‘I knew Cristo Wellingham intimately in Paris.’

      Florencia between them looked up as the silence lengthened, and Eleanor saw the very second that the truth of her daughter’s parentage dawned in Diana’s glance.

      ‘What have you done? Does my brother know any of this?’ Her question was full of horror as she comprehended what it was that was implied. ‘This sort of scandal will kill Martin and he has been nothing but kind to you. And my girls … This will ruin their chances of any union whatsoever if any of it gets out … you do know that?’

      The weight of choice became heavier.

      ‘If you could find it in yourself to protect our family and to say nothing … to let a man well connected take his chances …’

      ‘There were people killed tonight, Diana. If he should be blamed for that, they would crucify him.’ Eleanor shook her head firmly and reached for the handle of the carriage, but already the horses were moving at some speed. She felt a new dread creep into her heart as the anger flashed in her sister-in-law’s eyes.

      ‘Then you leave me no choice whatsoever, for both my brother and daughters and for Florencia. And for you, too, Eleanor! One day you might even thank me for saving you from yourself.’

      ‘I don’t understand.’

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