LITMIR.BIZ

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she returned.

      ‘Oh, I have many more, Beatrice-Maude. Later tonight, if you would let me, I could share them with you.’

      ‘Later tonight?’ she queried with a laugh. ‘Is that a promise?’

      ‘Indeed.’ The humour in his voice was easily heard. ‘And may I say that you look very beautiful this evening.’

      ‘You can see me?’

      ‘Imagination has its advantages.’

      ‘Such as?’

      ‘In my mind you are wearing the gown drenched in perfume that I found you in after returning from London.’

      ‘Rather revealing at a country ball?’

      ‘And your hair is down, floating in curls around your shoulders like the sirens on the rocks at Li Galli.’

      ‘If you heard me sing you might choose another analogy, my lord.’

      ‘Boudicca, then, of the Iceni, leading the Ancient Britons against the Romans?’

      ‘With poor Nero and his legions such an easy target!’

      When they had both stopped laughing, she brought her fingers along the edge of his cheek.

      ‘Taris?’

      He was very still and in the amber of his eyes she determined a vulnerability that she had never seen there before.

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘Thank you.’

      ‘For what?’

      ‘For making me believe that I am nearly beautiful.’

      ‘Ahh, Beatrice,’ he returned and held her closer, ’to me you are very much more than that.’

      An hour or so later Taris sensed that something was not right. He felt it in the air around him, and in the tension inside him.

      Leaving Bea with Emerald and Ashe, he went with Bates on the pretence of retrieving his glasses from his cape.

      Normally he would have simply sent his servant, but tonight the prickling sense of unease that he so often had had in his years as an intelligence officer under Wellington was strong, and he needed the silence to listen. As he sifted his way through the crowds, the intuition that had saved him on the Continent was heightened here and intense.

      As they gained the entrance hall he heard a muffled thump followed by a distinct groan. Bates drew away, his footsteps easily heard on the marbled flooring, and then another noise followed the first.

      ‘Bates?’ When his servant did not answer, Taris released the diamond points of his ring before unshackling the handle of his cane.

      ‘Bates?’ He tried again, feeling a shadow on his skin and a bristling sense of danger. Reaching out, he tried to fend off whatever was coming at him and the glancing angle of a hard wooden object skimmed the flesh on his forearm in a heavy well-aimed blow; a baton if he should make a guess, but his initial twist had been enough to escape the worst of the jolt. The scent of bergamot was strong.

      Radcliff! He was here? Raising his sword, Taris slashed before him, but all that was left was air.

      Panic settled across calmness as he crouched to his servant on the floor at his feet. Another man lay beside him. Both were out cold, but still breathing.

      God. Now the clerk would be after Bea!

      Standing, he made for the noise in the room he had just left, running full into a door left half-open. On the rebound his fingers glanced across a pillar he had felt a few moments earlier and, gaining direction, he continued on, the feel of the wall against his palm and then the door. The warmth generated by a great amount of people led him onwards, and in the sludge of grey he determined shapes.

      Someone swore at him as he bumped against a hand holding a glass, but he strode past, calling Beatrice’s name as he went. Not softly either. Another person’s foot almost tripped him up and he struggled to keep his balance, slamming into a plant that he had not seen and knocking it over.

      No longer careful or camouflaged.

      Years of restraint were lost in that one single moment of imagining her being hurt and as people came within his sphere he made no attempt at apology, their loud exclamations ignored completely as he made his way further inside.

      ‘Beatrice?’ Nothing else mattered now save finding out where she was, though without Bates at his side Taris had little idea of where that might be or of the objects in his way. A chair stopped his progress and he turned to the left.

      ‘Beatrice-Maude?’ His voice was louder, the cadence hardly recognisable, and the band that had been playing at this end of the room wound down into silence as he continued to shout. His breath came in thick bands of fear and he widened his eyes in an attempt to see something more.

      Ghosts of grey blurred into blackness, ephemeral and unrecognisable, the darker shadows of walls giving him at least a clue of the boundaries in the room. Beyond that, bands of sombre murkiness lingered, the detail of the chamber completely lost.

      ‘Beatrice? Where are you?’ His unsheathed silver blade caused those around him to scatter.

      ‘Wellingham has a sword. He’s gone bloody mad.’

      The sound of screaming made the hair on his arms stand up and the back of his neck crawl.

      ‘Bea?’ Had Radcliff got to her? Was he pulling her outside even as he searched hopelessly through the haze?

      One man tried to stop him, but Taris made short work of the fellow, the fop’s ineffective jab no match at all for a soldier trained in the art of warfare for over six years. He felt others move back from him, whispering, the footfalls of people afraid.

      ‘Taris?’ Ashe’s voice from afar, the sound in it almost as desperate as his own. Relief surged through him.

      ‘Asher, can you see Beatrice?’ The room seemed larger than it had all night, and still there was no response from the only one he sought.

      ‘Bea. Beatrice-Maude, where are you? If you touch her, Radcliff, I will kill you. I swear I will. Ashe?’ Another shout to his brother, who sounded closer.

      ‘The clerk is here?’ Asher’s tone sounded exactly like his own, and the noise of those in the room lessened, as though they too were suddenly cognisant of further threat and waiting for it to charge at them from any quarter.

      ‘Beatrice?’ He tried to disguise panic, but couldn’t.

      ‘To your right. We are over here, Taris.’ His sister-in-law’s voice and then finally Beatrice.

      ‘Taris?’ Her question was filled with worry. Closer and closer. The whirl of blackness made him pant, the sweat on his brow building and then she was there beside him, her hands threaded around his arm and the smell of violets welcome.

      ‘I thought I had lost you. Radcliff is here.’ He gathered her in, sword at ready. If anyone came close he would kill them, he swore that he would. The grey sludge of nothingness clung to his fear and anger made him shake. Only they in the room against the world!

      ‘Taris. He is not here. I cannot see him here.’ Beatrice’s reason was calming.

      ‘You are sure?’

      ‘He is not here.’

      The roar of the crowd came back and the thrump of his blood beating in his temples lessened. When Ashe and Emerald joined them, he lowered his blade and tried to find a normal breath.

      ‘He’s gone. The bastard was here, but now he has gone.’

      ‘You are sure it was Radcliff?’

      ‘I could smell him.’

      ‘Are you drunk, Wellingham?’ Lord Davis’s voice beside him voiced the query.

      ‘Not…drunk.’

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