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He wanted to kiss Aurelia and feel again what he had once, the sharp and unexpected delight of lust surprising him, for it had been many a year since he had known the sort of quickness that she inspired. The anger at such a demented fantasy had him sitting upright.
She was a woman who was said to have killed his cousin and got away with it, the whispered gossip of society following her every step. She would be forever ostracized and dismissed. He breathed out with a heavy force of air, for years of being a rolling stone had worn him away, homeless and searching, the shadows now thick harbingers of all he had become. He needed the security of a warm and easy home. He needed goodness and humanity and mercy to heal his demons, crouched now closer than ever. Taylor’s Gap had been a warning of his precarious state of mind and he knew he had to be more careful for with only a little push he might lose the touchstones altogether.
He opened a drawer on a small cabinet beside his bed and took out a box. A golden timepiece lay inside. His brother’s. Stopped at the moment of his death. The claws of grief had him standing and he made his way to the seat by the window to watch the heavens, a distant glimmer of light claiming the darkness to the east as dawn finally broke.
Alone. For so long now. The burden of it all made worse by his need for an heir. He swore as the hallowed legends of the Hawkhurst family wrapped around his chest so tightly he found it hard to move. The scent of violets felt close and his leg ached in the early morning cold.
‘No, Papa, you have to eat your breakfast.’
Aurelia had had three hours’ sleep last night and she swallowed down irritation as her father refused to open his mouth, her eyes straying to the clock on the mantel. Eight o’clock already. She hoped Mr Rodney Northrup would not come calling until well into the afternoon, although she could already hear Leonora preparing herself for his visit.
‘I want to read, Lia. I want to sit and read.’ His hand came out and she smiled when warm fingers curled into her own. It had been two years since the father they had known had been largely swallowed up by a stranger that they did not, but sometimes like now there were the old glimpses of him.
‘Eat the egg, Papa, and then I will take you into the library.’
When he finally allowed her to feed him she breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Leonora has a beau coming to see her this afternoon. His name is Mr Rodney Northrup and he is a friend of Lord Hawkhurst.’ Aurelia always told him the news of the house each morning just in case he might take something in.
Prudence joined her after a few moments, her youngest sister’s face alight with anticipation, her hair a golden froth of curls.
‘Leonora says Rodney Northrup is the most handsome boy she has ever met, Lia. She says that he danced with her all night and sat close beside her in the carriage on the way home. She also mentioned that you had had a waltz with the menacing Lord Hawkhurst. Could you not have refused him?’
‘Hawkhurst?’ Her father spluttered the name. ‘Charles knew Hawkhurst?’
‘Indeed, Papa, he did.’
Prudence’s eyes widened. ‘Did Papa just understand us, Lia?’
Aurelia waited to see if her father would say more, but silence seemed to have claimed him again as he sat and fiddled with a spoon and a fork.
‘There are glimmers of comprehension still, Pru, although we have to expect that they will become fewer and further between, but enough of all this for now. Tell me, what is Leonora wearing today?’ The topic distracted her sister completely and as she talked excitedly about a silk gown trimmed with lace, Aurelia wandered her own pathway of thoughts.
Would Stephen Hawkhurst accompany Rodney Northrup? She hoped that he would not. Please, God, let him not come, she prayed over and over, jolted from her musings as her sister asked a question.
‘Did the invitation to Lady Lindsay’s country party include Harriet and me?’
‘As you have not even come out yet I should doubt it very much!’
‘But we are almost seventeen, Lia. Could we not at least plan a time when we should be able to accompany you to such things? We could borrow the older gowns Leonora no longer fits. It won’t be expensive.’
The plaintive tone in her voice had Aurelia taking a breath. When would it ever be easy? The silks were beginning to pay, but their debts were still substantial.
She should be at the warehouse now, sorting through fabric, but this visit by Cassandra Lindsay’s brother meant that she needed to be at home today, chaperoning her sisters as there was nobody else to do it.
As she closed her eyes the exhaustion she had felt last night was there again this morning so, after finishing her father’s leftover breakfast, she poured herself a glass of milk. If she became ill then the whole game was lost. One mistake and her father’s second cousin would be in to claim Braeburn House, leaving them homeless and penniless.
The horror of such a thing happening was not even to be considered and she stood to help her father back to the library. He did not understand what he read any more, but he enjoyed holding the books. She would instruct his maid to keep him there until after the visitors had gone, influenza giving her a good excuse for his absence.
Rodney Northrup was accompanied by his sister and they arrived well into the afternoon.
They were all in the downstairs salon when they heard the sound of a carriage stopping. Prudence ran to the window to be roundly growled at by Leonora who wanted everything to be simply perfect. Harriet rolled her eyes at Aurelia as they all took their seats again and listened to the approaching voices.
He was not with them! Relief flooded into Aurelia’s whole body. Hawkhurst had not come with his golden eyes, night-dark hair and menacing certainty. She unclenched her fists, removed her glasses and found herself smiling as Cassandra Lindsay and Rodney Northrup were shown into the room by John.
‘I hope we did not keep you waiting at all.’
‘You are right on time, Lady Lindsay,’ Aurelia returned, her sentiment not echoed in the face of both Prudence and Harriet.
‘Oh, please call me Cassie. All of my friends do.’
Without waiting for a reply she clasped Leonora’s hands next. ‘Rodney has been most keen to come today, my dear, and with you looking so pretty in pink I can well see why. Your two sisters mirror you in their pastel hues.’ She waited as Aurelia introduced the twins, their curly blond hair catching the light from the window.
‘I did not realise your sisters were almost all of the same age, Mrs St Harlow.’
‘Prudence and Harriet are nearly seventeen. They will come out next Season.’ Aurelia did not quite feel comfortable using Lady Lindsay’s first name and so did not add anything else at all.
‘And your father?’
‘Is indisposed at the moment with the influenza. He is in bed and has been for the past few days.’
‘Then let us hope he makes a good recovery with no lingering bad effects.’
In answer Aurelia smiled, the lies falling bald into the room between them. It had been so long since any stranger had set foot in Braeburn House and the need for lies made everything dangerous. Her eyes strayed to the clock. How long did one of these visits usually last for? She hoped it might be quick.
‘I visited Mrs St Harlow and her sisters yesterday with Rodney, Hawk. Aurelia St Harlow is…unusual.’
Cassie’s statement made both men turn from their seats in the corner of the St Auburn library.
‘She