Chapter Eight
The town house was cloying. Nick thought that as he wandered the environs of his library later that same day, picking up this and that as he went.
A racing broadsheet. A book on sexual positions from the East. A lewd statue of the female form made of ebony. He truly could not remember buying this even with the return of his memory. Had he actually paid money for such a thing and liked it?
His servants had emptied the rooms of his uncle’s possessions and taken out all the objects that Aaron Bartlett had brought into the house.
What was left was surprisingly meagre. There were barely any books to read and the numerous gambling dices, cards and tokens lying on various shelves reminded him exactly where his interest in life had mostly lain.
And he had been so bad at it, too. To put all that effort into something that he had so little aptitude for amazed him.
A small bracelet plaited of coloured thread inside a box on the mantel held his attention because it was so out of place. Why would this be here? He measured the strands against his own wrist and worked out it must have been the possession of a female he had known. This puzzled him more than anything.
His taste in women had been eclectic and varied, but he had usually escorted well-connected young ladies of the ton or the high-flying courtesans from Vitium et Virtus. All these ladies he knew preferred diamonds.
Lifting the small circle to his nose, he took in breath. A faint smell of violets. A wave of heat hit him forcibly. Lady Eleanor Huntingdon?
Nothing made sense and yet everything did. He could feel her here through the fog, laughing at him, egging him on, sitting with him before the fire, her hands firmly entwined in his own.
Was this a hope or a reality? He could not grasp the essence of it and his damned headache was worsening just as it always seemed to when he tried to force memory.
Voices outside had him turning, the small plaited bracelet tucked carefully into his trousers pocket.
‘Mr Gregory, sir.’
Oliver came in, a broad smile on his face.
‘I missed you at Fred’s the other night, Nick, and thought perhaps we could catch up now for a drink. I also brought back a book you’d leant me just before you disappeared.’
Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe was in his hands, the burgundy-leather cover familiar.
‘At least I had one tome in my possession that was worth reading. I remember this.’
‘So the whole of your memory is back?’
‘Not quite all of it.’
‘Jake said you are certain it was not your uncle who had followed you to America and that you had been out looking for clues as to who else held a motive. Is that where you got the bruise on your cheek?’
Oliver had always been the one to notice if things were not quite as they should be. ‘Bartlett didn’t send anyone overseas. I know that much, though he did mean to drown me in the Thames. He is a man of small vision like his son. I doubt if he could have come up with a plan that encompassed searching for me across years and oceans. If I can remember the last week before I disappeared, then perhaps I might remember other men...’
‘I saw you on one of those days with Jacob’s sister outside Fortnum and Mason’s in Piccadilly. She might have some ideas to help you.’
‘She is already.’
‘Is what?’
‘Helping me retrace the moments.’
‘Does Jake know of this?’
‘I’m not hiding anything.’
Oliver frowned. ‘Eleanor was broken completely when she returned from the Highlands.’
‘I thought she had resided in Edinburgh.’
‘No. Her husband was some sort of a northern laird up by the western coast. He was drowned apparently in a boating accident in the autumn a year or so after you left and Eleanor returned home to Millbrook House. She has a young daughter so we do not see her much in London now, which is a shame. There was also some talk that she never married the fellow at all though Jacob soon put paid to such gossip.’
Such a varying account floored Nicholas, for it was nothing at all like the facts Frederick had regaled him with. All this supposition was quite patently hearsay and Nick wondered at the true story. Still, if Jacob had not told Frederick or Oliver of it he doubted it would suddenly be related to him.
But why the secrecy?
His hand slipped into his right pocket and he felt the threads of the bracelet and its beads beneath the pads of his fingers. Tomorrow he was taking Eleanor to Lackington, Allen & Co. in Finsbury Square and he’d always liked the look of the façade of the place. She’d seemed tense when he had asked her of their next destination and he had wondered if anything had happened there between them to make her feel this way.
Oliver raised his glass towards him as he took a seat on the leather sofa by the windows.
‘Here’s to your return and to the future.’ His smile was wide and honest. ‘You were my first true friend here in England and it’s good to have you back.’
‘It’s good to be here, Oliver.’
‘God, Nick, I was such a green boy back then, wasn’t I? One day at a new school and they were already teasing me about my Indian background and the colour of my skin and of the different way I spoke, until you showed up.’
‘With my ire up and fists flying. I’d been practising my boxing skills at Bromworth Manor that summer holiday if I remember correctly and wanted to put them into practice.’
Oliver shook his head. ‘It was much more than that, I would say. There were two of us and ten of them and you had a split lip and a black eye for weeks after and a broken wrist to boot. But they never bothered me again.’ He twirled the crystal stem of his wineglass in hand before glancing up. ‘I used to think of that after you had gone and for years I combed the city for you and paid agents to try and understand what had happened in the back alley of Vitium et Virtus. Even when people said that there was no hope left I always held out for some...’ He stopped and took a drink. ‘So here is to our friendship, Nick, and to brotherhood and to finding the bastard who did this to you. We are all in this you know. We all have your back.’
‘I do know and I thank you for it and when I have need of help I will let you know. Coming back again has been a revelation, all the differences and the changes. I have never seen you look quite so happy. Where did you meet Cecilia?’
Oliver stretched his long legs out before him as he took his time to answer. ‘In Paris. She was at the time employed in a gentlemen’s club and went under the name of Madame Coquette. She was quite famous.’ The laughter in his eyes made it known the story was not exactly as he said it.
Nick drank deeply before answering, ‘Here’s to women who are not boring, then, and who know how to please a man.’
‘Oh, a good woman is much more than that, Nicholas. To be with someone you love is about the warmth of friendship and the certainty of a future. There’s a comfort, too, in the complete absence of lies and after living a life like mine that is more than a relief.’
‘By the sound of things you have all found women with as many secrets as your own. Perhaps that is the trick of happiness?’
‘I think fate plays a hand, too, and timing.’
‘I’ll drink to that.’ But all Nick could think of as he smiled was the lost week that Eleanor Huntingdon was doing her best to try to make him remember.
* * *
‘Eleanor Huntingdon is helping Nicholas retrieve his memory.’ Oliver said this to Cecilia when he returned home for she was waiting up for him in the morning room.
‘Is he recalling anything else leading up to his disappearance?’
‘Seems he is not, but Jake’s sister is squiring him around town, trying her hardest to facilitate his memory.’
‘Were they close? Before this happened, I mean?’
‘I can’t remember. I didn’t think so, but...’
‘I hear all sorts of accounts of Lord Bromley wherever I go. He was somewhat wild, I gather, and seldom seen out of the company of women.’
‘He was lonely. Like me.’ Pulling her from the wing chair, he sat down himself and settled her on his lap. ‘You are warm and comfortable, my love.’
She laughed at that. ‘Like an old slipper?’
‘Warm and comfortable and sensual as hell,’ he amended and kissed her.
‘That’s better.’ She leaned back against him, her rich brown hair released from its pins and clips burnished in the firelight. ‘Eleanor Huntingdon is strong and sensible and I have liked her a lot each time I have met her. She is not a lightweight woman, yet she holds secrets and they worry her.’
‘Such intuition is not to be trifled with. I concur with your conclusions.’
‘Perhaps Nick is the man to help her, then? The way you speak of him, Oliver, gives me the impression that he was never afraid of anything.’
‘The attraction of opposites, you mean?’
‘Well, if he was reckless and dissolute you also said that he wasn’t a man who was unfair. And if he is lonely...?’
‘Perhaps they might find solace in one another?’
He was now laughing so much he could barely kiss her although he tried. ‘Are you by any chance lending your hand to that dubious art of matchmaking, sweetheart?’
‘If I invited them for afternoon tea, would you promise to be circumspect, Oliver? We could then test the waters, so to speak.’
‘Let’s go to bed right now and I will show you just how circumspect I can be.’
Oliver lifted her up then and their reflection caught in the window, light against dark, and he wondered anew as to how he had been lucky enough to find such contentment.
Happy chance and good fortune. The two blessings had been largely missing in his life before he had met Cecilia. He hoped with all his heart that Nick might finally find the same.
* * *
After Oliver left Nick retired to his bedchamber, the blues on the walls restful and mellow. He’d loved this room and coming in here as a young boy to curl up on the enormous bed with his parents and talk.
The same slice of regret ran over him, far more remote than it had once been, but still there none the less. Their deaths were the point where his life had begun to spin out of control, a wildness growing that became unchecked and complete.
The clock on the mantel chimed one. It was late and yet the night felt alive. With ideas and thoughts and hopes.
Cecilia was pregnant. Oliver had told Nicholas that under the threat of confidentiality. A new life. Another generation and the responsibility of guiding and teaching a child about what it was to live well.
As Eleanor had taught her daughter?
‘Lucy.’ He said the name out loud, liking the sound of it. A little girl. He wondered if she looked like her mother. He hoped she had Eleanor Huntingdon’s vivid blue eyes and brave spirit.
His glance fell on the piano in the far corner of the room and he walked over to pull out the seat. He had not played in years and he wondered why the instrument had been left here in this room when piano playing was so much outside his uncle’s endeavour or intention.
Setting his fingers above the keys, he began to beat out the Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven. He recalled so much more of his early years when he played. That’s why he had stopped in the first place, he supposed, out of pure sorrow. It was also why he could never quite abandon it.
He did not know when he’d started thinking about the music instead of hearing the notes. It was after his parents had died and he’d returned in the holidays to the cold unwelcoming Bromworth Manor. It was in loneliness that he’d gained the nuances of the pedal and had started to notice that silences, too, could be shaped by emotion.
He did this now even after all these years of awayness. He rode the edge of the beauty between easy and hard, and was absorbed in the sweet and powerful truth of the notes.
He’d never played for anyone, not even Jacob or Frederick or Oliver. He doubted they even knew he could hold down a tune. No, the music was his alone, his and his parents. A connection. Him on one side and them on the other. After his conversation with Eleanor today such a realisation was enlightening.
* * *
Lack of sleep made Nick feel wary though in those brief moments it had found him, his dreams had been strange amorphous ones full of ghosts and dead people.
It was the piano, he supposed, and the music that had wrapped around his regret and brought his parents closer. Jacob’s older brother Ralph had been there, too, with surprise on his visage at his newfound demise, blood still at his temple. The world they inhabited had been full of clouds and mist and fireworks.
That thought brought a frown because his mother had always hated the noise of them.
Eleanor was waiting for him outside Lackington, Allen & Co., a blue bonnet tied firmly under her chin and in a coat the colour of a churning winter ocean. He thought for a moment she had never looked more beautiful or more vulnerable.
‘You are early?’ He said the words as a question, stopping himself from reaching out and taking her hand again. It was a good ten minutes before the hour she had allotted as their meeting point yesterday.
‘Last time I was early, too.’
She did not look at him directly as she said this, her glance sliding away and a hitch in her voice. The façade of the Temple of the Muses was shining, whether from the recent rains or from the lightness of the clouds he could not tell.
‘You once told me that you had bought the book Robinson Crusoe from here and read it in a day.’ She said this as they walked up the stairs into the main room with its imposing galleried dome.
‘One of the few I ever purchased, then, according to the state of my library.’ He liked her soft laughter. ‘Actually Oliver Gregory returned the Defoe copy to me last night when he dropped in for a drink. He also said he’d seen us outside Fortnum and Mason a few days before I disappeared. What was it we were doing there?’
‘Buying wine as a celebration.’
‘What were we celebrating?’
‘I can’t really remember.’ Her cheeks flamed and the memory of something was so firmly written on her face that Nick knew she lied.
* * *
The wine was a celebration of our first kiss here at Lackington, Allen & Co. at Finsbury Square.
It had been summer and the day had been hot and so they had gone to find chilled wine and a small hamper of food for a picnic by the Serpentine.
Then, he had looked at her as if she was the most beautiful woman he could imagine. Now he only appeared perplexed. At her poorly formed falsity probably and her reddened cheeks. She had not blushed in six years and now she was doing so on an hourly basis.
Well, it had to stop. She was no longer eighteen and foolish and Nicholas Bartlett was hardly going to take her hand and run laughing through the streets in search of sweet treats and then kiss the dusted sugar off each finger as she ate them.
The sheer absurdity of it made her smile.
She noticed that everyone watched him, covertly, his sheer presence now impossible to miss. At six foot two he had to bend at the portal, yet he filled the room with such a masculine grace and power that it took her breath away.
‘I visit the library every time I come down from Millbrook House to London.’
‘And is that often?’
‘As little as I can possibly manage it, truth be told. Usually only at Christmas.’
‘The life of a widow is a quiet one, then? Tell me, where did your husband hail from?’
‘Scotland.’
‘Fred Challenger says he was from Edinburgh and Oliver Gregory swears it was the Highlands. There is a difference?’
She felt suddenly sick and a sheen of sweat built on her top lip. ‘You have been asking about me?’ He was a man who could discover facts about her past that few others could. If he put the timings of her return together and the birth of Lucy...
‘Only in passing, but I am sorry for your tragedy, Eleanor. It must have been hard to be so alone.’
‘I have my daughter.’
‘And I am glad of it.’
He did not patronise her or give unwanted advice. He spoke only in words that were simple and true.
It must have been hard to be so alone.
Because he had been lonely, too, she thought. In childhood on the death of his parents and in the wild dangerous antics of his youth. In the card rooms of London when the numbers never added up and he was left with a handful of debtors shouting for payment and an uncle who was withholding his inheritance. Certainly in his restless years abroad when he had shifted from place to place with an unknown killer on his tail and a memory that gave him no recall of peril.
Even here now, in the over-stacked salons of Lackington’s, he looked unapproachable and out of place.
For a second she wondered if she had the heart to climb the steps to the small scientific reading room they had visited last time and find the quiet spot at the end of a row of shelves. Could it ever be again like it was, that young unbridled love, breathless with passion? Giddy with the thrall?
Now she was shy of him in a way she had not once been for she’d seen the glances every woman had thrown his way no matter where they went. Desire had that certain raw and hungry look she hoped could not be discerned on her own face.
‘Penny for your thoughts, Eleanor?’
She smiled at his question and gestured to him to follow her.
Every leather-bound tome looked as if it had not been touched for years, the dust settled in the interim. The view was a fine one, however, and he went to the window to peer over London.
‘When I arrived here I thought everything looked so neat. The houses, the streets, the people.’
‘America is more wild, I suppose. Less ordered.’
‘It is in parts, but there is a sort of beauty in that. Perhaps it was the same for you in Scotland?’
‘Scotland?’
‘Where you lived with your husband?’
‘Oh, yes, it was.’
Digging into his pocket, he felt the small plaited bracelet and brought it out on his palm to show her.
‘Is this yours, Eleanor? I found it in a wooden box on the mantelpiece in my library.’
She began crying just like that, one moment shocked and the next inconsolable, large tears running down her cheeks even as her hands came to wipe them away.
Crossing the room, he took her in his arms and liked how her head fitted exactly beneath his chin, the warmth and softness of her astonishingly right. She smelt of violets and freshness. He knew the moment she gained control because she stiffened and pulled away.
‘I am sorry.’
He noticed that she held the colourful circle of thread tightly in her fist as though she might never let it go.
‘It is valuable?’
‘To me? Yes.’
* * *
Eleanor could feel her bottom lip still quivering and knew her eyes were red. When he gave her his kerchief she blew into it and then began to worry because she did not quite know whether to hand it back to him or tuck it into her sleeve to wash later.
These huge swings of emotion were something she had not felt with Nicholas six years ago in the happy haze of their new love. Then it had been easy and light.
Now everything weighed heavily upon them. Their past and their future and the present, too, because there was a danger close that she could not quite decipher.
She had given him her bracelet after he had made love to her. A circle of threads plaited for her by her mother from her tapestry basket and beaded at the end in the colours of primrose, green, cerulean-blue and coquelicot-red. When she’d explained how important it was he had held the gift and looked as though she had given him the world.
Today the limp gaudy bracelet had appeared tired and out of place between his thumb and forefinger, fingers that gave no impression at all of being that of a cosseted lord. There were small thin white scars across his knuckles now.
The hand of a fighter, the hand of one who had endured much hardship. A tougher hand altogether.
And yet when he had held her in his arms a few minutes ago all those elements of danger, menace, toughness and peril had only made her feel safe.
‘I did not sleep well last night, my lord, and I am sorry for such an outburst.’ She felt she needed to explain.
‘Did I give you anything back in return?’
‘Pardon?’
‘When you gave me the bracelet, did I find something of mine for you?’
Another kiss. She nearly said it.
Instead she shook her head and simply looked at him, at the small gold chips at the outer edges of his brown eyes, at the wound on his cheek which today seemed lessened and a part of him, another way of how his time in the Americas had been imprinted into now.
He was even more handsome than he had been, the hard and thinner planes of his face melding into high cheekbones and a strong chin. Not in the manner of the Greek gods, unmarred and perfect, but following in the fashion of a Norse one, scarred by battle and war and the fighting arts held dear by the Viking marauders.
He could protect Lucy and her. From everything.
He had kissed her right here last time in the slant of sunbeams coming in from the window. He had taken her hand and pulled her into him, slowly, never looking away, and with his fingers in the nape of her hair his mouth had come down upon her own, allowing no escape as he had deepened the connection and taken her heart.
Unforgettable.
Eleanor stood there in the dim winter light and wished with everything she had that he might remember.
* * *
Something had happened here in this room last time. He could see the shadow of it in eyes remote with memory. He touched her lightly.
‘The scent in the bracelet is violets. Your scent. Why did you give it to me?’
‘You had told me of how you had lost your parents and I wished to make you happy again.’
‘My parents?’
‘You said you played the piano sometimes to remember them. You said you felt them close just there on the other side of the music.’
Shock tore through his equilibrium.
‘You said sometimes when you could not sleep you played the Moonlight Sonata by Ludwig van Beethoven to try and reach them and you felt you did.’
His sudden loud curse shocked her.
‘Are you ill?’ Worry clawed into her words as he held on to the table, his knuckles white.
‘It’s just a headache. The same one I have had ever since...’ He stopped.
His emotions since the incident at Richmond had been more distant than he remembered them. But now the sharp edges of feeling returned forcibly and all he wanted to be was alone.
* * *
At the Bromley town house an hour later he poured himself a stiff whisky. He could not work out what was happening, for the threads of the conversation between himself and Eleanor were as entwined and complicated as the pattern in the bracelet. Triple stranded and double braided.
Why should he have told her of his secrets when he had not even confided in Jacob, Oliver or Frederick?
The answer, of course, was simple.
He had known her far better than she’d ever admitted, not just as her brother’s friend, as she’d said, but as something more important. He’d hurried her home to Chelsea from Lackington’s with all the speed of someone on the verge of a collapse.
He swore roundly and hated the shake in his hands. He’d been an irresponsible and pleasure-seeking youth, distracted by both gambling and women. He could not even imagine how the Eleanor he knew now might have tolerated such weaknesses.
He hoped she had not known of his mounting debts and of the ugly characters from London’s underbelly who had frequently come knocking at his door. He prayed he had not tried to sleep with her.
Jacob’s voice interrupted his reveries.
‘Good to find you home, Nick, because a message came for you this morning and the one who delivered it said it was urgent. A poorly dressed man by the sounds of it and a fellow who my butler said he would not like to meet in the darkness? A colleague of yours?’
‘Have a drink, Jake.’
He was glad when his friend sat down.
‘Remember I told you of my uncle’s involvement in my disappearance? Well, the information on the payment to those who cornered me in the alley behind Vitium et Virtus came from a man in a tavern in the docklands. He runs a protection racket, but seems to have extended his area of business into the art of kidnapping for a generous sum of money.’
‘And Aaron Bartlett paid it?’
‘He did. He’d had designs on my title and inheritance since the beginning and given the scandals surrounding the club he used his chance to have me gone.’
‘And this new message?’
‘I asked the ringmaster to put his ear to the ground to see whether he could find any trace of those who had followed me to the Americas. He was certain it was someone different from my uncle, someone with a lot more money.’
‘And you think he has found this person?’ Jacob handed over the sheet of paper sealed with wax.
When Nicholas broke it open he read out the message. ‘Perhaps. He wants to see me again this evening.’
‘I will come with you.’
‘No. He will only meet me.’
‘So you are still hell bent on doing this alone?’
‘For now, Jacob. Until I need help.’
‘Very well, but Eleanor said you were feeling unwell at Lackington’s. She looked worried. She also said that none of your lost memories seem to have returned.’
‘Did she say anything else?’
‘No. Should she have? It’s good that she’s helping you. She is lonely and has lived a long time under the cloud of widowhood.’
‘Where did she meet her husband?’
‘I think you should ask her that.’
‘Oliver said he lived in the Highlands and Fred was adamant Edinburgh was his abode.’
‘They don’t know anything about her marriage.’
‘It seems nobody does. When was Lucy born?’
‘After Lucy’s father died. She was born at Millbrook House.’
‘I see.’ He felt a pang of sadness that the small daughter was not his.
‘If you hurt Ellie, Nick, I will make you regret it. She’s been hurt enough already. But I did not come here to issue threats. Tomorrow is New Year’s Day and I have come with an invitation to a small family gathering. Lucy, Eleanor’s daughter, has arrived from Millbrook and I am certain you will enjoy meeting her. Grandmama especially has impressed it again and again upon me that she would very much like you there. Your grandmother, by all accounts, was a good friend of hers and as such she feels some responsibility in ensuring your happiness.’
Family. In the light of his conversation on the topic with Eleanor that thought had him swallowing the rest of his brandy.
‘Thank you. I should like to come.’ As he gave his acceptance he was taken by the idea that for a moment Jacob looked worried.