Chapter Seven #3
She had understood him exactly as he fought to get his emotions under control. He’d had no mask today but he had survived. A few years prior he would not have managed anywhere near as well.
He wondered if he should tell her some of what had happened to him but held back because such a confidence could also be a burden for her and he did not want to give her worries that were his to deal with.
Gretel had done that to him, time and time again, and each confession had seemed more and more like a heavy anchor.
So instead he brought her fingers up and placed a soft kiss on the back of her hand before letting it go.
‘Thank you for listening,’ he said. ‘Today would have been a lot more difficult without you there.’
Her smile was bright, the gold in her eyes catching a beam of sunlight that had slanted into the carriage at the turn of a bend.
Everything in her was centred on the man beside her, the feeling of connection strong.
Inside her heart beat faster, her breath was deeper and an odd feeling of heat crept through her body.
Even the air around them contained something that was different, leaving her feeling light-headed and strange.
Her reaction was ridiculous, she knew that it was, and she hoped that he would not notice her fluster.
‘Benjamin and his wife are looking well.’ His words were quiet. ‘It was a coincidence that you and Sarah were acquainted.’
‘It was.’ Her smile felt as artificial as her reply.
‘He said he would be in London next week on some business.’
‘That is good.’
She did not want these nothing words, not with all that she was feeling.
He was quiet then as though he too had decided such a conversation was pointless, and the silence thundered between them until he spoke again.
‘I was not happy as a boy.’
Better words. More real.
‘I am sure you discerned that from Ben Harcourt’s conversation. It was a difficult time for me.’
‘Why?’
‘Our family was struggling.’
She waited for more but the minutes lengthened.
‘Most families struggle at some point.’ She felt she needed to give something back. ‘Mine certainly did.’
He looked at her then, his blue eyes silvered in an unexpected sadness. ‘I have always admired your ability to say exactly the right thing at the right time, Wilhelmina.’
Her throat thickened as she held back tears at his compliment.
‘I don’t mean to make you sad, it’s just I never realised that someone might hold a gift like that. My wife never had such a knack.’
A different truth and so unexpected. Everything she had seen or heard of the beautiful Miss Gretel Carmichael had placed her on an unassailable pedestal. The perfect woman and the perfect wife.
‘If it makes you feel better, my husband would not have said the same of me, either.’
He smiled then and looked outside, the rows of trees close and blurred with the speed of the carriage. At their feet the bunch of colourful flowers from Sarah’s garden was carefully laid down.
‘You once asked me if I believed people might look at us from the afterlife and I replied that I hoped not. But I think I feel differently now because perhaps those who are gone and who did love us would have liked to see us happy.’
‘People like your wife?’
‘Yes.’
A kind answer and one that placed her questions about his relationship with Gretel at rest. Phillip Moreland had cared for her and if she had not perhaps filled all of his needs then she had still met enough.
‘I will not marry again but sometimes…’
He stopped and looked at her, a hope in his eyes that could not be missed, and without thinking she simply leant forward and kissed him softly on the cheek, so that he could move away if he wanted to.
She was a free and independent woman and had been since her husband died, but Phillip Moreland had awakened something in her that could not be ignored.
When his hand curved around the back of her neck and he brought her closer she did not resist, and when he changed the angle of the kiss so that his mouth slanted across her own she asked for more.
This was not like the kiss in the Elmsworth kitchen, but a fiercer, more desperate variety, and one that asked for things that had not seemed possible back then.
She opened to him, inviting him in, feeling in the passion a different request, a more sensual one, a need that went beyond what was offered.
His mouth fell lower to her throat, his free hand moving across the rise of her breast. You are mine, every action seemed to say, mine in flesh and lust, in appetite and fever.
There was no reason left in her, no will to stop what was happening. She wanted to lie down on the seat and tear open her dress so that he could find the secrets of all that lay underneath and take them. But he was suddenly still and his words were a far cry from the thoughts she was having.
‘Lord help me,’ he said as he pulled her against him, his breath as ragged as her own. ‘I cannot take you like this. It is wrong.’
Wrong because he did not want her? Wrong because he still loved his wife? Wrong because she had acted like a loose woman and it had shocked him?
She ground her teeth together and sat up very straight, for already the outskirts of London were visible through the window and she could not quite understand what might happen next.
‘I am sorry.’ His quiet apology only made her angry and she shook her head, for she did not want that from him.
She had misjudged him, misjudged his needs and her own.
If she could have left the carriage then and there she would have, but there was still a good twenty minutes before that would be possible, so they were stuck together in the silence of regret.
Wilhelmina collected her flowers and exited the conveyance as soon as it stopped, disappearing into her town house on Russell Square without once looking back.
‘Damn,’ Phillip whispered softly into the shadows of the waning day.
He had wanted to take her hand and explain what he’d meant by ‘wrong’ and if she had given him even one sign of desiring clarification he would have given it.
But she had sat ramrod stiff against the seat, the fingers of her right hand twisting the silk in her skirt in a way that told of great agitation.
He had not had much experience with the ways of women apart from his wife, and Gretel’s anger at him at times seemed mirrored in Wilhelmina’s posture.
Surely she understood why it would have been wrong?
He could ruin her for one and she would be forever exiled if anyone were to observe them.
It had to mean more, be more, on both of their parts, this binding of the flesh.
It could not be a nothing thing decided in a second in a moving carriage on a public street.
The whole day had been a disappointment to her, no doubt, and perhaps after her own troubles she now did not have the heart to take on the wretched truths of another man who would only disappoint her further.
He could not blame her for that either but the hope of it left him empty. He didn’t want to go home to the Moreland town house and at this hour of the evening he could not safely leave for Elmsworth Manor either.
The thought of his private club in the city came to mind, a place he had rarely visited but one which could now provide a drink and limited company. Banging on the carriage wall, he waited for the driver to slow before giving him new directions.
White’s was just as he remembered it, with its green walls, red seats and blue carpet, and as he came to the set of steps leading to the second floor he did feel a comforting sense of familiarity.
The salons were far busier at this hour than he’d imagined they would be but he did not turn away, walking instead with intent to a table in the darker end of the first room and sitting on one of the expansive leather chairs beneath a window.
The barkeep came before he could even look around and he remembered the stellar service of the place with a smile.
‘Whisky, please.’ The drink of broken men and their broken dreams. It seemed appropriate.
A number of the brands available were mentioned and he chose the last one, only because he had not really listened to the first options. Within a moment the man was back with a full glass, the bottle it had been poured from set beside it on a silver tray.
‘Thank you.’
‘It is our pleasure, Lord Elmsworth.’
Everywhere he went they knew his name. So unlike America, where he had journeyed alone.
Lifting the glass, he finished it and then poured himself another.
And another. The room began to feel less sharp, Wilhelmina’s kiss a warming memory, and he liked how reality slid away into something else.
Drink was how he had coped after Gretel’s death, the way he had got himself up every morning and lived.
But tonight it felt different. Wilhelmina St Claire was a mile away in her Bloomsbury town house, readying herself for bed, untying her hair, slipping between the sheets, finding sleep.
He imagined her dreams, freedom probably as much a part of them as the awful ending of their late-afternoon carriage trip.
He stared into the space before him to try and find the thought that was eluding him, skimming on the edge of his reasoning. Then he had it. He wanted the same things as she did. Freedom and the space to be alone, and had she not told him time and time again that she wasn’t a woman who gossiped?
He sat up straighter and helped himself to another whisky. The alcohol was giving him a clarity he had not had before, a way forward that might be conducive to them both if they were brave enough to try.
Not a replacement for Gretel, never that, but a woman whom he liked and admired.
As permanent as she wanted it. Or as temporary.
Private. Hidden. Undisclosed. When Wilhelmina tired of him, which he knew would happen, they could simply say goodbye in a civil fashion, and get on with the rest of their lives.