Chapter Eleven
Lionel’s cousin Simon St Claire came to visit Willa the next afternoon in Russell Square. He was a large man whom she had never liked and today he looked angrier than she had ever seen him. After barely giving her a greeting he got straight to the point.
‘I have had word from my lawyer to say that the sale of Belton Park is going ahead. I warned you not to try to sell it until I had all the family papers in order and I am here today to repeat my warning. Lionel did not wish for his house and land to go to you. He wanted it to go to a continuation of the St Claire line after you supplied my cousin with neither progeny nor happiness.’
His face was puffy and red and he wiped his forehead with a handkerchief pulled from his pocket. ‘I will fight this sale until the last breath I take and I won’t be kind.’
‘Are you threatening me, Mr St Claire?’
‘I am, madam. I am threatening you because you are a whore and a murderer. It is said that you pushed my cousin from the balcony with intent and then you slept with the lawyer who came to the Park a few days later to give you the details of your dead husband’s will.’
Dread filled her. This was everything she had always feared, laid out with such vitriol and threat. She could disprove none of it either, for she was certain Simon St Claire would have gathered credible witnesses to add to his accusations.
Shame washed in, a huge wave of it, for her stupidity, for Lionel’s lack of care and for Mr Elliott MacDonald, who had taken her hand in his with care and tried to explain the workings of the law.
The first soft touch she had had in years.
Another mistake on top of all the ones she had made.
She waited to see what Lionel’s cousin would say next.
‘We can do this in two ways. I can bring forth all my evidence to a judge in a court of law or you can simply walk away with five thousand pounds and the chance to start anew somewhere else, far from London, somewhere away from any reminders of your former life, somewhere so distant that we should never have to see each other again.’
He took out a sheet of paper then and laid it down before her.
It outlined the transgressions of Mr Elliott MacDonald and Wilhelmina’s inappropriate behaviour with him in the days following the death of her husband.
She wondered where Simon St Claire could have got such private information but everything on the sheet was true, so she stayed silent.
This was a form of blackmail, a threat to expose her behaviour to the world should she not do as he wanted.
He then showed her another letter. This one was crudely signed at the bottom by one of the gardeners employed at Belton Park.
‘This man, Mr Trevor Dell, says that he saw you shove my cousin away from you. He was in the garden at the time and, hearing shouts, he looked up. He said Lionel’s last words were, “Your fault” as he fell. He presumed it to mean that his wife, Mrs Wilhelmina St Claire, had pushed him to his death.’
Then he took out a further list and laid it down in front of her. On it were the times the carriage of the Earl of Elmsworth had visited her town house across the past week as well as the times she had visited his town house.
He had been watching her house and her movements from some vantage point, or perhaps he had had others do it for him. But he was not yet finished with his insults.
‘You take men and twist them into puppets to do exactly as you will, with no mind at all for decency or morality. Well, your schemes are finished, madam, and I will shout out your debauchery and evil from every rooftop in London if you do not sign the rights of Belton Park back to my family, an act that ought to have happened when my cousin died.’
When she looked down she saw the ownership deed, even as he laid a pen and an ink pot down for her to sign it with.
‘Our family land was never supposed to be yours. It should have always been protected, given you could not provide suitable heirs to ensure its safety.’ His voice was rough and full of impatience.
Willa thought of Phillip Moreland and what he would think of her.
She thought of those moments with him that had been like Heaven.
She thought of his hurt and of the ways this would hurt him further.
She thought of how she would be cut from London Society forever if even just a whiff of all this got out.
‘If I sign this I would need proof that this would be the end of your blackmail. Lionel’s falling was an accident only. He was an abusive man, so when Elliott MacDonald offered some kindness to me after my husband’s death I took it.’
She said nothing of Phillip Moreland. That was all she could do to protect him.
She knew ruin was like dropping a pebble in the middle of a still pond and that the rings of wreckage would get bigger and bigger.
She could not drag the Earl of Elmsworth into the melee of the disaster that she had created.
But she could not trust Simon St Claire either as she needed time to get her affairs into order.
‘I need a month to vacate my rented town house and leave. Come back to me after that time and I will sign the transfer of Belton Park into your hands and leave London for good. But I will only do that if you keep these accusations to yourself and I am left alone. I do not wish for further threats of exposure and if you do not agree to such terms then you risk years of this matter dragging through the legal channels, and believe me I will fight the charges.’
He looked so angry Willa thought he might hit her, but she stood her ground and said nothing else and finally he nodded, collected his papers and left.
The horror of everything began to hit her. If she could not disprove these claims, could she be hung for the murder of her husband? Or be banished to prison for years?
She had to keep the allegations out of the public domain in any way she could and Simon St Claire’s greed was the only route that was possible.
One month. One month to leave her old life and to try to shield Phillip from the awfulness of her past.
Phillip came to her later that evening, as he had meetings in the city with his lawyers.
She was in the little blue salon just off the front entrance when she heard his voice and, standing up, she waited for him to reach for her, all his safety and strength gathering her in.
Protection.
It was a feeling she had never known before and she closed her eyes and leant against him, relief rising from the worry.
‘You are back.’ She tipped her head to accept his kiss. ‘Are you hungry?’
‘Just for you.’
It felt so good to laugh even amidst all the danger of what would come. Untying her nightgown, she let it fall to the floor. Underneath she wore nothing but her skin.
This time she made the first move, running her hand across his cheek and then pulling at the tails of his neck cloth. He went to help her but she stopped him.
‘It’s my turn.’
When the tie was gone she undid the buttons of his shirt, one by one.
‘Can I take it off?’
He looked almost uncertain before he nodded, and she pushed the sleeves across his arms and it fell to the floor.
Three strips of scarred flesh wrapped across the top of his arm and then curled down his back.
This was what he had tried to hide on all the other nights, though she had felt the ridges in the darkness.
‘They are knife wounds.’
‘Why?’
‘God knows, because I certainly do not.’
When he said no more she leant forward and kissed the scars, running her tongue gently across the hurt. He stayed silent, though she felt a heavy tremor run through him.
‘Sometimes life is unfair.’ Her words were soft as her hands went to his belt and the flap of his trousers. With only a small effort both fell away and he bent to unbuckle his boots.
Then he was as naked as she was, the lamp on the sideboard slanting across him, his muscles catching light and shadow in startling definition.
Not an indolent lord but a man who had used his body in all of the right ways.
Tears came to her eyes at the thought of the lonely miles he must have endured in America after the death of his wife.
With all the care in the world she took his nipple between her thumb and forefinger, slowly rubbing at first and then when she increased the speed their eyes locked on to each other’s.
She saw shock there and then delight, she saw the smouldering flame quicken and burst, his breathing deeper, his other nipple hardening in unison.
‘Take me.’ His words now.
And so she did. She made him lie down on the rug and she sat astride him, guiding him into her and rolling her body, the slick, wet sound of their joining urging them on.
Two halves making a whole. It was all she could give him now.
Beauty and memory and truth. It was no longer just carnal and fleeting, the eroticism changed to something so much more.
Us, she said without words and with a tenderness that had been missing before, a soul touching honesty that could not be misinterpreted.
I love you.
For a moment she thought she might have said it out loud but she had not. It was her insides welling with a knowledge of all she would miss out on and all she would lose. She could not tell him because it would be his ruination and she had enough sense still to know it.
And when they both rose to the heights of ecstasy she let every part of herself go in a way she had not before and felt his seed fill her with the pleasure of release as she gripped him with her thighs, her breath taken, her thoughts scattered into just this moment, now.
In the very early hours of the morning they woke and went to the kitchen to find something to eat because they were hungry.
‘This reminds me of the first time we met,’ he said as she laid out some bread and cheese on a platter before him.
‘I was overwhelmed by you, I remember. I talked too much.’
‘I never minded that.’ He smiled as he said it. ‘I liked the way you surprised me. I still do. Oliver sent word today that he and Esther will be in London next week. They are staying with the Duggans but would like to see us.’
‘I am glad for it.’
He frowned at her tone and took her hand. ‘You sound sad.’
‘I just know how quickly life can change from one thing to another, and family is important.’
‘Do you miss yours?’
‘No, because we were not a close group, but I sense with Oliver and you that it was different.’
‘I know I will never have offspring to inherit Elmsworth and so it is important for me to understand their children.’
Wilhelmina took his hand and kissed the back of it.
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him he should have heirs and a wife and a chance at the life she could never give him, in Society amongst all that he knew as the Earl of Elmsworth.
But she could not get the words out and was too selfish to even try.
Not now, not after their lovemaking, not in the darkness of night after such perfection. For this moment she could still pretend it was just them against the world and no one was crouching in the shadows, getting ready to ruin everything.
For this moment she liked the feel of him on her body, the wetness between her legs, the swelling fullness of her lips, the pink whorls on her breasts where he had sucked her as she had gone to sleep.
She was a woman who had known the very pinnacle of everything that was sensual, the pain and the pleasure, the soft and the hard.
So when he led her up the stairs after their late-night snack and laid her down on her bed she could only welcome him in, another time, a further wonder, an inexplicable and miraculous union that she had no words to even try to describe.
She shut her eyes instead and let herself simply feel.
Him. Them. Love.