One Unashamed Night by Sophia James Page A

thought surfaced. What would happen should Beatrice determine the truth? Today with the full light of the window upon her he had made out the outline of her face. Not in detail, but not in grey sludge either. A halfway point to knowing what she might look like. He wished he could have used his fingers to fill in the nuances and touch her. Again. Even though he knew the foolhardiness of doing just that.
    Taris Wellingham and his carriage arrived at her door almost exactly at two, after sending a note earlier to ask whether this time would be suitable.
    Dressed in her bonnet, coat and gloves, Bea found him standing outside next to his coach. Today he wore brown, the colour showing up the darkness of his hair. Surprisingly he also wore a patch of the finest leather across his left eye.
    ‘My lord,’ she began, hating the tremor in her voice, ‘have you been hurt?’
    ‘No.’ He did not elaborate or embellish his reply as he held open the door to a carriage emblazoned with a family crest and pulled by four perfect chestnut horses. Two footmen tipped their hats to her when she acknowledged them, both adorned in the livery of gold and blue.
    Taris Wellingham followed her in, sitting in the seat opposite hers. Taking a breath, she smiled and tried to initiate some conversation between them.
    ‘It is a beautiful day for this time of the year, is it not?’
    ‘It is.’
    ‘I have heard it said that such weather augurs well for the summer season. Some say that we should expect a very mild May.’
    ‘A happy thought,’ he returned in a voice that suggested anything but. ‘And I would prefer it if you would call me Taris. With our history…’ He stopped.
    Our history? The weight of what had been between them settled like a stone in her stomach and the swelling bruise on his cheek underlined everything about him that was dangerous.
    Today the ease of yesterday had gone, replaced by a tension that Beatrice could not understand as he watched her with a disconcerting directness, a small tic on the smooth skin below his one uncovered eye.
    Hell! Taris thought. His eye was smarting and the headache that had been threatening all morning bloomed into pain. A familiar headache, the little sight that was left to him disappearing into nothingness. He should never have come, should have noted the heaviness in his temples and the tiredness in his eyes and cried off. But he was here and Beatrice-Maude was opposite with her quick-witted brain that might expose him as the cripple he was should he make even one false step. His fingers tightened on his cane, the silver ball his only connection to the world, his only certainty. All about him now lay the creeping dark of chaos and a discomfort that made him feel sick.
    He had given his men instructions to stop at St James’s Park, a place he often walked alone, because with the fences along the pathways on the western side he had a touchstone to know exactly where he was.
    ‘I have been thinking up ways to try to help you with your…problem and was wondering if you would be averse to answering a few questions?’
    She waited for his answer and he nodded.
    ‘Do you drink often?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘But when you do drink, you drink a lot?’
    The lies that were piling one on the other were nowhere near as humorous as he had found them yesterday.
    I am almost blind and that is why I fell.
    He should say it, just spit it out here and now and then that would be the end of it, for the truth would send any woman fleeing.
    But he did not say that because, even nauseous and in pain, the words just would not come.
    Avoided. Adrift. Lessened.
    Turning his face to the window, he pretended to look out, forcing away all the righteous arguments that rang in his head whilst protecting himself in-stinctively from pity.
    As the conversation between them again spluttered to a halt, Beatrice tucked her hands into the dark red fabric of her new dress and stayed silent.
    He did not want to speak, perhaps? He had