Page 77 of A Proposition for the Comte

Much later she awoke to the darkness and the silence and the hugeness of an unknown room. For a moment she stiffened, panic beginning to fill her mind. The lateness of the hour was apparent and she heard the soft rap of a branch against her window.

Had she cried out? Had Aurelian heard her? The house was still and so she lay there, too, watching shadows and remembering.

An hour later she was still not asleep and any repose seemed further away than it had been when first she’d awoken. With care, she sat on the bed and shifted her legs to the side, standing so as not to make any noise at all as she walked.

The world before her outside the window was blanketed in snow, a white wonderland of trees and hills and gardens and there was a peace here that was exhilarating.

A footfall to one side had her turning and Aurelian stood close. He had removed his neckcloth, his shirt falling away from the top of his chest.

‘I heard you had wakened.’

‘I tried to be as quiet as I could.’

He looked down. ‘There is no silence in a house like this one.’

‘You were not asleep?’

He did not answer this as he came to stand directly beside her, observing the landscape just as she was.

‘In France my family has land they have owned for centuries, old land where our ancestors walk as ghosts. Moving to England allows me a new canvas to fill with my own memories.’

She liked that thought.

‘Beginnings,’ she whispered just as his voice came again across the darkness.

‘“Remember tonight, for it is the beginning of always.”’

‘That’s beautiful. Who said it?’

‘Dante Alighieri, an Italian poet of the late Middle Ages.’

‘You are a spy who quotes poetry and a man who can kill without a second thought. Who are you really, Aurelian de la Tomber, for I cannot quite fathom the truth of you.’

He turned to face her, sadness in his eyes.

‘When you picked me up off that road, the snow swirling in the cold, I had almost given up on living. I thought you were an angel then, with your red hair against white skin and a voice that was...kind.’

‘A fallen angel, perhaps.’

‘Promise me something, Violet. Promise that you will discuss anything you are not happy about, anything that worries you.’

‘I don’t like sleeping in here alone.’

‘Will you come with me to my chamber, then?’ He offered her his hand, palm up and she took it.

His bedroom through the small door was enormous, one end filled with books and maps and ancient manuscripts.

‘I had them brought over from Paris,’ he said when he saw her looking. ‘I have not had much time for reading but I mean to make some here.’

‘And the piano?’

‘It was my mother’s.’

There were paintings on the walls that showed landscapes, foreign shores with a sun in the skies a lot warmer than the one here in England. On a desk near the fireplace was a bower of candles. A gun lay at an angle next to that.

‘You expect more trouble? This is why you do not sleep?’

‘I have guards placed from one end of Compton Park to the other. If trouble comes I will know about it well before it reaches our front door.’