Page 19 of Scandalous Nights With the Earl

He remembered the address at the foot of the letter she had sent him. Russell Square in Bloomsbury. Perhaps when he left here he would instruct his driver to pass by the house so he could at least see where it was that she lived.

A few hours later Willa brushed her hair out in front of the mirror in her bedroom. It was so much longer now than she had ever worn it, the tumbling curls almost reaching to her waist. Lionel had never liked it past her shoulders, chiding her each time he saw it down.

‘Only young girls wear their hair at such a length, Wilhelmina, and you are a long way past that. Such a vanity ill suits you.’

So she had cut it time and time again to prevent argument and to curtail censure. Such a docile, obedient wife. Such an easy target, too, for a man whose own life ambitions were falling into tatters.

The heavens above had failed to release their secrets to him no matter how many hours he spent trying to decipher them, and the high hopes of unfulfilled academic attainments were a bitter pill to swallow.

As Willa pushed back the thin satin of her gown, the ugly scar on her right thigh was evident, the glass from the broken telescope having sliced deep into her flesh. Tracing the linedown to her knee, she was filled with the sadness of so many wasted years and, leaning over, she pulled a journal from the bottom of her cabinet, the red leather scuffed now, and torn.

Poems and lines of prose filled the pages, each word an outlet for the much younger version of herself desperately trying to make sense of her situation. No one had helped her. Not her mother or her father. Not the doctor who had been summoned to stitch the wound. Not the priest at the church whom she had sought out for guidance. Not the housekeeper, either, who, whilst kind, had had no wish to lose her job.

No, she had made her bed and she’d had to lie down in it. Lie down with a man who’d become worse and worse with each passing year, a husband who’d used cruel words as a way of communication and anger as a method of control.

She’d thought it her fault at first that she could not please him, could not reason with him, could not still his disappointments. Then she had merely given up and accepted her lot, cleaning the house with more avid regularity and staying well out of his way.

When he had fallen down and down onto the stone terrace from the small balcony off the library she had watched with disbelief. The fluttering pages of her ripped book had gone with him, floating in a way that he had not, the dull thud of his head against the stones beneath so very un-survivable.

She’d stood there in the silence, in the space between them, the realisation of freedom present. She had then taken the gold marriage ring from her finger and thrown it as hard as she could, the symbol of oppression tumbling over and over against the blue of the sky before it was lost.

At her feet had been more torn pages that her husband had yanked out in his anger and those she’d tenderly lifted, safe in her hands as Lionel St Claire had not been, her push against him hard, too hard perhaps; she’d seen the moment his shoe hadcaught the jutting edge of the balcony, his attempt to grab for her, the astonishment as he had missed, the howl of blame, the curse of his marriage, a thousand moments between them sealed in this one final time as he fell, fury crystalizing in his last breath.

‘YOUR FAULT.’

These words were capitalised on the back cover of her journal.

And they were true. She had pushed him away from her in order to retrieve her tattered journal. He was a big man and it was a hard push but she had never expected him to lose his footing as he had done.

Biting her lip, Willa felt the salty taste of blood.

It was foolish to expect her life in London should now slot easily into place, given her past mistakes, and it was irrational to foster any sort of relationship with a man like the aristocratic Earl of Elmsworth.

But it had been lovely tonight in the ballroom of the Wilsons to pretend and to imagine that Phillip Moreland had sought her out for the dance because he felt something for her, that he liked her, that he had enjoyed their conversations.

‘Stop,’ she whispered into the empty darkness and turned to make herself ready for bed.

Chapter Four

Phillip Moreland’s name was everywhere in the next few days. It was in the broadsheets and on the lips of Anna Cherton when she came for a visit. Even Willa’s seamstress, Miss Brigitte, was spouting out the wonderfulness of his arrival in the Season because his presence had resulted in a number of young women coming by to order new gowns.

Indeed, it was as if London Society had become a seething bed of tittle-tattle. Gossip about his beautiful deceased wife was most prevalent, but so were the stories about the wealth of his estate. People commented endlessly about his handsome looks and easy bearing and about his being so very highborn.

The arrogance he was once accused of was dismissed in favour of his miraculous return and he was not a man it seemed to be censured by anyone. Society now loved him, each rejoinder she heard more flattering than the one before it, and the fact that he was now a widow only added to his allure.

He was the prize catch of the Season and every ambitious mama was out a-hunting.

Wilhelmina went riding five days after seeing the Earl. She needed the exercise and the freedom and she enjoyed the calibre of the horses for rent from the stables in Mount Street. Back at Belton Park horse riding had been the one true escape from allshe had to deal with and here in London it had continued to be both a balm and a solace.

Her meeting with Phillip Moreland at the Wilsons’ ball had set her on edge. She reasoned it was because she did not know what she expected of him and because their kiss had blurred the lines to such an extent that she was now trying to find ways to actively avoid him.

Thus when coming down the path in Hyde Park and seeing a lone rider in the distance she was shocked to see as she drew closer that it was the much admired Earl of Elmsworth. He wore his hair longer than most did here, the darkness cast into lighter shades today by the first rays of sun as it was ruffled by the wind. There was no way she could ignore him or he her without its appearing most odd and so she pulled her mount to a stop when he was a few feet away.

‘My lord.’

‘Mrs St Claire. You left the ball the other night before I had the chance to say goodbye.’

‘As you were in great demand I hardly thought you would have noticed my absence.’