CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“The governess has not, you know, many enjoyments.”
Private Education: A Practical Plan for the Studies of Young Ladies.
Elizabeth Appleton. 1815.
“Keep still!”
“It’s a scratch.”
“It’s a hole.” Amelia huffed. Honestly, men. Give them a dose of the sniffles and they wailed for their sick bed but get shot and they puffed out their chests and called for brandy.
She wrung the cloth out into the bowl, the water tinging an alarming crimson. In truth, the bullethadsolely winged his upper arm, the blood ceasing when they’d bound it with Hugh’s cravat in the hackney carriage. Yet the gash was lengthy and had reopened upon washing, likely needing stitches, but for now she re-bound it as tightly as she could with clean bandages.
His muslin shirt had been removed so he sat in merely his buckskins and although Amelia considered herself a capable, self-reliant woman, there was something about his abundantmasculinity that made her feel she could lean upon his strength once in a while and he’d never even notice.
Thisperfectplaceof Hugh’s happened to be on the east side of town where merchants and trade held sway. Far from the aristocratic parishes, it was obviously a place where Hugh could be anonymous.
They’d stepped from the carriage into the madness of Smithfield Market where every type of livestock could be found and it’d been hard to believe they were still within the modern metropolis of London as huge pens had contained braying cattle, bleating lambs and snorting pigs, the dome of St Paul’s cathedral upon the skyline looking on in faint disgust.
Hugh had guided her to an impressive stone archway with a rather nondescript, two-storey, brick-clad building constructed above it. The cobbled path through led onto the ancient St Bartholomew’s churchyard but beneath the arch they’d veered to one side, where Hugh had unlocked a door to stairs leading up into that same nondescript building.
A disguise for what had lain beneath.
She gazed around and smiled as those bricks were merely a façade, the interior displaying the structure to be pure Tudor London, one which somehow had escaped the Great Fire a century and a half ago. Black beams hung low, floorboards dark and gouged, and wattle and daub walls were dissected by curved oak timbers.
The furnishings matched the historic age, sheepskin rugs and sturdy trunks but there were also modern comforts – a coal fire, which they’d gladly lit, and a sofa with velvet upholstery.
“What is this place?”
Hugh prodded his bandage. “Well, it’s said the arch below us used to form part of the southern nave of the church, but after King Henry got his way, half was knocked down and someone built this house on top instead. The timber frame exterior musthave offended a previous owner so they had it clad in brick. I needed a house no one knew of as despite me having to live up to the sobriquet of the Scandalous Mr Cadwalader…” He waggled his eyebrows. “Sometimes I feel a need to…escape, to be unknown, to think, to escape theTonworld, and so when Wales is a mite far, I come here. I don’t get the chance often, but there is something about this place which brings me peace. As it did after Ross’ death.”
“You miss him, don’t you?” Amelia lightly brushed his arm.
“Yes.” Hugh’s mouth pinched. “We met less often in the last few years, which I now regret, but he taught me all. Saved my life once.” His eyes strayed to an oil painting of a ship setting sail on the Thames. “Left me that in his will. His favoured painting of London.” Hugh rubbed his creased forehead. “When I viewed the inside of this place, I knew it had to be mine.”
“It’s beautiful. I prefer these old houses with their secrets. What they’ve seen. What they’ve heard.”
“Are you saying you prefer this ramshackle old place to my Messrs Makefare and Co., architect designed Hanover Square townhouse?”
A snigger escaped her. “I would never say no to piped water and windows that keep the draughts out but there is a…romance to these places.”
“Amelia Lambert is a romantic?”
“Only on a new moon.”
He chuckled and flexed his arm. “My man of affairs pays a neighbour here to dust, keep the cupboards stocked and–”
“Place roses in vases?” She cocked her head to the white blooms upon one of the oak trunks.
“A weakness of mine,” he said huskily. “They remind me of summers in Wales. Innocence and life. Joy and beauty.”
Amelia felt her lips softly curve – at a man who was a warrior to his core and yet could still speak of the joy and beauty within life. At a man who she had nearly lost today.
As that Darnell had aimed his pistol at Hugh, her heart had ceased to beat, vision blurring and hands trembling, and she’d heard of only one emotion a woman could have that could cause such profound fear of loss for a man.
Dare she speak of it?
