Page 63 of A Sense of Paradise
Avery left the carriage as soon as the steps had been lowered and executed a sweeping, ironic bow. Flora was reluctant to leave the comparative safety of the carriage, but she wouldn’t put it past Avery to physically remove her from it if she demurred. The thought of his hands touching her made her cringe and so she alighted unaided, ignoring his hand when he held it out to help her down. Eloise followed directly behind her with Louis bringing up the rear.
The two men who had been with Avery in the village had ridden behind on the carriage, adding to the burden for the poor underfed horses conveying it. They left their perch and one stepped forward to open the front door to the house. Clearly, the establishment was short on servants, confirming Flora’s impression that Avery either lacked funds or felt a pressing need for privacy.
They were ushered into a small drawing room, where two young men were playing a game of checkers. They glanced up and the youth with a sweep of blond hair let out a yelp of surprise, before standing and hurling himself into Eloise’s arms.
‘How touching,’ Avery said in a sarcastic tone. ‘I shall try not to take offence because the delectable Miss Garnier failed to welcome my advances quite so affectionately.’
Flora sent him a scathing look. ‘Are you really so sensitive, or perhaps so arrogant, still to be riled by a lady’s rejection?’ She knew it had been a miscalculation to deliberately anger him the moment she noticed his expression darken. Remus materialised and waved his translucent arms madly in a restraining gesture. Flora knew he was right but couldn’t help herself. She despised bullies, especially those who would go so far as to murder innocent children in an effort to satisfy ever more extreme perversions. ‘Come along, Eloise. I assume this is Maurice. You are reunited and there is nothing to keep us here.’
‘Why did you deceive me, Louis?’ Eloise asked, looking bemused. ‘I thought we were friends. I trusted you.’
‘You were wasting your life, dreaming about a reconciliation with a marquess that was never going to happen. I had to make you see…’
‘You’ve seen Archie?’ Maurice asked enthusiastically, clearly oblivious to the tension in the room. ‘Did he ask about me?’
‘The fool is in love with you,’ Avery said dismissively, nodding in Louis’s direction. ‘I saw it the moment I first met you. I thought at first that you rejected me because you returned his feelings, but it didn’t take me long to realise where your true affections lay, or that Louis could prove to be useful.’
‘This is ridiculous,’ Eloise said, shaking her head in evident confusion.
‘It was an error,’ Louis agreed. ‘Avery persuaded me that once you recovered from your one-sided infatuation with Lord Felsham, you would come to realise that your feelings for me transcended mere friendship, as they did before Felsham came to France and spoiled everything.’
‘We were never…’
‘Intimate?’Non,I was too gentlemanly to press you in that respect, but I thought, in time…’ Louis threw back his head and closed his eyes. ‘I thought that at the very least, you would turn to me as you always do, and this time I would be able to make you see that it was useless, continuing to worship a man who had forgotten your name.’ He shook his head. ‘I believed it because I wanted it to be true and had to think of a way to persuade you to come to England. I knew you wouldn’t take much persuading because you would have a legitimate reason to contact Felsham and you’d assume that everything else would fall into place. I knew it would not. What I didn’t know was that I was being used to further Avery’s plans.’
‘Plans to discredit Lord Felsham,’ Flora said. ‘Plans that have gone woefully awry. No one believes for a moment that he killed Mr Yardley. Scotland Yard’s detectives have assured him in that regard.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Avery flashed a self-satisfied smile that turned Flora’s blood cold. ‘Mud sticks. Now that he’s a cripple, all he has left is his precious reputation—and I fully intend to take that away from him.’
‘You are playing a dangerous game against a man who wields considerably more power than you do,’ Flora replied calmly. ‘As you know, he is aware of your involvement in my father’s debauched exorcisms. Lord Felsham left it to the church to decide how to deal with that particular problem and was willing to let things rest. However, if you insist upon stirring the business up again then he won’t hesitate to turn the tables and use your own methods against you. In other words, the full horror of your actions will become public knowledge and you will be comprehensively shunned by society. Even more so than you are at present.’
‘He has no actual proof, so I will sue for slander,’ Avery said smugly.
‘Ah, so you are goading him into reacting. That’s what all this is about.’ Flora shook her head. ‘You really must feel threatened by him, which shows just what a spineless individual you actually are. You are nothing more than an irritating distraction as far as Lord Felsham is concerned. You mean absolutely nothing to him but are obsessed by him.’
‘With good reason.’
‘And one that I should be interested to hear,’ Flora said, shrugging as she perched on the arm of a sofa and regarded him with a look of weary disdain.
It was as though everyone else in the room had been struck dumb as they watched Flora and Avery testing one another. A silence spread between them, taut and intense, but Flora appreciated its value and was determined not to be the one to break it.
‘The man is a scoundrel. No woman was safe from him before he almost killed himself in his last adulterous sortie as an able-bodied man.’ Flora was taken aback by the vitriol behind Avery’s words and the manner in which his eyes turned to hate-filled chips of flint. ‘He followed his father’s example in that regard.’
Flora let out a hollow laugh. ‘Given what I know about your own behaviour, I hardly think you are in a position to adopt the moral high ground. Lord Felsham might well have spread his favours, as do most young men in privileged positions at some point in their lives, I believe. But he does not torture innocent children in order to achieve whatever gratification you seek from such bestial behaviour.’
Eloise gasped, but otherwise only the ticking of the clock and the sound of Flora’s own heart beating a loud tattoo inside her chest intruded upon the brittle silence.
‘You know nothing!’ Avery threw up his hands and appeared to be on the verge of a tantrum. Remus fluttered over his head, creating a breeze that stirred Avery’s hair. He ran a hand over his head and his eyes darted suspiciously from side to side.
‘What was that?’
‘Then explain,’ Flora said at the same time, wondering if Archie really was on his way, unsure whether she wanted him there. Avery was volatile. Thus far he hadn’t resorted to violence, but Archie’s appearance could well tip him over the edge since he clearly harboured a massive grudge against him. She was equally certain that she and Eloise would not be permitted to leave here of their own free will. It was hard to know what to do, but she absolutely wanted to hear Avery’s reason for his vendetta against Archie—a reason that appeared to have more to do with the previous generation.
‘My sainted mother died in childbirth,’ Avery said through gritted teeth.
‘I am sorry to hear it. I can sense that you were very close to her, but childbirth is a dangerous business and many women do not survive it.’
‘My mother could still be alive today, had she not died giving birth to Felsham’s bastard.’
