In preparation for dinner, Emily pulled off her gloves and put them in her lap. She laid her napkin atop them as Edmund took the place on her other side, with Anne beside her brother. Mr. Martin Eldridge, a county gentleman renowned for his experimental agricultural methods escorted and then sat next to Henrietta.
The lady made a show of choosing the seat to the left of the host. Emily noted that Aunt Agnes and Uncle Cecil took seats further down the table with some of the elder guests. The rest of the assembled company found their chairs and the servants began to usher out the first course a rich creamy mushroom soup, the likes of which Emily had not had since she was a child.
Emily found herself enjoying the meal. There was meat aplenty: beef, mutton and venison as well as several savory sauces. Each course was more sublime than the last and the conversation was engaging.
That is, except for when Mr. Eldridge spoke. Henrietta and the duke were the only ones who seemed to have been able to maintain focus throughout his speech about rerouting the stream that bordered his north pasture so that the plants received the water they needed without being drowned with the spring floods. Of course, Mr. Eldridge had already consulted at Bramblewood so the duke was rightly fascinated with his methods and approving of his success.
Henrietta had said. “It was certainly useful to have your wealth of knowledge in Scotland, Mr. Eldridge.”
Mr. Eldridge beamed under the praise of the only lady who seemed to have followed his speech.
“Further north, one must be more cognizant of the weather and water if you plan to have abundant crops,” Eldridge said.
Soon enough, Emily found herself laughing at the wit of her companions. Edmund was regaling those nearest to him with tales of the duke’s childish follies. Emily shuffled nervously worried about what her brother might say.
“There was that time, do you recall Anne?” Edmund began. “When your father had given you that small rowboat to take about the lake.”
“Yes,” Anne replied with a shake of her head. “It had been meant for one person alone. He had thought I would enjoy the solitude. My sisters were expressly forbidden to follow me.”
“And yet,” Edmund laughed, “we were able to fit the four of us inside for a row.”
“For a time,” Emily added, “before it sank!”
“I remember this,” Henrietta chimed in from across the table, excited to add her part. “I saw you carrying the tiny craft down the lane sopping wet and Emily marching behind with a scowl throwing pinecones at the back of Alexander’s head!”
Embarrassed, Emily applied herself to the candied carrots which was one of her favorites.
Everyone laughed at the picture Henrietta’s story made and Emily blushed with the thought.
“He deserved it!” She blurted, surprised that she still felt as strongly about the issue as she had years prior. He had deserved her censure once, but now Alexander was the duke. “I’m sorry, Your Grace,” she said almost immediately upon realizing what she had said.
“Oh, do not,” the duke laughed. “I was completely at fault. I freely admit it. I apologize, Miss Ingram.” He bowed his head slightly to Emily. Although, his laughter revealed that he still found her plight humorous.
“Nearly a decade later and you finally take ownership,” Emily shook her head.
“I have taken ownership of much of late,” Alexander said.
“And about time too,” Emily added.
“Whatever happened that made you so cross?” Mr. Eldridge asked. He was the only one present that had not witnessed the friends in their youth and was curious to know more.
Emily scowled and crossed her arms below her breasts unsure how to answer. His question was gauche, but she supposed she was short with the duke, and Mr. Eldridge did not know the complete tale.
Anne answered his query. “Emily’s skirt got stuck on a submerged log after we took our spill and she could not break it free,” Anne explained.
“My goodness!” Henrietta gasped with a hand over her mouth. “Poor child. Did you nearly drown?”
“Not even close,” Edmund chuckled. “Once we helped her gain her footing, she was only a bit more than waist deep.”
“You had nothing to do with it, brother dear,” Emily said.
“As I recall it was the duke who helped you to stand,” Anne said.
“Then why was she so angry with Alexander?” Henrietta asked.
Emily could not help but bristle every time Henrietta called the duke by his given name, but Alexander seemed not to mind. He was chuckling softly, a light in his eyes.
“As I recall, Alexander suggested she remove her skirt,” Edmund said chuckling.
“Oh,” Henrietta said, and Emily blushed crimson.
She could just kill Edmund. “As I recall we were ten!” She defended.
“Perhaps eleven,” Anne said.
“But Emily always was a bit of a killjoy,” Edmund said.
“I’m not,” Emily said glaring at her brother.
Alexander came to her rescue as he had so long ago.
“She wasn’t really angry,” Alexander replied. “She was just pretending to be. Emily never got angry with us. Not really.”
“Then why would she pretend?” Henrietta asked more specifically.
“Because he told me that since I was stuck I must live in the lake forever, but not to worry. He would visit daily to toss me bread as he did the carp.”
“Oh,” Henrietta said.
“Not like the carp,” Alexander corrected.
“You called me a mer-creature.” Emily explained with a childish huff.
“Mermaid,” Alexander said.
Emily was doing her best to remain indignant, but the laughter kept slipping through. It was a simpler time when it was easy to laugh.
“You did look most enchanting,” the duke whispered for her ears only, and she froze with the thought. She set her fork on the side of the plate. Her stomach was suddenly too full of butterflies to take another bite.
Edmund and Anne were still shaking with laughter at the memory.
Emily pulled herself from the reverie and gained her wit. “It was your fault we spilled,” she added. “The duke kept leaning over to pick the lilies and the boat would rock ever so violently.” She explained.
“As I recall, you still held the fistful of lilies that I had gathered as you stood in the water scolding me,” he replied.
Emily grew still as she remembered that part. She looked at Alexander. His blue eyes were sparkled with the mirth of youth and something else, something that did not speak of childhood.
“If anything it made you look all the more a mer-creature,” Anne giggled. “You had weeds in your hair and you were dripping. I never remember you being more out of sorts.”
Edmund nodded. “Emily who was always so careful about her appearance,” he remembered.
“Simply enchanting,” Alexander said again, his eyes dark as a night sky. “Like the Lady of the Lake,” he said.
“Oh, I remember how we played those stories,” Anne broke into the conversation. “Although usually Edmund was the damsel in distress, not Emily.”
“Now just a minute,” Edmund protested above their laughter.
Emily gave in to the moment and permitted herself to have fun. It was alright to remember her childish ways, she thought, although she was very aware that the man beside her was not a child.
In any case, she supposed, the conversation was much more interesting than speaking about next years’ plowshare.
She glanced at Mr. Eldridge who was listening intently to their tale.
“How did you escape?” Henrietta asked with interest.
“Ale… His Grace,” Emily corrected. “He rescued me at last.”
“Ah, you remember,” Alexander teased. “I have ever been your gallant knight.”
“If I would have had a sword, I should have cut my own skirt loose,” Emily said smartly.
“My sword is ever at your service, my lady,�
� the duke teased and for a moment there was something more serious in Alexander’s eyes, and then he was just the same. Emily thought she must have imagined the overtones, but the heat in his gaze was unmistakable.
Emily met his eyes as she spoke. “He dove under and broke the branch that had ensnared my hem. It was all quite straightforward when it came down to it.”
“I would have left you there,” Edmund said taking a sip of his wine. “You were being quite the shrew.”
“I was not.” Emily wished to give him a sharp jab in the ribs as she might have back then, but refrained. It would be inappropriate at such a gathering.
“I never remember Emily being shrewish,” Alexander said. “Opinionated, perhaps, but it is hard to argue when she is so often right.”
“Be sure to recall that,” Emily teased with a smile.
She had forgotten about the boat incident and several others like it that were shared that evening. Emily and Anne often found themselves an accomplice in the stories. Emily was amused to find that both gentlemen recalled their participation with fondness and did not think less of them for the wild ways of their youth.
“I had always thought myself more of a nuisance,” Emily admitted at last when Henrietta and Mr. Eldridge had turned toward one another for a private conversation on their side of the table.
“Not at all,” the duke said. “We are forever indebted to you for your ingenious escape tactics, Miss Ingram, without which we certainly would have found ourselves in a great deal more trouble.” He lifted a wine glass to toast her as another moment, another adventure, was recounted.
This time Anne recalled that the boys had broken the hay wagon by trying to ride it down a hill. “I remember, it made a terrible noise when it moved,” she said.
“We were lucky we were not killed,” Edmund said. “There was no way to steer.”
“I recall,” the duke said. “You crashed us into the side of the barn. I still have the scar.”
“You do not,” Edmund protested, but Alexander noted the pale white line on his hand which he swore extended all the way to his upper arm where a piece of wood from the wagon had splintered off and pierced his skin.
Emily eyes followed the scar noting where it disappeared within the sleeve of his shirt. Her throat felt tight. She remembered that day. His blue eyes were laughing now, but she remembered those same eyes fluttering closed with blood loss. The thought gave her a chill.
She had run down the hill after Alexander and her brother to find them both dazed and silly. She had begun to scold and then realized that Alexander was bleeding, holding a bloody spike of wood that had come loose from somewhere. She had been torn between running for Uncle Cecil or trying to help Alexander.
In the end she screamed at Edmund to get help and for just a moment he had balked at telling Uncle Cecil of their folly until she had commandeered his shirt and pushed him away.
She had thought Alexander might bleed to death before her very eyes. She couldn’t lose him. Not then. Not now. The reality made her feel a bit queasy, although she had not felt so at the time. At the time, she had just acted.
The gentlemen were still laughing at the tale.
“If I hadn’t put up my hand I might have put out an eye or worse. We were so foolish.” Alexander said shaking his head.
Emily looked at him a moment before speaking. “I remember,” she said softly.
Emily could not bear the thought of it. Looking back, she realized that a part of her used to care deeply for Alexander. Perhaps more than she ever wished to admit. What did she feel now? The thought of losing him still made her mouth go dry and put a cold feeling of terror in the pit of her stomach.
“Uncle Cecil was so cross that he threatened to send me back to London as punishment.” Edmund said.
“Of course, he was more scared than angry,” Emily said, “as was I.”
“Oh, Em, you never get ruffled,” Edmund said, but that really was not true. She just did not show it. Certainly, falling apart at the first sign of trouble would not have been helpful.
“As I recall,” the duke said, taking up the story, “Edmund and Miss Ingram had only just arrived for the summer the day before. Edmund would have been miserable in London and I would have been left to a summer alone with William, who was always more studious than the rest of us, but Miss Ingram saved us again.”
Emily blushed looking down at her plate. She couldn’t bear to see Alexander hurt or unhappy. Her eyes drifted again to his scar. He was the same boy she had known. He was different yes, but still marked by past. Was she not the same?
“I still cannot believe you convinced your uncle that it was the fault of the wagon,” Anne said to Emily with no little amazement. “That was brilliant.” She toasted Emily with her glass.
Emily sipped her drink and nodded. She took a breath and rejoined the conversation. She explained that with calm inducement she had persuaded Uncle Cecil to see that the hay wagon was quite old and already had a cracked axle.
“Broken at that point,” Edmund added.
“In any case, it could no longer be pulled by the horses and needed replacement,” Emily said.
“This gives you an excuse to convince Aunt Agnes that you ought to have a new hay wagon.” She had said. Although her uncle had still been very cross, he had taken to the idea of a new wagon. The following week, it had been delivered and the matter, forgotten. Although Alexander’s arm had been bandaged half the summer.
“That was Emily,” Edmund smiled at his sister with affection, “never caused the trouble but always found a way to trench us out.”
“Yes,” the duke said his fingers on his own scar but his eyes on Emily. There was weight in his deep blue gaze. She wondered if they both remembered the event in the same way, but there was no way to go back to that shared moment, even if she wanted to do so.
Emily sighed with dramatic effect and mock distain. “What a pittance I received for the effort. Neither of you were ever able to learn from the experience.”
“What would you know of my experience?” The duke chided in good fun, but Emily blushed with the sudden unintended innuendo, or perhaps it was intended. She glanced up to see the duke smiling at her, his dark eyes smoldering.
“Nothing,” she breathed.
The moment between them held. She realized she did want to know. There were so many details about this new version of him that she wanted to know. She wanted to curl up by the window and share secrets with him as she had as a child. She wanted to know everything that had occurred while she had been away.
Alexander reached across the table and took her bare hand. The heat of his hand on hers made her deeply aware of him. “Your Grace,” she breathed as his fingers moved over hers, bare flesh to bare flesh.
She felt the raised scar under her fingertips. She wanted to trace the line up over the corded muscles of his forearm. She wanted to map out his new form so that he might be known to her as he once was, but in a far different way.
He said nothing, but a hint of a smirk came to his lips and she knew he was thinking much the same. It was no boy’s look. His eyes held the full weight of a man’s gaze. Emily felt the heat of it against her skin. Her heart pounded in her chest, and for a moment she felt they were the only two people in the room. Perhaps the only two people in the world.
Edmund was still speaking, but his words seemed far away. “Emily has grown-up, sensible and proper. I, on the other hand am without hope of fitting in with London society even if my sister speaks well of me.”
“Nonsense,” Anne protested. “I am sure you are the perfect gentleman.”
“Oh no. According to my Father, I am far from perfect.”
“I would not credit it, Edmund. Your sister’s opinion is without flaw.” Alexander said at last. He released Emily from his gaze and she felt a sudden heaviness drop in the room, as if all of the air had gone out. “I hope she would speak well of me, though I too am far from perfect.”
Emily felt as though
she had missed something important in the duke’s words. Some secret weighted upon him. She wanted to chase away the darkness that had dimmed his smile, but did not understand what he wanted her to say. Once, she would have known. Now, she felt unsettled.
Emily looked about the beautiful room trying to regain her bearings. She was a lady in a beautiful dining room, and her host was at her side. A complement would bring the conversation back to a safe subject. “Perhaps not perfect, but you cannot say that you have not done well. You have restored Bramblewood.”
“Oh no,” he said. “Only upon the surface. The upstairs bedrooms are quite the mess. I should show you and then you would see …” he broke off as if suddenly aware of how improper it was to speak of the bedrooms with an unmarried lady. Her heart was aflutter again with his eyes upon her. It seemed as if she could still feel his fingers gliding over hers.
“You have done splendidly,” she said bringing the conversation back to a safe subject. “I do not think that I have ever seen such beauty.”
“Nor I,” he said so softly, raising a glass and toasting her. The duke’s voice was soft, for her ears only and she knew that they were no longer talking about the house. She blushed and lost her train of thought again.
“Do not be silly,” Emily said. He could not think her beautiful. She was not. It was only a nice dress.
“Oh, I am quite serious.”
She had never been so tongue-tied. What was wrong with her? She hoped the duke did not see how unsettled she was. It was embarrassing. Was it possible that he felt the same as she? Was it possible that he cared for her with more than friendship? No, she was his childhood friend, her brother’s companion, that was all. Why did thinking such thoughts fill her with melancholy?
“I still have a lot of work to do.” The duke added for the interest of the table. “I would not say that I am completely satisfied yet. Parts of the manor are completely unlivable, so I will warn you do not wander.”
“But you are a man of means, Your Grace,” Mr. Eldridge said. “I am sure you will have everything tip-top in no time.”
The Duke's Winter Promise: A Christmas Regency Romance Page 10
