Emily wrapped her arms around herself as if to hold herself together. She was gasping for breath, and it was all that she could do to prevent the tears from falling. The turn of the latch upon the door told her that he had followed her, but she refused to turn, afraid that he might see the truth, the devastation, in her face.
“Emily,” his voice was low and calm, “I am sorry if I have caused you distress. I never meant…” She heard him approach and stop several feet away. “I would never have spoken if I had not thought that, somehow, you might feel the same.”
“I do not,” she whispered, but the hitch in her voice gave her away.
“Turn then and tell me outright that there is no hope for me. Tell me that you do not love me, and I promise that I shall never bother you with my affections again.”
He waited.
It took Emily several minutes to gather herself, but even then, she could not bring herself to face the man that she loved. For that was the truth. It would always be the truth. She loved him desperately. Even though he was promised to another, she loved him still. The knowledge crushed her soul, and she felt as if the world had crumbled beneath her feet. There was no solid ground.
“Emily, look at me.”
She could not.
“Tell me what I have done to turn you against me, and I shall correct it,” he begged.
She almost believed the hurt in his voice. Almost believed that he cared. Yet he was false. He had to be. He had learned from the best. Learned how to convince more than one lady that his intentions were true, even when he only had his own interests at heart. He was a cad. How could she possibly be taken in by him? The deception of it tore through her like physical pain.
“Emily, please.”
“I know about Henrietta,” she blurted.
Emily finally worked up the courage to face him. His shoulders sank like one who had been dealt a great blow. The truth was there, written on his face; the shame that he had been caught.
“What?” he muttered. The word was a question, but there was no confusion in the duke’s eyes. He knew exactly to what she referred, and he did not deny it. Her own words felt like a sword through her heart.
“You do not deny it?” Emily whispered. She was not quite sure how she was speaking; how she was standing when she was dying inside.
The duke shook his head sadly looking at the floor like a chastised child. He did not meet her eyes, but muttered, “How? How did you learn of it?” He raised pain filled eyes to her.
“That is all you have to say for yourself? How did I find out?” The hurt turned suddenly to anger. It welled up in a great wave that drowned the pain. Emily was livid now. “Henrietta told me herself,” she replied with as much pride as she could muster. “Is it untrue then?” Even now, she hoped he would deny it.
“No,” he grunted. “If you have heard it from Henrietta directly then she would have told you true. After all, she was there,” he whispered.
Emily felt crushed by the thought alone. How she managed not to burst into tears she did not know, but her lips kept forming words as if she needed the torture of them. “How could you have kept such a secret?” she breathed.
“Because I was afraid that I would lose you.” The duke reached out as if to touch her arm.
Emily recoiled. “How dare you!”
He ran his hand through his hair instead, looking thoroughly bereft. The rumpled waves were mussed and the gentleman appeared utterly out of sorts.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” she hissed. “You owe Henrietta better, and myself as well.”
“I know.”
Emily could not quite bring herself to stop. She wanted to chide him, perhaps to hurt him as he had done to her. Her tone was hard. “You are no better than your father. No man worth his name would abandon a lady after having acted so.”
The duke’s recoiled at her harsh rebuke, but his head snapped back as he took her meaning. “You would have me marry her?” he said through gritted teeth.
“Yes!” Emily cried. Tears were now streaming freely down her face. “No more hiding. No more secrets. You owe the lady your honor and respect. You know it is right.” She crossed her arms before her both to help keep herself steady and to create a barrier between them. “The time for childish excuses is past,” she said at last. “This is your folly and I want nothing to do with it or with you.”
“I love you,” he said plaintively, like a child begging for a sweetmeat, as if love made any difference at all now. There were plenty of couples who were in love and could not be married, she thought. There were just as many who had been required to fulfill the promise of marriage even when there was no love involved.
“It does not matter,” she replied with a shake of her head.
His pained expression was anguish itself.
“It matters.” His voice was raw with the depth of his emotion. “If you love me?”
Emily could not bring herself to answer. He repeated the question and she cried all the harder for her inability to deny it. Silent tears coursed down her face. She ignored them. They did not matter. She brushed them away angrily, and yet she clung to the anger so that he would not see that she simply wanted to disappear into a cloud of smoke so that he would not witness her mortification. She stepped forward taking control even as her heart was breaking to pieces before him.
“Emily, please, say that you love me.”
She should ignore him. She should leave. She could not make her feet move. She hesitated in the doorway and leaned upon the frame. After several minutes had passed and she still had not moved, he stepped forward.
“You are standing under mistletoe,” he pointed out with a soft voice.
Her head shot upward and searched for the plant as if she could will the thing to shrivel and die by her very gaze. The action had caused her to reveal herself and she was sure that the duke was granted with a clear view of her heartbroken expression.
“Em,” he began again, so softly. The use of her nickname almost undid her. She shook her head, but did not move or speak. He stood close enough that they were both canopied by the offending bough. He reached out just shy of touching her.
“I won’t if you would rather not,” his voice was a whisper, but it reverberated around her. “I would do whatever you wish.”
Her mind screamed for her to tell him to go away, but her heart pleaded that she loved him. She could not deny him. Not this once or else she would forever wonder. Only a strangled sob slipped from her lips and she knew that her heart lay exposed.
She reached for him, and he took her into his arms in one swift motion. She did not fight him. He was so unutterably gentle, and she wanted this. She wanted him. He clung to her desperately and she returned his embrace. Her ear pressed to his rabidly beating heart.
He reached down to her face and thumbed away a tear as she looked up at him. For one frozen moment she thought that he would kiss her. His mouth hovered, but an inch away, and she could feel his breath upon her lips. His breath trembled, like her own.
He cupped her face in his hands most tenderly as if she would break. He thumbed one tear from her cheek and then the other with unutterable gentleness, a question in his touch.
Her eyes drifted closed in preparation. Just one kiss, she thought and then I shall have to let him go, but for just this moment, she would cling to him and pretend that he returned her love. She would pretend it was real.
His lips were on hers, gentle at first, and then more insistent. Her hands went up around his neck, fisting in his hair, those wonderful curls that she would never touch again. She opened to him and the entire tenure of the kiss changed as he crushed her to him. With his arms wrapped so tightly around her, she felt blanketed in the scent of him, as if he would never let go; as if this moment could go on forever.
She felt as if she was dying and living her entire life in this one single moment. There was nothing but this moment. There was nothing but him. She drank him down as if she would die if she
did not get enough of him, and he of her.
A gasp from the opposite doorway revealed an intruder, and the couple sprang apart to find Henrietta’s wide-eyed gaze upon them.
Every flutter of hope that Emily had just felt was crushed in an instant. She pushed herself away. Her fingers went to her lips. She turned and she fled the room.
“Em!” The duke moved to follow her, but Henrietta waylaid him.
Emily found an empty room soon enough. She flung the door closed and leaned her back against it sliding down to the floor. “What have I done?” Emily groaned to the empty hall.
She could not say how long she sat there before Edmund found her.
“Emily,” He grasped her quaking arms. “You look as though you have seen a ghost. Are you alright?”
“I’m not feeling well at all,” she told her brother. “Please, take me home.”
“I shall call for the carriage,” he sprang into action. “Uncle can call for the doctor.”
“No,” Emily pleaded. “No. I want to go home.”
“I will take you home,” Edmund promised.
“No, to London,” she said. “I want to go home to London.”
Edmund stared at her for a long while, but did not press his sister for an explanation. His eyes flicked to something over her shoulder, and Emily prayed that it was not a sign of the duke’s approach. A moment later, Edmund threw his coat over her shoulders and ushered her out into the night.
26
Alexander paced his study and ran his hand through his already disheveled locks. He looked at what he had written. It was rubbish. He crumpled the letter and tossed it in the fire and began again.
The entire staff knew of the young duke’s distemper.
He had stood like a dumb-struck fool looking after Emily. He had let her go. Why had he let her leave?
He was numb, and Emily was right. She had always known what was right and proper. He never did. It was Emily who always steered him and Edmund in the right direction. But this?
The duke took a deep settling breath. He would lose Emily forever. He watched her retreating back. Hadn’t he lost her already? Her slim shoulders were set in a rigid line. She did not look back.
Years had passed and Emily wasn’t here, and Henrietta had been. He wasn’t in love with Henrietta, but she was his friend and he needed a wife. He needed someone beside him. Why not Henrietta?
Henrietta had warned him to chase after Emily would invite even further scandal. Henrietta understood such things and Alexander could not bear for censure to fall upon Emily. The duke watched as Edmund bundled her out to the waiting carriage. His friend gave him a searching look, but he did not know what he could say.
Emily’s words whirled in the duke’s mind. Emily really told him that he was shirking his responsibilities. She had called him a child, and less than a man. The rebuke stung bitterly, but she was right.
Alexander had taken on many of the problems of the town, but taking responsibility for his own actions; that had been pushed aside again and again until it seemed so far away that it might not have happened at all.
His father had said it would be so, but Father was wrong. His father was wrong about so many things. Alexander had worried for years that he had inherited his father’s demons, but he had never heard it laid so plain. The injury had faded, but it was not gone and not forgotten.
Certainly, Henrietta had not forgotten the wrong he had done her. How could she? Emily had put the matter right in front of him where he could ignore it no longer. You should have married Henrietta, she said. You should have married her.
Alexander knew that was right. He knew, and still he hesitated.
Henrietta suffered more for the incident than he had done. She was banished from her home. She was ridiculed for being a loose woman. She had not found a husband of her own because of the shame he had brought to her name. He had been dropped from some of the local guest lists and been forced to endure their sidelong glances, but no one dared to really give him the cut. He was a duke’s son, and now he was the duke, himself. There was no censure, and the guilt nagged at him.
His father had insisted that the wench was well paid; she would go away, and he would do well to forget her. So Alexander had done, and for a while, his father was right.
The problem and Henrietta were out of sight.
But Alexander had missed her.
She was one of the few people his age that was not forbidden visits to Bramblewood. Even Edmund’s aunt and uncle preferred that he stay at Sandstowe and Edmund’s own father wanted him more and more in London.
Other friendships had dried up after his mother died because people wanted nothing to do with his father and his wicked ways. Just as Emily now wanted nothing to do with him.
Alexander closed his eyes against the painful thought. He had no right to her. She had refused him. No. She had not even allowed him to ask.
Only Henrietta was left.
Because her father and his father had been much the same.
She at least understood.
He swallowed down a glass of brandy and allowed the burn of the spirit to numb him.
Even the weather was against Emily and the roads were not suitable for her desired departure. Uncle Cecil would not give her the carriage no matter how much she begged. Instead, Emily had made no attempt to feign illness, but blatantly refused to go out. She would wait until the roads were clear and make her return to London as soon as could be managed.
Emily lay on the window bench of her aunt’s parlor and stared down at the blanket of snow that continued to accumulate on the lawn. Three days darkened by winter storms and gloomy winds reflected her mood.
In London, snow only fell in several polite English snowflakes and was conveniently melted by midday as was proper. Now, that she wanted to leave, the snow piled up for several days. It was most unaccommodating.
Edmund had still not pressed her for details. The entire household had tiptoed around the issue, but she knew that it would not be long before they began to demand answers.
Two letters had arrived from Bramblewood and both had been flung into the fire unopened. Emily could not bear to view his writing, or hear whatever excuses the duke might present.
She knew that she had spoken out of turn. She regretted her words, but she could not take them back. She could not bear to see him. Just the thought made the tears collect in her chest. She had refused his visit, saying she was indisposed.
“Em, you are being ridiculous. He knows you are here,” Edmund said, but she would not come down and even Edmund, in solidarity for his sister, kept his distance from his friend for a time at least.
Another letter arrived from Bramblewood, which Emily pitched into the fire, and one from her Mother. She was surprised that the letter made it to Northwick, but perhaps the road south was passable. It gave her hope.
“Emily,” her aunt had looked up from her book and asked across the room. “Cecil told me that you received a letter from your mother this morning. I wondered what she had to say?”
“Nothing much,” Emily yawned. “She asked if I had made a decision between the gentlemen that I had been meant to consider.”
“And what will be your reply?” Aunt Agnes asked with concern.
“Whichever she most prefers,” Emily replied without care. She did not see that it would matter one way or the other. She knew she had to marry eventually. If she was not marrying for love, it did not matter much who she married. There was some comfort in knowing that if she married Robert Hawthorne she would never have to come to Northwickshire again. She would never have to lay eyes upon Alexander. The sense of loss almost overwhelmed her.
“Em, do not speak so callously,” Edmund said. “You cannot make such a flippant decision.”
“Edmund, hush,” Emily said. “It is my choice, not yours.”
“I know,” he said, “and I want you to make it. You know this is wrong.”
“I shall not have this conversation with you,�
�� she concluded. Emily turned to march up the stairs to her room.
Within moments, Edmund followed. He rapped sharply on the door to her chambers.
“Go away,” Emily said without opening the door. “I will not be made to feel a fool.” She had flung herself across the fainting couch in her sitting room.
“You are a fool.” Edmund pressed on, entering anyway. He stalked into the sitting room. “So you want to return to London and marry some dullard like Hawthorne and live a dull life, raising dull babies awaiting his dullard grandfather’s praise?”
Emily wished to slap her brother for his cruel words; instead she clenched her fists in anger. “Robert Hawthorne is a good choice.”
“Hawthorne? Really? He is your decision?” Edmund threw his head back and stared at the ceiling as if he could not comprehend her words.
“He meets all the necessary criteria.”
“Of course he does,” Edmund scoffed as paced away. He turned back to her with all seriousness. “You shall never love him, Em, and you know it. Worse, he will never love you.”
“You do not know that.”
“Then you love Hawthorne?”
“No, but…”
“Don’t you want that?” Edmund demanded catching her shoulders and forcing her to look at him. “Do you not long for love?”
“This isn’t a fairy tale, Edmund,” Emily replied with confidence as if she meant it. “Love only gets you so far. Look at mother and father. Theirs was not a love match, but they are content. They do well enough. Love can grow from such matches.”
“Are you daft?” Edmund hissed. “Robert is too proper to love you properly. He shan’t do so without permission from his grandfather.” Edmund’s voice took on a singsong cadence. “Might I take my bride, Grandfather? Might I kiss my bride, Grandfather? Might I take a piss, Grandfather?”
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