Alex took in Emily’s curled lip and narrowed eyes. Her contempt smouldered between them.
He crossed his arms over his chest and watched her slender form move about the chamber, gathering items then shoving them pell-mell into her valise. She was far too soft-hearted, too naïve, too idealistic. She was going to be hurt in this quest of hers. His chest tightened. There was nothing he could do to prevent it.
“Where will you go?” he asked finally.
She stopped and dropped her armload of gowns into an already overstuffed valise. She paled at his words. He wanted to go to her and take her into his arms and tell her none of it mattered. If she wanted so badly to write this book on slavery, he would allow it. He would find a way to shelter her against the worst of the disillusionment; he’d pay whatever he had to in order to get it printed. But things had moved too far beyond that issue. They had said far more now.
He’d never forget the contempt on her face. He couldn’t abide living with a wife who held him in contempt.
Seriousness settled over her features, as if she understood that all the time before their parting had been theoretical but now it was real. Eminent. Irrevocable.
“Your cousin, Mrs Hazelwood, offered me a position as a companion.”
“Did she, when?” he asked, as if such a trifle mattered now. But a niggling doubt ate into him. A suspicion that she’d contemplated leaving him before.
She would have left eventually, no matter what. It was less painful this way. At least there were no children yet.
“Recently. She was distressed to learn that I spent the weekend here with you alone. She thinks there will soon be talk if I do not leave.” She laughed, a nervous, catching sound.
“You should go and live with her, yes, for now. But I do not like the idea of you working for her for wages. I’ll settle a bank account on you and you can take the art lessons still. You can eventually work as a portrait artist or something.”
“No, I don’t need or want your money now.”
Her words sideswiped him and nearly made him sway on his feet. He had not expected such a blanket rejection of his entire self from her. Not from Emily.
Well, well, well. Hadn’t he known in his guts that it would end like this? Wasn’t this the real reason why he hadn’t been able to bring himself to set a date for their marriage? Even though he hadn’t told her the whole of his past, she still recognised his damaged soul. And her idealistic spirit couldn’t possibly understand his need to forget and put the past behind him.
He felt a compelling urge to give in, to spill out the whole tale of his history. But even if she were capable of handling such a tale, he wasn’t capable of handling the contempt on her face change to pity. Better contempt than pity.
Of course they must part. Nicolo had been correct. They must separate. For both of their sakes. He wasn’t whole. It wasn’t fair that she didn’t know why. Yet she’d never be able to love him after he had told her. She would never be happy with knowing he was really half a broken man. Yet her pity would impel her to stand by him and he couldn’t ever bear that.
Better she left now with a valid reason to hate him. Hating him, she would forget him quickly.
He knew he would never recover from losing her.
* * * *
It was the evening of Emily’s first day at Mrs Hazelwood’s house She was tired. Elizabeth had attached herself to her and spent the day trailing at her skirts. Emily liked the girl but she was unaccustomed to caring for children.
Now she had hidden herself in the schoolroom, taking some moments alone. She needed time alone so she could continue to sort out her thoughts and feelings. Twenty-four hours had passed since her quarrel with Alex and yet the words echoed with finality in her mind. She had not known him. That hurt most of all. She’d been in love with an illusion.
It’d been torture to sit through supper with Mrs Hazelwood and Peter at once. She’d feared the whole time that she or Peter would give their previous intimacy away with a glance or a misspoken word. She hadn’t expected to dine with the family. She had expected to take her meals with the other servants. And she’d thought Peter would spend most nights out. But he had been kind and considerate to her through the whole meal. And had kept his sister from continuing to pry into Emily’s family’s past. She owed him for his kindness.
Hinges squeaked as the door came open.
She looked up and saw Peter entering. Smiling at her with warm familiarity in his startling blue eyes.
Her heart sped up and her mouth dried. Oh, heavens, he wasn’t going to make some sort of an advance, was he? Hastily, she reached for her sketchpad and turned her attention to it, taking her pencil and retracing lines needlessly.
He sat down beside her on the window seat cushion. She stiffened all over, preparing to resist him if he tried to touch her. But he merely leaned back against the window. He smelt of cigars and whisky and bay rum. She remained too aware of his masculinity. Her very awareness felt disloyal to Alex.
But she couldn’t love Alex any longer…
Save for the scratching of her charcoal on the page, silence fell between them for a long time.
“So Alex said or did something asinine and now you can’t forgive him?” Peter finally broke the silence.
Her pencil lead broke as a cold lump settled in her chest. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Oh, come, can’t you forgive him, just this once?”
“Alex and I are very different after all. I had not realised just how different.”
“Alex is a very complex man. A troubled man for all his glib charm.”
“Was he always this way?”
“No.”
The breathless need to know made her heart race away and she dropped the sketchpad and looked up at Peter. “What changed him?”
“I wish I could tell you, sweeting, but I can’t. The only person who might have known was Green, and, of course, he shan’t be telling secrets now.”
Green, who had served with Alex on the Pollyanna, a privateer ship during the war for independence from the King. Alex had been an adolescent and Green had been a man. Their ship had wrecked and, while Green had returned within three years, Alex had been declared dead. Until the day he’d shown up, hale and hearty, after five years’ silence. He refused to speak about that time.
Images swirled in her mind, of shipwrecks and the tossing sea, of pirates and unspeakable brutality. She tried to force her trembling lips to return his smile but she failed.
“So Alex really did or said something unforgivable?”
“The decision to part ways was shared.”
“I doubt it was your fault.” He inhaled deeply and shook his head slowly. “Ah, poor Alex, I didn’t think he would fumble this so soon—I care for him deeply but I see him as he is. Charmingly aloof, moving through life giving generously yet somehow giving nothing real of himself. He is an enigma.” He touched her cheek. “Think about this separation business. About what you want. If you want him, don’t let too much time go by. Forgive him whatever it is he has done or said.”
He bent and laid the lightest of kisses on her forehead. Then he left.
His words echoed in her mind for a long time after as she lay in bed. Yes, Alex was an enigma. But maybe somewhat less so to her now. Something had happened to Alex in those missing years. Something so horrific he would not tell her and yet it affected him constantly and in every part of his life. Even intimately. A terrifying suspicion tugged at her consciousness about what this experience might have been. It made her stomach turn sick. No, she couldn’t bear to think it. She pushed the awareness out of her mind along with the swirling, speculative images it provoked.
* * * *
“I didn’t think you could dance.”
Maggie Johnson’s blue eyes laughed at Emily as she fanned herself. Each slow, languid motion stirred the stray, strategically placed strawberry-blonde corkscrew curls on either side of her flawless face. With a button nose and a rosebud mo
uth, she was almost frighteningly beautiful. She was also one of Alex’s former lovers.
But that should no longer matter to Emily. It could no longer matter to her.
“I can dance a little now,” Emily said. She didn’t want to be here but Peter had insisted on bringing her tonight to this ball at the house of someone she didn’t even know. Of course, she had come only to avoid being rude and hurting his feelings. It had nothing to do with the chance that Alex would be here. He wasn’t, and, of course, she was relived. She was.
“I have been teaching her,” Peter said.
Maggie’s mouth gaped for a moment then she laughed softly and gave Peter a sideways glance. “Have you? Well, well, well. Isn‘t that interesting?”
Emily blushed at the insinuation. A totally undeserved shame, for Peter had been a perfect gentleman in every way in the two weeks since she’d come to live with Mrs Hazelwood. “He has sacrificed his afternoons to teach me,” she said, to remove any false images of herself alone with Peter in the more intimate hours of the night.
Maggie’s sharp eyes focused on her again and narrowed to feline slits. “I hear you have taken a position as companion to Mrs Hazelwood.”
“Yes.”
“And how do you like it?”
“I like it fine.”
Maggie shrugged and smiled. “I suppose it doesn’t pay as well as being Mr Dalton’s personal propagandist.” Her eyes danced with mischief.
The insinuation was clear. Emily turned her back and walked away. There was no use trying to be polite. She would never be accepted here. She ought not to have let herself be drawn into coming here tonight. She didn’t belong to this world.
A touch on her arm halted her. She turned.
Peter’s face was kind and concerned. “What is it?”
“I want to go home now.”
“You should stay. He should see you enjoying yourself without him. He should think about what his decision will mean.”
She frowned. “Why does it matter to you?”
“Because I want him to have the power of choice.”
His answer seemed needlessly cryptic but she was too edgy to give it much thought. “Well, he isn’t here.”
“He’ll show.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because I told him I was bringing you here. Believe me, he’ll show.”
Did she want him to show?
Peter took her hand. “Never mind women like Maggie. They are spoilt cats who have been given everything they ever wanted since birth. They think the world is theirs by right—they never like being forced to compete with those they deem to be commoners.”
Was that what she was? A commoner? Of course she was. The true pain of it all had been that she had forgotten that fact for a time and dared hope to have the prince and the happy-ever-after. But she’d been born to a middling sort of family. And her father had dirtied his hands in slave trade.
Peter tugged on her hand. “Come, let’s dance and have a good time and forget about all this.”
* * * *
Alex watched Emily with Peter. This evening, when Peter had informed him that he was bringing Emily here, Alex had sworn he wasn’t coming. He’d even removed his evening clothes and contemplated getting half-seas over.
Yet here he was, tormenting himself with the sight of Emily dancing with Peter. Touching his hand and laughing into his face. The present image of them together kept getting mixed in his mind with images of them in his study, kissing each other as if they had hungered all their lives for the taste of each other’s mouth.
At the time, it had simply struck him as lustful frolicking between two people he cared about deeply. A close friend whom he knew would only play by his rules. It had been so harmless. Now that had all changed. Emily was no longer his. She was free and available for any man to pay court to. Even Peter.
“If you don’t mend your break with her, and soon, I shall take her away from you.”
Peter’s words echoed with galling effect.
Yes, Alex wanted Emily to have her chance at happiness and motherhood. A home and hearth of her own. And, yes, Peter could be kind and generous. He was hard-working and made a excellent living. Women found him irresistibly handsome. On the surface he appeared everything a woman could want in a husband. But, in the full analysis of the matter, Peter fell far short of being an ideal husband. Certainly not the type of husband that Alex would want Emily to have.
He could have handed her over to a young man like Dr John Abbott but never one like Peter.
“Alex, aren’t you going to ask me to dance?”
Maggie’s drawling, peevish voice cut into Alex’s thoughts. He turned to her. In the past her blonde beauty had taken his breath, now it seemed cold. Too perfect.
Her tongue stole out and traced along her strawberry-pink lips. Then she tilted her head and gave him a slow, seductive smile. “Even just one little dance?”
Her blue eyes twinkled with sexual promise.
He couldn’t help but think how practiced her sensuality was. She was more about the hunt than the actual act. In bed, she tended to exude a lot less carnal decadence than her wiles would suggest. Yet she’d amused him once.
“Why don’t we go elsewhere? Neither of us really likes to dance.”
There it was. The invitation he’d originally planned to coax out of her this evening. And it turned his blood to ice.
“Not tonight.”
Her eyes widened. She fluttered her lashes and gasped with dramatic effect. “Are you unwell?”
“Yes, maybe.” A smile tugged at his lips.
“Aww, so you’re feeling low and under the weather.” She studied him and reached up and leaned forward, her heavy, full breasts brushing over his chest as she did.
Her signature lemon and carnation scent threatened to overwhelm him as she laid her gloved hand on his forehead.
“You don’t feel feverish.” Her delicately etched red-gold eyebrows drew together. “Is this because your little artist has absconded with your devilishly handsome cousin?” She shook her head and clicked her tongue. “Where’s the loyalty these days in these nubile young chits?”
He removed her hand from his forehead. “Don’t,” he replied tersely.
She stepped back, her eyes flashing with ire. But she hid it quickly with another small smile. “Ah, you think she might see us together—you don’t want to hurt her. How…” She laughed low. “Sweet.”
“Don’t be a bitch, Maggie.”
Her eyebrows rose as her jaw dropped. “La—well, all right then, but I wasn’t. It’s just that I haven’t seen you since you returned from the Orient and I wonder if you’ve still got time for me.” She made a moue with her mouth and studied him, waiting.
He let his eyes trail over her lush breasts and round hips, trying to convince himself of her worth. She’d always been a damned pleasant ride. Moreover, her bed was only a block away and it had always been warm.
“Well?” Her question hung between them, pressuring him into a decision.
“Aye,” he breathed with the air of one contemplating an unwanted expense. Which didn’t make sense to him. He needed something pleasant and uncomplicated in his life. Maggie was certainly that.
Pleasure lit her blue eyes and her smile curved wider, showing her perfect white teeth. “So the appeal of the little crusader began to pall?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” All afternoon long, he’d toyed with the idea of coming here and sweetening Maggie with his attentions so he could take her to his bed. But the longer he stayed in her company, the more she began to irritate him.
“All right, then, we won’t talk about her. Except I’ll say this—my husband was an idealist. They are not like us.”
Yes, that much he already knew.
She glanced at the dance floor and the candelabras’ light caught her diamond earrings, sparkling orbs that fascinated his eye as she continued, “The pleasures of life are not enough for them, they always h
ave to think of how this could be better or that could be better and they cannot simply rest and be. They must always be moving and progressing and improving. Or simply feeling romantic angst for what cannot be. They are creatures of the spirit.”
“Yes, you are correct,” he said.
She met his eyes again and tapped her chin with her fan. “How lucky for you that you discovered it before you did something foolish like declare yourself. I didn’t know Gerard was like that until after we’d wed. It was quite a shock to see the full depth of his foolishness in that area. He lived in a world of his own dreams.”
He’d never realised how different he was from Emily until their quarrel. He’d placed all his attention on their stunning compatibility in bed and her ability to make him feel whole. She was the first woman he’d felt deeply for and it was precisely because of her crusading spirit. Was he doomed to only love a woman who was exactly wrong for him?
Maggie touched his arm and let her fingertips trail over his woollen sleeve. “You and I are creatures of the flesh. We know how to enjoy life.”
That they were. So alike in that way they could have been spawned from the same seed. Maybe he couldn’t expect to ever be whole again. Maybe the most he could expect was to find someone to keep him warm and pass the time pleasantly with.
The music stopped, the couples drifted away from the dance floor. With her hand in Peter’s, Emily glanced up. Her eyes met Alex’s. It took a moment for her to perceive Maggie stroking Alex’s arm but he knew the moment she did. Her eyes widened, betraying her hurt, then they flashed fire.
A sharp pain, a tightening in his chest made him catch his breath then exhale slowly.
Don’t do a thing. Let her believe you’ve replaced her. Let the hurt end this for her own good.
Emily turned away but he fancied she held herself quite rigidly. It tore at him. He couldn’t bear it.
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