by Matilda Hart
“I have unpacked the cream muslin for you to wear to breakfast in the morning, my lady,” Alice said as she brushed her cropped hair.
“Thank you, Alice,” Emilia replied. She wanted to tell the young woman not to unpack anything else because she wasn’t planning to stay, but she held her tongue. No one needed to know of her plans, though she suspected her father had more than an inkling that she would try to escape again. And something about the way the Duke had looked at her as he had bid her goodnight made her wonder if he knew something she was unaware that he knew. Would her father have forewarned him of her attempt to escape? She imagined that he might have, and to be fair, it did seem to be the most prudent move to make, all things considered.
She sighed and pulled the thin sheet over her shoulders, answering Alice’s quiet “Good night, my lady” with a somber “Good night, Alice.”
Bright sunlight was streaming through the windowpanes next morning when Alice woke Emilia. She wondered where she was for a moment, and then remembered. She was lying in a soft bed in the home of the man whose own bed she planned never to share. She groaned, even as she sat up, yawning and rubbing her eyes. She felt inordinately tired, as though she had been working hard without a rest for a week. She knew that it was not just the arduous journey that had worn her out, but also the emotional heights to which the reason for the journey had driven her. She wished suddenly that she could sink back into bed and never leave.
Instead, she slid her feet out from under the sheets and allowed herself to be prepared to face the day and the man she refused to marry. The dress she wore was accented with bright green roses at the waist, sleeves, and hem, and she hoped they went some way towards relieving the colorless condition of her skin. Normally of pale skin, Emilia had found herself lately with little color in her cheeks, and not being the sort to enhance Nature’s bounty, she had never bothered with rouges and the like. Today, however, she felt she needed something to draw attention away from her pallor. So she had Alice help her apply a touch of color to her cheeks and lips.
Finally satisfied with her appearance, she left Alice to her unpacking and went down to breakfast. The Duke was not alone in the drawing room when she arrived at the door, but his back was to her as he looked out of the large window onto what appeared to be a rather expansive garden. Even from where she just inside the door, Emilia could see neat rows of flowers brightening the landscape. She would wander the gardens at her leisure, learn the grounds and the routes she might take to escape. Until then, it made sense to lay low and pretend to a nonchalance and acceptance that she was far from feeling. Summoning her courage, she squared her shoulders and spoke.
His companions saw her arrive and the very pregnant young woman smiled kindly at her, while the tall gentleman next to her pinned Emilia with a cool stare.
“Cedric, your first guest has arrived for breakfast, my dear.” The woman’s voice was soft, her tone gentle and somewhat amused, as she gestured for Emilia to enter. “Please do come in. Lady Emilia, I presume?”
Emilia nodded, then remembered her manners and replied, “Yes. I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, ma’am,” she added, hating how uncomfortable she was feeling in the woman’s presence.
The Duke turned, and Emilia felt the full weight of his gaze, even as she remarked on the beauty of his features, even marred as they were by a long scar down the side of his face extending from the top of his right ear across his cheekbone to just below his full bottom lip. It was clearly an old scar, but still plainly visible. She wondered how he had gotten it, whether it had hurt, and how he felt about the disfigurement. She blinked, reminding herself that it was none of her business. She was not here to admire a man she did not wish to marry, even if the sight of him did strange things to her emotions.
“I apologize, Lady Emilia,” he said. “My sister and her husband arrived earlier this morning. She is to be your chaperone until the wedding, my dear.” He smiled at her, making the scar crinkle, and went to stand next to the other man in the room. “May I present to you the Earl of Wycliff, Lord John Gillingham and his wife, my sister, Lady Eleanor Gillingham. This is Lady Emilia MacNeil.”
Lady Eleanor moved forward and extended a hand to Emilia which she took, struggling not to hold on to it like a lifeline. Then she found her hand pressed against the lips of Lady Eleanor’s husband, who declared himself charmed to make her acquaintance.
“Good morning, Your Grace, my lord, Lady Eleanor,” she said as amiably as she could, curtsying. “I seem to be the first of your guests to have stirred this morning.”
“Your father indicated that he would not be joining us for breakfast this morning, Lady Emilia, and Mr. Johnson will breakfast in town with my own solicitor.”
Lady Eleanor and her husband moved to the sideboard and began to serve their plates, while Emilia fumed silently. She understood immediately what her father had done. He had known all along that the Duke’s sister would be in attendance, and had planned for this morning’s meal to be between her and the family alone. How could she not have anticipated such a strategy? Now, she was forced to be polite, when what she really wanted to do was rail at her parent.
“What would you like to eat, my lady?” the Duke asked, interrupting her angry musings.
Emilia blinked and avoided his gaze. She did not understand the gleam in his eye, and she told herself she did not wish to do so. As far as she was concerned, he was the enemy, and one did not consort with the enemy under any circumstances.
“I can help myself, my lord,” she replied quickly, trying to keep her voice low enough that his family would not hear her rebuffing his attentions. She may not like him, but she did not want to embarrass either herself or him by being openly ill-mannered or disrespectful.
“I am sure that you can, my lady, but I insist.”
The hint of steel in his tone gave her pause, for while she was determined to remain a single woman, she did not wish to set herself up to make things any worse for herself than they already were. Better to relent now, and pretend to acquiesce
“Very well, my lord,” she said, and asked for eggs and ham, toast and a hot chocolate drink.
The Duke brought her breakfast over to her where she sat, placing the tray on the table next to her. Then he served himself and came to sit by her, making her skin tingle with awareness. He was a man of medium height, but still at least six inches taller than herself, and Emilia was grateful that at least he was sitting down, so they could make eye contact if need be without her having to crane her neck to see him.
“Did you sleep well, my lady?” he asked between bites of food.
“Very well, thank you, my lord. Between the excellent wine and the very comfortable bed, I slept dreamlessly.”
“Do you dream often, then?”
Emilia watched his tongue slip out to lick his lips as he ate, and found herself strangely attracted to the movement. She had to remind herself that she had no intentions of growing any closer to this man, or learning any more about him than she needed to know to escape from him. Paying attention to how he ate, or to the curve of his lips, or the dimple in his scarred cheek were not the sorts of things she should be noticing. She ought to be observing where windows and doors were, not how he sat, his legs crossed comfortably at the knee, or how his voice made shivers run up and down her spine.
“I do not, Your Grace. But these last few nights I have been plagued with nightmarish visions of myself tied to a torture rack and begging for mercy.”
“Dreams are symbolic, they say,” he commented, sipping his coffee. “What do you suppose your dreams represent?”
Emilia turned her eyes to the garden. “I cannot imagine, my lord,” she lied. She knew quite well they were related to her feelings about marriage and the man even now quizzing her.
“You must be undergoing significant anxiety at the moment, I am sure,” he said, “particularly regarding the question of our marriage. I cannot imagine that you are fully at ease on the subject.”
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br /> “You are very astute, my lord,” she replied demurely, neither confirming nor denying the reason for her distress. “You seem to be much more comfortable than I am.”
He turned to study her features, and their eyes met. “I will admit to being less concerned than you are.”
Emilia felt trapped by his eyes as much as by his insights into her feelings. He would know how she felt, perhaps because his own sister had no doubt been just as worried by the prospect of marriage to a stranger. Or at least she assumed the woman’s husband had been a stranger before their betrothal. The thought of her own betrothal made her pulse race with dread, and she pushed her plate away, taking a deep gulp of her chocolate. She needed to change the subject.
“It is a beautiful view,” she said, looking out at the beautiful garden, more clearly visible now from where she sat. The neat rows of flowers and flowering shrubs surrounded pristine green lawns and some beautiful statues.
The Duke chuckled, startling Emilia, who snapped her gaze back to his face. He made no attempt to hide his amusement, and her face burned with humiliation that he was laughing at her. She was certain of it, though she had no idea what she had said or done to entertain him.
“Do you make it a habit to mock your guests, my lord?” she asked sharply, no longer concerned about who heard her words. Anger now fueled her responses to him.
He laughed heartily, completely confusing her, which only made her more frustrated. “I will never mock you, Emilia,” he promised, too familiarly for her peace of mind. “But I do find it amusing that you think to distract me by discussing the beauty of my garden. Am I wrong in thinking that you are considerably more anxious about our upcoming nuptials than I am?”
“Are they a foregone conclusion, then, my lord?” she asked before she could censor herself, and then wished she could bite her tongue. She did not need to let him know that she not wholly invested in entering into a marriage of convenience with him.
“I believe that that is why you, your father, and his solicitor are here, my lady,” he said, his tone cooling almost imperceptibly. “Have I been misled?”
Emilia watched as his eyes grew cold and hard. Her heart thumped wildly as she realized the position in which she had placed her father. It had not been her intention to cast her father in a poor light, and were she to pretend she had no knowledge of the reason for their visit, she might find herself rather ignominiously tossed out on her ear, along with her companions. She could not bear that ultimate humiliation, nor allow her father to be mistreated, no matter how angry she was with him. She needed to make a prudent response.
“No indeed, my lord,” she replied hastily. “I merely questioned whether or not the arrangements were irreversible. If, for example, you were to find me less to your liking than you had at first supposed me to be?”
He eyed her shrewdly, the coldness never leaving his eyes. His answer was given without a hint of playfulness, making Emilia wonder if her were mercurial by nature. She could not live with a man whose moods swung wildly, like the pendulum in a grandfather clock.
“I am not a man given to making imprudent or hasty decisions, Lady Emilia,” he informed her. “Any choice I make has been more than fully considered. I can assure you that you are very much to my liking.”
Emilia hazarded another look at him, and found that his eyes had warmed again, but now they were almost hungry. There was still no hint of the playfulness of a few moments before in their now blazing depths. The new look made her uncomfortable. She did not know what it meant, and suspected that she did not wish ever to find out, not if she meant to escape.
Not knowing how to respond to his comment, she tried to pass it off with a shaky smile, and heaved a sigh of relief when he seemed to let it go.
Chapter 5
The rest of the day passed pleasurably enough. Emilia spent most of the morning with Lady Eleanor, while the Duke and the Earl went off to town on business. Emilia feared the ‘business’ had something to do with a wedding she wanted no part of, and she wished there was something she could do to avert the coming disaster. She would need to try again to escape, though how she would make her way in a foreign country where she knew no one would pose severe problems. Perhaps she could find her way to a church and beg asylum from the priest. Or maybe she could ask the way to a nunnery.
Lady Eleanor was a happy soul, content with her life by all accounts. Emilia tried to find out details about her marriage without appearing to do so as they walked through the grounds. She needed to know what it was like to be forced to marry a man one did not love, and she was determined to map out an escape route before too much longer.
“How well did you know his lordship before you married him, Lady Eleanor?” she asked outright at one point.
That lady cradled her burgeoning belly in her palms. Emilia remarked on her sweet beauty, and the pretty smile that curved her lips. “I had only a passing acquaintance with him, Lady Emilia,” Lady Eleanor said. “We met briefly and shared one dance at a Christmas ball hosted by his parents. He had just returned from the war, and was the honored guest at the function.” She chuckled. “I was quite taken with him.”
“So you did not object to being married off to him by your brother?”
“I didn’t say that,” she replied with a soft laugh. “I was most put out with poor Cedric at first, and gave him quite a lot of grief over the course of our courtship. Poor John did not know from one day to the next whether or not his suit would thrive in the frigid waters of my angry indifference.”
Emilia stared at her, fascinated by the story, and wondering how the woman seemed so carefree.
“How are you so calm about it all?” she asked her hostess.
“I realized rather quickly that I was not quite as opposed to the match as I wanted my brother to believe.” Her eyes went a little vacant. “Cedric has been the best guardian a woman could want. He steered me clear of two other men seeking my hand in marriage who would have made me miserable.”
Emilia could not imagine being forced to marry anyone as a sign of what made a guardian the best. Something in her aspect must have conveyed that message, because Lady Eleanor looked at her rather strangely for a moment, and then smiled a secret smile and said, “I hope that you will give my brother a chance to prove himself before you decide against him, Lady Emilia.”
The rest of the walk was consumed with discussions of the different kinds of roses, and of her husband’s travels on business. Emilia also found out that she was the mother of twins, both of whom were staying with their grandparents until Cedric was wed.
“I have left them with their nanny, of course, but I do miss the little darlings. John thought it might be too much for me to be your chaperone as well as being with Charlie and Lottie as much as I usually am at home.”
“How old are your children?” Emilia asked, curious about how long the lady had been married.
“They are seven years old,” she said. “Though John and I love the twins, we worry that there may be two growing here as well. They can be very tiring.”
Emilia hid her surprise. She had not imagined that Lady Eleanor was that much older than her as to be the mother of twin seven-year-olds. Her face was youthful, and her whole demeanor was not that of a woman almost thirty years old, at the least.
“Do you wish to have children?” Lady Eleanor asked out of the blue, turning to watch Emilia’s face.
Emilia blushed, and avoided her hostess’s eyes. “To be perfectly honest, I have not even once considered the possibility of bearing children,” she replied. “I have been preoccupied with other things.”
Thankfully, the lady let the matter drop, and they ended their walk in amicable silence.
“I thoroughly enjoyed that walk,” Lady Eleanor remarked as they walked back into the house. “It is good for me to take a constitutional at least once a day, especially now, when I am soon to be a new mother again.”
She walked into the drawing room and took a seat, accepting the tall
glass of lemonade that Talbot offered her. Emilia also accepted a glass, and sipped gratefully. It had been a rather extended walk, and though she was tired, she was also pleased to note where the garden gates were, which one led directly to the stables, and which led to the nearest road.
“I’m afraid I must abandon you for a few hours, Lady Emilia while I recuperate. Today was a much warmer day than we have had here in the last few weeks. I shall see you again at dinner.”
Emilia watched her hostess make her way tiredly up the stairs, and she relaxed in the chair, closing her eyes and letting her mind wander. A hand on her shoulder roused her and she sat up with a start.
