“Does Winnie have any siblings?” Val asked, refilling his own glass.
“None Emmie is aware of.” St. Just watched as his brother sipped at the second drink. “Being a professional, I assume the woman knew how to prevent such things.”
“And what was Winnie, then?” Val cocked his head. “Divine intervention? Or did the woman think to trap Helmsley into marriage? If she’d a brain in her head, she had to know that man was only going to marry money.”
“And stupid money at that.”
“Doesn’t make sense, Dev. This aunt had some sort of pension from the old earl, didn’t she? And a place to live. Such a woman had no motivation to set her cap for Helmsley, particularly not a woman ten years his senior, nor a woman trying to provide her niece a decent upbringing. I can’t imagine she was hungry to waste her remaining years on Helmsley’s bastard, either. You’re telling me she had to be older than you are now when the baby came along—several years older. Doesn’t add up to me.”
“It is puzzling,” St. Just said slowly, thinking through the questions Val had just raised. “And you’re right: It doesn’t add up.”
***
Emmie awoke the next morning, horrified to see the sun was already up. How on earth was she to get the cake to the church hall and still have her deliveries on the wagon by noon?
She had to admit, though, as she hastily put up her hair and donned a clean day dress, she had slept, and some of the leaden, creaky feeling in her body had abated as a result. She’d slept more than twelve hours, in fact, and knew she could have bested even that record had the drapes not been drawn open.
She washed and dressed quickly and had the insight that lately, she was so tired it was hard to work efficiently, creating a spiral of inefficiency and fatigue she’d been too exhausted to see. She shook her head over that and repaired to her kitchen.
“Good morning, Miss Emmie.” Anna Mae Summers emerged from the pantry, all smiles. “I’ve set the bread to cool, and I’m almost ready to start on the hot crosses. The dough for the cinnamons is rising on the hearth.”
Emmie smiled in return. “What on earth are you doing here, Anna Mae? I thought you were off to visit your sister while I’m here at the manor.”
“I’ve been back more than a week.” Anna Mae set to mixing up some icing. “I was dying of boredom when his lordship’s footman came by yesterday afternoon. This kitchen is bigger than yours and better laid out.”
“It’s very nice, but how long can you stay?”
“I didn’t come to call, Miss Emmie. I came to work. That wedding cake is going to look a treat, too. Enough to make me wish old Eldon Mortimer might take a girl to wife, you know?”
“The cake!” Emmie whirled, the morning’s deadlines looming up once more.
“It’ll be fine,” Anna Mae assured her. “His lordship has the dogcart hitched to take you over, and the layers are all boxed in the pantry. I’ve put the repair icing in the jar, and you’ll want a cloak, as it’s not exactly warm out.”
Emmie sat at the table and sent a bewildered look at Anna. She wanted to be indignant over matters running so smoothly without her, but her relief at not being behind was just too great. Then, too, she’d gotten more sleep in the past night than she had in the previous three put together.
“And, yes”—Anna Mae set the bowl of icing aside—“you have time for a nice cup of tea before you go. His lordship said he’d be in to fetch you when he had the beastie hitched.”
His lordship… Emmie got up to pour herself some tea. His lordship had taken Winnie off her hands yesterday, retrieved Anna Mae, shown Anna Mae what orders needed to be filled, and was now preparing to escort Emmie and her cake to church. She owed the man a debt of gratitude, one particularly profound given the way she’d treated him yesterday.
And the way she’d treated him the night before. God above, she’d all but attacked him… As she sat sipping her tea—hot, with lots of cream and sugar—the object of her musings appeared in the back hallway.
“I see you woke up after all.” He smiled at her, and Emmie knew with sudden certainty just who had tucked her in and opened her draperies. “Good morning.”
“Good morning.” Emmie offered a tentative smile. “My thanks for your efforts. I slept like a log, and the rest is much appreciated.”
“You aren’t going to castigate me for being high-handed?” He helped himself to a sip of her tea. “I thought you needed some reinforcements, and Anna Mae seems glad to be here.” Anna Mae winked at him for that pronouncement, and Emmie held her peace as the earl fastened her cloak for her then escorted her out to the gig. Three white boxes sat on the seat, each holding a layer of wedding cake. Caesar stood placidly in the traces, though the air was almost nippy.
“Don’t worry.” The earl handed her up. “I’ve driven the fidgets out of him already, and the church is only a short drive. You look a little less exhausted though.” He climbed up and settled himself beside her.
“Pretty morning,” Emmie said after they’d tooled along for several minutes. “And I really do appreciate your taking a hand in matters. I was about at the end of my rope with Wee Winnie.”
He smiled over at her. “You needed a nap, Emmie.”
“I did. I feel like I could use another one just as long.”
“Then take it. Anna Mae greeted me like I was Wellington himself, and she seems to have matters in hand.”
“What about Winnie?” Emmie frowned even as she stifled a yawn.
“Winnie has me and Val and Mary Ellen, if need be,” he reminded her as they pulled into the churchyard. “I get no end of satisfaction out of watching my little brother take tea with a stuffed bear and a dog. When my sisters played house, Val always got to be the baby.”
Emmie ushered him into the church hall, which doubled as the local assembly room. While she busied herself with setting up her cake, St. Just was sent to fetch the “repair icing” from the gig. He tarried long enough to release Caesar’s checkrein, allowing the horse to crop the soft fall grass in the churchyard.
“But, Emmie”—Bothwell’s cultured tones drifted through the back doors of the hall—“you know I’ve missed you.”
Emmie’s reply was murmured in low, unintelligible tones, causing St. Just to pause. The damned Kissing Vicar was about to strike again, but as a gentleman…
As a gentleman, hell… St. Just did not pull the door shut loudly behind him, which would have afforded Bothwell a moment to protect the lady’s privacy. He charged into the hall, boots thumping on the wooden floor, jar of icing at the ready.
“Now, Emmie…” Bothwell was kissing her, one of those teasing little kisses to the cheek that somehow wandered down to the corner of her mouth in anticipation of landing next on her lips.
“Excuse me, Bothwell, didn’t realize you were about.”
“Rosecroft.” Bothwell grinned at him, looking almost pleased to be caught at his flagrant flirting. “I’d heard you were back. My thanks for the use of your stables.”
“And my thanks for keeping those juvenile hellions in shape. You need a horse, man, congregational politics be damned.”
“Maybe someday.” Bothwell’s smile dimmed a little as his gaze turned to Emmie. “But for today, I’ve a wedding to perform.”
And Bothwell had known, probably from experience, Emmie would be bringing her cake over. Absent a special license, the wedding would have to start in the next couple of hours, and St. Just suspected the vicar had been all but lying in wait for Emmie.
“Em?” He brought her the icing. “Shall I go offer up a few for my immortal soul, or will we be going shortly?”
“I won’t be long,” she said, brows knit as she positioned the second layer atop the little pedestals set on the first. “I just need to put the candied violets around the base when I’ve got the thing assembled, and maybe a few finishing touches.”
“She’ll be hours.” The vicar smiled at her so indulgently that St. Just’s fist ached to put a different express
ion on the man’s face. “Come along, St. Just, and we can at least spend a few minutes in the sunshine.” They ambled out into the crisp air, St. Just willing himself to hold his tongue. Silence made most men talkative, and the vicar was no exception.
“It galls me,” Bothwell said, smile fading. “People around here will pay good coin for Emmie to make these gorgeous cakes—and they taste as good as they look, St. Just—but they won’t invite the woman to their weddings and parties and picnics. She’s never put a foot wrong, never flirted with anybody’s husband, and even after what—twenty-five years of spotless behavior?—they still judge her.”
“Your defense of her does you credit,” St. Just said with grudging honesty. “But Emmie does not curry their favor, and that, I believe, is what costs her admission.”
“And you’ve put your finger on the real truth.” Bothwell frowned, his gaze traveling over the tidy village green across from the church. “Enough of that, as there has been churchyard politics as long as there’ve been animal sacrifices to the pagan gods, but I think Emmie has just concluded touching up the cake, and the wedding doesn’t even start for an hour,” Bothwell said, turning toward the doorway to the hall.
“I’m ready to go.” She smiled at St. Just. “Nice to see you, Vicar, and these”—she held out a package of buns—“are for you.”
“My thanks.” He took the package then bowed over her hand, pressing a lingering kiss to her bare knuckles.
St. Just silently ground his teeth at that shameless display and even let Bothwell hand Emmie up into the gig. As St. Just took the reins, the Kissing Vicar patted Emmie’s hand where it rested in her lap.
Except it was more of a stroking pat, St. Just noted, a caress, the filthy bugger.
“You’re quiet,” Emmie remarked, lifting her face to the sun. The relief in her expression suggested she hadn’t been interested in lingering in Bothwell’s company.
“Is Bothwell pestering you, Emmie?”
She glanced over at him, a furtive, assessing glance that he unfortunately caught and comprehended too well: It isn’t bothering if the lady welcomes it.
“He is a friend,” she said, lapsing into silence when St. Just said nothing more.
He reached over with one hand and gently peeled Emmie’s index finger from her teeth. “No biting your nails. Whatever it is, you have only to ask, and I will help.”
“Is it possible to love someone and hate them at the same time?”
“It is. I love my father, in a complicated, resentful, admiring sort of way, but when he gets to tormenting my brothers, which he used to do brilliantly, I would rather Bonaparte himself had sired me than that scheming, selfish old man.”
Emmie grimaced and looked like she wanted desperately to bite her nail. “That is quite an indictment, especially coming from you.”
“He’s a quite a character. I don’t know how my mother…”
He fell silent: Her Grace was not his mother. Twenty-seven years after meeting her, St. Just was still making the same mistake he’d made when he was five years old.
“You never talk about your mother,” Emmie said. “I’ve heard stories of each brother or sister, Her Grace, your papa, Rose, her family, and even the dogs and horses, but you never talk about the woman who brought you into this world. You forgot her, I suppose.”
He drove along in silence until Caesar brought them back to the kitchen terrace. St. Just set the brake, climbed down, then came around to assist Emmie. He paused first, frowning up into her eyes. Then he settled his hands on her waist and lifted her to the ground.
In the normal course of such a courtesy, Emmie set her hands on his shoulders, and there they stayed as he continued his hold on her, even when it was clear she no longer needed his support.
“What?”
“I never forgot her, Em,” he said, closing his eyes. “Never… but not for lack of trying.”
She slipped her hands around his waist, hugged him for a brief, fierce instant, then retreated again to her kitchens and the endless work to be found therein.
Twelve
To Her Grace, Esther, Duchess of Moreland,
Thank you for your recent letter. I pray by the time you’ve received this, young Devlin is once again in robust health, tagging after his brothers and enjoying the pleasures of a country summer. I’m happy to report the farm here will prosper this year, but as harvest approaches, I find my thoughts turning to the day I parted from my little boy. As I am sure you recall, it was in mid-October, a bright, beautiful fall day, a day too pretty for as much as it pained me.
I am consoled, however, to hear Dev has taken to riding with his father and brothers, and he excels at this endeavor. Even as a babe in arms, he was taken with horses. I used to walk with him to the mews and hold him up so he could stroke the great velvety noses of the carriage horses. They seemed to sense his wonder with them, his heart for them.
Still, you must promise me, Your Grace, though it is rank arrogance to ask such a thing, that you will not encourage him to recklessness. Many a laughing boy has fallen to his death from the back of a horse…
St. Just stopped, unable to read further as he recalled all the laughing boys he’d seen fall to their deaths. Nearly a month he’d had these letters in his possession, and he could barely get through three paragraphs. Ever since Emmie’s innocent comment about forgetting his mother, the letters had been burning a hole in his awareness. Like an addict who knows there’s a pipe of opium inside a drawer, he’d held the letters in his hands countless times, letting hope and fear and loss and so much more reverberate through him.
His mother had worried for him, she had remembered him, she had kept him in her prayers, and never, ever stopped thinking of him. If only three paragraphs told him that much, how could he bear to go through seven years of letters? Because he knew he had to, somehow, he had to find the strength—the courage—to read every word.
“Are you all right?” Val cocked his head where he stood in the library doorway. “You are pale beneath your plebeian tan, and… You’re not all right.” He closed the door behind him and locked it. “Talk to me, Dev.” He came over to the desk, no doubt seeing correspondence laid there and more in his brother’s hands. “Is it bad news? Did the old bugger finally shuffle off this mortal coil?”
St. Just managed a swallow and a shake of his head.
“So then what is it?” Val asked softly. But St. Just was staring a hole in the window, and the letters in his hands were shaking with some elemental exertion of will he could not have named to save his life. Carefully, Val extracted the folded paper from St. Just’s hands. He’d see it was a woman’s hand and that the paper was yellowed and frail with the passage of time.
While St. Just ordered himself to rise and move, to say something, to escape the grip of the emotions choking him, Val studied a letter at some length.
“You haven’t seen these before,” Val said, sidling closer and putting the letter far to the side. St. Just shook his head and began to blink, his throat working with the effort of expelling words.
“Oh, child.” Val slid his hips along the desk and rested his hands on St. Just’s shoulders. “I am so sorry.”
“Val?” It was little more than whisper.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“I remember,” St. Just got out as he wrapped his arms around Val’s waist and held on. “I remember petting the horses… With her…”
They wept, as soldiers often do, in absolute soul-wrenching silence.
***
They sneaked out through the kitchen like a pair of truants, Val grabbing a bottle to slip in with the sandwiches, and a book to keep the sun off his face. For most of a long, lazy afternoon, they read Kathleen’s letters to each other, sometimes falling silent for long moments before resuming. When the stack was complete and reverently folded and put aside, they lay on their blanket watching clouds laze across a brilliant blue sky.
“Feel all better?” Val asked, taking a pull from the b
ottle and passing it to the brother on whose stomach his head was pillowed.
“I want my mother.” St. Just’s hand drifted over his brother’s hair. “You’d be surprised, young Valentine, how many dying men call for their mothers. Not their priest, not their wives of twenty years, not their God, not their firstborn. They want their mothers.”
“I had a kind of grudging admiration for old Boney before.” Val laced his fingers on his stomach. “Thought he was a determined rascal, valiant little prick, and all that. But hearing you…” Val closed his eyes. “Loving you, I have to hate that little bastard with everything in me. Why didn’t you come home, Dev?” The question echoed through the fears of an adolescent boy who’d seen two of his brothers ride off to war and only one come home.
“Riding dispatch, you think the orders you’ve stuck in your shirt are the ones that will turn the tide of some battle or see the enemy’s magazine blown up. When you’re on the battlefield, you charge in and disrupt the infantry lines, get under cannon range, and tear into their forces; then the real fighting can begin. You think you’re necessary.”
“You were necessary,” Val said, accepting the bottle. “But you were necessary to us, too, Dev.”
“You weren’t going to die without me,” St. Just countered, but his hand brushed over Val’s temple again. “You were safe and sound back in merry old England, which was exactly where I needed you to be.”
“I thought about joining up. Her Grace cried, and that was that. His Grace forbid it, and I caved. Some soldier I’d make. Her Grace said I lack the ability to defer to my betters.”
“Because you have none, but you mustn’t speak ill of Her Grace, or I will have to thash… thrash you.”
“Here’s to Her Grace.” Val held up the bottle. “She loves you best, you know.”
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