Standing here now, so far removed from the dark moment in time she’d prefer to forget, Emma was baffled that almost nothing remained of the frilly, overly opulent décor.
And yet the view outside the great bay window remained untouched. The estuary, which had been the scene of the strongest, most violent parts of the memories, remained thoroughly unchanged—a permanent reminder of all she’d tried so desperately to banish from her memory. Emma supposed only God himself could rearrange that scene. She couldn’t very well expect Vanessa and David to rip out the River Exe and build an orangery in its place, after all. If such a feat were humanly possible, she had every reason to expect they would have undertaken the task with similar vigor to that required for the transformation of the manor house.
As though to ward off the biting chill of the river, Emma hugged her arms over her chest and gave her back to both the bay window and the memory. She filled a cup with steaming tea from the service, adding two sugars and just a drop of cream. On such a pleasantly warm day, no fire burned behind the fire screen, but positioning herself there she could avoid looking out the window—something she would prefer to do at all costs—as she waited for her sister’s arrival. She sat on the settee by the hearth. With a sigh, she sifted through her reticule for the book she’d brought along for the journey. Waverley, again. She’d already read it a dozen times or more, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
A dog’s bark momentarily drew her attention outside. The hound raced along the open yard and then out of sight. How odd—she didn’t think David had any dogs as pets here at Heathcote Park. Perhaps she’d been mistaken.
Emma pulled her legs up beneath her in a thoroughly unladylike fashion, leaned back, and opened the book to where she’d left off. Edward Waverley had just been accused of both desertion and treason. Highly troublesome, that, particularly since it meant he was to be arrested. Within moments, she was lost in the Highlands again.
“Good Lord in heaven, Emma, you should be thankful David didn’t walk in here before I did,” Vanessa said.
The intrusion stopped Emma’s reading just as Waverley arrived at Holyrood Palace to meet with Bonnie Prince Charlie. She replaced the ribbon between the pages to mark her spot and grinned up at her sister.
Vanessa frowned in return. “I can see half your legs, at least.”
“David wouldn’t care one whit if he saw my legs. They aren’t nearly as shapely or nice to look upon as yours.”
“That’s hardly the point.”
“No.” Emma set the book beside her cold, forgotten cup of tea and stood, smoothing her skirt back into its proper place. “But it amuses me to see you in pique.”
Vanessa narrowed her eyes, taking obvious pains to keep all trace of amusement from her expression but failing spectacularly. Then she stopped trying and smiled. “You arrived sooner than we expected. I suppose your travel was favorable? David is still meeting with his secretary, and I was in the nursery with Patrick and Danielle when Baxter informed me you were here.” She crossed the room and pulled Emma into a full hug, then tugged her down to the settee again. “I miss you.”
With a half-smile, Emma pushed against her sister’s shoulder. “No one held a pistol to your head and forced you to marry David, you know. You left me to marry a peer, not the other way around.”
“And I made Mama and Father very happy in the process,” Vanessa said. Her brown eyes lost a touch of their glimmer. “How are they? I’ve been worried since the end of the Season. Mama just seemed so…frail, I suppose. Weary.”
“Not to mention Father was too indisposed to even accompany us to Town.” Emma looked her sister in the eye. “They’re both so worried about me, about what will happen to me when they can’t—”
Emma cut herself off, pressing her lips together and pinching the bridge of her nose. Saying the words aloud was too much. Her heart broke just thinking of all they had sacrificed to give her a better life, a chance at all of the things they had never had. She closed her eyes for a moment to regain her composure.
“I can’t allow them to keep doing this. Mama took me to London for the Season when clearly it was too much for her. She tried to insist on coming with me here this summer, even if Father wasn’t well enough to look after himself.” Emma choked back a sob, then pressed on. She had to get through this. “If David hadn’t sent Fanny with the carriage to accompany me here, Mama would surely have come along, even though Doctor Cary has forbidden Father from being out of bed for more than a few hours a day and he needs her assistance.”
Vanessa’s eyes widened. “It’s that bad? In your letters…”
“He’s coughing up blood.” Which was not something Emma cared to ever put in a letter. If it were written down, it would be more real. More permanent.
Vanessa took Emma’s hand and squeezed, lacing their fingers together as they had done as girls. “So now what?”
Emma fought down her tears. This was not the time for crying. There were far more important things to be done. “So now I find a way to ease their worries.”
Vanessa opened her mouth to speak, so Emma rushed on.
“I know you’re going to offer to let me stay here, but that’s not what I want. I’ve been a burden on Mama and Father for far too long. I have no intention of becoming a burden on you instead of them. You have children of your own now, and David to look after…”
Vanessa pursed her lips—a habit neither of them had managed to break—no doubt learned from watching Mama. After a moment, Vanessa gave a brisk nod. “Very well. If you won’t come live with us, what will you do?”
“I’ve thought about becoming a governess. It would be a good way for me to use the few skills I do possess in a productive manner.” All her reading had to be good for something other than just her enjoyment.
A wry smile greeted that pronouncement. “You know Father would be loath to allow you to go into service. That would hardly set him at ease, Em.”
“I know. Which is why I intend to find a husband. During this house party.” Somehow. The actual ‘how’ of the operation might prove to be difficult, particularly since Emma didn’t even know which gentlemen her sister and brother-in-law had invited to their gathering. And then there was the fact that she was as comfortable in social settings as an elephant would be drinking from a miniature china teacup designed for a doll.
She used her eyes to plead with her sister. It had always worked, since they were very little. “But I need your help. I’m always so awkward and clumsy. I don’t know how to do my hair in the ways that will attract a man’s attention. I always say the wrong things at the worst times.”
“Or if you don’t know what to say, you trip over your own feet to distract everyone,” Vanessa said wryly.
Emma cringed. “You make it sound like I do it intentionally.”
“Oh, you don’t?” Vanessa chided. “It’s become such a habit, it’s like an illness.”
“A pox.”
“The Black Death.”
Emma wrinkled her nose. “No, I don’t think the plague works in this situation. It’s more like it’s something that is on me. Something I can’t get rid of, no matter how hard I try to wash it away. Something you can see, like leprosy. Like my enormous teeth.”
Vanessa frowned gently. “They aren’t that big.”
“They’re horse teeth. The only thing that makes them look like they could possibly be appropriately sized is the length of my nose.”
Never in her life would she understand how she could be so long and gangly everywhere but Vanessa could be so perfectly elegant in every way, and yet they came from the same two parents. The differences between the two had only become more pronounced now that Vanessa had given birth to two of her own children. Her breasts had plumped nicely, and her hips had rounded delicately, and she looked like the perfect example of English beauty. But Emma? Still a giant stick.
“Have you ever looked at a horse’s teeth up close?” With a rueful smile, Vanessa chuckled. “I think you mig
ht be a wee-bit prone to exaggeration.”
“All the same, the point is I need you. Will you help me?”
“I will,” Vanessa said without even a moment’s hesitation. “But only if you promise to try your very best to make yourself amenable to the gentlemen I’ve invited. You can’t just sit in the corner with a book the way you’ve always done in the past.”
Emma placed her right hand over her heart. “I solemnly swear.” She even managed to avoid bursting out in a gale of laughter upon saying it. Likely because she truthfully was earnest about finding a husband this time, whereas she hadn’t ever been before. Every last bit of what she’d said was now of the direst import, even though she had as much natural appeal for a gentleman as a goat would.
A corner of Vanessa’s mouth turned downward. “I suppose Fanny already helped you settle in to your rooms? She’s to serve as your lady’s maid while you’re here.”
“Oh, but—”
A severely arched brow from her sister was enough to silence Emma.
“None of that, now. All of the other ladies will bring their own maids. It won’t do for you to be left out. Particularly since you’re in need of help with arranging your hair, as you’ve already mentioned.” Vanessa looked pointedly at the limp mass hanging indolently over Emma’s shoulders. “Not to mention David wouldn’t hear of allowing you to go without, whether anyone else was visiting or not.”
She had a point. David had made a valiant effort since marrying her sister to be certain Emma had the best of everything—as long as he wasn’t stepping on Father’s toes in order to provide it.
“Fine. Fanny can arrange my hair.”
A broad smile lit Vanessa’s warm, brown eyes. “Excellent. Now, moving on to the rest of the fortnight, I think we should enlist the help of—”
Before she could finish her thought, David knocked at the open door and poked his head inside. “Sorry to interrupt, but the first of our guests have arrived.” He moved into the room and helped Vanessa to her feet, kissing her lightly on the cheek.
“I’d say the first of our guests arrived almost an hour ago,” Vanessa pointed out.
David winked a brilliant green eye at Emma, then offered his hand to assist her. “Emma’s not a guest. She’s family.”
When she stood, he leaned over and planted a similar kiss on her cheek. His sandy-brown hair fell down over an eye and tickled her skin.
“Such flattery,” Emma said with a laugh. The ladies of the ton were lucky he was already married. The man could devastate a room with a smile. A wink was likely to cause heart palpitations amongst the lesser-prepared debutantes.
“Such unnecessary flattery,” Vanessa countered. “My husband fails to recognize he won your eternal devotion upon promising to add a proper library to Heathcote Park and stock it to the brim.”
Not just any ‘proper library,’ either. David had set Emma’s heart aflutter with tales of books lining every wall of the room from floor to ceiling, of bookcases scattered amongst cozy chairs, and even of a rotating, circular bookcase near the entry filled with her very favorite stories. It was all she could do not to salivate at the thought.
David held out one arm for each of them to hold and guided their way out of the drawing room toward the front entry hall. “Speaking of which, it’s finished. Perhaps I can give you a tour after supper?”
“I’d like that very much,” Emma replied. She’d like it more to have her tour now but doubted David would share that opinion. He could be a bit of a stickler about things like greeting one’s guests promptly upon their arrival. Spoilsport.
They moved past the marbled spiral staircase with iron balusters shaped like lyres and into the main foyer. Baxter signaled for the footmen to swing the doors wide.
“I thought your guests weren’t due to arrive until tomorrow afternoon,” Emma said. Her brow furrowed in thought. Vanessa wrote that Emma was to arrive on Sunday and the others would arrive on Monday. There had been church bells ringing this morning.
David winked. “Most of them aren’t.” He led the ladies through the doors and down the stairs to the flagstone entryway lined by a pea-gravel drive. Turning in from the main road, two carriages rolled carefully along, gradually coming into view. Emma immediately recognized the crests they proudly bore as well as the spotless scarlet and silver livery worn by the coachmen.
A faint sense of panic clutched at Emma’s chest. “The Earl of Trenowyth?” She looked past David to glare at her sister, who was studiously avoiding her gaze on his other side. Vanessa ought to have warned her. She knew—she absolutely, unequivocally knew—that Emma would not have come if there were any inkling of a chance that the Cardiff family would be in attendance.
Vanessa appeared disinclined to answer the unasked question hanging in the air between them.
Emma caught David’s eye. “Has anyone accompanied Lord Trenowyth? I do not believe I have seen anyone from the family out in society since…since…”
“Since three years ago? No, I’m sure you haven’t.”
The carriages pulled to a stop before them, and one of the outriders leapt down from the lead conveyance to set out the steps.
David pulled Vanessa and Emma forward—pulled being a disconcertingly literal description of the proceedings, at least on Emma’s part, as her feet had suddenly turned to tree roots and her legs to trunks.
“None of the family has been away from Tavistock Manor since then,” David continued rather stoically, “other than brief trips into town for provisions and the like. Even then, they’ve usually sent servants out instead. But they’ve all decided to begin their reintroduction to social life here.”
“All?” Emma squeaked. The panic clutching her chest was no longer merely a faint hint; she felt like she was being crushed between two massive boulders and couldn’t sink her nails into anything in order to claw her way out.
“Well, not quite all, I should say,” David amended. He lifted a hand in greeting as Lord Trenowyth, the first passenger, descended from the carriage.
In that scant moment, Emma regained her breath. Not quite all of the family had come. Perhaps the odious Mr. Cardiff had better ways to spend his summer than glaring at her from across rooms and making her feel as infinitesimal and welcome as a splinter in the ball of his foot.
David winked at her as Lord Trenowyth waved a hand in their direction in greeting. If he had any sense of her discomfiture, David would have refrained from winking in such a circumstance—it simply caused her to wish to rip his arms from their sockets before running to hide in her chamber, never to return.
“The dowager chose to pay a visit to her cousin in Shropshire instead of attending our little gathering,” David said, smiling cheerily, as though there couldn’t be a lovelier scenario in all the world than the one currently smacking Emma in the face repeatedly. “She thinks such amusements are better spent on the younger generations.” With that, he dropped the arms of both Emma and Vanessa and moved forward to welcome his guests.
When he was safely out of earshot, Emma glared at her sister. “You knew.”
“Of course I knew. Mr. Cardiff is David’s longest friend. They’ve been nearly inseparable since Eton. Or they had been until—”
“Until three years ago, yes,” Emma said heatedly, cutting her sister off with a dismissive wave of her hand. “But you didn’t tell me.”
A great sigh hefted from Vanessa’s chest and she closed her eyes—as certain a sign of a heavenward plea for patience as Emma had ever seen from her sister, though she had seen it countless times from Mama. “You wouldn’t have come.” Vanessa’s matter-of-fact words hung heavily in the air between them as she headed over to the carriage. Emma’s eyes followed the same path her sister had just taken.
Mr. Cardiff had stepped out, every strapping, sardonic inch of him, causing nausea to roil within Emma’s stomach from her panic. His presence could only mean her nightmares would now come true. For the briefest moment, his mocking blue eyes locked with hers. A fla
sh of revulsion shone in them before being replaced by his usual haughty disdain and the ever-present, smug half-smile he always bore—one which claimed knowledge of just a splash more than everyone else.
Before his presence could affect her any more deeply than it already had, Emma cut her eyes away from him to stare blandly at the scene. She refused to grant him the satisfaction of knowing just how much power he held over her, simply from existing.
He turned back to the carriage. A delicate, gloved hand reached out and took his before halting footsteps descended the stairs in painstaking fashion. Emma tried to ignore the animosity pouring toward her in waves from Mr. Cardiff so she could instead focus on meeting Lady Morgan again.
In that summer, before the incident at the river, Emma and Lady Morgan had struck up an odd friendship of sorts. It would be refreshing to renew it over the next fortnight. Not as invigorating as it might have been without her brother’s presence, perhaps, but stimulating nonetheless. And if Lady Morgan’s impending return to society was any indication, perhaps the fit of the blue devils that had held her in its grasp for so long had finally relinquished its hold.
Emma certainly hoped so.
Once free from the shadow of the carriage, Lady Morgan took a cautious step forward, holding on to her brother’s arm as a lifeline. Her travelling bonnet obscured her face from view at first, but then she stepped into a wide swath of sun between the drive and the main house. A flood of angry, red marks covered her visage, spreading in patches from her forehead to her neck and spanning from ear to ear, standing out against her pale, porcelain skin.
Emma could not contain her gasp. Mr. Cardiff’s head snapped up at the sound, his long, sandy hair whipping around where it peeked free from beneath his beaver hat. If sheer hatred could commit murder, she would be dead where she stood. Lady Morgan either hadn’t heard Emma’s ill-mannered outburst of shock or chose to ignore it. She held her brother’s arm as he guided her along to greet first David, then Vanessa.
Cardiff Siblings 01 - Seven Minutes in Devon Page 2
