by Darcy Burke
“Breathe,” she reminded herself. Sophie nudged her in the arm but Emmaline ignored her.
“There is no way a man can look at you the way the marquess is looking at you and not feel something.”
Aware of the intrusive way in which they were being scrutinized, Emmaline forced herself to look away.
Sophie groaned. “Oh dear, your brother is headed this way.”
Sebastian rapidly crossed the room, even as the crowd parted for Drake. “What do you want me to do?” Sophie urged. “Do you want to see him?”
“I do,” Emmaline whispered. She heard the consternation in her own words.
Sophie hopped up from her seat and crossed the room, intercepting Sebastian. She held her empty dance card up to his inspection. Her boldness was met with scandalous gasps. His brow furrowed with a blend of annoyance and confusion. Sophie jabbed her finger at the card and showed him an invisible mark. Sebastian directed a pointed glare in Emmaline’s direction, before taking Sophie’s arm with seeming reluctance and leading her to the dance-floor.
Oh, Sophie. Emmaline’s eyes slid closed in gratitude.
“She is a good friend,” a quiet voice said, just over her shoulder.
She gasped, a fluttering hand covering her breast, and turned to face her former betrothed.
Drake claimed Emmaline’s hand and bent low over it. He placed a slow, lingering kiss on the top of her knuckles, even as his fingers caressed her inner wrist. What he wouldn’t give to remove the fabric that separated their skin.
“My lord,” she murmured.
With some difficulty, he swallowed around a swell of emotion lodged in his throat. “After all we’ve shared you might call me by my name.”
“You’d have me call you Ashton?” She traced her lips with the tip of her tongue. “In front of a room full of strangers awaiting my misstep?”
“Perhaps not by my given name, then.” He’d always quite abhorred the name. “Nor should you worry after the gossips.” He glanced around the room and pinned the peering lords and ladies with a collective glare. The crowd immediately redirected their attention. “Is that, better, Emmaline?”
Emmaline’s lips twitched but still refused to arc in a full smile. “Would that you could make them all disappear.”
He inclined his head. “I shall work on that.”
An awkward silence descended. They stood there, studying each other, like two strangers meeting for the first time.
“Will you do me the honor of this set?”
I have wanted to hold you in my arms, since the moment I walked out of your home, out of your life.
She went to place her hand in his, and then pulled it back. “I—I,” she stumbled.
His stomach tightened under the bite of rejection. “Forgive me for burdening you,” he said lamely. He should turn away. He should—
“Oh no, no,” she hurried to reassure him. She motioned down to her slippered feet. “You see, I told the gentlemen I turned my ankle and was unable to dance. How would it appear if I were to suddenly strike out the next set with you?”
A wave of relief washed over him. “That is the reason for your hesitancy?” He laughed; the sound burst from him from a place he’d thought had ceased to exist, a place full of unrestrained hope.
Without allowing her another word on the matter, he commandeered her to the ballroom floor for the current dance—a waltz. He settled his hands on her waist.
“My brother is flaying you to ribbons with his eyes.”
Drake arched a brow. “The last person I’m thinking about right now is your brother.”
Emmaline looked toward her brother. A small frown marred her lips. She continued to study the glowering duke as he waltzed Miss Winters across the dance floor. “He is not happy.”
Drake glanced at the duke and then back at Emmaline. “Really? I’m amazed you can tell. That is the only expression I’ve ever seen him wear.”
She giggled.
Drake’s lips twitched at her infectious laughter. “No, really. He must have been born with that terrific glower.”
Another giggle escaped her. “He’s practiced it since he was a young boy,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper.
He nodded somberly. “Of course he has. It is a requisite course for all heirs to dukedoms.” Drake narrowed his eyes and studied Emmaline down the length of his nose in his best impression of Mallen’s expression.
A gurgle of laughter bubbled up past her lips. “That is a rather impressive rendering.”
“Or there is this one.” Drake drummed up the disapproving glower his father had directed his way, many a-times when Drake had been a small boy.
“Please, s-s-stop. It isn’t seemly if I…” The floodgates opened and Emmaline’s giggle became a resounding laugh that earned a multitude of stares from the ton. The full, husky sound was hardly the simpering, stifled laugh required of a lady. Instead it conjured thoughts of naked bodies entwined in silken sheets, sated with pleasure.
“Th-they are s-staring again.”
Drake arched a brow. “Should I attempt one of your brother’s famous ducal scowls?”
Emmaline laughed even harder.
Drake stared down at her. How did I let you go? Sheer madness and rash idiocy were the only answers that made any sense. If he’d searched the world two times over, he’d never find a woman like her. And yet, she’d been his since they were mere children.
“I read your notes.” He caught her as she lost her footing.
Emmaline had given Drake her notes with the expectation he would read them. That had been at a time when she’d thought she would never speak to him again. But knowing he’d read all her private thoughts, left her feeling exposed.
Now that he was here, she could finally have the answer to the question that had haunted her since he’d walked out of her brother’s townhouse and out of her life. “I don’t understand. Why did you push me away?” Why did you give me up?
His hands tightened on her waist, the heat of his skin warming her even through the soft silk fabric. “If I were a better man I would leave you alone.” He nodded towards the eager gentlemen watching from the side of the dance floor. “I would be content to allow you to make a match with one of those more deserving gentlemen. I’m flawed.”
She flinched as she remembered her brother had leveled the same charge against Drake. “Don’t say that.”
He shook his head. A gold strand tumbled across his brow. “No. Listen to me. I need you to understand. The reason—”
“I’d like to dance the remainder of the set with my sister, Drake.” A voice snapped.
Emmaline jerked at the sudden appearance of Sophie and Sebastian. Somehow her brother had managed to steer Sophie across the floor and secured a spot right alongside them.
Sophie’s eyes fairly glimmered with an apology, as if to say she were sorry she’d been unable to keep Sebastian at bay.
Drat it.
With little ceremony, Sebastian handed Sophie over to Drake so that Emmaline was forced to accept her brother’s hand.
Sebastian’s eyes had gone glacial. “Stay away.”
Drake tore his gaze away from the sight of Mallen waltzing Emmaline away.
“You love her,” Miss Winters said, her tone very matter-of-fact.
He blinked. It was one thing for Emmaline to be so brutally direct, it was quite another when it was her dearest friend. “I beg your pardon, Miss Winters?”
Sophie gave a jaunty shake of her curls. “No apologies for loving her. I also love her.”
Drake felt as though he’d been spun in one too many dizzying circles. “Uh, n-no…for…” He let the matter rest.
Miss Winters studied him with wide, blinking cornflower blue eyes. She put him in mind of a night owl.
“You really should tell her, you know. The both of you should just end this façade.”
Of course, Emmaline would be the best of friends with this opinionated, very vocal creature. “Façade, Miss Winters?”
Sophie pointed her eyes toward the ceiling. “One minute you love her. The next you push her away. The next she is weepy. Then happy. It is enough to exhaust a soul.”
“I have never said I loved her,” he blurted.
Sophie gave him a wide, knowing smile. “You didn’t need to, my lord.”
Did he love Emmaline? He cared very much for her. He’d missed her when she’d been out of his life. She had brought him so much happiness. But love? Could Miss Winters be correct?
“I am indeed correct.” Sophie echoed his unspoken thoughts.
Drake was never gladder for the end of a set. He bowed over Miss Winter’s hand. “Will you deliver a message to her? Will you remind her I owe her a picnic?”
With that, he left.
THIRTY-ONE
My Dearest Drake,
Oh, God. My father has died. Where are you? Why have you not come to me?
Ever Yours,
Emmaline
Lord Sinclair perused the long, pale pink marble foyer. “A bachelor’s residence,” Sinclair murmured. He fell into step alongside Drake.
Sir Faithful trotted along at their heels.
Sinclair glanced back. “A dog, as well. My, my, you truly are a bachelor.”
“Stuff it, Sin,” he muttered, leading his friend into his new office.
Drake crossed to the drink cart in the corner of the room and availed himself to a glass of whiskey. He held the bottle up to Sin.
At Sin’s nod, Drake poured a healthy amount into a crystal tumbler.
Sin accepted the glass and he and Drake claimed a seat on the set of leather winged chairs.
They drank in companionable silence. Sin polished off his drink before he spoke. “You do know you have set the ton on its ear?” He didn’t wait for Drake’s response, instead rose, and crossed the room, helping himself to another drink.
Drake sipped his more conservatively and absently eyed Sin’s movements. “To hell with the ton.” He waited until Sin had reclaimed his seat. “I want to court Emmaline.”
Sinclair sputtered around a mouthful of whiskey. “Lady Emmaline Fitzhugh? As in the same young lady you were betrothed to as a child? The same lady you ran off to war to avoid? The same—”
His hackles went up. “I believe you’ve made your point.”
Sin shook his head. “I don’t think I have. After years upon years of complaining about Lady Emmaline, you choose to court her now that she has cut you loose?”
Drake was well aware that courting Emmaline now, after she’d broken off their betrothal, would be met by Society with derision and speculation. The ton only knew Drake to be consumed by his own pursuit of pleasure. What they didn’t know, what he’d kept carefully concealed, was the madness he battled.
Sin sighed. “So when is this courtship to ensue?”
Drake shook his head. “Not right now. Tomorrow. The day after tomorrow.” He raked a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. Soon.”
Sinclair tapped the edges of his chair.
The rhythmic sound grated until Drake snapped. “You must have something to say.”
“I’m certain Mallen won’t go for it.”
Drake gazed into the depths of his drink wishing he could divine the answers within the swirling amber liquid. “No, no, that is a certainty.”
Sin leaned forward in his chair. “What makes you certain the lady will be amiable to your suit?”
Recent memories of last evening’s waltz filled him. He could still feel the heat of her skin, still see the smile playing on her lush, seductive red lips, hear her laughter. “Last evening at the Thompson ball—”
Sin slashed the air with his hand. “Yes, yes. I heard all about the Thompson ball. Anyone who is anyone has, in fact. A waltz, however, does not a courtship make.” He inched again to the edge of his seat. “As much as I want to see you happy, I don’t want to see you hurt again by Lady Emmaline.”
Drake tossed back the contents of his glass and growled. He didn’t like the way Sin was pinning the state of his unhappiness on Emmaline. “I was the one responsible for Emmaline’s decision to sever the betrothal. Not the young lady.”
Sin cradled his drink between his hands, studying Drake over the edge of the glass. “I understand the lady is entitled to her sense of injury. You, however, are my main concern. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve known enough hurt.”
“You’re mothering me, Sin.”
Sin bristled. “Well, you are in desperate need of mothering.”
Drake glanced at a point just over Sinclair’s shoulder, unable to meet his eyes. How could Sin ever know that the ache of losing Emmaline was far greater than any physical pain? “I need her.”
Sin didn’t say anything for a long moment. “Do you…love her?” The word came out halting. Men didn’t speak of these things.
Drake grimaced. There it was again. That question. Did he love her?
“I don’t know.”
Sin held up his tumbler in mock salute. “You’d better have more of an answer for the lady than that.”
“I will not lie to her. I want there to be honesty between us.”
His friend snorted. “Trust me, when presented with the choice of honesty or love, a lady will always choose love.”
In spite of his friend’s words, Drake had already made up his mind to share with Emmaline the demons that had held him back. He’d confess to her about the affliction that had haunted him since he’d returned from war. He would, as his father suggested, allow her to decide for herself if it was too much of an albatross.
Still the idea that she might reject him…sweat popped up on his brow. What if it were too much for her? What if she wisely decided he was not worth it?
After all, what had he brought her other than heartache?
“What is it you require of me?” Sinclair asked, his tone, uncharacteristically sober. “You know I will do anything to help you.”
Drake reached down and stroked Sir Faithful between the ears. “I need guidance on how to woo a lady.” He sat up and then fished around his front pocket. Drake stared at the parchment a moment and then handed it over to Sinclair.
Sin laughed and accepted the parchment. “And you think I might be able to help you? You, the one recognized throughout Society as being an expert with matrons and debutantes alike?”
Drake shifted in his seat. “That is a gross exaggeration.” He nodded to the paper in Sin’s hands.
Sin glanced down at the heavily marked sheet with extensive cross-outs and too much ink. His brow furrowed.
“It’s a poem.”
“Uh, yes, I see that,” Sin said.
Drake snatched the sheet back and proceeded to study it. “It’s rubbish.”
“I take it the poem is for Lady Emmaline?”
It didn’t escape Drake’s notice that his friend didn’t counter his statement about the quality of the poem.
Drake set the paper aside. “No, it’s for Mallen. Of course it’s for Emmaline.”
Sinclair laughed until tears streamed from his eyes.
“So glad you’re amused,” Drake muttered. “Emmaline wanted to be courted. She deserves to be courted.” His eyes went to the impressive bouquet of flowers he’d had delivered earlier that afternoon…to himself. They rested on his desktop, or rather they sat wilting on his desktop.
Sinclair followed the direction of Drake’s stare. “Uh, they’ve begun to wilt.”
“Yes, yes they have.”
Drake had spent last evening and the better part of the morning laboring over a poem. Then, he’d ordered the flowers. He looked over at the buds again. The dying flowers. The poem, though rubbish, was finally complete. Who’d have figured it would be so bloody difficult to put words to paper?
Sin cleared his throat. “So when you said you intended to court Lady Emmaline, just not today or tomorrow…that wasn’t altogether true.”
Drake surged from his chair and strode across the room. He shoved back the damask curtains and stare
d out the window into the dark night sky.
“I don’t know how to take the step,” he said.
Sin’s visage reflected back in the glass pane. He remained seated. “You just…do it, Drake. You tell your brain to tell your feet to move one at a time, and march up Mallen’s steps, and demand to see Emmaline. Then you read her your poem.” He picked up the poem in question and grimaced. “Well, maybe not this one, per se.”
Drake pressed his forehead against the cool window.
Could it be that simple? He glanced over his shoulder at the bouquet of cerastium and the poem still held in Sinclair’s hand.
He’d fought a bloody war…how hard could this be? In one of her notes to him, one of the notes that had never been sent, she’d called herself a coward, but it was he who was the coward.
He picked up the dreary looking flowers from his desk.
“You can’t go now,” Sinclair stuttered.
Drake paused. “Whyever not?”
Sinclair blinked several times. His eyes landed on the ormolu clock on the fireplace mantle. “It is nearly eight o’clock in the evening. Mallen is hosting an intimate dinner party with Waxham. Whyever not, indeed?”
A fiery pit of jealousy flared in Drake’s stomach. “Waxham, you say? Why, then I can’t think of a better time to pay a visit.”
“Mallen’s going to give you hell,” Sin predicted with a grin.
Drake smiled. “She’s worth it.” With that, he turned on his heel and marched out of his office. Sir Faithful gave a yap of approval.
Sin hurried after him. “Rude leaving your friend and all. Perhaps you’d like some company along the way? Just to make certain you’ve thought through everything you are going to say when you interrupt the duke’s intimate dinner party.”
Drake growled low in his throat. “Stop calling it an intimate dinner party.” Intimate was the last word he wanted to come to mind when thinking of Waxham and Emmaline.
He flung back the front door and marched down the steps. Sin trailed after him.
“Not the thing, opening your own doors, you know. Your first order of business really should have been to set up at least a butler and housekeeper. Oh, and of course a chef. Not one of those French fellows that seem all the rage—”
