by Jo Goodman
She found herself recalling it as Ian Gardner made a toast to their good health and happiness at their wedding breakfast. It had not occurred to her last night that Restell’s family or her own would attend such a hasty wedding, nor did it occur that there was but one reason that explained their lack of protests and all of their cooperation.
They thought she was carrying his child.
Emma’s fingers tightened around the stem of her wineglass. It suddenly felt extraordinarily heavy in her hand. As though she were watching from a distance, she saw herself raise the glass and touch it to her husband’s. She also saw that she was smiling. The fact that she was baring all her teeth did not appear to alarm him in the least.
The carriage was waiting for them when they descended the steps outside his parents’ home. The family—hers and his—crowded at the windows to see them off. Emma leaned forward and waved through the open door before the footman closed it. Marisol, she observed, was standing arm in arm with Mr. Charters, both of them looking oddly abandoned. Her uncle seemed happy enough, but it may have been that Lady Rivendale had secured herself a place at his side. The Gardners were largely smiling. Hannah and Portia stood on either side of their father and bounced in place with their energetic waving. Sir Geoffrey looked particularly handsome in his morning clothes and waved only marginally less enthusiastically than his daughters. Ian Gardner and his wife stood paired at another window, sharing some private amusement that made them laugh. Imogene and her husband shared a small upper balcony with Wynetta and Porter Wellsley. Wynetta and Imogene were tossing flower petals from a basket that the men held between them.
“You will not expect me to do that, I hope,” Restell said when a shower of pink and white blossoms swirled around the carriage as it moved forward.
“Hold the basket or throw the petals?”
“Either.” He sat back and regarded her steadily. “What is it, Emma? You have been biding your time, but I think the time has come.”
“How did you come by the special license?”
The question surprised him. “A favor. One I was owed. It was the only way even I could get one with so little notice. It is all quite legal. Everything was put in order so you should have no concerns on that count.”
“We were married with indecent haste, you know.”
“I suspect there will be those who think so.”
“Is your family among them?”
“I’m not certain I follow,” Restell said carefully.
“Does your family think I am carrying your child?”
Restell frowned. “Did one of them intimate as much?”
“No. I want to know if you intimated as much to them.”
“I did not. Even if you could be carrying my child, it is too early to know. We have not been acquainted above two months.” He saw immediately that he had not done well to put that fact before her again. She looked very young of a sudden. It was odd, that. He had always thought of her as older than her years, more determined and practical. She was fragile. He knew that, too, but what had made her fragile had also made her strong. It was a paradox that he did not yet fully comprehend, although he observed the truth of it on every occasion they were together. “What raised this gremlin thought?”
“Your family was everything solicitous. All the preparations were made at a moment’s notice. Their eagerness to move forward without raising a single objection seemed unusually cooperative, and I could not imagine any other explanation for their haste. I feared they must believe that I permitted you to compromise me.”
“My family is everything solicitous,” he said. “It is our nature to rally to a challenge, not turn our backs on it. The preparations were hardly elaborate, and quite frankly, Lady Gardner has been planning something like them for me since she married my father. Their eagerness, I believe, was predicated on a fear that I would change my mind.” Restell touched Emma’s slightly wobbly chin with a gloved fingertip. “I have told no one in my family what you were made to endure at Madame Chabrier’s or later in the country outside Walthamstow. If they learn of it, it will be because you choose to tell them. I won’t. It must be your decision.”
Her nod was almost imperceptible. Restell felt the movement against his fingertip and removed his hand. She was the one who reached for it and folded her own hands around it.
“Last night, as I was readying for bed, Marisol came to my room. She was curious about my decision to marry you. Perhaps she is the one who put the idea of compromise in my mind. She never revealed her thinking to me, but as I reflect on our conversation, I believe it’s what she meant.”
“She did not anticipate that you would steal a march on her.”
“I thought of that also.”
“She is jealous of you.”
“It is not a simple matter for me to understand, but I am coming to accept that it’s true.”
“I would have your mind at ease, Emmalyn.”
“Emma,” she said softly. “I prefer it to Emmalyn.”
“Very well. Emma. I prefer it also. I have noticed that Sir Arthur and Miss Vega call you Emmalyn, but I am put in mind of a reprimand when I hear it from them.”
“That is my sense also.” She smiled a shade wistfully. “It was the manner in which my parents used it. Emmalyn was for those occasions when my behavior disappointed them. Emma never was in trouble.”
He chuckled. “You were fortunate to have such clear lines drawn for you. I had but the one name for my parents to use. I had to depend upon the tone to know if I was about to be praised or pilloried. Sometimes I missed the mark. That was never a good thing.” He glanced sideways at Emma and saw that her smile was still in place. “Do you mind that we are not taking a wedding trip?”
“It did not occur that we might. I am not eager to leave London just yet, even in your company. It is a kindness to me for us to remain here.”
“Good. I hoped you would not be disappointed.”
“I have few expectations regarding how we shall go on.”
“I see.”
She stole a look at him. He was facing forward, his features set in such a way as to be impenetrable. “I am still catching my breath,” she said. “The expectations, I think, will come in time.”
Restell nodded but offered no comment.
Emma suddenly felt desperate to fill the uncomfortable silence. “There is another reason I am happy to remain in London: my uncle has need of me. You will not be surprised that he required more assurances last night that I did not mean to abandon him. I hope I was not wrong to provide them.”
“I suppose that depends on the promises you made. If you told him that nothing would be changed, that you would continue to help him in the manner you always have, then I believe you overstepped.”
“I said that he could depend upon me to visit him regularly, that I would discuss the arrangements for those visits with you, and that you would be reasonable. Was I wrong to make those assurances?”
“I wish you had not said I would be reasonable.”
“Did you not tell me once that you are exactly that?”
“If I did, I could not have been speaking of your safety.”
His answer, rather tersely given, still warmed Emma. “We were speaking of the favors you request. You assured me you were not an unreasonable man.”
“And you took me at my word.”
She smiled, squeezing his hand lightly and urging him to look at her. “I believe I was right to do so. Was I?”
Restell sighed. “I only wish you were not so confident of it in this case. You and I may yet disagree about what is reasonable.”
“We will find a solution that satisfies both of us. Have you noticed that we do that?”
“I have.” He raised his hand to her cheek and tucked a tendril of dark cocoa-colored hair under her bonnet. The carriage began to slow. His smile held an edge of regret. “We are arrived.”
“Are we?” Emma felt no compunction to look away from him. She’d thought she alr
eady knew every nuance of his expression and the angle of every one of his features. But she was not familiar with the way he was looking at her now, nor had she known that his smile could tilt at so perfect an incline as to pierce her heart.
“We are.” Restell dropped a quick kiss on her slightly parted lips and pointed over his shoulder as the carriage came to a halt. He watched Emma’s face as her eyes darted to the window. Her puzzlement was not unexpected. “It’s my home,” he said, answering the question before she asked. “I did not think we should spend our first night together in my brother’s house. You argued quite effectively in favor of financial independence, so I thought I would begin as I mean to go on.”
Emma stared at the town house as if she’d never seen the like before. In truth, it was very much on the order of every other house along the row in size and design, with only its black door and shutters and stately iron fence setting it apart. Alarmed of a sudden, she sat back and gave Restell the same incredulous regard that she’d given his house. “How is it possible? Please say you have not indebted yourself because of some ill-conceived suggestion I made?”
“I have not indebted myself,” he said calmly. “Come. Let us go inside, and you will tell me if all is to your liking. I am depending upon your honesty. I cannot assure you that everything has been made ready, though the staff has been working with considerable diligence since you gave me your answer.”
Emma could barely make sense of what he was saying. “You did not secure this home only yesterday, did you?”
Restell chuckled. “No, Emma. I could not have anticipated I would be in immediate need of a dwelling.”
“I cannot fathom why not. You are frighteningly well-prepared for all manner of things.”
“My, how you flatter me.” The door to the carriage opened. Restell made a nimble descent, then held out his hand for Emma. It seemed to him that her feet barely touched the ground, she was that light on his arm.
The household staff was assembled in the entrance hall. They stood at something resembling regimental attention as Restell escorted Emma inside. The butler took Restell’s hat, gloves, and stick and Emma’s bonnet. She declined to give him her shawl. Her fingers were wound too tightly around the knotted tails.
Restell kept one hand on her elbow as he introduced her. Mr. Crowley served as butler, Mrs. Underwood as the housekeeper. The misses Payne and Hanley were the upstairs’ maids; Mrs. Wright and Miss Miller performed the downstairs’ functions. Mrs. Wescott held the important position of cook. Her two young helpers were Becky Morrison and Eliza Shepard. Hobbes stood to the rear of the line, closely attended by the footmen McCleod, Lewis, and Shaw.
Out of the corner of his eye, Restell observed Emma nod and smile and find something pleasant to say to each servant as the introduction was completed. She comported herself with the effortless confidence of one who was practiced in managing a household. If any of his staff noticed that she had only been able to loose one hand from her shawl and that the one that rested at her side curled frequently in the folds of her white bombazine gown, not one among them gave any indication of it. Even Hobbes and the footmen, all of whom had better than a passing familiarity with her, seemed quite taken with her manner.
“Grace under pressure,” Restell told her when they were alone.
“Hmm?” Emma stopped running her index finger along the spine of the book she was holding and returned it to the tabletop where she’d found it. It seemed doubtful that she’d have occasion to read Nightmare Abbey this evening. She looked up. Restell was sitting in a wing chair that he’d angled away from the window. A light breeze caused the drapes to billow behind him. He watched her with his eyelids at half-mast, and she was struck by how extraordinarily tired he must be. She approached his chair and sat on the upholstered footstool he seemed to have no use for.
“You were the embodiment of grace under pressure,” he said. “That’s what I was thinking when you met the staff. You demonstrated a great deal of poise.”
“Did you mean to test my nerve?”
“No. Is that how it seemed?”
“No, it was merely startling,” she said. “I cannot say if I would have done better or worse to have been forewarned.” She lifted her hands to indicate all of the sitting room they were in, then broadened the gesture to indicate all of the house. “You can collect, I think, that it is rather a lot to absorb.”
“But you find it satisfactory?”
She was struck again by Restell’s concern that she approve of her new home. It was perhaps the most appealing aspect of his character that he placed some value on her opinion. “It is all to my liking.”
Restell had presented her with a large set of keys that made her feel every inch the chatelaine, then escorted her on a tour of the home himself, taking her even to the bowels of the house and showing her the kitchen, the wine cellar, and the meat safe. She observed that the pantry was well-stocked, that the cutlery was sharpened, and that there were coals enough in the scuttle to sustain fires in every room when they would have need of such. He urged her to open cupboards and closets and see for herself that there were linens, china, and silver. He allowed her to wander about the drawing room and the library, picking up and examining such items that caught her eye. She was struck by his exquisite taste in the appointments and artwork, and when he had urged her to consider how she might change any of the rooms to please her, she had been unable to imagine what could be more pleasing.
As she walked from room to room and took in the arrangements of each, she could not help but recall Neven Charters’s home. He seemed to have amassed all of his most impressive treasures in one room. The purpose—and she had come to conclude it was purposeful—was to inspire awe in his visitors. In contrast, Restell’s treasures appeared everywhere. There was the delicate Ming vase filled with hothouse flowers in the entrance hall, the sumptuous, damask-covered window seat in the library, the medieval tapestry in the sitting room. Every piece of furniture was elegantly curved so that the eye slipped easily from one appointment to the next. No single piece stood apart from the rest, yet they were not designed or crafted by the same artisans. An ornate gilt birdcage hung in one of the bedchambers. The bird, a nightingale, perched on the highest point of the equally ornate gilt mirror above the mantel and seemed to be quite full of himself now that he had the whole of the room for his home. Neither she nor Restell had been able to coax it down, although only Emma’s soft urgings could truly be interpreted as coaxing. Restell simply demanded that it remove itself. The bird showed his disdain for this approach by leaving a bit of guano on the gilt scrollwork, and Restell had been sufficiently motivated by Emma’s laughter to stand on a Chippendale chair and snatch the felon.
“I find all of it to my liking,” she repeated. “Even the nightingale.”
Restell grunted softly. “If he had more meat on his bones, we would have him for dinner.”
“I am certain Mrs. Wescott has a recipe for it. She seems frightfully competent.”
“She is. She is also given to tantrums and opinions not shared by my mother, the latter being the reason I was able to lure her away. I promised her I would have no opinions of my own, and we have gotten on famously.”
“But I have opinions.”
“Yes, and you are as skilled as the entire diplomatic corps in negotiating terms. I fail to see that Wescott will present you with the least challenge.”
“My, how you flatter me.” She saw his lips twitch as she echoed his earlier comment to her. “Why did you choose to live in Ferrin’s home when you might have lived here?”
“For the advantages, of course.” He saw this did not placate her in the least. Before she could begin her interrogation, he explained, “Chief among them being that mamas with eligible daughters were not quite certain that I would come up to snuff. I had no visible means of support except for Ferrin, and he regularly made noises—very public noises—that he would not settle so much as a farthing on me while I avoided responsibility.”
“I can understand what might move him to tell you privately, but it is not the sort of thing families are usually wont to make public.”
“You are quite right, but I asked Ferrin to put it about. It was as good a ruse as any to keep certain females from making me the target of their pursuits.”
“Your mother must have been extremely put out with you.”
“An understatement, but she has never known the whole of it. She does not, for instance, know about this house.”
“Mr. Gardner! Oh, but that is very bad of you.”
Restell’s eyebrows approached his hairline. “If you are going to admonish me, and I suspect you will find many reasons to do so, I insist that you use my Christian name.”
Emma’s mouth flattened momentarily. “Well, I have already said my piece so there is no reason to belabor the point.” She ignored his chuckle. “Is your father also uninformed?”
“No, but he can never admit that he’s known. His life would not be worth living.”
“To have such secrets from your mother.” She shook her head. “Will she forgive you?”
“Eventually,” he said, turning the full force of his smile on her.
“You think you are charming,” she said primly, “but your mother will not be so easily persuaded.”
“You will not be so easily persuaded,” he said, reaching for her. “For all her noises to the contrary, Mother does not entirely mind that I am a rascal.” He caught Emma’s fingers, then clasped her hand and pulled her off the stool. Before she could straighten fully, Restell tugged harder so that she simply fell into his lap. She made to scramble free, but he caught her by the waist and quieted her. He watched her face closely. A pale pink wash of color highlighted her cheeks. She was not quite meeting his eyes but looking just past him. “Are you uncomfortable?”
