How to Tame Your Duke, page 14
Dogging.
Dogging.
Emilie dropped her cold-numbed hand to the pocket of her gown, where a thin stiletto lay in its sheath. Miss Dingleby had shown her how to use it (“skin is much tougher than you might think, my dear, so slice across the neck with vigor”), and she had practiced the movement diligently. Unsheathe, lunge, slice. Unsheathe, lunge, slice. Surprise was the key, of course. Surprise was always the key, according to Miss Dingleby.
A faint white mass began to interrupt the darkness ahead. Emilie drew a relieved breath. The hotel at last. The lamps were lit along the drive and the portico, in eerie pools of blue white light. From behind came the sudden rattle of hooves and wheels, the warning shout of the driver. An instant later, a carriage bounced past at a smart trot, drowning the sound of the widow’s footsteps. It swung into the drive of the hotel with an eager tilt.
Just before the drive lay the path to the back garden. Emilie turned sharply through the black wrought-iron gate and strode down the neat paving stones, her legs straining against her heavy woolen skirt.
The path was unlit, bordered by young trees. Emilie inhaled the frozen silence, the hint of impending snow. The branches shone faintly in the reflected light from the hotel, like skeletal fingers. A high and trilling laugh came from the front portico, cut off abruptly by a closing door, and then Emilie heard the decisive and unmistakable clack of a woman’s half boots on the paving stones behind her.
She went on, faster now, her hand clutched around the stiletto in her pocket. If she could just reach the back entrance. Through the garden, across the drive and stableyard: A minute or two was all she needed.
She pushed her footsteps a little faster. The paving stones were uneven, left in picturesque disorder by the hotel gardeners, and her heel caught on an unexpected edge. She staggered forward, caught herself, and went on.
A sharp voice called behind her. “Ma’am!”
Emilie strode out, nearly running, and then the world lurched and streaked around her, and she hit the ground with a bone-rattling thud.
“Ma’am! Ma’am!”
Emilie didn’t wait. She scrambled up, found the stiletto in her pocket, and flashed it out in front of her.
“Why, ma’am!”
The voice was high and surprised. The woman stood a few feet away, her veil thrown back, her face shadowed. She held her hands out before her, as if to beg.
“Who are you?” Emilie demanded breathlessly.
“Why, nobody, ma’am!” The woman took a step back, and one of the hotel lights moved across her face, revealing a flash of young features and wide, astonished eyes.
“You’ve been following me!”
“I haven’t! Not a-purpose, anyroad. I . . . I have business here, that’s all.” The woman nodded at the sprawling building to her right.
“Business! What sort of business?” Emilie lowered her hand a trifle. Her pulse beat rapidly in her ears.
The woman drew herself up. “Why, that’s my own affair, it is. I’m a respectable woman.”
“Indeed! And what sort of respectable affair brings a woman to a . . .” Emilie let her words trail away. Understanding began to dawn.
“No less respectable than yours, ma’am, begging your pardon.” Her tone was laden with irony.
Emilie tucked Miss Dingleby’s stiletto away in her pocket. “I do beg your pardon. You’ve come for Mr. Brown, haven’t you? The fourth Tuesday of the month.”
The woman hesitated, and then said, a little defensively, “Why, yes, I have. Though I don’t see it’s any of your business.”
Emilie peered through the darkness, searching for details. The woman had a sort of dignity to her, carrying herself with elegance, though her speech marked her somewhere in the middle rank, neither gentlewoman nor worker. One of those many nameless women holding precariously to respectability, as the economic ground shifted and split beneath their feet: a widow, or perhaps never married, or perhaps married to a drunkard or scoundrel or worse. Ashland’s fifty pounds a month would lift her from penury and into a comfortable life, with a genteel house and a few servants. It would make all the difference.
The woman’s head was tilted at a proud angle. Did Ashland admire that about her? How well had he known her? Had he simply watched her read books in her chemise, or had he been moved to do more? To touch her, to kiss her?
A surge of jealousy rose up in Emilie’s chest, so sudden and violent it burned the back of her throat.
“I’m afraid there’s been a change,” she said. “Mr. Brown and I have come to an understanding. I have been seeing him weekly since just before Christmas.”
“What’s that?”
“I mean your services are no longer required. I’m very sorry,” she added, after a brief pause.
“Why, that’s . . . That’s when I was badly, at Christmas. When I couldn’t come. I told them, I’m sure I did, I sent a telegram . . .” The woman shook her head and said plaintively, “And now you’ve crowded me out, have you?”
“It isn’t that. I had no intention of . . . We simply got along so well . . .”
“Every week, you say?” The woman’s dark-clad shoulders sagged in the faint rim of gaslight. She locked her hands together at her belly. “He must fancy you proper, then.”
“I don’t know about that.” Emilie spoke quietly. “He’s not a man easily overcome by emotion.”
“No, he’s not.”
Emilie reached for her pocket, and the woman stumbled back warily. “No, no,” she said. “It’s just this. I haven’t touched his money. You can have it, if you want. Two hundred pounds.”
The woman gasped. “Two hundred pound? In your pocket, ma’am?”
“I couldn’t touch it.” Emilie drew the envelopes from her coat and held them out. “Please. Take it all.”
“I couldn’t, ma’am.”
“Please take it. I’m sure you were counting on the money.” Emilie thrust her arm insistently.
The woman stood quietly. Her breath came out in ghostly clouds, uneven and somewhat rapid. “Two hundred pound,” she said again, quite softly. “It would set me up, it would.”
“Take it.” Emilie stepped forward and placed the envelopes against the woman’s knotted hands, until her fingers loosened and accepted the precious cargo.
“I shall miss him,” the woman said, “though he were such an odd one.”
“Yes.” The word stuck in her throat.
“I always thought, maybe, if we kept on . . .” She shook her head. The veil trembled around her shoulders. “Every week, you said?”
“Since Christmas.”
The woman turned, paused, and looked back over her shoulder. The shadows made her face look strangely ancient. “Do he ever touch you, ma’am? Touch you proper, I mean.”
Emilie gathered herself up and tightened her woolen muffler around her throat.
“Not yet.” She tilted her chin. “But he will.”
TWELVE
She was late.
Ashland pretended not to notice the clock ticking away on the mantel. He walked to the round table, Emily’s table, and picked up the book he’d selected for the evening. It was new; he’d just picked it up in the bookshop the other day, and the scent of new paper and fresh ink rose up to meet him as he flipped unseeing through the pages.
He put the book down and went to the window. No sign of her; no neat black-coated figure illuminated by the gas lamp on the rear portico.
The clock ticked on, unmoved. She should have been here ten minutes ago. She had promised to come straight from the station now, so he wouldn’t worry. He should have sent the carriage; that was it. What was he thinking, trusting the darkened winter roads of Ashland Spa to bring his Emily safely to his side? He should have . . .
A knock sounded on the door.
He turned. “Come in.”
The door opened, and there was Emily, gloved hands outstretched, blindfold in place. “Good evening, sir.”
“You’re late.” He meant to punish her, to make her endure the same few minutes of unreasoning worry he’d felt himself, but the sight of those outstretched hands dissolved his anger. He strode across the room and seized her kidskin fingers and kissed them. “You’re shaking. What’s happened?”
“Nothing.” She withdrew her hand and laughed, a high and artificial laugh. “It’s frightfully cold outside, that’s all.”
He studied her mouth. “It isn’t the cold. What happened, Emily?”
“Nothing. I . . . I fell, that’s all. On the path in the garden. The paving stones were uneven, and it’s so awfully dark . . .”
“Good God. Are you all right?” He lifted his hand and touched her cheekbone, her jaw.
“Perfectly.” She turned away.
“Come to the fire and warm yourself.”
He led her to the fireplace and urged her into the nearest armchair. She was trembling with something, some emotion, though her hands clenched tightly in her lap with the effort to disguise it. She sat ramrod straight, as always, as if she were still in the schoolroom with a book balanced on the crown of her head by a purse-lipped governess.
Ashland plucked away her hatpin and drew the small felt hat from her hair. The golden strands gleamed in the firelight and disappeared beneath the black blindfold. He knelt before her, took off her gloves, and rubbed each hand between his large fingers. “I’ll send the carriage for you, from now on,” he said. “I should have thought of it sooner.”
“Oh no. It’s quite unnecessary. I like the walk, really. So bracing.”
“Nevertheless.” He examined her face minutely. She was steadier now, whether from the warmth of the fire or from the steady massage of his fingers. It no longer pained him at all to touch her like this, hand to hand; he hardly even remembered the old sensations of dread, of recoil. “You’ve scraped your chin,” he said.
She touched the tip and winced. “So I have.”
He rose and went to the bathroom, where he found a washcloth and ran it under the cool water, avoiding the sight of his face in the mirror above the sink. When he returned, Emily had unwound her muffler and was rising from her seat, struggling with her coat.
“Don’t be silly.” He drew off her coat and set her back in the chair. “Here,” he said, and held the washcloth gently to her chin.
“Oh! Don’t, really. It’s nothing.”
He said nothing. The coals hissed behind him; the clock ticked. Emily’s breath rushed warm and fragrant against his cheek. Her lips had parted slightly as he pressed the washcloth on her skin, and her teeth peeked out in a thin white line between them. He imagined running his tongue along that alluring seam of rosy lip, opening her mouth millimeter by millimeter, until he was tasting her deeply. Until she was tasting him.
Ah, how would Emily taste?
She lifted her hand and placed it over his. “Thank you.”
Her fingers were still cool from the January air. The light touch trapped him, held him utterly captive on his knees before her. The glow of the fire illuminated her skin, as if she were lit from within.
Kiss her. For God’s sake, kiss her.
With inhuman effort, he lifted his hand away from her chin. “Let me pour your tea. That will warm you quickly enough.”
“I am quite warm already, thank you.”
He rose and poured the tea with his shaking hand.
“Mr. Brown,” she said, in that voice of hers, perfectly low and perfectly dulcet, “I have another impertinent question for you.”
He couldn’t help smiling. “What is it, Emily?”
“Why am I here?”
He added the cream and sugar, stirred with a tiny silver spoon, and placed the cup and saucer in her waiting hands. “Since you must know your own motivation, I can only assume you’re asking me why I wish you to visit me every week. The answer is that I enjoy the pleasure of your company.”
“That’s not an answer. It’s a drawing-room pleasantry. You know perfectly well what I mean.”
Ashland did not want tea this evening. Not that he ever wanted tea; he had drunk too much of it in India, and the taste reminded him of other things, unpleasant things. He went to the fireplace instead and rested his right elbow on the mantel, which somewhat relieved the ache in his missing hand. “But I do enjoy your company. Is that somehow inexplicable?”
“You know we cannot go on like this. You must make a decision eventually.”
“What decision?”
“Whether we will lie together or not.”
The porcelain clinked as she lifted the teacup to her lips, drank, and set it down again. Ashland watched her lips as they parted to accept the tea, her throat as she swallowed, her fingers as they curled around the delicate white S-curve of the handle.
She went on, into his silence. “I presume you’re wrestling with the morality of it all. But surely it’s just as much a betrayal of your marriage vows to sit in a room alone with another woman, to undress her, to watch her nearly naked as she sits at a table and reads to you. To pay her for the service. After such an intimate relation, what does it matter if copulation occurs or does not?”
“It matters to me.” He turned to the wall and rested his chin on his forearm. “It matters to you, I daresay.”
“We will leave my own desires aside, for the moment. The dilemma is yours.”
Ashland left the fireplace and walked to the window.
She continued. “Don’t think me unfeeling. I can see how it pains you. I presume your wife is no longer living with you?”
“She left me twelve years ago.” He fingered the windowpane. He felt he owed her the truth, as much as he could tell her.
“I see. Have you never considered a suit of divorce for abandonment?” She said the word divorce crisply, without emotion, as she might refer to the glazed orange cake lying in slices on a flute-edged plate atop the tea table.
“I have not. I returned from war a different man, a beast, maimed and charmless. Her departure was not without provocation.” A tiny smudge marred the corner of the glass; he wiped at it with his thumb. “And I had made a vow, of course. A vow before God.”
“So did she. For better or for worse, and yet she left you in your trouble, and did not return.” The porcelain clinked again. “Did she leave alone?”
Ashland closed his eyes to shut out the dark-haired image of the Earl of Somerton. “She did not.”
Emily whispered, “Oh, my dear sir.”
He turned from the window to face her. She was still sitting before the fire, but she’d placed the cup and saucer on the table and sat with her hands together in her lap and her head bowed. “I don’t require your compassion,” he said.
“It is not compassion,” she said. “It is admiration.”
He stared at her golden head, and his breastbone, his ribs, his muscles and skin, his every defense fell away from his chest and left only his madly beating heart. “I have a son,” he said.
She lifted her head. “I’m sure he’s a fine boy.”
“He is. He’s nearly sixteen. He has . . .” The words had to be pushed from his throat. “He has been everything, and he is her son. He was born from her own body. To betray her flesh is to betray his.”
“She didn’t share your conviction.”
“We are not discussing her behavior. We are discussing mine.”
Emily bent her head again and stared at her fingers. When she spoke, her voice was choked with tears. “My dear Mr. Brown. Where does that leave us?”
Ashland levered himself away from the window, picked up the book from the table, and walked toward Emily’s bowed figure. The nape of her neck beckoned, pale and tender. He knelt before her and placed the book in her lap.
“My dear Emily. My very dear Emily,” he said. “Read to me.”
* * *
The lamplight cast over the page in a yellow pool. Emilie’s eyes were beginning to ache; she thought longingly of her spectacles, tucked into the pocket of her jacket back at the Anvil.
“Is something wrong?” asked Ashland from his armchair.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “My eyes are tired.”
“Then you must stop, of course.”
She placed her finger in the book and closed it. The leather cover was new, stamped in bright gold letters. Ashland’s gaze caressed her from behind. She wanted to turn to him, to nestle in his arms in the chair and listen to his heartbeat beneath her ear.
“What is it, Emilie?” he asked softly.
“Nothing, sir.”
“Don’t say that to me again. If something troubles you, tell me.”
Emilie ran her fingers over the title. The wind was picking up, flinging itself against the windows. She dreaded the ride home, cold and lonely, her body and heart aching.
“I have a confession for you,” she said.
“Indeed?”
“That first night, the first time I visited you . . .” Emilie placed the book on the table and laid her hand flat atop it. “It was a mistake.”
Beneath the low shriek of the wind at the window, she could hear the heavy cadence of Ashland’s breath.
“A mistake. I see.”
“No, not like that. I mean that I wasn’t the woman who was supposed to come. They mistook me in the hallway; I was only taking tea at the hotel.”
“What the devil?” He moved in the chair, as if he wanted to get up, and then stopped himself.
“I don’t know why I came up. I don’t know why I stayed.” Her voice began to break. She paused and filled her lungs with air. “I don’t suppose it matters. Anyway, outside today, on my way from the station, I met a woman. The woman who was supposed to come a month ago. She was here for the regular Tuesday visit.”
“Good God.”
“I told her . . . I told her that she was no longer needed. I’m sorry; I ought not to have taken the liberty . . .”
“Good God.”
“But I couldn’t let her come up to you. I couldn’t let anyone take my place. I gave her money, all the money you’d given me, and told her not to come back.”
“You gave her . . . What was it?”
