Chapter 7
‘You were missed at the assembly, Esther,’ remarked Emerald, watching a little greenfinch hop down the quiet country lane. The day was particularly fine for January and she was glad to be out of doors once more, the weak winter sun shining on her face.
‘Monthly courses administer no mercy, as I’m sure you know,’ Esther Lyon said with an exasperated little laugh, bumping Emerald’s shoulder as they walked. ‘Tell me what I missed. Leave out no detail!’
‘Goodness, where to start?’ said Emerald, kicking a little pebble. Her exchange with Beau had haunted her since that night; the possessive way he’d claimed her hand, the intensity with which he’d studied her, the way his glowing eyes had looked into her darkest corners. Instead of exposing herself, Emerald shared all the gossip she’d heard as she passed through the rooms.
‘The new baron was certain to display his humility.’ The former Mr Bowmar had received the title only two months prior for his part in sussing out a small smuggling operation in the cove near his home. ‘And Miss Crenshaw seemed to advance her campaign for the role of baroness.’
Miss Lyon rolled her eyes to the sky. ‘If she wishes to take on a tedious bore of five-and-forty with children grown enough to see through her ploys, she is welcome to him. I will own to being as shocked to hear it was he who helped the authorities as I was to learn smugglers are active here. I’d just assumed, the war with France being over, the profession, if we can call it such, hadn’t remained lucrative enough for men to risk life and limb.’
‘No, nor I. I find the whole idea rather unsettling, to say nothing of the unscrupulous men who seek to line their pockets through criminal means.’
The two friends strolled without a word between them for several minutes, a pall cast over their easy conversation.
‘This will never do,’ announced Emerald. ‘It’s too nice a day to spend it sullen and fretful.’
Esther heaved a sigh of relief. ‘Oh, yes, please. Let us go back to speaking of the assembly. Surely there’s more I missed.’
After a moment’s consideration, Emerald brightened. ‘Mr Lambert trod upon Miss Dagmar’s dress and tore the bottom flounce clean off. The chill between the Misses Abram was palpable to anyone standing within a foot of them. It appears the younger has not forgiven the elder for driving away her “suitor,” if we are being generous with the term. And I was accosted not once, not twice, but thrice by Mr Bosworth, who seemed to think me capable of divining information about your whereabouts as the night wore on.’
‘Goodness me.’
‘His crestfallen countenance made me feel quite sorry for him.’
‘No doubt,’ Miss Lyon said with a touch of asperity. ‘How a man can see interest where not even encouragement exists is beyond my comprehension. I feel I’d much rather have him come to the point so I may reject his suit and be done with the business. He’s making a cake of himself.’
Emerald squeezed her friend’s arm but made no reply.
‘Curious you, as of yet, have made no mention of Lord Avon’s return. Charles mentioned seeing him at the assembly.’
‘Yes, your brother had the dubious pleasure of his company before our dance.’
‘Is his lordship as handsome as he ever was?’ The tail of her question pitched up as Miss Lyon’s breath caught.
‘If you find dereliction of duty attractive.’
Miss Lyon let out a bark of laughter. ‘I understand your frustration with the man. I do, truly, as much as I am able. But even you cannot deny what’s so obvious.’ Miss Lyon laughed again, smaller, self-effacing, and shook her head. ‘You know, I still recall the day I first met him. I must’ve been seventeen. It was at one of my first assemblies with Aunt Margaret. Up until then I’d only ever heard of him. He’d become rather mythical, always away at school or in London or wherever else it is men of his station go. When he asked me to dance, I almost swooned.’
There should have been no surprise in Miss Lyon dancing with Beau; the young lady was several years older than Emerald and therefore had been out much longer, but curiosity welled within her nonetheless, and she hoped her friend would say more as she would not ask the questions multiplying rapidly in her brain.
‘Of course, he was not interested in me, no matter how much I may have wished it. One only has to pick up a paper, or so it was before he went abroad, to see him linked to some fair-haired angelic beauty. Besides, I was hardly out of the schoolroom and couldn’t string two coherent thoughts together as we danced. Poor man. He was quite patient and kind when I think on it.’
Emerald felt her eyebrows rise of their own accord and consciously lowered them before her friend noticed. In the distance, two riders approached.
‘My brother and Mr Babin, I think. They rode out earlier to do who knows what.’
‘You say so even knowing your brother is about as capable of causing mischief as a new kitten.’
‘He’ll be flattered to hear you say so,’ replied Miss Lyon with a grin.
Mr Lyon’s kindness to Emerald bordered on interest, and even on occasion flirtation, but at five-and-twenty he was young yet and showed no interest in settling down. Perhaps because he would inherit his aunt’s estate, and the hardy woman showed no signs of springing from her mortal coil.
‘What think you of Mr Babin?’ Emerald asked.
Her friend made a little humming noise. ‘Even features, well-distributed proportions. I prefer light eyes and honey-coloured hair, which Mr Babin displays to fine advantage. The friendship between him and Charles is quite new, and I can’t say he has ever paid us much attention the many winters or summers before when we’ve visited this part of the country. You know him better.’
She didn’t. Emerald knew a little of the family as they resided in a neighbouring county. The mother was widowed, there were two girls married off in the last few years, and Mr Babin, when she saw him at the rare assembly he attended, was polite but had never asked her to dance.
The riders were almost upon them and slowed their horses as they approached.
‘A lucky thing for us to come upon such fine company. Never say we are trespassing on a cosy tête-à-tête and must take ourselves away forthwith,’ Mr Lyon called out.
His sister replied, ‘We were just discussing the assembly last night and everything I missed.’
‘Then we have no reason to apologise for our interruption, I hope,’ said Mr Babin, with unwarranted solemnity. His serious countenance appeared almost grim when contrasted to Mr Lyon’s happy, open one. There was nothing wanting in his face or figure, but his complexion was as pale as the first flakes of fresh snowfall, and Emerald found herself wondering if he spent much of his time sequestered indoors.
Miss Lyon waved away the gallantry. ‘Not at all. In fact, you’ve rescued me from making any more embarrassing confessions about my girlhood tendres.’
‘And you, Miss Doubleday? Have you escaped sharing such mortifying intelligence, or do we arrive just in time?’ teased Mr Lyon as he wiggled his eyebrows in her direction.
Emerald dipped her head on a light laugh to give the pretence she enjoyed the joke as much as they did, but there wasn’t a soul who walked the earth in whom she’d confide the extent of her youthful admiration of Beau during his last visit at Oakmoss. When she first was sent to live with the Calverleighs, she’d been too young still to see him as more than some man, the kind of man she’d known mamas everywhere wished their daughters to marry, but with enough years between them that his getting married and hers had seemed to be two events which could not possibly take place even in the same decade.
But then he’d come and gone, come and gone, and in the meantime, Emerald had shed her girlhood. The last time he’d returned home before his father died was the first time Emerald had ever experienced the jolt of attraction—instant, sweeping, painful even. He’d been exquisite to look upon, yes, but confident, composed, like a man who said what he meant and kept the promises he made. He had also been cold, aloof, and dismissive, and if he looked in Emerald’s direction, it was only to see something beyond her. What a fool she had been at sixteen, to think herself so grown, to think a man like him would pay her any special attention. What a bigger fool she was now to still wish it.
‘Won’t you join us?’ asked Esther while Emerald continued to chew on her thoughts.
Mr Babin hesitated. ‘You are certain we are not treading upon your confidences or interrupting some errand of great importance?’
‘Not at all. There is no destination in mind, merely the desire to catch what we can of winter’s sunshine and to do so in good company,’ replied Emerald.
As the men dismounted from their horses, Mr Babin said, ‘How flattered I am to be included.’
There was no pretence in his manner, maybe a little shyness, Emerald thought, as she studied the man and the countenance her friend found so pleasing. He was fine looking, a touch shorter than herself, and dressed well without showing an inclination to dandyism. Without any wish to, she pictured Beau and the intricate embroidery of his waistcoats, the careful and plentiful knots of his cravat, the fine tailoring of every outfit. She might wish to label him a dandy, and she supposed to some extent he was. Still, Emerald couldn’t think of his raiment as anything other than exquisite. He was almost more handsome than any gentleman had the right to be. Why shouldn’t he wear the clothing to match?
The conversation had continued to ebb and flow around her. Mr Lyon shared some anecdotes from the assembly, as Mr Babin also had not been in attendance.
‘The more time I spend out, the more I prefer country assemblies to engagements of a similar nature in town,’ said Esther. ‘It puts me at ease to feel as though I know many of the people present and to not always be concerned some bit of gossip will get away if I miss a step or say the wrong thing. But alas, in her last letter, Mama wrote to request our presence in London before the first of February. ’Tis very likely the next assembly will be our last, depending on how fair the weather remains and when we depart. Will you come to London for the season, Em?’
Emerald had never been to London, despite all the promises made to her. First by her father when he’d tried to ease her pain at being sent away: Lord Avon will give you a season, likely as many as you wish for, the finest dresses, perhaps even a pretty trinket or two. Then by Lord Avon himself. But timing proved a troublesome thing. She had been too young to come out when Beau’s father was still alive, and after he passed, she hadn’t felt right leaving the estate for such a protracted period of time—nor had the dowager offered, and Emerald couldn’t bring herself to make the request, although she was certain it would be granted.
She looked ahead rather than at anyone in particular when she finally answered her friend. ‘The thought had not crossed my mind.’ It was an honest response and the best she could give without revealing too much.
‘It occurred to me perhaps with his lordship home…’ Miss Lyon let her thought trail off.
Nearly everyone knew the responsibilities of managing Oakmoss had fallen to Emerald with Beau far from home, but still people were reluctant to say so outright, to indict the lord of the land, no matter how well deserved. She swallowed her bitterness. Her feelings were complicated, and although she was willing to censure him, to do so in a public way also felt like censuring the family, the dowager, and she could never, would never.
Mr Lyon broke the silence Emerald wasn’t sure how to fill. ‘How about you, Babin? I don’t recall meeting you in town years past. Do you not often visit the metropolis?’
‘I do, although my time there has been inconsistent and at the whim of my work here. I went when each of my sisters made her come-out. The younger chose not to marry her first season, and for the following two years we went to Bath. Like Miss Lyon, she prefers closer company. Bath gave her a change of scenery from her home county and the company of some cousins to lean on.’
Emerald said the first thing that came to her mind. ‘You sound like a fine brother, Mr Babin.’
‘Thank you, but I was only doing my duty by them.’
She couldn’t figure out the look he pinned on her when he spoke, but she didn’t think his choice of words an accident and felt the heat of a faint flush creep up her neck.
‘If only my own sister would take a note from yours,’ Mr Lyon said with a teasing smile while dodging a playful swat from Esther.
‘Miss Doubleday,’ Mr Babin began, turning to face her and almost entirely excluding the Lyon siblings from the conversation. ‘I had the pleasure of meeting your guardian in Broadstairs yesterday.’
‘Whatever was he doing there?’ she blurted out before thinking the better of it, but she couldn’t fathom what would take him to the smaller village when Ramsgate was closer to the estate.
‘I couldn’t say. It’s frequented by smugglers, but I daresay his lordship would never be involved in something so lawless as that,’ he replied with a chuckle, and Emerald found herself offering a weak smile in return. ‘The bookshop is small, but the proprietor is an old friend of my father’s, and he often has unusual volumes in his possession. Perhaps that was the draw.’
‘Indeed. My guardian very much enjoys losing himself in a good book.’ Emerald didn’t know if such a statement was true, but she said it with quiet confidence, hoping to cover the real doubt and confusion she felt.
‘Oh! Look at the crocus!’ exclaimed Miss Lyon, her attention on the bright purple blooms set a few feet back from the road; the radiant buds against the feathery green grass a tease of spring still months away. ‘I wish to pick some for pressing, but everyone need not wait for me.’
‘We certainly cannot allow you to remain back by yourself,’ replied Mr Babin gallantly.
‘Perhaps you will lend me the use of your hands then, sir?’
Mr Babin laughed and acquiesced with a courtly bow.
‘Come, the sun is warm, but we don’t want to linger in the cool air if we don’t have to,’ said Mr Lyon, taking Emerald’s hand and looping it through his arm as he steered her down the lane. Behind them, the other two promised to catch up in only a minute or two.
‘Truthfully, I’m glad for this moment alone. I do not wish to overstep my bounds, but it did not appear to me you were entirely pleased with Lord Avon at the assembly. If you are unhappy, if he has made you so, I hope you know I remain a steadfast friend in your corner.’
Emerald wondered at his speech and knew not what to make of it. The three of them—Mr Lyon, his sister, and herself—had become fast friends when first introduced six or seven years ago. Before Emerald was out, she was allowed to visit with the pair, shop with Esther, and ramble about the countryside. Despite his mild flirtation, Mr Lyon had never declared himself to her, nor did she wish him to. If he had, she wouldn’t have known how to respond. They weren’t in love with one another, and love in a marriage was something Emerald was desperate for. The sentiment had been missing between her father and stepmother, and she hadn’t known it was something she could wish for, hope for, until she came to live with the Calverleighs. They had more of everything, including affection between husband and wife, parents and children, and between the children themselves. Emerald craved that feeling—to love and be loved without conditions, without obligation.
Some reply was necessary, and Emerald was careful in her answer. ‘Thank you, sir. Your friendship has always been a source of pleasure and comfort, but you need not worry. There is, naturally, a period of adjustment. He’s been home hardly a sennight. Already we rub along better than before.’ Not quite a lie. They were speaking at least, even if their exchanges were fierce, unrestrained, and at fault for the violent storm of want and rage thrashing within her. ‘In very little time, he and I will be as easy between ourselves as he and Louisa, as brother and sister.’ A definite lie. The words felt funny in her mouth. She could live a dozen more years in his house. It mattered not. There was no world in which she could imagine looking at Beauden Calverleigh as a brother.