Chapter 16
With a furrowed brow, Emerald looked at her open palm as if a seedling might sprout from its centre, trying to understand what had captivated Beau. She turned to look after him, her mouth opening in question, but he had already disappeared down the long hall, leaving her to her confusion and irritation.
Pacing the room, she told herself that the root of her concern was self-serving. It wasn’t wrong to tell him her life would be uprooted should he be so stupid as to get himself killed, but Emerald was struggling against the niggling feeling underneath—the feeling that if he should cease to exist, somehow she would too. Inhaling as deep a breath as she could manage, she held it a moment, then exhaled slowly and gave her head a little shake.
Before retreating to her rooms, she peered into the corridor, looking in both directions, not that she really thought Beau lingered anywhere near.
When he made no appearance at dinner or in the drawing room after, Emerald had the unwelcome suspicion she wouldn’t find him anywhere on the grounds of the estate had she the desire to go looking. It was futile to put that thought from her mind as she stared out her bedroom window into the dark night, intrigue and concern making sleep impossible. Her fingers fidgeted with the fabric pooled in her lap. Outside, the faint, faraway hoot of an owl reached Emerald’s ears, her senses heightened while she waited for some sign of his return.
She rolled her neck to release the tension then tipped her forehead into the cool pane of glass. A wave of grief and longing for the previous Lord Avon swept over her—for someone she could turn to, someone whose counsel and guidance she could depend on. After her father died, Lord Avon had been the one to pull her from her sadness, one ride at a time. Those were the moments she’d felt listened to, felt like someone cared about what mattered to her, her wants and dreams. He had promised her a season, promised to find a man worthy of her. She’d wished for nothing more than a chance to find a husband she could love and who would love her in return, a home of her own, children whose joy and laughter would ring through the halls. All she hoped for now was some measure of control over her future.
The following morning, Beau was not down at breakfast, nor was he in the study when she stepped in to balance the accounts, and she debated how long she would wait until she asked after him. Distraction came in the welcome form of a summons to the dowager’s sitting room, but still Emerald found herself searching the great expanse of green for a moving speck of black.
‘Em? Emerald, dear?’
Emerald jerked her head from the window of Lady Avon’s room. ‘Yes, ma’am?’
‘I asked if you prefer the strand of pearls and diamonds over the diamonds on their own. Perhaps we ought to take both—diamonds are a must for your first ball in London,’ the dowager said, holding up a delicate necklace of bevelled diamonds set in gold that increased in size as they drew nearer the large centre stone.
There were cases upon cases of jewels set out on the dressing table. Emerald couldn’t recall her ladyship wearing much jewellery at all, and her eyes had nearly doubled in size when she and Louisa first entered the room. The young girl who still lingered somewhere in Emerald was in awe of it all.
‘Are emeralds too on the nose?’ Louisa asked, lifting a box containing a diamond and emerald choker with matching earrings and a stack of bracelets.
‘Not at all, only not quite fitting for a girl in her first season.’
Emerald smiled and shook her head. ‘I am hardly that.’
‘In London, that’s exactly what you will be, and we cannot afford a misstep.’
It was a polite way of saying no one could be exactly sure how the ton would receive Emerald.
‘Do not think me in the frets, dear, only conscious of what it means to be a young lady embarking on her first season. You will soon discover it’s not at all uncommon to have as many foes as friends, only you must treat them all equally. Or you must when you are a green girl. Although years have passed since my last stay in town, I am far from friendless, you know.’
Emerald stifled the laugh bubbling up in her and covered it with a little cough. Between both sides of the family, the Calverleighs were related to a half dozen peers and however many more families of ancient lineage. Before Lord Avon’s passing, he and her ladyship had removed to town for the season every year, and Lady Avon’s elderly aunt had been brought to Oakmoss to stay with Emerald and Louisa while they continued their studies.
Her ladyship would send letters describing all the fashion and balls and fêtes. The theatre and opera and routs. Little more than a girl at the time, Emerald would lay awake at night, imagining herself shimmering under some excessively large chandelier, a handsome suitor leading her to the floor. She would remember the times as a child when she would drape herself in sheets, pretending they were wildly elegant gowns, and twirl about the drawing room while her father played the piano.
A dreamy sigh broke into Emerald’s reminiscences.
‘I can’t wait for next year,’ said Louisa, a faraway look in her eyes.
Emerald smiled. ‘Is another year long enough for you to stop tripping over your own feet?’
‘I’ll have you know I’ve made excellent progress in the last weeks,’ the younger girl said, with her nose in the air and feigned accents of superciliousness before giggling. ‘By next year, I’ll be as fine a dancer as you.’
‘Better, if I dared to make a wager.’
‘You can’t possibly think so!’
The dowager, still mulling over the options in front of her, interjected as a mother was wont to do. ‘You both dance beautifully.’
Emerald and Louisa shared an amused glance.
‘Your dance card here is always full,’ the younger girl continued.
On a laugh, Emerald responded, ‘You can’t possibly know such a thing.’
‘I do. Because I always demand you tell me everything after. So unless you’ve been lying to me for years, from the number of dances you participate in, I can surmise your dance card is always full. And from such a detail, I can glean that you must be a very elegant dancer. Of course, I’ve seen you here at home myself, but ’tis not the same as a ball or assembly—and because I’ve two working eyes in my head, I’m certain of your loveliness. We can all agree sharing a dance is often the first step towards sharing a life, and if you liked a gentleman here, you wouldn’t be going to London.’
‘Lou!’ Emerald couldn’t hold back her laugh.
‘What I’m saying is you’ll have more, and better, prospects in London, and I very much hope you find a gentleman to your taste. You have such a great capacity to love and nowhere for it to go.’
Emerald was touched, and a little embarrassed too. ‘I’ve you and your mama.’
‘But your heart can accommodate so much more.’
In her mind, an image of her younger half-sisters formed. Emerald wondered what they looked like now and if they even remembered her. She didn’t miss Whichwood or the friends she’d had as a child or the winding paths she used to walk—that life had long felt as though it had been lived by someone else. But she couldn’t think of her sisters without a touch of sadness.
‘Goodness, you’re making me feel quite maudlin.’
‘I’ve just the thing for that,’ Louisa replied, walking to the dressing table and returning with a tiara. She secured it to Emerald’s head, stepped back, and studied her work with a lip caught between her teeth. ‘Is there such a thing as too many diamonds? Let us find out.’ Lou layered as much of her mother’s jewellery as she could on Emerald—stacks of bangles, brooches sagging the satin of her dress, enough necklaces to weigh down Emerald’s tense shoulders—and continued until they were laughing so hard the sparkling headpiece precariously topped on her head fell with a thud to the thick carpet.
Hours later at dinner, when the first course was served and there was still no sign of Beau, Emerald felt herself fraying at the edges, concern and anger peeling away her hard-earned and fire-forged layers. Under the table, her legs bounced, and she struggled to keep her composure as the dowager waxed poetic about her own first season.
‘Brother!’
When Louisa cried out, Emerald resisted the impulse to jerk her head towards the door. Instead, she set her spoon next to her bowl, swallowed the lump in her throat, and willed her face into an inscrutable expression before looking in his direction.
‘My apologies. Business kept me longer than anticipated.’ He went to kiss his mother’s cheek before taking his seat, and Emerald watched the consternation on that woman’s face melt with the gesture.
‘We were just discussing our plans for London,’ said Louisa, with innocent enthusiasm reserved for the young.
Beau looked to his sister, but his eyes quickly flicked over to Emerald. ‘What plans are these?’
‘Mama is taking us down for the season. I am not out yet, of course, but Emerald is and has never had a season in town, which seems a great shame. The assemblies and dinners we have here can’t compare. Not that I’d know, but it seems an obvious statement.’
‘I see.’
‘You’re displeased.’ His sister frowned, and Emerald wondered how his opinion could still matter so much to her.
‘Perhaps he’s worried that our presence will somehow impinge upon his own pleasure. By all accounts, there’s not a single ballroom in the capital in which you have failed to find contentment at some point or other, if the papers are to be believed. Although perhaps you’ve forgotten the steps in the last five years.’ Emerald addressed him with such airy accents someone unfamiliar with her might easily overlook the barb. Or maybe it was more an indictment.
It had been her wish to provoke him, a little form of punishment for the worry he unknowingly caused her, but his response was a languid blink, a long pause, and finally, ‘Are you so surprised to discover I am fond of dancing? Do you feel such pleasure is reserved for the fairer sex?’
‘Beau is a wonderful dancer. Do you remember,’ Louisa said, a wistful smile softening her countenance, ‘when I was very little and you would let me stand on your feet and called it dancing? Oh, how you would twirl me around the blue drawing room.’
‘Because you said it made you feel as if you were dancing among the clouds and stars and the sun in the sky. And only until Father came round. Then it was on his feet you wished to dance.’
Emerald could very well imagine a young Louisa saying such things. The blue drawing room was one of the most elegant on the ground floor, papered in pale shades that appeared to shimmer when the light streamed in through the long windows. The drapes were the colour of the sky on a moonlit night, and every piece of furniture was cream, cerulean, or aquamarine. When she glanced over, both brother and sister seemed adrift in the past, and Emerald suddenly felt like an intruder in a moment, a memory, a place that could never belong to her.
‘You’re for the marriage mart then, Miss Doubleday?’
The dowager sighed. ‘Beauden, really, she’s not a piece of cattle going to auction.’
‘No doubt he’d prefer I was.’ Emerald made the comment into her spoonful of soup. The subject of the marriage mart, however, had animated Lady Avon, who began to speculate, more to herself than anyone else present, as to which eligible gentlemen would be in town. Her chatter prevented her from hearing Emerald, but Louisa snorted into her wineglass. When Emerald peeped at Beau out of the corner of her eye, he was stern-faced and had paused in chewing the food held in his mouth. She swallowed her own soup with a little smile lingering at the corner of her mouth, but her victory was not to last.
Since he was the only gentleman present, they never separated after dinner. He used the opportunity to draw her apart from his mother and sister, keeping Emerald back in the hall as the other two women made their way to the drawing room.
‘I was surprised to learn you consented to a season.’
The rich timbre of his calm voice at her side filled her with a strange inner awareness she wished to ignore, and so she said matter-of-factly, ‘Because no man wants a penniless wife with no connections?’
‘Because I thought you content to keep busy here, with me,’ he replied, undaunted by her provocative words.
‘If I remain, when you marry one day, I will find myself relegated to the dower house with your mother, where I’ll fade into spinsterhood and obscurity after having given the best years of my life to managing an estate to which I’ve no claim. As pleasurable as such a life sounds, I’d rather take my chances in town.’
‘You are quite serious then about making a match while in London?’ he asked in his usual cool tone, but Emerald thought for one quick moment there was a glint of displeasure in his eyes.
‘Will you forbid it?’
‘The trip or your marriage?’
‘Either. Both.’
‘The trip? No.’
Emerald curled her fingers into her palms until the nails threatened to cut the skin. ‘Would you prefer I remained and waited for Mr Lyon or Mr Babin to make me an offer?’ She had the satisfaction of seeing his countenance grow taut and grim.
‘Are you in anticipation of such?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘My father desired you to find a worthy match. You may not see it as such, but I will do my best to act in accordance with his wishes, even if we are not always in agreement on the methods.’
She scoffed, and it sounded like a boot crunching gravel. ‘Your father…’
‘Has his spirit offended you?’
Emerald’s lips parted, and she looked around as if the words she wished to speak had fallen out one at a time and she needed to gather them all up in order to form a sentence.
‘’Tis nothing,’ she finally said, her whole body heaving with effort as it struggled to hold everything in. She turned to walk away, but his hand on her arm prevented her. With little effort he halted her steps and turned her body. She was facing him once more, but so close the silence could hardly fit itself between them. Emerald licked her suddenly dry lips and watched him watch her. His eyes dropped to her mouth.
‘Tell me.’ It wasn’t a question. It was a demand.
She shook her head as the breath in her chest hitched.
‘Miss Doubleday.’
Emerald tried to control her voice as she spoke, but it cracked nonetheless. ‘Whatever faults you felt your father had, real or imagined, he was kind, compassionate. Few men in his position would have taken on a girl like me of no relation. It was a testament to his goodness, his integrity, the loyalty he felt to the friendship shared between him and my father. To know that one is seen, valued, where there is the least expectation of such is a great gift. You’—he flinched at her emphasis—‘show up with expectation but without word or explanation, and tell me after all the years I’ve given to you, you might deny me the one thing I want. The one thing I have some little control over.’ Her body tremored as she released the words.
‘What is it you want?’
Again, she shook her head, feeling foolish for letting the conversation get as far as it already had.
‘Please?’
Never, not in this lifetime or the next, had she thought the man in front of her would ever use that word. She brought her eyes to meet his, hoping the unshed tears remained so. For once, his expression was open, his gaze not cold but sincere. He reached out a hand, as if he might take her own in his. He let it drop back by his side, and she felt the emptiness in her own. Still, she could not voice her most private wishes, not aloud and not to him with so many years of acrimony between them. Even as she realised what a thin line separated love and loathing, his earlier words ringing in her ear: We are capable of feeling both at once and in equal measure.