Chapter 24
Emerald fidgeted with her elbow-length white gloves.
‘Are you enjoying your first season, Miss Doubleday?’
She started at the sound of Beau’s voice, feeling breathless and a little lightheaded as he drew nearer. When the dowager had casually mentioned his presence in the house the day prior, Emerald had found herself only half paying attention to what happened around her as she waited to set eyes on him, needing to see his person for herself to believe the truth of his mother’s words. Had he come for her? Her conscience warned her to guard herself against such insidious thoughts, but the spinning of her pulse had its own story to tell.
‘Certainly,’ she replied, pretending all her attention was absorbed in trying to secure the button in the delicate keyhole on the inner wrist of her glove.
‘Allow me.’
Emerald thanked him, hoping she didn’t sound as flustered as she felt. She watched as he pulled his own gloves off and held them out to her. Instinctively she reached for them. Beau took her other hand, and rather than extending her arm towards him, he brought himself closer. Her heart jolted, and in an abstract way, as if the hand weren’t her own, she considered how very fine it looked in his. The bare tip of his thumb drew several caressing circles on the tender flesh of her wrist, sending a shock of awareness through her body.
‘I intended to follow you and my mother directly to town and was sorry to miss your first ball.’
Her heart quickened. ‘Oh? It’s no matter. I assure you our pleasure in the evening did not suffer.’
‘No?’ His gaze ensnared her.
She shifted under the disbelieving gleam of droll amusement in his eyes and turned towards a painting on the wall to hide her confusion.
He secured the wayward button in its loop and held her hand, inspecting the rest of the buttons. Emerald thought she felt his fingers graze the side of her own as he released her. Or maybe she only wished it was so. She swayed on her feet, dizzy from his proximity, and her chest rose rapidly with her quickening breaths. When Lady Avon came down the stairs, Emerald swallowed with relief.
Each in possession of one of Beau’s arms, the three of them walked into Almack’s at quarter to eleven. Their arrival set off a deafening furore as the assembled company released gasps of astonishment and cries of delight to see the earl returned. The crowd bobbed and swayed, consumed with excitement.
Emerald had heard on occasion discussions between Lord and Lady Avon regarding a good match for their son—the right match—and felt, at least philosophically, she understood what had been meant by that. What she learned as the crowd parted for them to take their place, with every pair of eyes turned in their direction, was that she knew nothing.
Oakmoss, and the villages and towns surrounding it, had been her whole world for almost nine years. The estate might have been Beau’s, but she saw his return from the perspective of one who belonged, observing an outsider attempting to make a place for himself where one no longer existed. London, however, appeared to be his to rule if he so wished. Mothers rushed to daughters. Young ladies who’d smiled at her before eyed her with critical stares and bent their heads together behind gloved hands. Gentlemen squared their shoulders and lifted their chins as Beau walked past.
Lady Avon released Beau’s arm to clasp the hands of an older woman approaching whose long plumes of ostrich feathers tickled the faces of everyone she passed.
Emerald spoke in a soft voice for his ears only. ‘When I suggested over dinner ages ago there was not a single ballroom in the capital in which you had failed to find contentment, I’d meant to provoke you. Had I any notion of how revered you are, I would’ve employed a better barb.’
‘Revered?’ he repeated with a low, rumbling chuckle.
The sound settled in her belly and warmed her like a hot brick.
‘You’ve been gone for years and still everyone here clamours for you.’
Beau turned to look at her, a playful smile lurking in his eyes. ‘You don’t.’ The musicians struck up the first notes of a quadrille. ‘I believe the pleasure of leading you out is mine.’
Emerald felt a little flustered at the idea of dancing her opening set at such a revered place with a man such as he. ‘How gallant you sound.’
‘Did you suspect my request for your firsts a jest?’
‘Wasn’t it?’ she asked, pleased with the indifference in her voice.
‘You know it was not.’
Her stomach swooped. ‘But you missed the Cawdry ball,’ she pressed, revisiting the topic despite being afraid his response would prove she was not so important to him as his request made her feel.
‘I did. I broke my word. The choice was met with agony. One day, when I can, I will tell you more, if you’d like, and you may weigh the worthiness of my excuse for yourself. In the meantime, would you rather I leave you with the wolves?’ he asked, glancing over his shoulder to the matrons flocking towards his mother.
‘It’s you they hunt, not me.’
‘You don’t see what I see, if that’s what you think.’
There was an unfamiliar light in his eyes when he spoke. Emerald, her mind whirling from their conversation, sought refuge by turning her attention to the bustle of people around them. He led her to the floor, with real or feigned blindness to the stares following them. Which it was, she couldn’t tell.
The dance began. His hand twined around hers, and excitement thrummed in her bones. He lifted their joined hands overhead and took a step towards her, coming so close the thin line of propriety disappeared between them. Beau’s leg brushed her dress. His boldness sent a tremor of wanting straight to her very core. An expressive glow lit his brilliant eyes from within, and despite a rush of pink to her cheeks, she couldn’t tear her gaze away.
When the dance forced her to turn from him, the smell of tobacco and oakmoss and spiced vanilla plucked her senses like a vibrant chord.
‘You dance with natural elegance, my charming ward.’
She eyed him with what she felt was open suspicion. ‘What is it you’re hoping to gain with such flattery, Lord Avon?’ The address felt awkward coming out of her mouth. She rarely called him by his title. She rarely called him anything at all. Years of distance between them prevented her from feeling comfortable calling him by his given name, but Lord Avon felt reserved for the one she’d known and loved and missed dearly. By his shuttered expression, she wondered if he felt the same.
Beau replied, his tone teasing, ‘Some conversation is expected when dancing.’
‘Conversation, not compliments. Such a thing is not in your nature.’
‘No one would accuse you of flattery.’
She expected a blast of cool air when she looked up at him, but his eyes shone bright like a full moon and held a gentle challenge. They were separated again, and Emerald was grateful the dance made it impossible for her to issue a response because she had none—rather, none she could share with him. She was too uncertain to admit, least of all in a crowded ballroom, how he figured in her mind as the most handsome man she’d ever seen or how drawn she was to his sharp mind and veiled strength.
For the remainder of the dance, they were quiet, and Emerald expected him to lead her back to the dowager at the end of their set. Instead he folded her hand over his arm and said, ‘Allow me to procure you a glass of lemonade.’
Emerald wasn’t thirsty and she didn’t much care for lemonade, but something was shifting between them, a change in the cosmos, his star and hers coming into alignment. The awareness of the change clung to her like the bodice of the blue dress she wore, the one with the ribbon matching his eyes.
‘Why did you do it? Run the estate?’ Beau tipped his head towards hers to keep the words between them.
The unusual hint of confusion in his voice caused her eyes to fly to his own. ‘Someone had to.’ It was a statement said without anger or accusation.
‘Sims has worked there nearly thirty years and is capable of managing, maintaining as it were, to say nothing of the house staff. You know as well as I do they could plod along if needs must. Much like you know that’s not what I was asking.’ His manner was mild, subdued almost. Emerald’s instinct to open for him rubbed against her desire to protect herself, even as a whisper in the back of her mind told her it was much too late.
There were only a few others in the room where refreshments were being served, and Beau offered her a glass of ratafia while taking a cup of orgeat for himself. She gave him a sidelong glance.
‘I’ve never seen you drink lemonade. Ratafia, on the other hand…’ His sentence trailed off, and he steered them to an attached withdrawing room, where they sat knee to knee on a chaise longue, the door open.
Emerald took several sips of the drink, her mind whirling, her heart striking hard against the bone cage containing it, knowing she was on the verge of revealing one of her greatest fears to a man she only half knew.
‘When one has been abandoned once,’ she began, her eyes downcast and focused on the ruby red liquid in her cup, ‘one fears it happening again. But if one makes herself invaluable to the place and the people…’ She couldn’t bring herself to meet his gaze, but his gloved finger tilted her chin up, not giving her a choice. The mix of pain and understanding writ clear across his face almost broke her, and she shook her head to clear her eyes of the tears forming. ‘Why did you stay away?’
‘I’ve no such worthy answer. Work took me away, but guilt kept me from returning.’
She didn’t understand and said so.
‘Before I left the last time, we’d had a ferocious row, my father and me. He felt my work posed too great a risk to my life and the Calverleigh name. I felt he didn’t—wouldn’t—understand why I desired to feel useful in my own way, to establish an identity not directly linked to his own. Although I wrote, I never acquiesced to his wish for reconciliation. Towards the end, he mentioned something of great import and expressed a wish to speak to me. He asked me, very directly, to return home at the soonest possible moment. I ignored that request, too, and then it was too late. The next letter I received was yours.’
Of all the emotions Emerald anticipated feeling, the sharp sting of empathy wasn’t one of them. At least she had been able to say goodbye to her own papa. Without thinking, she reached out and gripped his hand with her own. His fingers pressed into her palm, and he stared at their white gloves layered over one another until she shifted on the chaise. He set his cup on a side table near at hand before taking the one she held and doing the same. The movements happened slowly, like the two of them were underwater, pushing through imperceptible resistance. Beau took her free hand in his, giving a little squeeze as he did so.
‘Miss Doubleday. Emerald.’
She was drifting. Music and chatter from the other room faded away. If there were still people in the tea room, Emerald couldn’t see them. The feel of his hands holding hers, the reverent way he spoke her name, carried her away to a time and place where nothing existed but them.
‘I am so sorry—for leaving you to shoulder my responsibility, for making you feel there was no other choice, for not thanking you or appreciating you as you richly deserve. I cannot make amends, but I can make a promise.’
Emerald listened first with bewilderment and then with her mind reeling. Her stomach fluttered like a murder of crows took flight, and a knot of hope lodged in her throat.
‘I promise to be present, to do better.’
Emerald deflated. She hadn’t really expected a declaration, had she? But his phrasing— She cut the thought short, relegating it to the back of her mind with all the others till she could pick it apart in the privacy of her own room. Her face was upturned, studying his, and whether it was his hands pulling her forward or her leaning in of her own accord, she didn’t know, but she came so near she could see his entire history in his eyes. He dipped his head, bringing his lips so close to hers they ached. Her eyes fluttered closed, every thought vanished, but the kiss she waited for never came. She felt his heat drift away from her and opened her eyes, mortification blossoming in two red spots on her cheeks.
It did not surprise her when he released her hands, but her mouth dropped open when he removed his gloves and began to undo the button at her wrist he had secured earlier. When that sensitive spot of flesh was once more exposed, he traced along her veins with the soft pad of his thumb before bending down and touching his lips to it in a delicate kiss that sent shivers over every inch of her body. In silence, he buttoned her glove once more, returned his to his hands, and stood, saying, ‘It’s long past time I returned you to my mother.’
Emerald couldn’t sort out what had just happened, if the kiss to her wrist had been his way of easing her embarrassment, and whether such a thing was worse than suffering the humiliation of not being kissed at all.
He led her back to the dowager as some other gentleman came to request her next. Beau relinquished her hand, his inscrutable expression issuing the final, devastating blow in a series of events that left Emerald bewildered.
Her new partner’s easy conversation was no match for her wayward thoughts or her defiant gaze, which wandered more than it had any right to do to where Beau stood until he disappeared from her sight altogether.
Emerald expected to see him once more in the carriage on the ride home and prepared herself for awkwardness between them, but when she and the dowager stepped outside, she was informed he had departed some time earlier.
Nothing that had happened during the course of the evening could escape scrutiny, and all Emerald had to decide was whether she preferred starting at the beginning or the end. When she settled into bed, she determined to examine every interaction from the moment he found her fiddling with her glove, but as she set forth to do that, her mind raced to their moment in the withdrawing room, then back to their dance, then forward to him leaving Almack’s entirely. Instead of taking any kind of logical approach and sewing up the scenes and the feelings each engendered into anything remotely resembling sense, Emerald drifted off just as the morning sun pushed out the dark with only two things clear in her mind: She had hoped he would kiss her; he had walked away instead of doing so.