Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
“I’m terrified, My Lady. I am absolutely terrified,” Peggy said, her voice shaking harder than the carriage as it rattled over the uneven stones of the path. “Great Heavens, we must turn back now before it is too late. I cannot allow you to do this. It’s madness, I tell you! Total madness!”
“Would you calm yourself, Peggy!” Emily Pierce hushed Peggy, her maid. “You are being utterly ridiculous. Am I dying?”
“Not yet,” Peggy said darkly.
“Am I bleeding?”
“No, My Lady.”
“Is the carriage on fire?”
Peggy looked around, as though genuinely checking. “No.”
“Then I fail to see...” Emily said, smoothing her skirts. “...what the emergency is.”
“I should not have told you,” Peggy said, fiddling with her hands in her lap. “I blame my big mouth. I should not have told you. The housekeeper always said that my big mouth would get me in trouble, and now I believe her. I have gotten my lady in trouble. Oh, great heavens. Forgive me.”
“Peggy.”
“I am so sorry, My Lady.”
“Peggy.”
“Truly, deeply sorry —”
“Peggy, if you apologize one more time, I shall be forced to leave you on the side of this road with nothing but your big mouth for company!” Emily rapped.
“Stop overreacting. You did not get me in trouble. We haven’t even done anything yet.
You gave me information, which is what you always do, and I made a decision with it, which is what I always do.
That is how we work. That is how we have always worked. ”
Peggy did not look remotely comforted by this.
Emily studied her for a moment and shook her head, amused.
Peggy had been with her since they were girls, since the days when Emily was ten years old, small and very serious.
Peggy had been thirteen, round-cheeked and always smiling, already knowing everything about everyone in the household before the week was out.
They had not been assigned to each other so much as they had simply gravitated together, the way certain people do.
Peggy knew her better than anyone alive.
That was the trouble. That was precisely why she was sitting there wringing her hands like the world was ending, because she knew Emily, and she knew that when Emily Pierce made up her mind about something, the decision had already been made and the conversation was largely ceremonial.
“May I speak freely, My Lady?” Peggy asked with widened eyes.
“When have you not, Peggy?” Emily asked and groaned. “Go on.”
“You might as well be walking into a lion’s den,” Peggy hissed, clutching her shawl.
“Not just any lion, His Grace, Duke of Carrowell! Do you have any idea what they say about him? The gossip in the servants’ hall is enough to turn milk sour.
They say he’s as arrogant as a peacock and twice as dangerous.
Lady Birks? She’s very clever! You can’t just..
. walk in there with that plan. It’s a horrible plan. ”
“It doesn’t matter,” Emily answered. “I just need to get on the list. That is all.”
“It is not just the list, My Lady,” Peggy whispered, her eyes wide as she gripped the leather strap of the window.
“It is him. His Grace. Or have you forgotten who we are talking about? The man has broken more hearts than the King has coins. People say that he is a rake of the first order, a man who treats a marriage proposal like a punchline to a very long, very expensive joke. They say he will never settle down. He will only dance around you until you are dizzy and then leave you for the next shiny thing that catches his eye.”
Emily said nothing.
“There has to be a better way to deal with this situation. Not this,” Peggy continued. “Lady Fentworth told Mrs. Alcott, who told the downstairs girl, who told me that he has not shown a single woman genuine interest in three Seasons. Not one.”
“Peggy —”
“They say he is not capable of love,” Peggy pressed on, because she was already going and stopping now would require more self-control than she possessed.
“Incapable of settling down. Committing to anyone. That is what they say. Lady Harcastle told someone at the modiste that he finds the whole institution of marriage deeply amusing, and he would rather laugh at it from the outside than —”
“Peggy.”
“He has never once, in all his years in society, courted a woman with any serious intention. Not one.”
“Are you done?” Emily asked firmly.
Emily knew that Peggy was not done. Not even slightly.
But she looked at Emily's face, at that particular expression she wore, the composed, decided, do-not-try-to-talk-me-out-of-this expression that Peggy had been on the receiving end of for years, and felt the argument leaving her like air from a punctured cushion.
“You cannot even stand him,” Peggy mumbled and crossed her arms defiantly.
Emily's jaw tightened, just barely. “No. I cannot.”
“You have never been able to stand him.”
“Also true.”
“Every time his name comes up, you get that look.”
“I do not get a look.”
Peggy gave her a long stare. “You get a look. You have always gotten a look. You roll your eyes, and your eyebrows tighten.”
The truth was, Emily had known Theodore Merrick for precisely long enough to know that she did not particularly want to know him any further.
They were acquainted. That was the word for it.
They were not friends, not enemies in any dramatic sense, simply two people who had ended up in the same rooms on enough occasions to have formed a very clear opinion of each other.
The rooms in question had almost always belonged to Alistair and Yvette Locke, the Duke and Duchess of Pembourne, who were dear friends of Emily's and who, for reasons she had never fully understood, seemed to find Theodore delightful company.
Emily did not find him delightful company.
She found him charming in the way that things which were not to be trusted were often charming.
He had a gift for it, an effortless, almost architectural gift.
The right word at the right moment, the perfectly timed smile, the way he could walk into a room and within ten minutes have the entire table laughing at something that was not even particularly funny.
He made everything look easy because to him, everything was easy, or at least he wanted everyone to believe it was, and that was precisely what bothered her about him.
Life was not easy. It was serious, demanding, and required one's full attention, and Theodore Merrick moved through it as though it were one long, leisurely amusement put on entirely for his benefit.
They had spoken, of course. One could not be in the same drawing room with him and avoid speaking to him, without it becoming an event in itself.
They had exchanged words at dinners, at gatherings, at the occasional afternoon the Pembourne's had arranged.
He had said things that made everyone else laugh, and Emily had smiled politely and thought privately that he was infuriating.
He had noticed her reserve and seemed to find it entertaining, which made it worse.
She could not tell, even now, whether he genuinely liked provoking her or whether she was simply one more person in a room full of people he was performing for.
Either way, she had decided that Theodore was a man she would simply never be close to. They would remain acquainted. Distantly. Politely... and that would be perfectly sufficient.
It had been her position as recently as that morning. But then Peggy had opened her big mouth, and Emily learned about Julia’s list.
She had made a decision as soon as she learned about it.
A decision that she was now sitting with in a moving carriage, telling herself was entirely rational, which it was.
It was completely rational. It was simply that the rational thing and the comfortable thing were not, in this particular instance, the same thing at all.
She needed a husband. She needed one with some urgency. She needed someone with some power. Someone whose name and title and presence in the world would be enough to make certain problems simply go away.
Theodore Merrick was, by every available measure, exactly that.
She had spent the better part of two years resolving to limit their acquaintance. She had, just yesterday, told herself she would be quite content never to sit across a dinner table from him again.
Yet here she was.
“He is playful about everything,” Emily said at last. “But I need a husband, Peggy. You know why. There’s a lot riding on this. I have to make haste. The sooner I marry, the better.”
“It’s just...” Peggy paused and sighed. “You have spoken about a love marriage so much that sometimes, I dream of it for you. I think it is still possible.”
“It is not.”
“Yes, it is, My Lady.”
“Peggy, there is no time —”
“You were the Diamond of the First Water during your debut two years ago,” Peggy said, with the conviction of someone presenting irrefutable evidence.
“The Diamond, My Lady. You are beautiful, elegant, kind, accomplished, well-read, and you play the pianoforte better than anyone I have ever heard in my life.”
“Peggy. Stop.” Emily swallowed. “My situation is dire. I need a husband as soon as possible. All of that is in the past. I do not think like that anymore. You know why I am doing this. You of all people…” Emily swallowed again. “You of all people…”
“I’m sorry, My Lady.” Peggy mellowed. “I know. I’m sorry. It is a good plan. It’ll work. You’ll get on Lady Birks’ list. There’s no way she would turn you away.”
Emily looked out of the window. The gates of the Faithcourt estate were closer now, the stone pillars just visible through the line of elm trees. She took in a ragged breath and shut her eyes, trying to calm herself.
In two and twenty years of life, this was undoubtedly the most dangerous gamble she was about to take. She had never done anything so reckless.
But then again, she had never been so desperate.