Chapter 3 #2
A short silence fell between them. More silence of two people who had just exchanged several blows in quick succession and were taking a moment to assess the damage.
Julia had stopped pretending to be doing anything other than watching them. She stood with her hands clasped and her head tilted slightly, the expression on her face somewhere between fascination and barely suppressed delight.
“I said confidence was an admirable quality,” Emily continued, turning to Julia with a gracious smile, as though the last two minutes had been perfectly ordinary dinner party conversation. “In moderation. His Grace simply has rather a generous supply of it.”
“She means I’m insufferable,” Theodore told his godmother.
“I said admirable, Your Grace.”
“You meant insufferable.”
“I find...” Emily said serenely. “...that the two are not always mutually exclusive.”
Julia looked at her godson. Then at Emily. Then back to her godson. “Interesting,” she said with a cunning smile as she walked away.
The moment the distance between them and his godmother was sufficient, Emily’s serenity vanished like a candle blown out in a gale.
She stepped forward, deliberately cutting off Theodore’s path to the dining room.
She moved so quickly he was forced to halt or collide with her, and for a second, the air between them was tight enough to snap.
“Do not ruin this for me, Your Grace,” she rasped. Her voice was no longer a melodic lilt; it was a low, jagged warning that vibrated with raw desperation she had been stifling all morning.
Theodore stilled. He looked down at her, and his expression shifted.
The easy amusement did not entirely leave his face, but it shifted, rearranging itself into something considerably more attentive.
His head tilted, just slightly, as if she had caught his genuine interest, and for a moment, he simply looked at her.
“There she is,” he said softly. “There is the Emily Pierce that I know.”
The tone of his voice was a low, intimate vibration that felt like a physical touch against her skin. Emily’s breath caught. The heat in his gaze did something to her, a sudden, dizzying spark of recognition that she did not expect.
“You are hiding something, Lady Emily,” he said in the same tone.
Before she could find her tongue to deliver the scathing retort burning in her throat, a hand landed on Theodore’s shoulder.
“Your Grace! Just the man I was looking for,” Lord Halloway boomed, pulling the Duke’s attention toward a group of gentlemen near the door.
Theodore didn't look away immediately. He held Emily’s gaze for a heartbeat longer before he smoothed his features and allowed himself to be led away.
Emily stood alone in the center of the foyer, her hand instinctively reaching for the cool marble of a nearby pedestal to steady herself.
Her heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
She took a slow, trembling breath, smoothing the silk of her skirts with hands that wouldn't quite stop shaking.
She could only hope that Julia had interpreted their little spat as the spirited rapport she seemed to crave, rather than the genuine animosity it was.
If Julia sensed the true depth of the friction between them, she might rethink Emily's place on the list, and Emily could not afford to lose her seat at this table.
Not when the cost of failing was so high.
“She is rather charming, is she not?”
Theodore did not immediately look up from his glass. He took a small sip, let the comment settle, and then turned to find his godmother at his elbow.
“Who?” he said.
Julia gave him a look that communicated, very efficiently, that she had not lived fifty years and raised him to fall for that particular deflection. “You know who.”
Theodore looked across the room.
Emily Pierce was standing with Lord and Lady Fentworth, a small glass of ratafia in her hand, laughing at something Lady Fentworth had said.
It was a good laugh. Genuine, unguarded.
It was a laugh she did not produce when she was looking in his direction.
She held herself the way she always did, straight-backed, composed, every inch the diamond they had apparently called her at her debut.
He had met her for the first time through Alistair, his good friend, and spent the better part of that evening waiting for her to be charmed by him, as every other lady in the room had been.
She had compared him to a lapdog instead.
He had found that interesting, in the way unexpected things are.
Most women did not do that. Most women laughed at his jests, touched his arm, and told him he was frightfully clever.
Emily Pierce had looked at him with those steady brown eyes of hers, that constellation of freckles across her nose that made her look deceptively unassuming, and said exactly what she thought, which was that he was insufferable.
He had not quite known what to do with her after that.
The trouble with Emily Pierce, he had decided over several subsequent encounters, was that she was too certain of everything.
Too composed, too measured, too relentlessly proper.
She moved through the world as though she had read the rules cover to cover, memorized them, and then built her entire personality on top of them.
It was exhausting to watch. More than that, it was suspicious. Nobody was actually like that. Nobody was that composed all the way through without something underneath holding it all in place, and whatever that something was, Emily Pierce had no intention of letting anyone near it.
He found that considerably more interesting than he wanted to.
“Charming,” he said, returning to Julia's question. “Is that the word?”
“It is the word I used, yes.”
“Mm.” He took another sip. “She is very proper.”
“She is very accomplished.”
“She is very correct about everything.”
“Theo.”
“She makes me feel like I am being marked on my behavior,” he said. “Like there is a ledger somewhere and she is keeping it.”
Julia looked at him with fond exasperation. “Not every woman who fails to find you immediately irresistible is keeping a ledger, darling.”
“She does not find me irresistible either,” Theodore said. “She finds me irritating. There is a distinction.”
Julia was quiet for a moment. Across the room, the musicians were setting up in the far corner, and the low, anticipatory murmur of a gathering about to become a dancing occasion moved through the guests like a gentle current.
“Dance with her,” Julia said.
Theodore looked at his godmother.
“The musicians are about to play,” she continued. “She is without a partner. You are without a partner. It would be the natural thing. I want you to dance with her. I think you both would make a good match.”
“Why?” He frowned.
“Why what?”
“Why would you think something so absurd?”
“What is absurd about it?” Julia questioned. “She is the second daughter of an Earl; she is gorgeous, disciplined, impeccably mannered, and from everything I have seen of her, she has more grace and good sense than half of the ladies on my list.” She paused. “What exactly is your objection?”
Theodore looked at Emily. “She is too proper.”
“Too proper?” Julia repeated.
“Rigidly so.”
“You are describing virtues, Your Grace.”
“I am describing a woman who has never once in her life done anything that was not correct,” he said.
“Everything with her is black and white. Every response precisely what the situation calls for and nothing more.” He gestured vaguely.
“There is no room in her for anything that is not already approved and categorized.”
Julia studied him for a moment. “This bothers you?”
“It bores me.”
“Does it?” Julia said. “Because from where I was standing earlier, you did not look remotely bored. She is the only woman I have not seen you flirt with.”
Theodore scoffed. “That is not from a lack of trying.”
“Theodore Merrick!” Julia chastised him in a hushed tone.
“Fine, I will dance with her,” he said, sighing. “Not because you’re insisting, but because I have questions.”
“Fine, I will take that. Thank you, Your Grace,” Julia said. “Now, go on.”
She was still with the Fentworths when he reached her. Lady Fentworth was mid-sentence about something, and Emily was listening as though whatever was being said was the most interesting thing she had heard all evening.
She saw him coming. He could tell by the almost imperceptible straightening of her spine, the slight recalibration of her expression.
He almost smiled.
“Lady Emily.” He inclined his head to the Fentworths first, pleasantries exchanged in the efficient, practiced way. Then he turned to her and offered his hand. “Would you do me the honor?”
He expected a pause. A fractional hesitation while she weighed the social calculus of refusing versus accepting, the implications of each, the appearance of the thing. He had seen her do it before, that barely perceptible moment of internal consultation before every decision.
She looked at his outstretched hand for precisely no time at all.
“Of course, Your Grace,” she said, and placed her hand in his.
He had not expected that, but he did not let it show.
The musicians had settled into a waltz, something elegant, and the floor had filled with couples moving in the warm, golden light of the room.
Theodore placed his hand at her waist and felt her straighten further, if such a thing were possible, every inch of her correct, composed, and perfectly positioned.
They moved together in silence for a moment. She was a good dancer.
“You are very quiet,” he said.
“I am dancing,” she said.
“People can do both.”
“I prefer to do one thing properly than two things adequately.”
“Of course you do,” he said.
Another silence. The music moved through them. Around them, other couples laughed and talked and leaned toward each other, and Theodore watched Emily look somewhere carefully past his shoulder.
“You are doing it again,” he said.