Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Ihave always found it fascinating how some women possess such a natural talent for theatre,” Julia Birks said, her voice cutting through the quiet chime of tea service.
She didn't look up from her cup, but the stillness of her posture drew every eye at the table.
“To carry oneself with such pristine virtue while harboring... well, let us call them unspoken histories. It is a rare gift to be so entirely different from who one claims to be.”
Emily felt a cold, visceral shock settle in the pit of her stomach. The teacup in her hand trembled, the porcelain rattling against the saucer with a sound that felt deafening in the sudden silence.
She looked at Julia, searching for the warmth that had once defined their relationship, but found only a sharp, knowing flint in the older woman’s gaze. The air in the drawing room seemed to thin, making it difficult for Emily to draw a full breath.
She could not understand what was happening.
They were gathered in the conservatory of Theodore’s estate, a soaring glass cathedral filled with the scent of damp earth and blooming jasmine.
Outside, the sprawling grounds were blurred by a persistent gray mist, but inside, the light was bright and unforgiving.
Her parents sat across the table, her mother looking remarkably pleased with the fine bone china, while her father seemed to be mentally calculating the value of the rare orchids surrounding them.
It should have been a triumph, both their families uniting in a display of blooming domesticity…
but the atmosphere was as fragile as the glass overhead.
The day had been going well.
Or rather, it had been going well until Julia opened her mouth.
Since the night of the ball, Julia's warmth had curdled into something unrecognizable.
Every word now felt like a coded threat, a reminder that Emily's entire future rested on a foundation of secrets that Julia was currently picking apart at the edges.
Emily still did not know what Julia knew or how she had come to know it.
She only knew that something had shifted, that the woman who had welcomed her with open arms and genuine pleasure was now sitting across a tea table looking at her like she was a problem that needed solving.
Theodore's hand shifted on the table, his fingers brushing against Emily's in a gesture that was designed to look like the absentminded touch of a man at ease with the woman beside him.
Even though Emily knew that they had to keep up appearances, she was finding it difficult to hold a smile on her face.
“Lady Birks.” Theodore's voice was pleasant. Dangerously pleasant. “Perhaps this is not the moment.”
Julia looked up from her teacup. “I am simply making conversation, Your Grace.”
“Then perhaps...” Theodore said and then paused to let out a breath. “...Perhaps, we might find a different subject.”
Emily set her teacup down. Carefully. Precisely. She looked at Julia with the clearest, most composed expression she had available to her and said. “I am afraid I do not quite follow, Lady Birks.”
The fire crackled in the grate.
Julia looked at her. Then at Theodore. Then back at Emily and took a sip from her cup again before setting it down on the table.
“The jasmine is beautiful this time of year,” Emily said, turning deliberately toward the glass walls of the conservatory, where climbing white blooms pressed against the panes in great cascading tangles.
The afternoon light came through in long pale sheets, catching the steam rising from their cups and the fine dust of pollen drifting in the warm, heavy air.
Under any other circumstances, Emily would have found the conservatory genuinely lovely.
“It is,” Theodore said, and she heard the deliberate ease in his voice, the same effort she was making, both of them paddling quietly against the same current. “The gardener has been tending it for nearly a decade.”
“How dedicated,” Julia said. “Some things do require a great deal of tending to appear presentable. Jasmine especially. Left to its own devices, it grows rather wild.
Emily picked up her fork.
“I understand the orchids in the east wing are quite remarkable,” she said, turning to her mother. “Perhaps we might take a look after tea, Mama?”
“I would love that,” Sarah said. She had been reading the room for the last ten minutes and must have decided that enthusiasm about orchids was the safest available response.
“Orchids are temperamental things,” Julia finally said. “They require very specific conditions to thrive. The wrong environment and they simply —” she tilted her head “— wilt. No matter how beautiful they appeared at first.”
Charles Pierce set down his cup, louder than necessary, and sat up. Emily knew that pose all too well. Her father usually took that stance when he wanted to dig for answers.
Emily spoke before he could.
“Lady Birks, you must tell us about Faithcourt in spring,” she said, surprising even herself with such a drastic change of subject. “I have heard the grounds are extraordinary. Theodore speaks of them often. He talks about how beautiful your rose garden is.”
Theodore, to his credit, did not blink at this, even though it was a blatant lie. “Constantly,” he agreed.
Julia looked between them. “Faithcourt in spring is very beautiful,” she said.
“Though of course beauty alone is never quite sufficient, is it? One wants substance beneath it. Character. History.” Her eyes settled on Emily with a warmth that did not reach anywhere near her eyes.
“Things that cannot simply be... arranged. Beauty can be very misleading, wouldn’t you agree, Emily? ”
The conservatory breathed around them. Emily looked at Julia directly. She held her gaze with everything she had, which was considerable, and she smiled. Her lips quivered on both ends, but she fought to hold the smile on her face.
Theodore reached for the teapot. “More tea, Lady Birks? You must be due for another refill. How deep is that cup? You’ve been sipping from it for quite a while now.”
Julia set her cup down. “I think that we have spent quite enough time talking about jasmine and orchids.” Her gaze remained locked on Emily, her composure finally snapping like a dry twig under the weight of her own vitriol.
“Do not play the fool with me, Your Grace,” she said, her voice rising with a shrill, jagged edge that silenced the birds nesting in the rafters of the glass house.
“You are bringing a woman into this house who has already made a mockery of the very vows you intend to take. She has a child! A child born of shame, hidden away while she prances through ballrooms looking for a crown to cover her disgrace.”
The silence that followed was absolute. Emily felt the world tilt. The scent of jasmine became suffocating, and the faces of her parents, Sarah and Charles, went a ghostly, translucent white.
“I beg your pardon?” Charles roared, setting his cup down with a click that was not quite a slam but carried all the intention of one. He straightened in his chair and looked at Julia. “Where exactly did you come by that information?”
“Charles.” Sarah's hand found her husband's arm.
“No.” Charles did not look at his wife. His eyes were fixed on Julia with a steadiness that held no warmth. “I would like to know. Where did she hear this, and what exactly does she think she knows?”
“I know what I know,” Julia said evenly.
“Then you know very little,” Charles said. “What you are implying is not the truth.”
“Charles, please.” Sarah turned from her husband to Julia.
“Lady Birks, there seems to be some sort of misunderstanding. A terrible, jagged misunderstanding. There is an explanation for Frederick, one that has nothing to do with what you are implying. Please, let us speak as friends, not as adversaries.”
“Friends?” Julia’s laugh was a sharp, brittle sound that seemed to vibrate against the glass panes. “I do not make friends with those who weave tapestries of lies to trap a Duke.”
“Lies?” Charles’s voice boomed, cutting through his wife’s soft pleading.
He stood tall, his posture as rigid as oaks.
His pride, long-simmering and fiercely guarded, had finally boiled over.
“Where did you get this nonsense, Lady Birks?
To sit in my presence and cast such aspersions is not just an insult; it is a slander I will not tolerate.
You speak of horses as if you know the stable, but you haven't even seen the gate!”
Beneath the storm of their voices, Emily sat perfectly still. She felt as though she were suspended in a block of ice, the conservatory's heat unable to reach her. Her mind was a frantic, whirling calculation.
“That is enough.”
Theodore's voice cut through the room cleanly, the way a door closing cut through noise. Everyone stopped. He rose from his chair slowly, and he looked at Julia with an expression that Emily had not seen on him before.
“Lady Birks, have you forgotten whose roof is currently over your head? Or am I suddenly undeserving of your respect anymore?”
Julia opened her mouth.
“I invited the Pierce family here, and I invited you to foster an understanding between both families. I expected a morning of grace. Instead, you have turned my home into a courtroom.”
“Your Grace, I am only trying to —”