Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“So, how was it? You must tell me everything!”
Emily looked at Euphemia over the rim of her champagne glass and thought about how to answer her question.
They had found a corner of the Ashby ballroom that was not precisely private but was as close to it as two women could manage during a ball of this size, tucked behind a large arrangement of hothouse flowers near the far window with the noise of the room a comfortable distance away.
The dancing had paused between sets, and the crowd had redistributed itself toward the refreshments, which had given them approximately ten minutes before they would be expected to redistribute themselves back.
Euphemia had been waiting to ask this question since Emily arrived. She could tell by the way she had appeared at her elbow within four minutes of Emily walking through the door, which suggested she had been watching for her.
Emily looked at her champagne. “Effie,” she said. “I do not know how to answer your question.”
“Just be honest,” Euphemia said. “You can tell me whatever detail you want. How was the honeymoon? Was it as magnificent as the books claim?”
Emily looked at the ballroom, at the crowd moving between sets, at the candlelight on the ceiling, at Theodore somewhere across the room doing what Theodore did in rooms, which was make every person within ten feet of him feel like the most interesting person he had ever encountered.
“You know the circumstances,” she said to Euphemia. “You were present for a significant portion of how we arrived at the marriage in the first place.”
“I know how it started,” Euphemia said. “I am asking about after. There is a considerable difference between the beginning of a thing and the living of it.”
Emily was quiet for a moment. “It was...” she said carefully. “...not what the books describe.”
Euphemia's eyebrows furrowed. “How far from what the books describe?”
“We spent the better part of the first week barely occupying the same room,” Emily said. “We ate separately. We moved around the house in a very large orbit that did not often intersect. There was a great deal of ledger reviewing on my part and a great deal of study occupying on his.”
Euphemia stared at her. “That is it?” she asked.
“I had such ideas about it. About what it would be like. I know that is foolish, given everything I know about how marriages are made and what they generally are. But I had read so much and heard so much, and I thought—” She stopped.
“I thought surely there must be something to it. Some truth underneath all the description. Some reason everyone talks about it the way they do.”
“It's different for everyone, trust me. You cannot use my marriage to decide what yours would turn out to be.”
“Mine?” she scoffed. “I might die a spinster at this point.”
“Don't say that.”
“I am being realistic,” Euphemia said. “I came to this Season with a very specific intention. I was going to prove to my sisters that love was possible. That marriage did not have to be a negotiation between two families with a reluctant bride in the middle of it.” She looked at her glass.
“I have not proven anything. I have, if anything, gathered considerable evidence for the opposing argument.”
“What has happened?” Emily said.
Euphemia shook her head. “I stopped accepting callers.”
Emily looked at her. “All of them?”
“All of them,” Euphemia said firmly. “After the last one, I decided I had reached my limit.”
“What did the last one do?”
Euphemia turned to look at her with a dejected look on her pale face. “He told me that he had always dreamed of a large family.”
“That is not unusual,” Emily said carefully. “Do you not want a large family?”
“He wanted thirteen children!” Euphemia rasped.
Emily blinked.
“Thirteen,” Euphemia said again, in case the number had not landed properly.
“He sat there for twenty minutes detailing the lineage of his prize hounds before transitioning seamlessly into his requirement for thirteen children. He had apparently given it considerable thought. He spent the better part of another forty minutes discussing my childbearing capabilities and whether I was of sufficiently robust constitution to manage the undertaking.” She paused.
“He did not ask me a single question about anything else.”
Emily stared at her in disbelief.
“I did not receive any callers after that,” Euphemia said simply. “I was terrified.”
“I cannot imagine why,” Emily said, and sighed.
“I have decided that this Season is perhaps not the Season for me. I think I simply need to understand London first. To learn how it works, what it is, and perhaps next Season, or the one after, I will be better prepared for it. This Season I will simply observe.”
“That seems sensible,” Emily said. “But it does not mean you cannot also enjoy yourself. You do not have to be either hunting for a husband or hiding from one. There is space between those two things.”
Euphemia smiled slightly. “Perhaps.” She looked at her hands.
“I have also been trying to make new friends. As I said I would. But it is —” She paused.
“It is not easy for me. The other young women in the ton have their established circles and their histories together, and I arrive with none of that, and I find I do not always know how to insert myself into a room full of people who already know each other.” She glanced at Emily sideways.
“I am better one-to-one. Too many people at once and I go very quiet, and then people decide I am cold or strange... or both.”
“You are neither,” Emily said, giggling.
“It is all right. I have you, and I still have my sisters. That is already more than I had at the beginning of the Season and I am content with it.”
“I am not,” Emily said.
Euphemia looked at her.
“I love our friendship,” Emily said, directly and without any ceremony around it, because it was true, and Euphemia looked like someone who needed to hear a true thing said plainly.
“I would not trade it for anything. But I am not content with you being content with only me. You deserve more than one friend in society, Effie. You deserve a whole room full of them.”
Euphemia giggled. “Thank you,” she said quietly.
“You’re very welcome.” Emily smiled. “Shall we go back into the light?”
“Actually,” Euphemia said, stopping her. “There was something I wanted to tell you. Something I heard this week that I thought you should know about before someone else told you less kindly.”
Emily tilted her head sideways. “What is it?”
“There is a rumor going around,” Euphemia said. “That you have a child. Out of wedlock.”
Emily felt as though the floor had suddenly turned into water. “What?”
“They are saying,” Euphemia continued, carefully.
“That you went into the marriage with a child that is not the Duke's.
That the child existed before the marriage.
That you were pregnant before the marriage and hid it.
That the Duke either did not know or did not care, and that either way the question of the child's parentage is —” She stopped.
“I am sorry. I thought you should hear it from me rather than from someone who would enjoy telling you.”
Emily could not believe her ears. “I was pregnant? And hide it?”
Euphemia nodded. “Yes. They keep saying you have made a fool of the Duke.”
If the rumor had been solely about her and not Theodore, Emily figured she would not have been panicking that much.
In that moment, Emily felt a desperate, irrational need for Theodore. It was a realization that hit her with more force than the rumor itself. In the short time they had been at Carrowell, he had become the person who grounded her. He had a way of speaking that made the world feel manageable again.
“Excuse me,” Emily said.
“Emily—”
“I just need a moment,” she said. “I will be back.”
She wanted Theodore.
She wanted his voice. She wanted the specific quality of it when he was being direct and calm and certain, the voice he had used outside Frederick's room when she was trying not to cry, the voice he had used in the garden when she had been sitting in the roses avoiding lunch and he had come to find her, and simply sat beside her, talked until the weight of the morning had lifted.
He knew how to talk to her. She had noticed that. Not talking at her, but to her, in the particular way that landed. She came to a stop near the edge of the dance floor and stood there and breathed.
She felt him before she saw him. His hand settled at her waist, and she exhaled. Emily felt her lungs expand for the first time since Euphemia had spoken.
“Emily.”
She turned her head. He was beside her, having appeared from thin air, his expression attentive and already slightly watchful.
“There is... Theodore, there is a rumor,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “They are saying that Frederick is... that I am —”
“I know,” he interrupted.
Emily looked up at him, her eyes wide with panic. “How can you be so calm? We don’t know how long this rumor has been spreading for. It’s entirely wrong. What is your business partners heard it? It is —”
Theodore’s gaze softened, though his jaw remained set. “Relax your shoulders, Emily,” he commanded softly. “You’re doing it again.”
Instinctively, she obliged, her muscles going slack under his touch. He shifted his hand from her waist, bringing it up to her shoulder and giving it a slow, deliberate squeeze.
“Everything is fine,” he said, his eyes locking onto hers, forcing her to find her center.
“It is just a rumor, born of boredom and probably malice. You must calm yourself. If you look like a woman with a secret, they will believe you have one. But if you look like my Duchess, they will realize they have made a very dangerous mistake.”
“Theo —”