Chapter 6
“I know that you do not wish to hear my concerns about your choice of a female companion,” Michael began as he and Colin walked side by side along the shady, dappled paths of Hyde Park.
“No, I do not,” Colin confirmed.
“But,” Michael continued in spite of the warning look that Colin shot him. “I urge you to reconsider. From what you have told me of your conversation with the marchioness, you are in grave danger of being disappointed in your pursuit.”
“Miss Rebecca is not her sister,” Colin argued.
“While I must admit that my first visit to the Frampton house was less cordial than one might desire, Rebecca had no hand in it.” He looked at Michael with true sympathy in his eyes.
“It sorrows me to see what the marchioness has done to you, my dear cousin, but I will not allow it to dissuade me from my course.”
Michael sighed, shaking his head. “As much as I might wish to save you the pain, I cannot force you to act upon your own best interests.”
“In the time since our meeting, Rebecca Frampton has not once given me reason to believe that she is disingenuous. She does not care for titles or wealth. You should hear her speak of the working man’s plight.
She is most ardent in her desire to aid them.
She shows an intellect that is lacking in many of our own peers concerning the deplorable conditions of the impoverished, along with the present state of politics and the monarchy. ”
Michael shot Colin with a sharp warning look. He grabbed his cousin by the arm, stopping him in his tracks. “Have you lost command of your senses?” he hissed, his eyes flickering to the other men and women who were promenading around them to see if they had overheard Colin’s declaration.
“To speak ill of the king is treason. Do you wish to be hanged as well as broken-hearted? Neither of you should be speaking of such matters.”
Colin frowned. “We did nothing treasonous,” he argued, keeping his voice low. “We simply shared with one another that which we held of import. We have much in common, she and I, in how we think and feel.”
Once Michael was certain that no one around them had overheard Colin’s declaration, he turned his eyes back to his cousin. “I thought the same of the marchioness and I, but as you can see, she deceived me. I fear that the same deception waits for you.”
Colin shook his head and extricated his arm from Michael’s grasp. “Rebbeca is not Emmeline,” he stated firmly, using their given names for emphasis. He turned and continued walking, not waiting to see whether Michael followed or not.
Sighing, Michael fell into step beside Colin. His words had fallen on deaf ears, and there was naught that he could do about it. Surrendering his cousin’s care to God, he held his tongue.
They walked in silence for a moment, each with their own thoughts, when suddenly Colin’s body came alive with excitement. Michael followed his cousin’s suddenly happy gaze to find the Frampton sisters walking along the path toward them.
Michael groaned inwardly, feeling a headache begin behind his eyes. He pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration, took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and faced the oncoming storm.
“Miss Rebecca,” Colin greeted with a wide grin of pleasure. “What a fortunate encounter.”
“Mr. Barrington,” Rebecca greeted in turn, smiling up at him. “Most fortunate indeed,” she agreed.
“Would you care to join us in our perambulation?” he invited, as he extended his arm for her to take.
Blushing with pleasure, Rebecca reached out and took it, her gloved hand fitting snugly in the crook of his elbow. “My sister and I would be delighted.”
The expression on Emmeline’s face was anything but one of delight.
“Marchioness,” Colin said courteously, his usual warmth tempered by his knowledge of her disapproval.
“Mr. Barrington,” Emmeline returned, her eyes cooling as they fell upon Michael’s face. “Lord Ravenshollow,” she greeted as propriety required.
“Marchioness,” Michael returned her greeting with equally cold reserve.
Colin and Rebecca walked on, conversing animatedly about their recent activities, leaving Michael and Emmeline to fall into step several paces behind. The air between them crackled with anger and unspoken hurt.
“They have much in common, your cousin and my sister,” Emmeline noted, her face showing a brief moment of surprise at her own voice as if she had spoken by accident.
“So Colin says,” Michael acknowledged stiffly.
“Their enthusiasm reminds me of a younger, more innocent time in life.”
The hint of wistfulness in her voice caught Michael off guard.
“I do not remember ever being that passionate in conversation,” Michael noted, as the young couple engaged excitedly over yet another shared interest.
“Art,” Emmeline murmured.
“What did you say?” Michael asked, not sure that he had heard her correctly.
“You were always that passionate about art,” she repeated more clearly. “You never looked more alive than when you were painting a new landscape.”
Her eyes took on a faraway expression as if her mind were in another time and place. “I always enjoyed watching you paint as you would blend the light and dark watercolors together to capture the dawn of a new day.”
Michael’s brows rose in question. He had not known that she had paid such close attention to his work. Before he could fully process her words and respond, they were passed by another group of young people.
As they approached, Michael overheard one of the women talking above the rest of the group. His eyes searched out the annoyance and found that it belonged to a blonde-haired woman in an elaborately designed dress. Her dark brown eyes gazed down her nose at Emmeline.
“It would be quite unfortunate for England’s most eligible noblemen to be taken by grasping widows who do not honor their deceased husbands with a proper period of mourning before returning to society.”
Michael felt Emmeline stiffen beside him and watched as her face became a blank mask, her eyes staring straight ahead. In spite of himself, anger flared within his chest on her behalf.
“It is a most noble woman indeed who puts aside her own needs for the care and keeping of a beloved sister,” Michael’s voice carried above all the others within the passing group, the looks on their faces leaving no doubt that they had heard him.
“For such a sacrifice, Marchioness, you have my undying admiration. Would that all ladies of the realm exhibited such honorable love and care. England would be immeasurably better for it.”
The gossiping woman’s dark eyes grew wide as her mouth snapped shut, and she scurried away, reminding him of an offended hen with her feathers ruffled. Emmeline looked up at Michael with surprise.
“You did not need to defend me. I can defend myself. I simply choose not to engage with notorious gossips such as Selina Bragg. People will talk. There is nothing for it but to ignore them with as much grace and dignity as one can manage. You should know that by defending me, you will be the object of their ridicule.”
Michael shrugged. “It would not be the first time. I am a regular topic of discussion among the ton. Have you not heard that I am now known as the eccentric bachelor recluse?” His tone held an unspoken accusation, as if she were responsible for the gossip surrounding him.
Emmeline felt as if his words were a slap to the face. Anger swelled up within her. “I did not need you to defend me,” she repeated firmly.
“Why are you always so stubborn?” Michael asked, his ire rising.
When Selina Bragg had spoken offensively toward Emmeline, he had defended her on instinct born of many years of affection.
It irritated him that in spite of his anger toward her for her betrayal, he still felt the need to protect her.
“Why can you not accept my help with good grace?”
Before he could say more, Emmeline stopped walking and turned to face him.
“Thank you,” she breathed softly. Her chin rose, and she met his eyes.
“Thank you for defending me.” She held his gaze for a brief moment, her whisky amber eyes liquid pools of warm vulnerability, then turned and continued walking.
Frowning in bewilderment at her sudden change in attitude, Michael silently fell back into step beside her. The way she had looked at him, anger warring with sorrow, had stirred something within him. They had always argued with one another for as far back as he could remember.
As children, Michael would play the gallant knight rescuing his damsel, but when he arrived at her castle to save her, he would find that she had already saved herself.
She would never play such romantic games as other girls would, always running about as if she were one of the lads slaying dragons.
“Girls cannot be knights,” his younger self had argued.
“I can do anything that you can do,” she would argue back, fierce pride and a fire for life glimmering in her eyes.
What Michael had just seen in her eyes as she had looked up at him was but a ghost of the fire that had once been her most identifying feature.
What happened in her life that could quench such a fire? What pain could she have endured to have known the sorrow capable of such a feat?
He studied her profile discreetly from the side. She had lost her father and her husband, but he did not think that even that would have been enough to break a spirit such as hers.
He remembered a day when they had gone riding together and she had been bucked from the back of her horse.
She had been scraped and bruised from head to toe, blood pouring down her arm.
Michael had dismounted and wrapped the wound with a cloth.
“Is it broken?” she had asked, a brief moment of fear in her voice.
Michael had reassured her that it was not. It was the only time in their lives that she had ever let him help her. The moment that he had finished wrapping her wound, she had gotten up and climbed back onto her horse, slapping his hand away as he had tried to help her mount.
Once back in the saddle, she had flashed him a challenging grin, then taken off at high speed across the moors; any sign of fear had disappeared. He had thought then that nothing on earth could dim her light. She had been his ethereal phoenix, blazing bright, resilient, and indomitable.
“Do you remember when we were children and you fell from your horse?” he asked, unable to let the moment of nostalgia pass without sharing it.
She looked up at him in surprise. “I do.” She nodded. “You wrapped my wound.”
“It was one of the few times in our lives that I had ever seen you frightened,” he noted. “It was the only time that you ever allowed me to help you.”
Emmeline smiled. “My father’s brother had fallen from his horse, breaking his leg. The wound grew putrid, and the physician had been forced to take the leg. I was afraid that I had broken my arm and that it would be removed,” she confessed.
Michael nodded in understanding. “That explains your fear and swift recovery.”
Emmeline laughed softly. “I still beat you back to the stables.”
Michael chuckled. “Indeed, you did.”
Their eyes met, and a glimmer of the old friendship that they had once shared passed between them.
Before they had been in love, they had been inseparable companions.
Perhaps instead of the barrier that their past had built, their childhood friendship could be a bridge to healing the wound between them.