Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
S omething more than hurling knives had happened in Clearford’s portrait gallery. But what? The danger of sharp projectiles, the discussion of a match with someone actually interested in the strategy of it all, and the snoozing chaperone in the corner. It all produced a heady and irresistible energy that still thrummed through Emma.
Emma snagged a glass of champagne from a passing tray. The crush in the Coldpepper ballroom was the biggest she’d experienced yet in London, hot, pressing, and stifling, beading sweat on the back of her neck.
Hot and pressing… like Clearford had been against her when teaching her how to throw.
He’d been headier than the rest of it. His sincere gaze, his sun-hot touch. The man made gentle seem dangerous and made the sharp tips of knives feel safe. Something dangerous certainly buzzed between them, something born that night in the garden. Something they had promised to forget.
The duke had touched her more today than any man ever had. She did not have to concentrate to relive the feel of his hard body pressed at her back. But more intense even than that, the memory of him cradling her wounded hand. Gentle sparks had leapt like a growing fire. A new sensation, one she’d not even known had existed, one she perhaps had missed in her matchmaking equations. This leaping, living thing—safe yet dangerous, burning and sweet—did it guide the heart more than practical matters did?
That would explain her failure with love matches because—
Love matches? No. If this flame in her belly for the duke was the same forged at the heart of a love match…
No. He had another woman in mind for marriage, and he’d been at her side all evening.
She must focus on something other than her duke-heavy delusions.
Such as… the opportunity to be had in London! The men and women dancing and trading gossip here did not gossip about her. They did not even look at her, a Scottish peer’s daughter below their notice. Not a shadowed disregard, though. Arriving as the close relation of Lord and Lady Macintosh and at the same time as the duke and his sisters, she had, apparently, passed muster. The family’s familiarity with Emma’s sisters had elevated them immediately, strangers and Scottish though they were. And Emma’s plain gown, downcast face, and whispers of her advanced age had worked well with the debutantes and their mamas. Lady Emma offered no threat for the duke’s affections.
Though he certainly threatened hers. With his excellent aim and gentle touch, and…
None of that mattered. Only Lady Felicity mattered. There was where Emma's attentions must lay. To the side of the dancefloor, her charge was speaking with Mr. Sinclair and Sir Rexley. They had been her most consistent suitors so far, but she had shown little particularity for one or the other. She laughed at both men's jokes equally, and she accepted their favors and gladly allowed them to write their names on her dance card.
When the gentlemen disappeared to lead other ladies out to dance, Emma inched closer to Lady Felicity. “Do you feel, perhaps, any hint of jealousy as the gentlemen leave your side?”
Lady Felicity fidgeted with the gold cord that secured her dance card to her wrist. “No. Sir Rexley looks rather well turning about the room with Lady Allison, and Mr. Sinclair is likely having a difficult time with Miss Baxter. She steps on toes, I’ve heard. But look, he smiles every time he winces. I think he finds her lack of rhythm charming.”
Sometimes jealousy helped to see where a lady’s affections lay, but clearly that particular emotion was not in play here. “Can you see what your future would look like with either man by your side? How you would rub along, what you would do together, how you would solve problems? That sort of thing.”
“I suppose,” Lady Felicity said, choosing her words carefully, “if I were to marry either of them, it would be much of the same. I would take care of the house and the children and probably run some charities and spend my days with my sisters and friends. And he—either of them—would be doing whatever it is men do all day, and we would meet to make an heir.”
“That sounds terribly isolated and not at all affectionate. Are you no longer in pursuit of a love match?”
“I am.”
“So, we must look for other suitors. Ones more likely to interest your heart.”
“Per—haps.” Lady Felicity’s entire body went tight as a wire strung in a harp. She opened her mouth as if she might speak, but she did not. Her tongue touched her top teeth as if they meant to shape a sound, but no sound emerged. Her gaze had shot across the ballroom to the doors. A man stood there, tall and lean and golden, a definite lack of merriment in the thin slash of his lips.
“Who is that?” Emma asked.
“Viscount Bransley.”
“And what is his relation to you?” But Emma guessed, the man’s identity evident in the tightness of Lady Felicity's jaw, in her inability to shape words.
The man who had broken her heart.
Emma placed a hand on Lady Felicity's arm. “You need not say it. Let us simply escape to the retiring room.”
The young girl shook her head. “Find me another suitor. One who is as perfect a candidate for marrying a duke's sister as can be.”
Perhaps Lady Felicity understood jealousy after all. “Very well.” Emma slipped away, pulling from her beaded reticule a small list of gentlemen’s names. As she walked the perimeter of the ballroom, slipping between gaps in the dense crowd, she gazed out over the ballroom, looking for the faces that matched the names.
And then a hand wrapped around her arm, pulling her backward and into the shadowed edges of the room beneath the upper levels. She shrieked, but the sound was cut off halfway by a familiar voice in her ear.
“We must talk.” Clearford.
She clutched her heart. “You terrified me.”
“Do you know who that man is?” His gaze was steady on the man in the doorway sauntering slowly into the crowd.
“I do. Viscount Bransley.” Emma led the duke toward a corner of the ballroom hidden the most by a balcony, crowds, and potted plants.
“He's supposed to be in the Continent.”
“Do not worry.” Emma pulled her arm out of his grasp. “He will not approach her.”
“How do you know?”
“He does not think Lady Felicity is good enough. He will not waste his time, as he sees it—Do not growl, Clearford. People are looking.”
He did not stop growling, merely channeled it into a promise. “I'm going to call him out.”
Her turn to clutch at his arm, yanking her hand back when the heat of him through shirt and jacket singed. She fussed with the edge of her gloves, pulling them up, rubbing away the sensation of touching him with other sensations entirely, those that alarmed her less. She tugged her puffed sleeve down, outlined the edge of her bodice with her fingertips and—
Froze.
He was watching her, his gaze flashing to that exact spot where her fingers fidgeted, next to the exposed swell of her bosom. He shifted from foot to foot, his gaze jerking away, and she dropped her hand to her side, a much safer location.
Oh God, why had things become so uncomfortable so quickly?
“You cannot call him out,” she said, hoping to fill the awkward silence with a hard truth. “He has done nothing concrete, and you will only bring more attention to your family than is necessary. And your sisters will not thank you for it, particularly if he shoots you. I do not want you to die.”
“You don't?” His tone suddenly lighter, his gaze gentle, like a caress.
“ They , I mean. They do not want you to die,” she corrected. “Your sisters.”
He made a soft hum in his throat, considering her until she felt her belly flip, tighten, and places lower ache.
“Oh no.”
“I agree. Oh no.” His voice still gentle, still lingering, like fingertips over skin.
She spun him around. “Look. Lord Bransley is approaching Lady Felicity.”
“What?” A loud and barking objection as he surged away from their corner.
Those nearby turned and looked. And whispered. But if she did not stop him, he would barrel over there like a raging bull and headbutt the other man in the gut. So, she caught his arm with all ten fingers and held on tight. His muscle bulged beneath her grip.
“Release me. He's asking her to dance.”
She grasped him more tightly. “She can survive the dance. Or she can survive rejecting his offer. Let her do it. Let her stand strong. As long as she does not leave this room with him, let her be strong.”
His hand became a fist, and she did not think he could speak. Jaw too tight, teeth gritting to sand. And just when it looked like Lady Felicity might snap her fan and give Lord Bransley the cut direct, she let the man lead her out to the dance floor.
“Now what?” the duke hissed, his body still taut and ready. Apparently one could speak between gritted teeth.
“We watch. Felicity is strong enough to survive this.” She loosened her hold.
And the rogue took advantage, slipped away just enough to take her arm.
And drag her toward the dance floor.
“Clearford,” she hissed. “What are you doing?”
“I would think that obvious.”
The quartet strummed to life, a waltz in the wobbly string notes. A waltz , which meant his hand low on her back and his other holding hers. He took those spots on her body as if he owned them, as if he’d done it already time after time, and he swept her into the dancing crowd, and into the music, and into the candlelight sparking above.
For several rotations, she did not place her hand on his shoulder where it belonged. It hovered near his shoulder. And he did not seem to notice because he watched his sister and Bransley waltzing circles around the ballroom, their gazes intent on one another, as if everything else had fallen away.
“What do you think he's saying?” Samuel asked. He looked at Emma, and his ferocity melted, the angles of his face softening as he chuckled. “Have you never waltzed before?” His gaze flicked to her hovering hand.
“I have. Plenty of times.”
He nodded toward his shoulder. “Then you must have forgotten this detail.”
“I—” She spoke as she let her hand fall through space and settle on the hard, warm muscle of his shoulder. After that, no words to be found, and the crushed, frantic whispering world of the ballroom fell away. For several rotations, they simply danced. Moving in sync, one two three, one two three, circling and skirts and candlelight magnified off chandeliers, sparkling over the diamonds littering women's throats.
One two three, one two three—first footsteps and then breaths and then the count of hearts beating together.
One two three, and she could not live like this, floating and free in the arms of a man not meant for her. She had a job to do.
She wrenched herself out of the air, planted her slippers firmly on the dance floor, and turned her attention away from the muscular shoulder beneath her hand and to the young lady waltzing across the room. Lady Felicity was poised and calm and said, with only the tilt of her chin, that her dance partner bothered her not.
“See,” Emma said, “Felicity is doing fine. She does not appear to be broken or even close to it.”
“She does seem strong.” His hand on her back flinched. “Perhaps she does not need me.” He shook his head. “Of course she does not need me. She needed you , that much is clear. It is why I have solicited your help. You are my one good decision.”
Emma almost stumbled right there in the middle of the other dancers as he swooped her around a turn, his gaze so sincere, so focused. His one good decision? If he did not stop saying such things, he would be her one bad decision, the decision that ended all her hard work, all her goals unraveling like his cravat from his neck yesterday.
Where had this need come from, where this desperation?
She swallowed it whole, shoved it down, locked it up, and looked anywhere but at him. There—Felicity’s suitors A much easier thing to study as they watched Lady Felicity, jaws growing firmer with determination or perhaps…
“Jealousy,” Emma said. “I think your sister is attempting to make her suitors jealous by dancing with Lord Bransley.”
“Is it possible?” Clearford’s question resonated with a tone of objective curiosity she'd begun to recognize in his voice anytime they talked about courtship. “I thought, once, jealousy was a precursor to a fine match. That it could be used to successfully encourage a lady’s affections for the fellow courting her. But as with all my former observations, I have abandoned it.”
“No. I think you were right to some extent. Jealousy can make a man, or a woman, feel desperate, as if the thing they want most is out of their reach. But you'll see it is Felicity wielding this particular weapon and not the gentleman. Her suitors might have tried the same strategy earlier this evening by dancing with other ladies. I asked her, though, if she felt anything as she watched them dance. She did not.”
“Fascinating. Which do you think is more effective—male jealousy or female jealousy? In other words, who wields this particular weapon more successfully?”
“I cannot say.”
After several moments of thought, he said, “The lady, I think, can wield it most devastatingly.”
“Why?”
“A man has more to lose if he loses his lady’s affection.”
“I disagree. If a woman loses a gentleman's affection to another lady, she loses her protection.”
“I suppose so. But then… a man loses his entire world.”
No man should be allowed to say words like that while looking at a woman as Clearford looked at her—stormy eyes entirely sincere, mouth soft and cheeks flushed. If the moment had lasted longer than a moment, she might have done something odd, something wrong. Like cup his cheek or thread their hands together or hug him tight and hope he hugged her back. But what had been a moment for her, when the spinning world stopped entirely, was nothing but a breath to him, a ticking second, a dance step like any other.
He pointed his chin at Bransley and Felicity. “He has the look of a man about to lose an entire world.”
“He broke her heart,” Emma hissed.
“Is that permission to call him out?” Samuel grinned.
She grinned too, couldn't help it because laughing at him was better than thinking about him losing a world. Who was his world? Who held the power to bring it crashing down?
“What do you think, Lady Emma?” he asked. “Shall I call him out and put a knife through his heart?” His voice was low, almost conspiratorial, and it weaved something like a secret around them, bound them together like a stitch. On the very edges of that secret, a tease. It lifted her spirits. Had they needed lifting? They had, and she’d not known it until he’d lifted them.
“Let the fellow live, Clearford. We need him for the observation’s sake, to see which of the other suitors become emboldened by Bransley’s pursuit.”
“He may never come around again. If he likes living, he won’t.”
“And then it is not a problem, and no one need find a knife in their heart. But if he does come around again, then perhaps your sister was using her new suitors to catch an old one.”
“But if she catches the old one, how will he treat her? With the loyalty and adoration she deserves? Or will he cast her off again?”
“That remains to be seen, Your Grace.”
The music ended, but Clearford still seemed to wish to dance, sweeping her toward the outer doors that led to the balcony. But when she gently pulled from his arms, he let her.
“Thank you, my friend,” she said, “for the dance.” She clasped her hands behind her back. The ghost of his warmth still lingered in her skin and bones, gloves doing nothing to guard her against sensations she could not control.
“Thank you for watching over my sister and for providing sound advice.”
“My pleasure.”
He seemed about to say something else, but then he stepped backward, and she did, too. When he turned, she did as well, and she succeeded in not looking back at him as she joined Felicity on the far side of the room where she’d been before, only then turning to face the couples lining up beside one another for the next set.
Not even trying, she found him. Clearford still stood on the edge of the dance floor, alone, watching her.
A drink. She needed a drink and now. She took two glasses of the champagne from the nearest waiter and took a long drag from the first flute.
“Thank you,” Lady Felicity said, taking the other flute from Emma’s hands. “I am in need of this. I find myself quite parched.”
“Me as well.” She’d meant that second glass for herself.
“I saw you dancing with my brother. You dance well together. I would like to see it again when my attention is not otherwise engaged.”
Emma took another sip to drown that compliment entirely. “Yes, you were otherwise engaged. Dancing with the man who shamed you.”
“Do not sound so disapproving, Emma.”
“I cannot help but be disapproving. And are we being informal now?”
Felicity looped their arms together. “We are. We must. We shall be like sisters.”
“Do you always disarm people with charm and cozy friendship?”
Felicity grinned, and a dimple appeared. The girl was as dangerous as her brother.
“Then as your friend, you must heed my advice: Be careful with that young man’s life, Felicity . Were any man to think one of my sisters worthless, I'd likely find some inventive way to maim him.”
Felicity chuckled. “You are very much like my brother. After my disappointment became clear, he threatened to call out Lord Bransley several times. And when I refused to let him duel over me, he begged me to let him maim him just a little and in some creative way.”
“Brothers, it seems, are a loyal lot.”
“Mine certainly is. You might borrow him if you have need.” Her friendly grin took a mischievous bent.
“I do not have need of him.” Emma downed the rest of her glass.
Mr. Sinclair appeared more eager than before and Sir Rexley more determined. A bit of jealousy had done them well.
As they showered Felicity with compliments, Emma melted toward the edges of the room where the wallflowers wilted.
“You look like you need this,” said a voice nearby. Lady Huxley held out another champagne flute.
And why not? Emma took the champagne. She sipped this one, the bubbles of the previous already floating her away. “Thank you.”
“We have not been introduced,” Lady Huxley said, “but I would like to know you. I am Viscountess Huxley. And you are…?”
“Lady Emma Blackwood.”
Lady Huxley tapped her shoulder with her half-full flute. “The Duke of Clearford’s family friend.”
“Just so.” Emma steeled herself for a confrontation. She’d invited it, waltzing with Clearford.
But instead of glaring, the widow smiled. “You're stunning if you do not mind me saying so.”
A true compliment, meant in every word and expression, and Emma bloomed a bit inside. “Thank you. I am a little shocked by such a gracious appraisal, but I do not object. Most women enjoy compliments. Allow me to give you one as well.”
“Please do.”
Emma’s compliment must be true as well. She had just the thing. “You have an enviable figure.”
“Oh!” Lady Huxley’s smile broadened. “I do, don't I?” She peered down at her decolletage with pride, then sighed. “Unfortunately, Clearford does not seem to notice.”
“Oh, surely he must.” Particularly when they were attached to a lady so frank and disarmingly nice.
“I assure you, he does not. He noted them once, but it was like he cataloged them as a fact—the grass is green, the sky is blue, Lady Huxley possesses breasts. And he has not looked since.” Another sigh.
“I am sorry for that.” But she wasn’t. She took another sip of her champagne. “I hear he is courting you.”
“Oh, yes, I suppose so.” Lady Huxley swayed side to side with the music. “It would be an excellent move for me to make. He's much younger than my first husband and much more handsome. But he's very emotional, do you not think? Quite brooding. I keep wondering what it would be like to live with such a man. I cannot quite picture it. It did not appear to bother you, though, when you were dancing with him.”
“Oh, no! His broodiness does not bother me at all. Perhaps because I am a bit brooding myself at times.” Shameful to admit, but there it was. “Besides, I find him quite logical.”
Lady Huxley patted Emma’s hand. “We all have our flaws, my dear. And believe me. He is not logical. I am logical. He hides his passions beneath a calm exterior. But I am not fooled.” More swaying side to side as she sipped her drink. “I watched you dance with Clearford.”
Here it came, the confrontation, the warning to keep her distance. “I hope you know it meant nothing. Merely a dance with a family friend. I do not wish you to worry about—”
“I wish you would worry me. I think I’ll root for you to win him. So, I do not feel obligated to marry him myself.”
Obligated! What women would marry that man out of obligation instead of all the other reasons to do so—his humor, his mind, his good heart. “I am not aiming to win him, Lady Huxley. I am not even in the race.”
“Rosalie. Call me Rosalie. And I shall call you Emma because we are destined to be friends.”
“That’s two I’ve made in a single night.”
“You’re irresistible. See, how could I not root for you?”
“I hate to disappoint, but I fear you are wrong. We are not at all meant for one another.” An earl’s daughter and a duke… they could. Society would not object. But then the duke would have to be agreeable, and he agreed to Lady Huxley. Not Emma.
“Oh no. Your face is drooping. Is it because you and Clearford are star-crossed?”
“No!”
Lady Huxley, Rosalie, nodded enthusiastically. “Ill-fated. Yes, of course. My favorite kind. Do you know I dislike high emotion in real life, but I adore observing it.” Lady Huxley—Rosalie—chuckled. “Reading of it, too.” She tapped Emma’s shoulder with the rim of her glass. “I pray you make it to the altar with him before I do.”
“I have no plans to make it to any altar. And even if I did, he has no interest in me in a matrimonial capacity.”
Lady Huxley sighed. “Then you must stick by my side and advise me on how to deal with a gloomy husband.”
She did not want to think of this other woman living in the same house with the gloomy duke. And that was namely because she rather felt like she should live in a house with the gloomy duke, attempting to make him less gloomy.
What an absolutely ridiculous thought.
What an absolutely useless thought. The duke did not want her . (Forget the garden. That had not been real . Not really. Even he had said so.)
“I'll help you,” Emma said.
“Excellent!” Rosalie tapped her flute against Emma's and threw the champagne down her throat.
Emma did the same, welcoming the bubbles, welcoming the warm haziness that wrapped around her. She wanted to float away. Far, far away.
“Look.” A bit of a groan in Rosalie’s voice as she pointed with her flute across the ballroom. “The duke looks for me. Our second dance is coming up.” She held up her hand from which the dance card dangled by a gold cord. “If I do not go now, he will find me here with you, and I have the distinct impression he will get all broody if he does that.” She weaved into the crowd toward Clearford. “We will chat again. Soon!”
Emma watched until the woman met up with Clearford and he led her out onto the dance floor, and then an elbow jabbed into her arm.
“What do you think of Lady Huxley?” Felicity asked.
“I think I’ve made a friend.” An unlikely one. “She's quite direct.”
“Just so. She always has very interesting ideas about books.”
“Oh? You read books with one another?”
Felicity stiffened, her mouth hanging open for just a second. “We belong to a book club. I like to read.”
“So do I. Perhaps I could join you.”
Again, Felicity's mouth hung open. “Yes, yes. But… erm… the club is on a bit of a hiatus, but I'm… bother. I think I see Annie over there, and I haven't talked to her for a whole week! Do you mind if I run off?”
Emma did not see Felicity’s sister, Mrs. Kingston, anywhere, but she shrugged. “Go, then.”
The young girl bolted away as quickly as she could through the crush, leaving Emma alone on the edges of the ballroom, two empty champagne glasses in her hands.
And for some reason, those empty glasses felt terribly heavy, their emptiness overflowing, drowning in something cold as the duke swept her new friend into his arms.