Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
E mma bent over her writing desk, attempting to pen another letter to Clearford. Six days since her previous one, six since the string of letters still residing in her trunk, better off forgotten in the dark. Six days of keeping her distance from the duke. Somehow she’d managed to avoid him entirely. Probably because she’d feigned illness all week. A cold, a megrim—excuses that allowed her to remain hidden in her room.
But she could not always avoid her duty. This letter would be her reentry into life, where she’d have to see Clearford and Lady Huxley happy at one another’s sides.
A pile of crumpled paper littered the floor at her feet. Every time she tried to write to Clearford of Lady Felicity and Mr. Sinclair and Sir Rexley and ask if he’d scheduled a time to speak with Lord Bransley, she wrote instead things she should not, words that continued the conversation from before. The letters all started with felicitations on nuptial happiness and ended with I would choose you, too .
Rubbish.
She laid down her quill. She would wait to write the letter. Wait until after she had more information on Lord Bransley. She would ask if Felicity knew anything.
Felicity had placed the last epistle in Emma’s hands.
If I were free to choose, I would choose you.
What chained him?
Not that the what mattered.
She would match Lady Felicity. Then, whether it welcomed her back or not, she’d return to Edinburgh. Cold Edinburgh which did not seem to want her back. Returning would be for the best, even if she left her sisters behind in London with Lady Macintosh to guide the way.
Yes, that’s what she would do—tell her father to marry her off as he wished, so long as he left the girls in Aunt Georgie’s care.
She’d barter her future for theirs.
Hunger growled inside her, though she’d just eaten, and she whipped out a clean sheet of paper, set her father’s name atop it. He’d sent three inquiries all the way from Scotland, and she’d not answered a single one. If she didn’t do so soon, he’d either forget about them—the preferred outcome—or he’d show up on the Macintosh’s doorstep, fury in his eyes and a bottle in his hand.
A knock on the door tore her from the task easily as one of Samuel’s knives could cut through the paper.
“Yes?” she asked, opening the door.
“Lady Emma,” the butler said, “a Lady Huxley is here for you.”
Lady Huxley? But… why? “Yes. I’ll be right down. Please bring tea.” It was quick work to pull on her stockings and shoes and throw a shawl over her shoulders, and she found Rosalie in the ground-floor drawing room, peeking out the window at the square beyond.
“Good afternoon,” Emma said as she entered. “Will you take a seat?”
“Oh, I will. Thank you.” Rosalie dropped into the offered chair near the fireplace as Emma sat opposite her. “You are looking well, but I have heard you are not.”
“I am better.” Though not free from guilt, making this lovely woman worry because she couldn’t bear to see her happiness. She should offer her congratulations. But the words would not form on her tongue. They lodged like chunks of meat in her throat, cutting off her air. “What brings you here, Rosalie?”
“You, naturally.” Rosalie stripped her gloves off. “To see if you are well and because you have potential.”
“Potential? I’m afraid you will have to explain.”
“Do you like books?”
“Yes.”
“All books or only certain types?” Rosalie leaned forward.
“Ah… only certain types. I think. What types do you mean?”
“I’m a member of a book club, and I think you might be a likely prospect for joining it. We are selective about our membership because we only read a particular sort of book.”
The tea came, and Emma busied herself pouring Rosalie a cup and handing it over. “Scientific tomes?”
Rosalie threw her head back and laughed. When her mirth threatened her tea, she plopped the cup and saucer onto the table beside her and held her belly.
“It’s hardly an amusing question,” Emma said, pouring her own tea through a scowl.
Rosalie wiped a tear away from her eye. “It is only that my answer to your question could be no and yes at the same time, I think. Some do, perhaps, think of our club as a scientific one. Certainly, there is much lively and often intellectual discussion and, at times… experimentation.”
“But the books are not scientific?”
“No. Not at all.”
“Will you tell me what sort of books you read, then?” Emma held the cup near her lips but did not drink. She inhaled the rising steam.
“Not yet, I think. I’m still making observations to determine if you are worth an invitation. But I am positive it would be for the best if you were part of our club.”
“Rosalie”—Emma snapped her cup to its saucer in her lap—“will you please speak plainly.”
“I would. I swear to you I would, but it’s a delicate matter. As I said, we are quite selective. And I cannot offer an invitation without the approval of the entire group. I think you’ll be accepted, though.” Rosalie pushed her bottom lip out. “I dislike subtlety. I much prefer direct conversation. Tell me… has your aunt discussed this with you?”
“Discussed the… book club?”
Rosalie nodded enthusiastically.
“No. Is she a member?”
“Oh yes, one of the founding members.”
Emma lifted her cup to her lips but then set the entire cup and saucer aside on the table next to Lady Huxley’s. Agitation rose up in her like a hiccup. “No, she has said nothing, but… she did give me a book.” Her cheeks became coals. “And I know she has borrowed books from Clearford’s sisters.”
“Those Merriweather sisters.” Lady Huxley chuckled. “Lady Macintosh is testing you. She has the same idea I do, I see. Wonderful. Tell me—what book did she give you? I see from the red of your cheeks it’s a good one.”
“I… I can’t say. I don’t remember.” Lies. She’d opened it once every day, reading a sentence at a time, waiting for the explosion she knew must come. The heat in her cheeks jumped high as soon as she saw the cursed thing.
“Your lips are lying, but your blush tells the truth. It’s the sort of book an unwed lady is not supposed to know about, isn’t it?”
Emma covered her face with her palms. “How did you know?”
“Because those”—Lady Huxley leaned closer over the tea set—“are the particular sort of books your Lady Macintosh’s book club reads.”
Emma’s hands dropped. “No!”
Lady Huxley’s head nodded like a boat bobbing on choppy water. “Yes, yes, and you must join us. If your aunt is giving the books to you, I refuse to feel guilt for revealing the nature of the club. I see now it is not merely a possibility, your joining, it’s an eventuality. Come, do say you will join us.”
“I-I… well, no, I can’t. I—”
“You can, and you must.”
“How can you participate in such a club? You are soon to be a duchess! You should be cultivating a pristine reputation!”
“A duchess? I see you’ve not heard.” Rosalie snorted, throwing her head back and sending her curls bobbing. “I was reading the books before the duke was courting me, and I shan’t stop now. Even if I had agreed to marry him, I would not have stopped. He’s much too emotional. I prefer a more practical sort of man.”
Emma’s hands, curved around her teacup in her lap, flinched, and the teacup tilted, and the red-hot heat of steaming tea seeped through her skirts, her shift, her skin. She jumped to her feet, hissing.
“Heavens!” Rosalie jumped to her feet, too, snapping up a serviette from the tea tray. “Here! Are you burned?”
The heat was disappearing, leaving nothing but a dull, insistent ache. Emma shook her head and sat, urging the widow to sit as well. “Apologies. I am more startled than anything.” She accepted the serviette and dabbed at the dark stain on her cream skirts, cold now. Her body the same—hot and vibrating yet cold and numb all over. She kept her gaze down as she tended the stain. “Y-you rejected Clearford’s suit? W-when did he propose?”
“A week ago, I think. And how else could I answer? We do not suit. As a matchmaker, you should see that.”
“You do suit.” Still, Emma dabbed at the spot, perhaps a touch more aggressively than before. “You do. You are of similar backgrounds and are friendly with one another. You share the same goals in life. You would have been comfortable together.”
“Me? Comfortable with such a gloomy, serious fellow? You forgot to take temperament into account, I think, Miss Matchmaker.”
Emma threw the useless serviette down. “I was not brought here to match him, and”—her gaze whipped to Rosalie’s—“how do you know I’m a matchmaker?”
Rosalie shrugged. “The Merriweather sisters told me. I do not mind, except you seem to be rather bad at it, but”—she chuckled—“that is perfectly fine considering the duke used to think himself something similar yet proved bad at it as well. Do you enjoy sharing a pod with the duke?”
“Pod?” The conversation had rolled like a child’s ball into a thicket, and Emma could not follow.
“You’re a pea, my dear. And so is Clearford.”
“Ah.” Why was it so hot in here? “He proposed to you, though?”
“Yes. And that’s precisely what it was. A proposal. Nothing romantic about it. Not that I want romance. In fact, I would have preferred it had he shown up and offered a happily practical match. But”—she chuckled again—“that is not what happened. Here. Let me show you.”
“No, no! Do not. It’s not necessary.”
“You’ll laugh as hard as I did, dear. Watch.” Rosalie jumped up from her chair and strode to the door. She bolted outside, closed the door behind her, then knocked from the outside.
When Emma did not answer, she stuck her head through. “Tell me to come in!” She disappeared behind the slammed door. Two knocks came like harbingers of doom.
“Come in,” Emma said, careful to keep the tremble from her voice.
The door swung open, and Rosalie strode in, hands clasped behind her back. She made a deep, tight bow that almost folded her in half. Then she stood up tall, lips pressed flat, and said in a deep, serious voice, “Lady Huxley. I do not think we should delay this any further. If you are willing to marry me, I am willing to marry you.”
“No,” Emma gasped, her hands flying up to cover her mouth. The man had poetry in his soul, and that’s what he’d said? “What did he… when you rejected him, how—”
“He gave a tight nod, spun on his toe, and left.” Rosalie retook her seat across from Emma in a flurry of skirts. “He was so controlled, yet at the same time so stiff and unhappy. I’m too clever to marry myself to a man like that. Perhaps if he expressed his emotion easily, naturally, I could entertain him. But he bottles it up so tightly that it fairly explodes. I cannot condone it.”
“I cannot contradict you. He should have been nicer, offered a compliment.” Emma’s bones had become flower stems—light and airy and green with spring.
“Even then I would not have accepted him. I think he hopes for love, and I cannot give him that.”
“Why do you think he wants that?” Even to herself, her words sounded small.
“All his sisters are disgustingly enamored of their husbands. Lady Helston… there’s a question there… but her husband is doting, and she is happy, so perhaps it does not matter. And it is what his sisters wish for him as well. They speak of it often. They have seemed unhappy about him courting me.”
“Oh, I am sure they were not.”
Rosalie waved her hand. “I am not offended. What he wants has nothing to do with me, and what I want has nothing to do with him. Do not some of the matches you try to make work out that way? An amicable parting of ways?”
“I… no. The matches I’ve made do not get so far if there is to be a parting.” Except the times she’d tried love matches. What failures.
“Well, now you have seen something new. But do not pity me. I’m pleased I have a new friend.” She reached for Emma’s hand and squeezed it. “I do hope Clearford finds what he’s looking for, who he is looking for. His requirements are rather particular.” She stared into the fire, then shook off whatever she saw there, and grinned brightly at Emma. “But do say you’ll join our next meeting. I’ll share the book we’re discussing with you. I’ve already consumed it. Two days was all it took. I have it here.”
She dragged her overly large reticule out from between her leg and the chair arm, opened it, and produced a small, blue book. She shoved it toward Emma, and when Emma did not immediately snap it up, Rosalie shook it. “Come on, then. It won’t bite.”
Emma took it and ran her thumb down the gilt lettering on the spine. “ The Duke’s Garden ?” She tried to imagine Clearford dressed as a gardener, digging in the dirt.
“Lousy title, wonderful tale. You see, the garden is not a plot of earth. It’s that place between a lady’s legs.”
Clearford dressed in nothing, stepping between legs, her legs with a mole just above the left knee, and when he discovered it, he dragged the pad of his thumb—
Emma dropped the book to the table and jumped to her feet. She paced to the windows, fanning her cheeks.
“Surely,” Lady Huxley said with calm hesitation, “you are not unaware of what happens between men and women. You are unmarried, but you are no green girl.”
“I am aware,” Emma snapped. “But I have not… I have never. I am a spinster at one and thirty. I know, but I do not know , and I am not supposed to know.”
The rustle of skirts. From the corner of her vision, Rosalie rose and took two cautious steps. “But don’t you want to know? Even if it is merely an intellectual knowledge?”
Did she? She’d never questioned not knowing. It was simply the way of the world. Yet she had been opening Aunt Georgie’s book, reading a sentence at a time, holding her breath as the young woman learned about her body, as the young man showed her…
“A husband,” Emma said, “should educate his wife on such matters.”
Rosalie snorted. “Do you truly believe that? No matter. Even if you do not wish to join, you will keep our secret.”
“Yes!” Emma spun around, nearly barking the answer. “I would never tell. I swear it.”
“You can keep the book. Just in case. If you change your mind, take me aside at a ball or any other event and let me know. You can be my personal guest at the next discussion.”
Emma reached out. “Wait… are you not scared about what would happen if someone found out?”
“That is a risk. But sometimes a husband does not educate a wife as you suggest. And I think in such cases a lady must pursue education elsewhere. You are, as you say, one and thirty, and inexplicably ladies of such mature years are considered undesirable. You may be facing a future with no husband at all, no man to teach you. Yet… shouldn't you like to know, anyway? Shouldn't you like your sisters to have someone who does know? Shouldn't you like to be the one to prepare them before their wedding days? If they have no mother, and you have no husband, then how are you to do your duty as their closest female relation?”
Emma inhaled the widow’s words like fresh air. And with a bit of guilt as well. She had not prepared her other sisters for marriage, but her mother, had she lived, would have. “I will think on it.”
Rosalie made for the door. “Excellent. I trust you’ll come to the correct decision. Some things, you know, are worth taking risks for.” She grinned. “Enjoy the book. That duke does know how to garden. Strong fingers. Flexible... Enjoy.” She tossed a languid smile over her shoulder, then disappeared down the hallway.
Emma returned to her room, the salacious book clutched to her chest. She knelt next to her trunk, popped it open, and dug deep until she found the book Aunt Georgie had given her. Her sisters needed her to obtain the knowledge within its pages. Perhaps it was time to procure it with steadfast dedication instead of a few furtive sentences at a time. The other book… the one Rosalie had given her… She was not ready for it yet. She dropped it into her trunk, where it landed right next to the ink-stained, folded paper—Clearford’s letters.
He had proposed to Rosalie.
Rosalie had refused.
If I were free to choose, I would choose you.
Emma shivered and retreated to her bed, sprawling across the mattress on her back and holding The School of Venus above her face as she cracked it open and silently read the first words again.
Roger a young Gentleman being passionately in love with Katherine…
She curled her lips to the side. “Not too questionable.”
… a virgin of admirable beauty, but so extremely simple…
“Terribly rude, that.”
… having always been brought up under the rigid Government of her Mother, who was a Wife of a Substantial Citizen, that all his perswasions could do no good on her…
“That’s more titillating, I suppose.”
… by reason she understood not anything that appertained to love.
Emma sighed. “Who does?” She skipped past the book description and opened to the first page. She read about clueless virgins and knowledgeable cousins. And about how men and women together could reach the “greatest pleasure.” She read until the light outside the window shifted from afternoon to early evening, and—
A bang on her door startled her upright. She shrieked and threw the book. It landed in her still-open trunk as she jumped to her feet.
More banging. “Emma, open up! You must!”
Emma smoothed her hair and opened the door, and five girls flew in. The duke’s sisters and her own, all but for Lady Felicity, and all red-cheeked and wide eyed, their hair wild and their skirts wrinkled, their throats gasping for air.
“Breathe,” Emma demanded as she stood. “Do breathe and tell me what’s happened. Is the duke—”
“Not him!” Lady June gasped in a breath. “We ran all the way from him, though.”
“He’s leaving for Scotland,” Lady Gertrude said.
“Scotland?” Emma heard the word but did not feel her mouth shaping it. “Whatever for?”
“Lady Felicity has eloped!” Briar clutched her heart, her words ringing with doom.
And in Emma’s ears they rang like a death knell. Eloped. Eloped. Eloped.
“No,” she whispered.
And then she ran, pushing through the sisters and down the stairs, out of the house, and through the garden. The rapid footfalls behind her told her the sisters followed. Emma pushed into the duke’s house without knocking.
“I must speak to Clearford,” she demanded.
The butler peeked out from a door to the side of the entry hall. “He’s busy, my lady.”
“I’ll show you.” Lady June grasped Emma’s wrist and pulled her toward the stairs.
Emma did not need pulling. She hoisted her skirts and took the stairs two at a time to keep up with the younger girl and soon found herself breathless before an open bedchamber door.
Inside, oblivious to anyone and everything, Clearford snapped open a large satchel and stormed from one end of the room to the other, threw open doors and threw articles of clothing inside the bag. His long, determined legs, bunched muscle beneath wool, and his hair, usually perfectly contained and pushing back and away from his forehead, fell wild before his eyes.
“Samuel,” she breathed.
He spun around and whispered her name, and if she’d not been in trouble before, she now was. Because this was a beast wounded and bleeding, and she’d do anything to heal him.