Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
H er sisters hadn't noticed yet. Behind Emma, they laughed and chatted and bragged about having created a love match, and the young earl groaned and teased.
And Emma, one hand gripping the banister so tightly her knuckles shone through her skin, reached a shaking hand out toward them. “Stay here. Do not leave this balcony.” She did not stay to answer questions, nor to ensure obedience. She took the stairs slowly, settling each foot on each step with careful precision as if one wrong move could topple the entire ballroom.
Her father stood like a boulder in the doorway. People came and went, flowing in and out like sheep through a gate, like water parting around a rock. Two rocks. Her father and Viscount Parkington. Neither dressed for the occasion, both rumpled and mean-looking in rough traveling clothes instead of evening wear.
She'd almost reached the bottom step of the ballroom when her father found her. He rocked back onto his heels, a crooked grin slashing his lips across his face. She felt as if she walked through muck and mud and refuse, each step difficult, painful, like stepping on broken glass. But soon she stood before him, clutching her hands behind her back so he did not see them trembling.
“Good evening, lass,” he drawled, his brogue thick, his breath putrid with whisky fumes.
“Father. How unexpected.”
“I like to keep people guessing.”
Guessing how he would pay their bills.
“Good evening, Lady Emma.” Parkington reeked, too. They had not simply shared a bottle of whisky on the journey; they had doused themselves in it. “Will you not greet me after such a long absence?”
She’d rather not. But he did not seem to be poofing out of existence, so she must. “Parkington. Even more unexpected to find you here.” She turned back to her father. “What brings you this far south?”
“You, naturally.”
“Me?” The ballroom seemed to be fading away, the chatter surrounding her softer now, yet somehow louder at the same time. “There's no reason for you to come all the way to London for me.” The words fell from a tongue that had forgotten how to shape them. “If you mean to check up on my work, I can assure you that things are going quite well.” Where was Samuel? She should introduce him, a social requirement. But she needed him, too, would stand stronger with him beside her. Yet she wanted Samuel far away, too, wanted the kind-hearted duke miles from her alcohol-soured father.
“I assure you, Father,” she mumbled, “everything is well here. I just sent you a letter. By the time you get home, it will be waiting for you.”
“And I’ll have no bluidy need of it.” Her father’s boot began to tap, slow, staccato, unceasing. “You’re coming home with me. You can tell me all about what you wrote on the way.”
A roar rushing through her ears dulled the ballroom chatter. She must not have heard him right. “I am not going back to Scotland. I have not yet finished my task here.”
“And you won’t. Those silly tasks are done with. No more. They never earn enough anyway.” Her father slapped Parkington on the back. “Tell her why you came. Tell her.”
“Lady Emma,” Parkington sneered. The curl of his lip, the tilt of his head in condescending victory… something in her lurched away from him. Her belly churned, and her feet begged to run. “Will you dance with me?”
“No. My dance card is full.” A lie.
“Dinna play courting games,” her father snarled. “Just tell the girl.”
Parkington’s eyes flickered with the light of a thousand candles flaring high under a surge of air. “Your father has honored me by granting me your hand in marriage.”
“No.” Emma tumbled back a step. “No. I must have misheard you.”
“You're coming back to Scotland and marrying the man,” her father said. “Now.”
“No.” No. No. No. No, no, no. She ran back several steps but hit a wall of bodies. They turned and glared, and she tried to run forward but was caught up in her father's arms. And Parkington’s.
No no no . She threw elbows, lifted knees, her struggle silent, quiet, futile.
“Quit making a scene,” Parkington hissed, his hold on her arm tight, tighter, a chain that would not loosen.
She shook and shook but still he held, hissing.
“Stop it, you brat.” Her father jerked her arm, shook her limp. “Dinna make the viscount regret it.”
“Why?” Emma panted. “Why?”
Her father chuckled. “No other lass will have him, it seems.”
“Not after your little performance at the assembly rooms. Lady Mercer says you spoke with her, accused me of manhandling you.” Parkington’s hold on her arm was still so tight there would be bruises. Already they burned into her skin, into her muscle and bone.
But… that meant Lady Mercer had believed her, and she’d told the women of Edinburgh, who’d believed her as well. She’d saved them, saved all of them from marrying a man like this.
She’d not saved herself, though.
Power returned to her limbs, a surge of defiance. She would save herself. And she would not have to do it alone. She needed to find Samuel.
She kicked at Parkington’s leg, stomping his foot. “I’m not marrying him. I am already—”
Her body dragged forward, her defiance silenced by the loss of breath as her father and Parkington yanked her limbs until she was imprisoned in the shadows of the hallway beyond the ballroom.
“One of my daughters will marry him,” her father said, his face so close to hers, she held her breath to keep from breathing his foul air. “For a considerable yearly price, you’ll marry him, and if it’s not you, it can be Glenna.”
Emma's heart stopped. Her tongue somehow still shaped the right words. “Glenna is too young.”
“Seventeen is as good an age as any to become a wife,” her father said.
Where was her knife when she needed it most? She’d unfold it, slip it between her father’s ribs, and twist. She’d cut a pretty red ribbon around Parkington’s throat. She had no knife. The only weapon currently at hand to save those she loved… her freedom.
Life slumped out of her, and the two men dragged her from the ballroom.
“Emma! Emma!” A sweet, high voice yelled over the buzzing chatter, and Emma managed to look over her shoulder as her father and betrothed pulled her down the hallway.
Felicity, pale and brave and screaming Emma’s name. Offering hope.
“Stop,” Emma begged. “Please. If you do not let me tell her where I’m going there will be a fuss. You must let me speak with her.”
“In front of me, lass.” Her father pinned her to his side. “No secret conversations.”
She shook her head, and Felicity surged toward them, stopped as her gaze flew between Emma and the men she did not know.
“What is wrong?” Felicity asked.
“Nothing. Nothing at all. Here.” Emma didn’t have to do this on her own. There was someone to lean on. She reached into her pocket for what she’d placed in there when she’d dressed that evening. She handed it over to the young girl. “Give it to him. He’ll understand.”
“Emma.”
“She’s safe,” her father snapped. “I’m her pa, ain’t I? And this one here’s her betrothed.” He jabbed a thumb toward Parkington.
“Betrothed?” Felicity’s voice small, her gaze on the pink handkerchief she held in her hands, her thumbs rubbing over the bright garden embroidered along its edges. “Emma, I do not understand.”
“He will.”
“No more.” Her father yanked her toward the outer door. The last thing she saw through the doorway was Felicity's pale face, her frantic eyes a stormy gray like her brothers, her bloodless, parted lips, and Emma’s name dying in the space between them.
Someone was screaming Samuel’s name, and he placed a hand on Lottie’s wrist to stop her warm congratulations. The dancers and partiers looked in the same direction, searching for the source of the scream. Samuel found it first.
Halfway up the staircase, Felicity clutched the railing with both hands.
“Something's wrong,” Samuel said, and he darted away from Lottie.
She followed, her skirts rustling close behind. When he reached Felicity, she was shaking, fighting to breathe, and he scooped her up and climbed the stairs, marched her into the hallway at the top of the balcony, found an empty, private parlor, and laid her down on a sofa. He knelt beside her and brushed hair off her face.
“Felicity, calm down. Breathe.”
“What happened?” Lottie asked, sinking to her knees beside them.
The door shut, and the lock clicked home. He looked over his shoulder. It seemed everyone was there. His sisters, their husbands, and Emma’s sisters, too. The youngest of them gathered close to the sofa, hugging one another.
“They have her!” Tears spilled down Glenna’s cheeks, and she dashed them away with fisted hands.
“Emma!” Felicity gasped, pushing upright and knocking away Samuel's concerned hands. “Two men took her, dragged her from the ballroom. Her father, they said, and her betrothed.”
Betrothed? The world began to buzz.
“One was our father,” Diana said, “but the other one—”
“Viscount Parkington.” Glenna spit the name.
“The cad,” Briar hissed.
“Who?” Lottie asked.
“He’s not her betrothed.” Diana wrung her hands. “I swear it. Oh! We should have gone after her, tried to save her.”
“What do we do now?” June sounded like a general ready to march into battle.
“She’s with her father?” Samuel sat back on his heels, his mind running so quickly he couldn’t catch up, couldn’t grasp a damn thing. Surely she was safe with her father. But he had dragged her? “I’ve never heard of Viscount Parkington.” He was not her betrothed; that was damn certain.
“A man who gave her some trouble last Season,” Glenna said. “He claimed he was in love with her. He wasn’t. He just… he just… he merely wanted her.”
Samuel cursed. That man, then, the one she’d told him about.
Felicity placed a hand on Samuel’s forearm. “Emma went with them on her own. In the end. I heard her. I heard them… a little bit. Her father said someone was going to marry Parkington, and if it wasn't Emma, it would be Glenna. So, Emma went.”
Glenna squeaked.
And Samuel ached for a pistol to put two bullets right between two sets of eyes he’d never even seen before. God. Glenna . Emma would give her life to save her sisters and to keep Glenna from enduring a relationship she had no desire for. Emma would give her life .
And she had. Of course she had. Samuel expected nothing less, but damn… what did he do now?
“The last thing Emma said was that you’d understand, Samuel.” Felicity spoke almost in a whisper. But the room had shattered into such silence, she might as well have been yelling.
Understand the need to save her sister no matter what? Understand sacrifice and love and how it hurt so deeply. But she’d step into it so swiftly. If it meant saving those she loved best.
She’d known Samuel would understand.
Because he did.
Felicity held something out to him, something pink and flimsy. “Emma said to give it to you.”
Between his fingers, the handkerchief was warm and smooth, embroidered all around with flowers. The one Emma’s mother had made for her to carry on her wedding day.
He understood this, too. She would give that bit of embroidery to only one man. Her husband. She was counting on him. She was leaning on him when she’d never relied on anyone else.
Samuel stuffed the handkerchief into his pocket and stood, his mind racing.
“Samuel?” Lottie settled at his side, laying a hand on his shoulder. “What are you going to do?”
Samuel straightened his cuffs. “Bring her home.” He straightened his waistcoat. “Marry her.” He stepped calmly into the hallway. “Probably, first, I’ll stick a knife in her father’s gut.”
As they broke out into a cacophony of protests and cheers, he ran. Back into the ballroom and halfway down the steps. He vaulted over the railing and landed in the ballroom, then shot out the doors.
He ran upstairs and found his box of knives, found the belt of leather with the sheaths, and he filled each one with knives meant more for protection than for play. Sharp bladed and good for carving bone.
Then he was on his horse, and he was headed north, black cloak billowing behind him.