Chapter 11
“No!” Louise raised a hand to her mouth. “Can it be?”
Grateful that they were standing off to one side in the crowd of guests, Emeline put an arm around her cousin. “Steady,” she whispered. “It’s only Charles.”
“That is just what I meant to tell you…” Mouette said, wincing slightly.
Slowly, Louise seemed to recover her senses. She stood up a bit straighter, and a hint of color returned to her cheeks. “As Emmie says, it is our own Charles, returned at last,” she managed. “How lovely.”
Emeline watched as her mother started forward to greet her first-born child.
Charles had aged, but the years agreed with him, Emeline thought.
Her half-brother was turned out in the latest style, from a gleaming black silk neckcloth to his double-breasted frock coat, popularized by the queen’s husband, Prince Albert.
As he strolled closer, Charles swept off his tall hat, revealing carefully brushed, wavy golden locks with side whiskers.
He paused to embrace both Mouette and Emeline, and then glanced toward Louise, his smile widening.
“Ah, Louise!” he proclaimed. “Yet, I should not be surprised. Even after all these years, you have a way of turning up in England wherever I am—even here in the cosmopolitan environs of London.”
Sensing the storm of emotions inside her beloved cousin, Emeline stepped between them.
“But Louise and I have been in London for some time, so it is you who has turned up where she is.” Her tone was light, almost teasing.
“We have taken lodgings together and are engaged in serious scholarly endeavors at the British Museum.”
He flicked a monocle from his breast pocket, lifted it to one eye, and cocked his head to one side.
“Are you indeed?” Surveying Louise from head to toe, Charles added, “No surprise, I’ll own.
From a young age, you’ve always been a bluestocking at heart.
” He turned toward Emeline and added, “But I didn’t expect it from a diamond like you, Emmie!
Last I heard, Justin needed reinforcements to fend off your suitors. ”
“That’s nonsense.” She sent him a warning glance. “And Louise is the diamond, not I.”
Seeming to realize that he had said the wrong thing, Charles stepped closer to Louise and gave her shoulder a brotherly pat.
“Well, of course!” He smiled into her eyes.
“Our Louise always was a very rare sort of female. Ah, I see my old friend Lord Marsh.” He waved to a figure near the arbor.
“Must go and pay my respects.” Charles took two steps before glancing back at Louise, who had gone pale.
“We will catch up properly later on, yes?”
“Oh…yes!” she stammered. As he turned his back and started off, she added, “It’s good to see you again.”
No sooner had Charles moved away from them than Emeline turned to her mother. “You knew that he had returned, I take it?”
“I did…” She managed a strained smile. “He arrived last evening, but I wasn’t entirely certain he would attend this gathering since he just completed a long journey from Rome.” Wincing slightly, she added, “I did try to tell you.”
“I must say, Mama, you didn’t try very hard,” Emeline said with a trace of irony.
“I hesitated to stir up old feelings,” her mother confessed with a faraway look in her eyes.
Emeline set her chin. “Meanwhile, I wonder what brings him home.” Privately, she suspected that something must have happened to drive him from Italy.
Louise seemed to gather her composure. “How nice it is to see Charles again after so many years,” she said.
Watching her, Mouette said gently, “You have ever been his loyal friend, even when the rest of us were out of temper with him.”
“Yes…and he was my friend. It will be fascinating to hear more about his time away. No doubt he has become a well-regarded architect.”
Across the garden, Charles was chatting with wealthy Lord Marsh’s daughter. Emeline’s heart ached for Louise.
“Do you know, I feel a headache coming on,” Emeline said. “Louise, why don’t we go home and have a nice cup of tea in our own little parlor? Little Mew is doubtless waiting to curl up, purring mightily, on your lap.”
Her cousin’s relief was palpable. “Oh, yes.” She let out a deep breath. “That would be just the thing.”
The morning of the luncheon at Amity Park, Emeline awoke to see a few crimson leaves fluttering past her window.
Stretching, she lingered in bed for a few more minutes, remembering that the day ahead would be filled with new sights and people.
What recently discovered relics would be revealed at today’s gathering, and who else would be present?
Perhaps some artifacts would provide useful information for the project she and Louise had undertaken for Hart.
It was odd to anticipate spending the day with virtual strangers.
After all, she barely knew Sir Giles Peyton, no matter how exuberantly she had spoken of him to her father.
And she felt not a flicker of attraction for him, though that would remain her secret for now.
Anything to stop Papa from conjuring up his own list of suitors for her.
Emeline reached to throw back the covers, yet paused as a thought rose, unbidden, inside her. Where is Hart today? She and Louise had left her grandparents’ garden so precipitously, she’d had no chance to speak to him again or bid him goodbye.
Lying there in the morning quiet, Emeline closed her eyes and thought back to her last encounter with him at the garden party, when she had turned and bumped into his broad, hard chest. Hart had caught her forearms and held her against him for a few moments that had felt…
oh, deliciously intimate. Her heart raced now as she let herself feel it all again.
Turning against the soft bed linens, Emeline imagined, just for an instant, what it would be like to wake and find Hart sleeping on the pillow next to her. His warm, strong hands touching her…
This fantasy was rudely interrupted by scratching at the door, followed by a demanding “Meeoow!”
Just as well, Emeline thought ruefully as she rose and went to admit her morning caller. Dreams like those could never come true, not unless she accepted a carte-blanche from Hart. He had made it clear that he would never marry…and of course, neither would she!
Two hours later, dressed in a stylish but understated promenade gown of dove gray silk set off by violet accents that brought out her eyes, Emeline waited in the parlor for Sir Giles to arrive.
Because they were traveling to Amity Park in his post-chaise, Emeline had chosen a becoming bonnet with a veil to shield her from the elements, and she carried a violet-striped reticule.
“Oh, miss, you look like a princess,” proclaimed Dora as she appeared with a plate of day-old scones.
“Thank you! It is definitely a change from my usual attire,” Emeline replied, smiling.
When Dora took her leave, Louise spoke up from her chair by the bow window. “I am certain it will be wonderful. You’ll have to tell me everything when you return.”
“Of course I will! And I hope to befriend Viscount Melford so that he may eventually know you and include us both in future invitations.” She paused. “I wonder if the viscount is very old?”
Just then, a drab carriage drew up in front of their house and Sir Giles emerged, looking rather harried. “Oh, dear. What shall we talk about?” Emeline said suddenly.
“I have never known you to be at a loss for words,” Louise soothed.
“I rather dread being alone with him though…” She thought suddenly of Lord Fulham, and so many other men. They had feigned respectful adoration but, once they had her alone, could think of nothing else but her female body.
A knock sounded at the door. Moments later, Dora was ushering Sir Giles into the parlor. He was proper, as always, yet clearly in a hurry. “Don’t like to leave the horses standing,” he explained as they bade Louise farewell.
Outside on the footpath, Sir Giles paused.
“Ought to tell you, my mother, Mrs. Peyton, is with us.” He looked embarrassed. “Very keen on these sorts of things. A great friend of Cartwright, the archaeologist.”
His mother? As Sir Giles handed her up into the carriage, Emeline found herself wedged in beside a stately dragon of a woman who surveyed her through her pince-nez.
By the time they reached Oxford Street, Mrs. Peyton had made it clear that she came first in her son’s heart, and there was no space for other females.
The remainder of the rather slow journey was taken up with a dull conversation between Sir Giles and Mrs. Peyton about the need for new horses.
Grateful that she didn’t have to be alone with her would-be suitor, Emeline looked out at the countryside and felt a rising sense of anticipation for what lay ahead.
When, an hour later, the equipage turned up the sweeping drive to Amity Park, she sat up straight. They passed through an avenue of ancient oak trees, russet leaves gilded in the autumn sun, and soon a handsome manor house came into view.
“Not far from the Thames, you see,” murmured Giles. “Cartwright, the archaeologist in charge of the dig, believes there was a village here centuries ago. Viking, even Roman? Access to the river, very important.”
In the distance beyond the manor, the grounds sloped downward toward what Giles said was the excavation area. A white canvas tent had been erected nearby, and guests were already mingling on the freshly cut lawn.
Emeline felt both excited and uncertain as she was handed down from the carriage. However, just as Mrs. Peyton began to implore Giles to assist her, a male voice called out to them.
“Giles, old fellow! At last.” A thickset man with broad shoulders, dark chestnut hair, and a kind face was striding up the hill, one hand raised in greeting. “I’m so glad you were able to come.”
“Ah, Lord Melford,” Giles replied, drawing his mother forward. “I apologize if we are tardy.”