Chapter 2
Emma dropped her shears in her apron pocket and admired her trimming of the rose bush.
This was her garden, her refuge in her Uncle George’s house.
It was lush, only a hint of its regular fragrance now in mid-October.
But she had tended it so carefully, that it sported one enormous red rose.
If she sold the house, she would miss this and more of what she’d created here in this plot in the midst of the city.
There was not much she adored that still existed.
Her first pony, gone to an arthritic old age.
Her kind and loving governess, banished by her father.
Her oldest friend, gone to war, home now to…
to…torment her with his bright green gaze and earnest behavior.
None of that had she any control over. But now at Uncle George’s passing, she had the freedom to live as she chose, to ignore what had come before. Her uncle had ensured that for her…and for Diana.
Freedom that took her out into the world of which she knew so little.
Freedom that took her to garden parties where Lady Shackleford spoke about her behind her long skinny fingers.
Freedom where she had stared at the woman with knowledge of what she did…
and what she had done years ago to sully Emma’s name.
But then the image of the new, the vital, the dashing Lance Winters rose up before her like a genie from a lamp.
He’d seemed to grow taller, broader, more imposing, and impossible to ignore with his sunny good looks and disposition.
What was she doing, silently yearning for a moment alone with the Lance of her youth and the entrancing Lance who’d appeared yesterday?
Oh, yes, she shivered as she closed her eyes to chase him away. But he remained, stubborn fellow. And why not? He deserved more than a moment’s regard. After all, she was proud of him.
He had endured. Survived the worst that life can give a man.
War had built him, broadened him, rewarded him with vigor and health.
He’d served faithfully in the hellish war against Napoleon.
Then, so said her uncle, he’d been sent immediately to Canada.
New colonists there needed protection from raging waterways and flaming forests.
Army engineers built roads and bridges, tunnels and dams. Then suddenly on the death of Lance’s cousin, fate had granted him wealth and status he’d never sought to claim.
His health and prosperity was another sign that some elements of her youth lived and flourished. She could celebrate his success as she should now celebrate her own change of circumstances.
She smiled to herself and touched her fingertip to the velvet petal of her last red rose of the year. Perhaps I shall keep this house. Why not? It pleases me. If and when it doesn’t, I can decide to sell.
“P-p-pardon me, m-miss,” her butler Jeffries came to the salon door.
Emma swung around to face him. Sans hair on his head and eyebrows, he had piercing blue eyes—and a palsy.
Despite that, he would not allow her to pension him off.
He’d served her Uncle George for more than thirty years and deserved a restful retirement.
Poor fellow was right as rain in his head, but he had a terrible time talking. “You you you have a a c-caller.”
“This early?” She did not know many rules of proper society but she did know no one called on another before two or three in the afternoon. When she’d come out here to prune her roses, the hall clock was just striking eleven. “Who is it?”
Jeffries winced. “Lord Weatherby, miss.”
“Lance?” She let slip his given name.
“Yes, Miss. What shall I say? Do you re-receive?”
She whirled about, facing her roses and the white pagoda where she spent so many hours in silent joy. Why did he come here and attack her serenity?
“Miss?” Jeffries urged, his tone wobbly with worry. The old fellow had been in service to her Uncle George when she’d been disgraced years ago. He knew what receiving Lance could cost her.
“Let me in, Emma.”
At the sound of his voice, her mind was flooded with old memories of how assertive he’d always been.
Defying rules of his uncle not to ride the prize thoroughbreds in the family stables.
Crawling up the drain spouts on her family’s house to her bedroom and crawling along the branches of the old yew to scramble inside her room.
Years ago, she had thrilled to his escapades. She did now at this, too. Some things never changed. But the stakes were higher now, and just as treacherous.
She took him in, his power and might. Her hands perspired in her anxiety. She patted the palms of her hands on her yellow gardening smock. She’d have done with this matter now and for good. “Do, yes, come join me.”
His magnificent physique was nothing to his grin of delight at her acceptance.
“Jeffries, please bring us tea and whatever Cook has available. Please ask Miss Diana to attend us here.”
Lance strolled toward her, handing over his hat and gloves to Jeffries as he passed. “We don’t need your cousin to chaperone, Emma. We are such old friends, how could we endanger each other’s reputation?”
She dropped open her mouth. “You cannot be serious!”
“I am,” he said as he stood right before her. So close, too close, she could inhale the scent of his morning bath. Lemon-scented soap. “It’s been years. Ten of them. Too long.”
She scoffed. A good thing, too. Looking up at his perfection burned her eyes. She would not fall prey to his charms. “Clearly, you must work the receiving lines more frequently. Did you meet Lady Shackleford at Lady Trilling’s?”
He laughed and availed himself of a garden chair. No invitation to sit necessary for such old friends who have ruined each other, eh? “The woman with the silver hair?”
“And silver tongue.”
“Yes.” He crossed one long leg over the other, looking like a rogue in command of all before him. “I must say I expected her to slither along the floor.”
Emma snorted. “She would want to show you her most sterling characteristics. She has two daughters in the marriage mart.”
“And two bricks tied to each ankle,” he crooned as he pressed a hand down his thigh, “wishing you to come drown in her cesspool with her. I’ve nearly drowned in clearer eddies.”
She smiled at his joke.
He pointed a finger at her. “I see that.”
“It’s gone now.” She grimaced at him, and he had the audacity to chuckle. “What do you want? Why are you here?”
His expression tightened. “Well, I did not come here to argue.”
“I want to.” Oh, she was being irrational and he always caught her out at that.
He winced. “Did your cook put sand in your tea this morning?”
“Oh! Get on with it!”
“I cannot rub along with you if you insist on being a harpy!”
“Did you just come here to tease and torment me?”
He lost all pretense of humor and locked his verdant green gaze on hers. “You know I’ve come to make you laugh.”
“That day is done. I do not smile.”
“You just did. Perhaps I can help you do it again?”
“How can you say that?” She swept out an arm, flabbergasted. “You honestly don’t know why I cannot be gay?”
“Know what? What’s happened to you? I know your father is gone and your uncle, too.
Your cousin is with you. But what else can I know, Em?
How can I? I am only down from the wilds of Northumbria since last week.
There ever since February to take over for my dearly departed cousin.
Before that I was in Canada, Em. For nearly two long years.
” He cursed beneath his breath and ran a hand over his hair. “Do you have any idea where Canada is?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She rolled her shoulder and sniffed. She’d worried and wondered about him for years off in the wilderness with wild animals and native peoples. “Of course, I have a globe.”
“The mail gets to our encampment once a month. Little though that matters because you never answered my letters.”
“You wrote?” She was crushed, appalled that someone—her father?—had kept Lance’s letters from her.
“Of course I did.” He looked stricken, as if she had wounded him. “You did not write to me. Neither would your father send me word of your health and—”
“You wrote my father?” She was stunned. The man had never told her.
“When I had no word, I knew not what else to do. He told me to forget you. No kind word of his regard. Not that I expected that of him. He was not one to offer solicitations in peace or war.”
“I’ll say!”
“Finally, I wrote to your Uncle George and he told me you had retired to his country house in Derbyshire. He reported you were well and wished to remain there. I speculated as to your reasoning, but then I knew you preferred your uncle’s company to your father’s.
” Lance stepped near again and urged both her hands from her pockets.
“I promised I’d write. I keep my promises. ”
“That day when you kissed me you also promised to return for me. But you never did. I lost hope.”
“I nearly did myself, Em. I was sent to Canada immediately after we occupied Paris. I never came home until February, then I went north immediately. My cousin Thomas, my predecessor, was dying and I was to replace him immediately. I had no say in any of my destiny. None.”
He learned forward, his attitude one of a supplicant. “Please come sit and talk to me, Em.”
His tender plea touched her heart. She sat, chastising herself for acting like a twit, sorrowing for what they had lost. Peaches came to purr around her legs and then his.
He put out a hand and circled one of her wrists with firm fingers. “I came to renew our friendship.”
She took back her arm and shoved her hands in her apron pockets. “That is not possible.”
“Why not?” He cast about the garden as if looking for others. “Is there some man for whom you have an entendre? I asked about, but no one mentioned any attachment.”