Chapter 8 #2
Emmeline stood with her father at the entrance, lamplight catching along the pale line of her throat and the bright shine of her hair.
She wore deep blue this evening, a color that made her skin look warmer and her eyes softer at first glance.
His attention fixed on her so quickly that the room might as well have emptied around her.
Lord Weston saw him first and smiled with tired cordiality.
“Your Grace.”
“Lord Weston,” Rowan said, and then his gaze shifted to her. “Lady Emmeline.”
She curtsied. “Your Grace.”
There was nothing wrong in her tone. And still he heard the faint reserve in it, the note that had remained between them ever since the garden party, since Aaron’s frightened face and that brief, impossible absence of a stammer and the look she had given Rowan after.
Frederick bowed over Emmeline’s hand before Rowan could say more. “My lady. How fortunate that the theatre remains a place where one may run into one’s friends without appearing to have engineered it.”
Emmeline’s mouth softened. “Is that what you are calling this, Lord Calham? Fortune?”
“When it favors me, always.”
Lord Weston chuckled.
Rowan cut cleanly through it before Frederick could continue. “Join us in our box.”
Lord Weston began at once to decline out of politeness. “You are kind, Your Grace, but I would not intrude—”
“Come,” Rowan said.
It was answer enough.
A few minutes later, they were seated together, the theatre unfolding in warm gold beneath them, rows of faces tilted toward the stage, the murmur of voices gradually lowering as the musicians below prepared to begin.
Frederick, with what Rowan suspected was intention disguised as courtesy, placed Emmeline in the chair nearest Rowan and took the farther one for himself, leaving Lord Weston beside him. `
“You attend the theatre often, Your Grace?” Emmeline asked after the first bustle had settled.
Rowan turned, moving closer to her than he had meant to. Her soft, clean scent filled his lungs, and for a moment it hit him hard enough to make his thoughts blur. “When required.”
Her brows lifted faintly. “Required?”
“A great many things in London are endured under the name of social necessity.”
Frederick made a soft noise of amusement. “You see, Lady Emmeline, what romance awaits you in marriage.”
She ignored him. Her eyes remained on Rowan.
“And Aaron?” she asked. “Do you bring him here?”
Rowan leaned back slightly. “No.”
“Why not?”
“The plays in London are too long, too loud, and too heavy for a child.”
Emmeline’s head tilted. “I do not know that I agree.”
Something in him tightened immediately. “No?”
“My parents brought me to the theatre and the opera from a young age,” she said. “I remember very little of the first times, only that I was entranced.”
Lord Weston smiled at that. “You were. We nearly lost you beneath a row of seats at Drury Lane once, because you insisted you must get closer to the stage.”
Emmeline laughed softly. “I was six.”
“And stubborn,” her father said fondly.
Rowan found himself watching her too closely, imagining her as a child—curious, bright-eyed, reckless enough to crawl toward beauty if she thought it worth the risk—and the thought stirred something unexpectedly tender in him before he shut it down.
“Aaron is not you,” he said.
Her gaze shifted back to him at once. “No. But perhaps he might still enjoy more than you allow.”
“You know him very well, then.”
The edge in his voice was slight, but it landed. He saw it in the stillness that came over her mouth before she answered.
“I know what it is to be a child treated as though feeling deeply is a weakness to be corrected.”
Lord Weston went very quiet beside Frederick.
The orchestra below struck the opening notes before Rowan could answer. It was fortunate they did, because whatever he might have said would not have improved the evening.
The theatre fell into attentive hush. Curtains shifted. The performance began.
The silence in the box was a trap. Rowan stared at the stage, his mind recording the plot while his body focused entirely on the woman inches away.
The space was too small. When she leaned forward, the pale curve of her throat caught the light, and her warmth radiated across the narrow gap—a distance he could no longer tolerate.
Her fingertips brushed his knuckles.
It was a ghost of a touch, yet it scorched him. His blood turned to liquid lead, heavy and hot in his veins. He felt the sudden, violent narrowing of the world until there was nothing but the scent of roses on her skin and the thud of his own pulse.
Onstage, an actor shouted a confession of love. It sounded hollow.
Rowan forced his eyes toward the actors, but his discipline had failed.
The phantom heat of her touch burned in his nerves.
A darker, more vicious curiosity took hold: how her bare skin would feel under his palms, and how quickly her polished composure would shatter if he stopped being a gentleman.
He wondered if she would go soft first, or fierce.
When the applause broke, it sounded like it was happening in another world.
They descended with the rest of the crowd in a tide of silk and conversation. Outside, carriages were already being called.
“Thank you for the evening, Your Grace,” Lord Weston said, his voice bright with the relief of a successful evening. “A masterful performance.”
Rowan barely heard him. He was looking at Emmeline as they reached the pavement. The streetlamps caught the sharp, high line of her cheekbones.
“Lady Emmeline,” Rowan said.
She turned to him.
“It was an enlightening evening,” she said. Her voice didn’t shake, but it carried a ragged edge.
Rowan stepped closer, his coat brushing her sleeve. “Was it?”
“Exhausting,” she corrected softly. She didn’t look away, but her cheeks had flushed pink. “I find I am quite ready for the evening to end.”
“As am I,” Rowan replied, his voice dropping into a low, rough register.
He handed her into the carriage. As his fingers gripped hers, the heat from the theatre flared between them again, freezing him in place.
“Goodnight, Your Grace,” she whispered.
“Goodnight.”
The tavern he and Frederick chose was not one the ton claimed in daylight. It was quieter, lower-ceilinged, less polished, with music somewhere in the back room and the smell of ale.
Rowan preferred such places. Or had once. Tonight, he found no real ease.
“You are silent,” Frederick said over the rim of his glass.
“You talk enough for both of us.”
“True.” Frederick settled back. “Though I note you were no more talkative during the second act.”
Rowan said nothing.
Frederick smiled into his drink. “That bad, was it?”
“It was a play.”
“Mm.” Frederick drained the rest and set the glass down. “Well, I must leave you. I have an appointment.”
Rowan looked at him.
“With Celeste,” Frederick added, as if that explained everything. “And unlike you, I mean to enjoy mine.”
“Then go.”
Frederick rose with a laugh. “Try not to spend the whole night pretending you are not haunted by your fiancée.”
When he was gone, Rowan remained where he was, finishing his drink more slowly than he intended. The room had grown louder around him, though perhaps it only felt so because he kept trying to quiet his thoughts.
A woman approached the table.
Not one of the painted ladies who drifted from man to man by calculation alone, but one he knew from years ago, a barmaid named Violet, with chestnut curls and a smile that had once required little persuasion from him.
“Well,” she said, resting a hand against the back of the empty chair opposite him. “If it isn’t His Grace remembering simpler pleasures.”
Rowan looked up.
Her smile deepened. “You could come upstairs, if you like.”
There was a time he would have done it. A time he would have followed the invitation without thought, grateful for the easy use of someone else’s body to silence his own.
Now, with the scent of theatre dust and Emmeline’s perfume still trapped somewhere in his mind, the idea felt wrong.
“No, thank you. Goodnight.”
He stood, left a coin on the table to settle the drink, and stepped out into the London night.
He did not want another woman’s bed. He wanted Emmeline.
Heavens, he was doomed.