Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Lord Calham will want to see this,” Aaron declared the moment the butler opened the door, while Biscuit sat at his feet with the proud, trembling self-importance of a puppy who had no notion he was being presented to society.
Emmeline glanced down at him, then at the butler, whose face remained impressively composed despite the small dog staring up at him with grave expectation.
“I should perhaps explain,” she said, unable to contain a smile. “Master Huntley has spent the better part of the morning teaching Biscuit a trick, and His Lordship has been named the necessary witness.”
Aaron nodded earnestly, his dark hair ruffled from the walk, his hand curled around the ribbon lead. “He can sit. And roll. Almost.”
The butler’s mouth twitched once before he bowed. “Your Grace. Master Huntley. Lord Calham is not at home at present, but he is expected to return shortly. If you wish to wait, I shall have refreshments brought to the garden.”
Emmeline had agreed to stop by during their walk, partly because the boy’s happiness was becoming impossible for her to deny and partly because she found she loved these ordinary little errands with him.
“Only for a short while,” she said gently. “If Lord Calham is delayed, we must return home.”
Aaron’s smile broke wide across his face. “He will come.”
“You sound very certain.”
“He likes us.”
The words were so simple, so sure, that Emmeline’s throat tightened. She rested a hand briefly over his hair, and he leaned into it without thinking.
“Yes,” she said softly. “I believe he does.”
They were shown through the house and out into a walled garden that was unexpectedly charming.
Frederick’s taste revealed itself in small, clever details: a stone bench tucked beneath a chestnut tree, roses allowed to grow with some wildness along the walls, a fountain carved in the shape of some mythological creature whose expression looked suspiciously mocking.
Aaron was enchanted at once.
“Biscuit, come here,” he called, and the puppy bounded after him across the grass with the graceless joy of a tiny creature.
Emmeline stood for a moment beneath the chestnut tree and let the sunlight move over her face. The warmth should have steadied her. Instead, a brief, unpleasant little wave of dizziness moved through her, and she pressed her gloved fingertips to her temple.
Perhaps she had walked too quickly. Perhaps she had not eaten enough at breakfast, though Rowan had watched her plate with such quiet, brooding attention that she had eaten another slice of toast simply to prevent his concern from becoming a command.
Her cheeks heated.
“Your Grace?”
She turned at once. A maid stood near the garden door, waiting with folded hands.
“Yes?”
“Refreshments will be brought directly. Did you require anything else?”
Emmeline almost said no, then another small shift of faintness passed through her, enough to make the edges of the garden swim for one brief second. She steadied her expression by will alone.
“If you would direct me to the powder room, I should be obliged.”
“Of course, Your Grace. This way.”
Aaron looked up from the grass. “Are you going?”
“For only a moment,” Emmeline said. “Do not allow Biscuit to eat Lord Calham’s flowers.”
Aaron looked down at the puppy, who had already put one paw into the edge of the rose bed. “I shall try.”
“That does not inspire confidence.”
He grinned, and she followed the maid inside.
The coolness of the corridor was a relief after the sun.
The maid led her along a quiet passage, up a few steps, and into a small chamber prepared with a basin, towels, and a looking glass.
Emmeline thanked her and took a few moments to refresh herself, pressing a damp cloth lightly to the back of her neck until the dizziness receded.
When she stepped back into the corridor, the maid was gone.
For a moment, Emmeline stood still, listening. The house was quiet. Somewhere below, a door closed. Somewhere beyond the walls, Aaron’s faint laughter drifted in from the garden.
She turned in the direction she thought they had come and moved carefully, one hand trailing near the wall. The corridor looked different now, longer, dimmer, with paintings spaced along the walls and a carpet that swallowed the sound of her steps.
Then the dizziness returned.
It came sharply this time, a wave of heat and emptiness that rose from her stomach to her head. The floor tilted beneath her. Her breath caught. She reached for the wall, but her fingers met only air.
“Oh,” she whispered.
A pair of arms caught her before she fell.
Emmeline gasped, her body jolting against another’s, her hands clutching instinctively at soft muslin. Whoever held her was slight, warm, breathing too quickly.
“I have you,” a woman’s voice whispered. “Do not move too quickly.”
Emmeline’s heart hammered. Shame and fear flooded her first, then gratitude, then confusion so swift it made her dizzy all over again. She steadied herself slowly and lifted her eyes.
The woman before her was young. A bit pale, perhaps, but unmistakably lovely, with dark brown hair pinned back and gray eyes so much like Rowan’s that Emmeline felt the breath leave her body. She had the same shape, same color, same startling intensity.
The knowledge moved through her like cold water.
“Lady Juliet?” she whispered.
The woman went utterly still.
In that silence, Emmeline knew she was right.
For a suspended second, neither of them moved. Emmeline could hear her own heartbeat, frantic and heavy in her ears. Juliet’s hands remained at her elbows, trembling now, and the fear in her face was so naked that it stole any triumph from the discovery.
Footsteps sounded at the far end of the corridor.
Both women turned.
Frederick appeared, hat in hand, his easy expression vanishing so completely that Emmeline almost did not recognize him. His eyes widened, moved from Juliet to Emmeline, then back again.
“Good God,” he said.
Juliet reacted first. She seized Emmeline’s wrist with surprising strength and pulled her toward the nearest door. “Inside. Both of you.”
“Juliet—” Frederick began.
“Inside, Frederick.”
There was enough panic in her voice that even he obeyed. Juliet drew them into a small parlor and shut the door firmly behind them, then leaned back against it.
Frederick dragged a hand over his face. “What on earth are you doing out of your room?”
Juliet’s chin trembled, but she lifted it. “I heard them arrive.”
“So you decided to stroll through the corridors like a ghost?”
“I only wished to see Aaron,” she said, and her voice cracked on the name.
“From a distance. I was not going to speak to him. I know I must not. But then Her Grace came inside, and when she came out she looked as though she might faint. What was I meant to do, allow her to strike her head upon the floor?”
Frederick’s face changed at once. He turned fully to Emmeline. “Are you unwell?”
Emmeline opened her mouth, but for a moment no answer came. She was staring at Juliet—the living answer to weeks of fear and guilt and searching.
“I am all right now,” she said slowly. “But I am very confused.”
Frederick sighed, and the sound seemed dragged from some exhausted place too deep for wit to reach.
“Yes,” he said. “I expect you are.”
Juliet stepped forward. “Your Grace, I am so sorry.”
Emmeline looked at her properly then. She was smaller than Emmeline had imagined. Her gown was simple, her face thinner than it ought to be, her eyes shadowed. She looked like someone who had run so long from terror that even stillness had begun to frighten her.
“You are truly Lady Juliet,” Emmeline said.
Juliet nodded. “Yes.”
“And you have been here all this time.”
“Not the entire time,” Frederick said quickly. “I have moved her between safe lodgings. This was only meant to be temporary.”
Emmeline turned to him and hurt rose unexpectedly beneath the shock. “You knew.”
Frederick’s mouth tightened. “I found her on the wedding day.”
The room seemed to alter around those words.
Emmeline thought of Rowan in the chapel yard, rigid with anger and fear. Rowan sending men across the countryside. Rowan bribing scandal sheets, pretending not to bleed from his sister’s absence because control was the only bandage he trusted.
“You found her,” she repeated.
“At the inn,” Frederick said, quieter now. “She had changed clothes with one of the girls there and was about to vanish farther than I could safely allow. She begged me not to take her back.”
Juliet’s eyes filled. “I thought he would make me marry Lord Wellfield.”
Emmeline’s chest tightened at once. There was so much fear in Juliet’s voice.
“Rowan would not have dragged you to the altar by force,” she said, though even as she said it, she thought of the man he had been then, who had believed security could be given without listening to the heart.
Juliet gave a small, broken laugh. “Would he not? Perhaps not with his hands. But with his will, yes. With disappointment. With all the arguments that make refusal feel childish and selfish and cruel.”
The words struck too close.
“I accepted Lord Wellfield,” Juliet continued, twisting her fingers together.
“I told myself I could do it. I told myself Rowan had chosen sensibly and that I owed him obedience after everything he had done for me. He protected me all my life. He raised me more than our father ever did. I thought the least I could do was not make his life harder.”
Frederick went very still at that.
Juliet swallowed. “But on that morning, when they put me in the gown, I could not breathe. I could not make my hands stop shaking. I kept thinking that once I walked into that chapel, my life would no longer be mine. I know it was rash. I know I behaved terribly. By the time I began to think clearly, it was already done.”
“And so Lord Calham hid you from Rowan,” Emmeline said.
Frederick’s eyes met hers without flinching. “Yes.”
“And from Aaron.”