Chapter Twelve
When Oliver returned, he ate a warming dinner with the family—precisely what he needed after such a long, frozen journey. Night was already settling over the land by the time he ventured upstairs with a pack of cards. Emily was just finishing the tray of food Mrs Chambers had brought her earlier.
She saw him and smiled, and his stomach gave an alarming twist. “You’re back,” she said. “Did the physician get home safely?”
“He did. And so did I.” He held up the cards. “Do you fancy a game?”
She raised her brows. “Of what?”
“Whatever you like. Vingt-un? Commerce? Loo? Whist?”
“You know all the games, I take it.” She settled herself more comfortably against the pillows. “Why not whist?”
“As my lady wishes.” He settled himself beside her and dealt, the movements familiar by now. “Have you played before?”
She made an inarticulate sound in the back of her throat. “Our circumstances are unfortunate now, but I did not grow up in a barn, Mr Beaumont.”
“You strike me as a very proper young lady.”
Her cheeks reddened, and she steadfastly did not look at him as she thumbed the worn corner of her card.
His father would have noted the movement, told Oliver to memorise the individual appearances of the cards and what they were so he might tell others’ hands.
Oliver attempted not to watch, rejecting his father’s teachings, but the progress of her chapped fingers over the frayed corner proved too mesmerising to resist. “Not as proper as all that, I assure you.”
Intriguing. But he knew better than to push, so he merely played the first card. “Then I take it you had a happy childhood?”
“Mm.” She played another card, following suit. “For a time.”
“A time?”
“My father and mother loved one another,” she explained, seeming to disappear inside herself to a different place, one that held nothing good. “And they were happy together—my father, the country gentleman, and my mother, the city lady. I used to want to love the way they did.”
Sensing they were on the brink of a confession, Oliver stilled, not wanting to do or say anything that might persuade her not to confide in him.
The silence stretched between them, and he cleared his throat. “But now you don’t?”
Emily glanced at him, her eyes like the grey of an approaching storm, then looked away. “My mother died, and my father lost himself in his grief. Such a love—and such heartbreak. I think that was when I realised love could be poison.”
Oliver almost recoiled. “Poison?”
“Do you not think? When one loves so deeply, they lose their own sense of self. Oh, my father loved my mother. He would dance her around the room, kiss her hand as though they were meeting for the first time, and deliver outrageous compliments. They were utterly in love, and when he lost her, he was utterly broken.” She pressed a hand to her chest. “I was seventeen, and were it not for me, we would have lost everything. The servants stayed only because I ensured their wages were paid. And when there was no more money, I was the one to speak with them and let them go.”
“Emily—”
“It rather taints the happy childhood memories, don’t you think, knowing what comes after?”
Their entire acquaintance thus far, he had considered her plain, but there was something captivating about the fierceness of her expression now. “And that’s why you have no intention of marrying?” he asked.
“In part, yes. Why should I offer myself to someone who could ruin me so desperately? I have no intention of falling in love with a man who could leave me and destroy what remains of my life. My father was miserable until he died, and I want none of it.” She met his gaze square-on.
“So no more talk of marriage, Oliver. Not for me. I won’t marry, and that’s the end of it.
Be content with my sister, if she should still want you. ”
Isabella. He had almost forgotten about her; she hardly seemed to belong in this farmhouse. If he had been travelling with Isabella, he could guarantee she would not have tramped across the snowy road without complaint. She certainly would not have risen early with a head injury to make breakfast.
Isabella posed herself as a doll, content to be put on a shelf.
Oliver was no longer sure he wanted to put her there.
“Emily,” he said, unsure how to broach the subject, but knowing he needed to, at least a little, dispel the illusion that Isabella was an innocent, virtuous, selfless sister. “When your mother died, what did Isabella do to help you?”
“She was ten years old—she did nothing, and I would not have asked her to.”
He took her hand in his, wishing he could ease the pain of her poor chapped knuckles. “And when your father died? That was only a couple of years ago, was it not?”
“When she was fifteen, still a girl.” A frown touched Emily’s brows. “She is my sister, Oliver.”
“Her hands did not look like this,” he said softly.
“Of course they didn’t. I would never have allowed it. Don’t attribute our situation to her lack of initiative. I sheltered her and gave her everything I could. Why should we both suffer the folly of our father?”
“Why should you take the burden entirely on yourself?” he returned.
“Because I am the elder,” she said simply. “And because I love her.”
His chest twinged, and he fought to keep his anger from his face.
When Isabella had mentioned her father dying, the implication had been that nothing much had changed.
She had posed it as though she and Emily were equals, yet her hands had been soft, her clothes warm and elegantly made up, if a few years out of fashion.
She had never sacrificed herself for Emily, but it seemed as though Emily had done nothing but sacrifice.
“And when Isabella marries, what will you do?” Would she continue to live in her forgotten, rotting house, scraping for every penny so she might survive?
The picture pained him.
Gently, she withdrew her hand from his. “Don’t pity me, Oliver. I’ll be fine.”
“The same fine you were when you nearly collapsed because a brick hit your head?” he demanded hotly. “Forgive me for wanting something better for you.”
“We can all want something better for ourselves.” She tilted her head a little. “Tell me about this brother you’re fleeing from. Is he stern? Cruel?”
“I can see what you’re doing, changing the subject in order to distract me.”
“Is it working?”
“Are you certain you wish to know about Henry?”
“I find myself curious.”
“About him and not me?” He clasped a dramatic hand to his heart, but when she remained unmoved, he sighed.
“My brother is the eminently more responsible and respectable son, and he will inherit the earldom when my father passes on. He is ten years my senior, and he can be stern, but not cruel.” Oliver sighed.
“My father neglects all responsibilities where possible, and so my brother picked them all up. He wants me to do the same.”
“Then why don’t you?”
Despite himself, Oliver’s ears flamed. He disliked the thought of losing whatever regard she might now hold for him, but the thought of lying to her—or playing his inadequacies off as mere carelessness and indifference—seemed equally as insupportable.
“It’s not as easy as all that,” he said, testing the words. “I find myself—I am ill-suited for most occupations.”
“And why is that?”
He sucked on his teeth, but the worst that could happen was she would look at him with disgust, and surely that was not so bad.
Bearable. “I struggle with writing,” he said.
“Reading, too. The letters, the words . . . Everything feels muddled in my brain when it comes to putting it on paper. I’d much rather do my thinking with my hands. ”
“Your hands,” she repeated, looking at the hands in question.
“Being a gentleman’s son doesn’t involve much of that,” Oliver said, sighing. “If I were the firstborn, it wouldn’t matter so much, I expect, but I’m not.”
“I imagine eldest sons must read and write, too. Estates require maintaining, and there are expectations.” Emily frowned across at him. “Does your brother struggle with this?”
“No, and my sisters are voracious readers and letter writers. They think me indolent and lazy because I rarely reply, but doing so makes me feel . . .” It made him feel stupid.
Most of his life, he had been made to feel a fool—and so he had played into it.
At least then they thought he was a fool because he chose to be, not because it was born in him.
“You could tell someone,” she suggested.
“I have,” he said, forcing something approaching a smile. “I’ve told you.”
Her eyes widened a fraction. “No one else?”
“I would rather my wider acquaintance is unaware of my shortcomings.” He sighed, running a hand through his hair again.
His childhood tutors’ frustrations all played back across his head.
They berated him for not trying, for refusing to learn, all while the words tangled in his head, all sense wrung from the letters.
“Your brother might understand,” she said gently.
“My brother believes that sheer dogged will is enough to achieve anything one puts one’s mind to, and if I fail at that, it is simply because I am not trying hard enough.
Failure is weakness, and he does not allow for weakness.
Thus, you see, he would have no sympathy for my predicament.
” He lay across the bed, angling himself to partially conceal his face and any vulnerability he felt.
“When I have my estate, I will hire a steward who will do all my letter-writing for me. I shall dictate, and he shall write and read them for me, and no one need be any the wiser. I have thought it all through.”
“And so you will live in fear all your life of someone finding out?”
“No one will think twice about it, darling. A man of means may be eccentric. It is only a man reliant on others who lives in danger of discovery.”
“I doubt many people view it as the deficiency you do.”
“You may be right.” He offered her his most charming smile. “But I intend never to find out.”
That night, Oliver sat at the edge of the truckle bed, his candle flickering and the sound of Emily’s slow breathing filling the air. Of everyone in the world, he had confided in Emily.
And she had not looked at him as though he were deficient. A miracle. She had not judged him. She judged his excesses, yes—he had done plenty of things that he knew she would condemn, and harshly. After all, he was his father’s son.
But she would not judge him based on something he could not help.
What on earth was he supposed to do with that?
He stared at her red lashes, tipped blonde. Those constellations of freckles, sprinkled so liberally across her nose and cheeks. Objectively, he knew, she was not pretty. Her mouth was too small, her nose too sharp. Her jaw too pronounced and her brows too severe.
And yet she did have beauty—the kind that only made itself known after looking. Eyes that could look like damnation or starlight. A smile that changed the entire contours of her face. The candlelight burnished her red hair and turned her skin to silk.
He wanted her.
Not in the way a man usually wanted a woman—the way he had half-heartedly wanted Isabella after she posed herself seductively before him.
He wanted Emily despite all the reasons she had given him not to want her.
Forbidden fruit, all the more desirous for being out of reach.
He did not need to have her, and she certainly did not need him, but he hungered for her all the same.
Resigned, frustrated, unable to slate his lust, he lay on the bed and attempted to think of anything but her soft mouth around his cock, or the way she might look divested of her clothes, thighs wide to accommodate him.
He failed.
Just like everything else worth having in this world, she was destined never to be his.