Chapter Sixteen
The words sounded as though they had come from far away. She grasped them, struggling to make sense of what he had said. When she’d first heard of the match, she had been disappointed, but now she knew better—she knew what sort of man Oliver was, and what a good husband he would make.
She could not allow any man to break her sister’s heart the way Marlbury had broken hers.
“Don’t say that,” she said, the words thick. “You have to marry her. You promised.”
“I did, before I knew what it was I was promising.” He gripped her hand, but she tugged it free. “But we are not engaged. There’s nothing between us but—”
“But your word.”
“We made idle plans when I thought money alone could bring harmony to an ill-suited marriage. That is all, and nothing more. There is no formal agreement, no arrangement, and what little expectation there may be will soon be repaired. I’ll admit my actions are not what I might have hoped they would be, but that does not make your sister an innocent maiden left to perish in her own grief. ”
“An ill-suited marriage?” She remembered Marlbury, those heady summer days where he had wooed her with sunshine and his father’s whisky. He’d promised her love and fidelity, and with him, she had thought she had a future. Happiness.
That had lasted just a few weeks, but in her young mind, she had spent a lifetime in his company.
She recalled the way he had lain her back on the picnic rug and pushed her skirts up to her waist, kissing away her protests and telling her love made him do it.
Love made him do so many things—and she had welcomed it, believing that this was the highest form of adoration.
But that had not been the worst part. No—that had been later, when he had stopped coming.
And then, when she had cornered him, desperate and heartbroken, he had attributed his lies to her consumption of the whisky.
Told her that she could never be tempting to a man like him; compared her ailing charms to those of other girls who had pleased him better; claimed that she was delusional to think he would ever want to be with someone like her.
Isabella could not suffer the same.
“Yes, ill-suited,” Oliver said, frustration in his voice now. “And ill-conceived. After so long in my company, do you truly think I am well matched with your sister?”
“You thought so yourself before we kissed!” she snapped.
Shame sank deep inside her, turning desire to ash.
In that moment, when he’d been standing over her, she’d been reminded of how it felt to want something—for so long, she had not allowed herself the luxury of need, but it had found her then. Need and heat.
Marlbury had seduced her with pretty words and promises, but Oliver had made her feel as though he wanted her just as much in return, and the feeling was intoxicating.
She shut it down.
“The kiss?” He tossed up his hands. “The problem is not that we kissed, Emily. It’s that I wanted to kiss you. I have been wanting to kiss you for days now, and if you do not think that an impediment to your sister’s happiness, then I do.”
Emily covered her face with her hands. This was her fault.
She was the impediment to Isabella’s happiness; if she had not got in the way of Oliver’s plans, Isabella would be married by now—and yes, seventeen was too young for marriage, but Oliver was a good man, far better than she’d imagined. Her sister would have been cared for.
An impatient sigh, then Oliver’s hand wrapped gently around her wrist. “Emily,” he said, soft again. “You can’t blame yourself for this.”
“On the contrary. Without me, none of this would have happened.”
“Your sister would have been desperately unhappy, as would I.” His thumb swiped across her skin, and she remembered belatedly that she had not replaced her glove since stroking Doris.
“Time has been her enemy, not you. I arrived in Dalston angry at my brother and determined to spite him, and Isabella was a means to that end.”
“You wanted to marry so you would not have to admit to your deficiency,” she said, muffled through her hands.
“Yes, true. And yet I would not have confided that truth in her the way I did to you. Now I’ve had some time to think and reflect—and be here, with nothing to do but help with the chores and speak with you—I see how much of a damn fool I was.”
“Isabella deserves better.”
“Perhaps,” he said, his voice wry. “But I fancy she will find herself someone new in time, and will spare me very little thought. If I were a pig farmer, no matter how handsome, she would not have looked twice. Believe me when I say she doesn’t love me. And she knows I don’t love her.”
Isabella, that conniving? Could she believe it? Isabella had never wanted the life they shared, and if she had come across Oliver in Dalston, so evidently a gentleman, young and handsome and ready to be flirted with—was it so surprising that she had taken the opportunity fate had presented to her?
It was just . . . Emily had seen the glow on her face when she came back from meeting with him, and she had recognised it; she had worn the same one when meeting Marlbury.
She freed her wrist from his hold and paced away from him. Distance, that was what she needed—distance and clarity.
“Em,” Oliver said, pleading now. “Even if she had intended to fall in love with me, she barely saw me. I have spent more time with you than I ever did with her, and are you in love with me?”
She whirled. “I am not my sister! Nor am I seventeen.”
“That doesn’t change reality. I saw her a handful of times, barely so much as kissed her, and I hardly promised her the world. We talked of a runaway marriage and of coming into my inheritance, and I assure you that is what she loved far more than me.”
Emily pressed a hand to her chest, feeling the rapid pounding of her heart.
Fear coursed through her veins, that Isabella might endure the same things she had—but reason and logic soon took hold.
When she had been with Marlbury, she had sneaked away to spend every second of every sunlit day with him.
Their mother had, in retrospect, been ill, and no one had paid attention to her comings and goings.
There were no chores, no responsibilities, and her governess paid far more attention to her sister.
The same could not be said for Isabella now.
Emily had lain with Marlbury, several times, offering him her body as well as her heart. He had promised her everything, and she would have taken him for her husband even if he had been a pig farmer, because love did not come armed with conditions.
“For the first time in my life, I feel as though I have a purpose, being here,” he said.
“Working on the farm, doing something worthwhile with my time. It is a new sensation, admittedly, but one I enjoy. Isabella wants me to be an idle lord whose purpose in life is to buy her pretty dresses and take her to elegant balls. But that’s not the life I want. ”
“Then what do you want?” A new fear entered her heart, and her next words were jagged and sharp. “I won’t marry you.”
He held up both hands. “Did you hear me asking you to? One kiss does not a marriage make. Besides, you told me you had no intention of marrying. Love is poison, remember?”
She let out a sigh of relief, her shoulders loosening. If he was telling the truth and Isabella didn’t love him, she might be disappointed by his changed mind, but at least she would not go through the same heartbreak she had.
Love was poison.
She prayed if Isabella ever came to love, it would be in moderation, and when she was old enough to truly comprehend the risks.
“If Isabella does love you, you ought to keep your promise to her,” she said.
“Is that what you want?” He came to her now, cupping her face in his hand and looking deep into her eyes. His were every colour under the sun, split through with gold. “Even if it makes her unhappier in the long run?”
“I—” This came too close to telling him everything, and she didn’t know if she was quite ready for that.
She felt raw, as though he had taken a knife and carved her open.
But he had confided in her; perhaps she could do the same, at least a little.
“I loved someone once. I thought he loved me in return, but he was—he was cruel, and he left me when someone new caught his fancy. He broke my heart, and my mother broke my father, and I refuse to let Isabella go through anything similar.”
Oliver’s eyes darkened, but his hand remained gentle on her face. “She won’t. I swear it.”
Strangely, despite everything—he was Marlbury’s friend, after all—she believed him. “All right.”
“Tell me something.” He inhaled deeply, as though steeling himself, then said, “Was it Marlbury?”
The air rushed from her lungs, but she had given him too many clues; of course he had put them together. There was no point lying to him now. “Yes,” she said.
“Did he hurt you?”
“Only with his lies.”
Oliver nodded, a precise gesture, as though he wanted very much to say more, but held himself back. “What happened?”
She shook her head. “Not now.”
“Later?” When she didn’t respond, his gaze searched her eyes, as though he could prise the answers from her that way. “Let me help you, Em. I know you may not have the best opinion of me, but I want to be there.”
Just as he had sat by her bedside when she’d been ill.
How could she deny him this?
“All right,” she said, the words a promise. “Later.”