Chapter Twenty-Six
The house was cold and quiet without Isabella or Oliver. Emily lit a candle, hating the tallow stench, and made her way upstairs. Once there, she lingered in the bedroom she had shared with her sister. The bed lay unmade, a nightgown discarded on the floor.
Emily closed her eyes. She gritted her teeth.
And then, candle safely on the nightstand, she removed her soaking clothes, hanging them where they might drip, though not dry.
Once in her nightgown, blankets thrown over her shoulders, she lit the fire with the remainder of the coal, coaxing the flame into life.
Grit from the floor dug into her knees, and she laced her hands together, saying a prayer for the first time since her father’s death.
That had been when she’d given up on God. On Sundays—most of them—she still went to church for appearance’s sake, sitting at the back with Isabella and wishing that she could find the joy from faith that others did.
If he was the Holy Father, he was an absent one.
But now, on her knees before a flame as feeble as her hope, Emily clung to the last thing she had left. If there was a chance that God listened to prayers, she had to try. There was no dignity when there was desperation.
And she had more desperation than she knew what to do with. It poisoned her every breath.
“Please,” she begged, her fingers clasped before her, the cold creeping down the gap between her collar and the bare skin of her back. “I know you probably hate me, but let me save her.”
The flame flickered. It flared, its light seeming brilliant in the gloom, and Emily allowed herself to believe her prayer had been answered.
Signs were easy to come by if one looked hard enough; one could pick apart the world in order to find the answers they were looking for in the wreckage.
Ordinarily, she was not one to cling to such blind belief, but now she needed something to cling to.
As the coal dust caught and the embers glowed red with trapped heat, the chill in Emily’s bones slowly fled, replaced by exhaustion.
She rose, the blankets around her shoulders feeling impossibly heavy, and made her way to the bed she had once shared with her sister.
Now, the dip where Isabella’s body lay was cold.
So many times, they had giggled together.
Small happinesses that had been born of love, not of luxury; they’d had cold toes pressed against each other’s shins, and threadbare clothes that needed constant repairs.
They went to bed hungry and spent those dim, hazy, in-between moments together dreaming of a different life.
Emily rested her head on her pillow. Tomorrow, she would return to being strong. But for now, she let herself feel.
Sleep took her the moment she closed her eyes.
Oliver paid the coachman and ducked into the still-bright lamplight of the Rose & Crown, the ale-soaked air immediately familiar.
In the two weeks he’d been in this corner of the country, he’d come here often, although this time, he wasn’t here to forget.
He strode to the comely girl polishing glasses.
Her gaze took him in and sharpened, no doubt recognising him.
He gave her his most winning smile. “I don’t suppose you happen to know which direction Lord Marlbury went when he left Dalston?”
“What’s in it for me, little lord?” Her voice was throaty and determined, her gaze already on the coin in his hand. One of the precious few left to him, but he would leave behind debts for Henry to berate him over if that was what it took.
“I just need to know if he was going in the London direction.”
She took the coin and bit it. Satisfied, she put it in her apron pocket. “If anyone’s seen the lord’s coming and goings, it’s John by the door. You’d be best off asking him. I can’t tell you what he saw or hasn’t saw.”
Oliver tipped his hat at her, making her giggle, and wound through the smoke to where the doorman stood, arms crossed over a barrel chest. He was grizzled, close to his sixtieth year if Oliver had to guess, and his eyes were a pale blue as they met Oliver’s.
“Have you seen Lord Marlbury’s coach about three days ago?” Oliver asked, not waiting for the usual pleasantries. Emily waited for him at her hollow shell of a house, and he didn’t intend to be long.
“Aye, that he did.”
“In which direction?”
A laugh rumbled through him, and he hawked, spitting on the cobbles by his feet. “Headed south, of course,” he said. “Towards London, in my mind, like the devil was on his tail. Gave you the regular slip.”
“That he did,” Oliver agreed. “Thank you for your time.”
John nodded, scraping a hand along white stubble. “I hope you catch him.”
“Yes,” Oliver said. “I hope so, too.”
The back door was unbolted as promised. His questing hands found a candle and flint, and after some tries, he succeeded in lighting it.
The house groaned and protested around him as he made his way through it, following the smell of smoke until he reached the room Emily occupied.
A fire sat in the grate, a blackened guard standing protectively before it.
And in the bed, Emily lay asleep under a pile of blankets, her face in flickering shadow.
Placing his candle on the table beside the stump of hers, he stripped and joined her in the bed, flinging the blankets over them both. As she rolled against his body, she shuddered, half waking from sleep, eyelids fluttering.
“Oliver?”
“I’m here.” He kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry. All my clothes were wet.”
“You’re cold.” She made a sound like a moan, then she pressed herself more firmly against him. “Where did you go?”
“Checking for certain that he went to London—or as sure as I can be—and procuring us seats on tomorrow’s stagecoach. I’m afraid I don’t have the funds to better get us there.”
To his surprise, she turned her face up to his, her lips soft and lax with sleep, and kissed him on the mouth. “Thank you.”
“It’s the least I could do.”
“I despise false modesty.” She rested her head against his bare chest, and he held her close, one hand in her loose hair. “You did not need to help, but you did. And I will not forget that. When this is over—” She pressed a hand against his heart. “Whatever you wish from me then, you may have.”
He almost asked if she meant marriage—and he thought she might. In gratitude, she would marry him, if he wished it.
And he did, he had not changed his mind about that, but he didn’t want a pity wedding. A bride who married him out of gratitude and nothing more.
If they were ever to marry, it would be because she wanted him for a husband, independent of the things he had done for her.
He couldn’t be sure that would ever happen. There had been real fear in her eyes when he’d proposed and she’d imagined a life with him. She’d told him love was poison, and he didn’t know how a mere week with him would convince her any different.
At least she believed—hopefully—that Isabella had never loved him. That was a start, a single impediment removed.
“Sleep,” he said, stroking her hair. “Don’t think about that now.”
To his relief and gratification, she did as he instructed, her body softening and her breaths turning languid and deep, warm against his skin.
He tried to imagine his life without her, and could not.
Everything he said to her was true—he would go into the maws of hell, if that was what it required, and he would drag Isabella back out.
He would restore Emily her sister and her life, and from there, she could decide what she wanted.
And he could dream, in that hopeless way he found himself indulging in more often this week than he ever had before, that she would decide she wanted him.
If not, he would find a way of walking away.
As she slept, she let out a sigh.
In the darkness, with no witnesses but the frayed edges of his own tattered heart, he gave voice to the words that had been burning inside him for so long. “I love you,” he whispered. “I love you, and I think it might kill me.”
Unknowing, she slumbered on.