Chapter 2
Shivering, Emma moved to rearrange the sodden skirts of her gown to cover her exposed ankles when the sudden jerk of the horse moving off jolted her back against her mysterious savior.
She let out a soft gasp as his muscular arm slid around her middle and anchored her to his chest. His touch surprised her, but she found herself clinging to the arm, having not expected to be moving so fast so soon, especially in this rain.
His unfamiliar touch made a strange knot form in her belly. It was the first time in her life that a man had held her so. As unfortunate as the situation was, Emma still held onto it.
I should not have stayed at the shop so late.
What would I have done if he had not come along?
Was there anything I could have done?
“Take a left here, please,” she said over the rain, then bravely asked, “Were you going to do it, my lord?”
“Hm?”
She swallowed. “When you told the man who tried to—that… that you would kill him. Were you going to do it?”
She did not know this stranger, but something visceral and certain in her stomach suggested he had not been jesting. That he had meant every syllable.
“Knowing his intent, certainly,” the man answered matter-of-factly. “Or at least injure him so gravely he would never put his hands on another woman again.”
Emma swallowed tightly. The horse eventually trotted down to her grandmother’s house just outside the city. “This is my home, my lord.”
The cottage was built of grey brick and timber with large bow windows, slightly overgrown hedgerows, and wildflower bushes. He rode her to the awning jutting over the door and helped her down.
Another jagged streak of lightning illuminated the sky, and in that brief flash of light, she glimpsed his full face.
Damp, dark locks tumbled into darker, smoky grey eyes, and his forehead was lined with worry; not age, she thought, guessing him not more than a decade her senior, perhaps less.
Water dripped from the chiseled contours of his cheeks, making his hooded brows and thick eyelashes appear almost sensual.
Emma tried to let her gratitude show in her face as she met his gaze. She lifted her chin and mumbled, “Thank you for stepping up and protecting me. I won’t forget it, even if I don’t see you again.”
Something in his expression flickered, as though the thought had not crossed his mind until she’d put it there.
His eyes lifted to the door behind her before returning to hers. His head cocked to the left, as if he were examining her anew. He reached out and cupped her chin, twisting her head. “He scratched you.”
She winced and reached up to touch her temple. He was right—the scoundrel had cut her. Thankfully, it was not deep.
Is that the reason I am not feeling it, or is it because all my attention is on this mysterious man?
His fingers stayed. He tilted her face toward the glow from the window, his thumb settling just beneath the cut, and the roughness of his skin against her rain-chilled cheek sent her pulse into her throat.
“It won’t scar,” he muttered coolly. His eyes swept her face once more, “That would have been a crime.”
He pulled away before the shiver emerging from the heat of his fingers could manifest. “Be safe, pet.”
With that, he strode off and swung into his saddle, and soon enough vanished into the stormy night.
The wind howled through the trees around her a few moments longer.
As she finally went to unlock the door, she belatedly realized that she had not even gotten the lord’s name, nor had she given him hers.
“Doesn’t matter,” she sighed. “What good would a name have done. At least I have a face to remember him by.”
Shuddering, she removed her sodden cloak after pulling her coin purse out of an inner pocket, then hung it on a hook near the door.
The soft padding of feet had her turning to see her grandmother, Agnes, coming out of the front room, holding a candle. “Emma—” the older woman’s pale eyes ran over her, “—you’re drenched, dear. Please don’t tell me you walked again. You need to get out of those clothes and into a warm bath.”
“I know, I know, Grandmama,” she murmured. “I’m sorry to wake you so late.”
“Nonsense!” Agnes chided gently. “You know I stay up and wait for you on late nights like these.”
And I wish you didn’t need to. In another life, I’d be returning from a ballroom with not a care in the world, not toiling from dusk to dawn at a seamstress’s shop. If only Papa had not lost his fortune.
Immediately, she chastised herself for the petty thought. It was small of her to harbor such long resentments.
“How is James?” she asked about her older brother. “Asleep?”
“Yes,” Agnes said as they retreated to the kitchen. “He had a full day today. I gave him an early supper, and he went off to bed at seven.”
“Good,” Emma swiped her wet hair from her eyes. “I will dry off, and if you can have that water ready for me, that would be heavenly, Grandmama. Thank you.”
“Of course, dear.” Agnes took her candle and left for the kitchen. As Emma carried herself up the stairs to the room in the attic and her quarters, she paused on the landing where James’s door sat ajar by an inch.
Through the gap, she spotted him cross-legged on the bed, sorting coins into neat little stacks on the sheet, his lips moving silently as he counted. A small pouch sat open beside his knee. He’d been saving, she realized, squirreling away whatever pennies he could get his paws on.
The stair creaked under her weight, and the coins vanished under his pillow in an instant. He yanked the blanket to his chin and shut his eyes tight.
Her chest tightened.
“Goodnight, James,” she whispered.
Nothing. She smiled sadly and turned to go.
A strained, reluctant mumble chased after her. “…Goodnight, Emmy.”
Her smile broke wider, and she climbed the rest of the stairs without looking back. In her quarters, she began to disrobe and donned her thick robe before undoing her pinned hair and combing it out.
For a moment, she dropped the comb and stared at her reflection while thinking of the gentleman moments ago. Did he, or men like him, like women with red hair? What about the freckles sprinkled across her nose?
Staring at her reflection, she drifted into another world—a world of glitter and glamor, where women whirled in gowns of every shade imaginable and men cut dark, elegant counterparts beside them. It was a world of clinking crystal, warm laughter, and a figment of an old life.
The strains of a waltz floated through the air, and that was when she saw him.
Dark-haired and mysterious, his black evening coat and carelessly tousled hair seemed to absorb the very light around him.
When he turned, the dapple grey of his waistcoat threaded through with the finest silver matched his eyes so precisely it might have been deliberate, though it did nothing to lift the air of mystery that clung to him.
His presence dwarfed the entire room, and when he strode across the floor toward her, his gaze did not waver from hers, as if no one else existed in that moment. By the time he stopped in front of her and extended his hand, she could hardly breathe.
“May I have this dance?”
Shaking her head, Emma scolded herself and moved from the mirror. “Stop daydreaming, you silly girl.”
As she managed to rag dry her hair, Agnes poked her head into her room. “The water is ready for you, dear.”
Emma felt a twinge of guilt for making her grandmother climb the stairs when, on cold nights like this, her knees pained her. “Thank you. Please get some rest, Grandmama.”
“I will,” Agnes said, already turning toward the stairs—then stopped and looked back at Emma. “Oh, it almost slipped my mind! A letter arrived for you earlier today, and I don’t believe it is from either of your friends. A fancy seal, if I say so myself. I placed it on your writing desk there.”
A letter? From a stranger? Emma wondered who would have bothered to send her a letter of all people, and why. Spinning, she spotted the folded white on the desk near her window. “Thank you, Grandmama.”
“And there is some leftover supper wrapped up for you downstairs if you’d like,” her grandmother added. “Have a good night, dear.”
“You too,” Emma replied absently as her grandmother descended the stairs. She went to the letter resting on her writing desk and opened it.
The seal in the corner was one she was unfamiliar with, but her eyes flew over the words quickly. An invitation to attend a ball hosted by… the Duke of Highminster.
Dread settled in her gut. Immediately, she was of mind to rip the card into pieces and toss it into the furnace.
Emma knew that name well; this dastardly duke was the reason she and her family were in shambles.
Ten years ago, when her father had been maliciously accused of forging financials for a shipping venture, the court had levied high fines against him.
It had pushed her father to take up the bottle of Blue Ruin and into black melancholy, a cycle of drunkenness and self-loathing that had soon killed him.
Not a day after the man was laid to rest, the Duke of Highminster had scraped out the coin her father had left, less than ten thousand pounds, and claimed it to be owed to his estates.
She had loathed the man ever since.
How little humanity did the man possess to have made a family destitute while he lived in the lap of luxury?
And now he was inviting her to his ball? For what? To rub salt in the still smarting wound?
She dropped the card and went off to her bath before the water grew cold. If she ever did decide to attend that ball, it would be for one reason and one reason alone: to find the cad and make him answer for what he had done.
It was long past time someone did.