Chapter 30 #2
The vehicle lurched to a stop, and before Emma could muster a single word, he leaped out and hefted his greatcoat over his shoulders, “Take Her Grace back to St. John’s Wood.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Alarmed, Emma flung the window open and poked her head out. “Vincent? What are you doing? W-where are you going?”
Shrugging into his dark coat, he strode into St. James’s traffic, cutting between a hackney and a gentleman’s curricle. And then the carriage rounded the corner and cut him from sight.
For a moment, Emma stared after the corner that had taken him.
Then she pulled the check-string.
“Stop the carriage!”
The carriage jerked, wheels slowing near the curb, and the driver twisted on the box. “Your Grace?”
“Let me down.”
“His Grace said to take you to—”
“And I heard him,” Emma bit, already reaching for the latch. “Now, let me down.”
The vehicle juddered to a halt. She flung the door open without waiting for the driver and dropped to the cobbles, ankle turning a half-inch as she landed.
Drat.
Righting herself, she lifted her skirts.
That is it! If he thinks I’m going home like a chastened pup, he married the wrong woman!
St. James’s at this hour was a river of cravats and carriages, link-boys touting lanterns to gentlemen in evening greys. Emma kept to the dark side of the kerb, her eyes pinned to the obsidian coat cutting through the traffic ahead.
He turned down an alley behind King Street.
A narrow alley. Unlit.
Her insides turned out.
By the time she rounded the corner, he’d vanished through a narrow green door tucked between a chandler’s and a shuttered milliner’s. A small brass plate caught the gaslight above it.
The Devil’s Guinea.
Emma knew the name. Charlotte had mentioned it once after some tale from her father about men who fancied themselves chess masters until cards and women emptied their pockets.
A veritable gaming hell.
What is Vincent doing in a place like this?
She pressed herself against the brick and watched two gentlemen rap a code into the door. Three short, two long, one short.
Snatching a domino mask from a hawker dawdling at the alley mouth, she pressed a shilling into his palm before he could bow. The ribbons knotted clumsily at her nape. She tugged her cloak high to swallow her elaborate navy silk gown and approached the door.
Three short. Two long. One short.
A viewing slat slid open. Yellowed eyes raked her once.
“Domino night, miss,” a pug-nosed porter muttered as he opened the door. “Mind the steps—” The man looked her over, from the crooked mask to the elaborate gown to the mud on her hem. Fear curdled in her gut for the briefest instant, but then he stepped aside with a shrugging grunt.
Emma slid past him and into a corridor of red flock paper and tobacco smoke so thick, it was nearly impossible to see a few paces ahead. Brass sconces burned low along the walls, and somewhere beyond the inner door, a roulette wheel chattered against its ball.
She kept her head down and made for the staircase at the corridor’s end, keeping her eyes fixed on that gold-trimmed obsidian coat.
The runner under her slippers turned a deep claret, threadbare in the middle from a hundred drunken passages.
Emma climbed it slowly, listening keenly.
A burst of male laughter from the first room.
A woman’s low voice in the second, husky…
in pleasure? The third door at the corridor’s end stood ajar by an inch, lamplight knifing out onto the carpet.
She edged closer—and pushed.
“You best tell Weaver I’m in no humor to pay for ghosts and rumors,” she heard Vincent’s voice from the inside. “If he doesn’t have what he promised, Aldo, I’ll make sure he—”
A creak at the base of the doorway had him whirling.
His eyes caught on her mask, then the open door, then the stair beyond it.
The blood left his face.
“Emma… Have you lost your god-forsaken mind?”
“You left me in the carriage!” she snapped.
“That wasn’t my question.” Crossing the room, he caught her arm and drew her inside, and when his guest—a feral-looking gentleman with eyes like cloudy marbles, presumably Aldo—took his leave, slammed the door hard enough to rattle the entire building.
“Have you lost your senses? Do you understand what is below us?”
Emma tipped her chin. “I understand enough—”
“No, you don’t,” he growled. “There are men down there who would follow a lady for sport if they had half a chance and a bottle in them. Men who would put a hand on you because you looked meek enough not to scream. And you come here alone?”
“I came after you,” she corrected.
“Why?” he bit out.
“Because you keep walking away before I can say a single thing that matters!” Wrenching her hand free, Emma shoved his chest with all her might, though it barely moved him back a couple paces.
“And because you sent me home before I could speak,” she pressed on, reaching for the domino ribbons and catching the mother-of-pearl hairpin instead. The pin pulled sharp beneath her curls. “Ow—gadz. No, stay there! You don’t get to lock me in a carriage and then act like you care.”
Vincent, already approaching again, stopped with his hand half-raised.
The cheap black domino had slipped so low that the edge of it cut across her brow and shadowed one eye. Tugging at the ribbon only made the pin bite harder, and Emma sucked in a breath, blinking fast against the sting.
How perfectly humiliating.
Coming here after him had been mad enough. Coming here after him and then getting tangled in a mask like some green girl at her first masquerade was beyond bearing.
Behind him, the room no longer looked like a place for cards. A plain dark coat hung near the fire with mud drying along the hem, a city map lay open on the escritoire with three streets circled, and several notes sat stacked beneath a knife.
What was this room?
Why was he here?
“I didn’t follow you because of Lord Windham,” she muttered, dragging the domino down far enough to glare at him under its crooked edge.
“He’s had enough of my afternoon, and I’ve had enough of being passed between men who think they know best. I followed because you still think the answer to every difficulty is to stow me away and shut the door. First at St. John’s Wood, now this.”
His attention lowered to the ribbon tangled near her ear. “You’re hurting yourself.”
“So you can see me. A splendid start.”
The words came sharper than intended, but Vincent took them, his jaw locking once before he stepped closer.
Emma tugged again, and pain shot hot behind her ear. She gasped before pride could stifle it.
He caught her wrist at once. “Enough. You can be angry and yell at me to your heart’s content, just let me get it out before you bleed for a shilling mask.” Guiding her hand down, he moved behind her and found the knot beneath the fall of curls. “Hold still.”
Standing stiff as a poker, Emma glared ahead at the smoking lamp.
The ribbon had wound itself through the pearl pin and a small lock of hair, and every furious tug she’d given it had only made the little snare worse.
Vincent eased one loop free, paused, then slipped a careful finger beneath the next.
“You offered the annulment,” she began again, lower now.
“That was the bargain,” he murmured. “You agreed to it.”
“I agreed to it because I was drowning and you threw me a rope with conditions tied to the end.
But then you offered me a life. A glimpse of a future. A school. A tutor for James. Your time, when you remembered to let me have it in the first week of our honeymoon.” She bit the inside of her cheek. “And… those other lessons.”
His fingers slipped a breath before resuming.
Flushing miserably, Emma gripped the table edge, “Yes, yes, I know what you said they were for. And I know what I agreed to. You were to teach me enough that I wouldn’t go into another marriage ignorant. So, perhaps that is my fault.
“But were you really so foolish enough to think a woman could give her body and let her heart stay out of it? The thought of taking what you have shown me and carrying it to Lord Windham—or any man—makes me want to cast up my accounts!”
The ribbon loosened. Vincent drew it gently through one loop, then another. For a second, the pressure eased enough that Emma exhaled.
Then the silk caught beneath the pin’s teeth and cinched around a curl.
She jerked with a small, pained sound.
“Devil and damnation,” he breathed, bending closer. His knuckles brushed the damp place beneath her ear as he tried to reverse the snag. The ribbon tightened instead, and the first tear slipped down her cheek before she could order it back. “I… I think I made it worse,” he frowned.
Emma gripped the hazard table until the brass rim pressed through her glove. A wet laugh escaped her, small and ugly. “You did. And then you left me to sit with it.”
For once, no clever answer came from him.
“I need scissors,” he said at last. “The ribbon has taken a curl with it. I can cut less than an inch… if you let me.”
The words finished what the pain had begun. Emma pressed a hand to her mouth, but the tears came anyway.
Coming around to face her without pulling the knot, Vincent held the tangled ribbon away from her skin. “Emma,” he said, gently enough that her heart gave a painful little twist. “I’m asking for your permission.”
Nodding once, she turned her face away from his.
Fetching a little pair of seal scissors from the escritoire, Vincent returned and slid two fingers beneath the trapped lock to guard her neck. The blades gave one tiny snip. The domino fell into his palm with its black ribbons, the pearl pin, and a few copper curls threaded through the mess.
Emma looked down at it until the tears blurred the whole ridiculous heap.
“I don’t want the annulment,” she whispered, wiping her cheek with the back of her glove and failing to make herself look less pitiful.
“I don’t want your lessons for another husband.
If you want to be rid of me, then you must say so, and I shall go back to Grandmama and James.
I know how to live there. I did it before you.
But I won’t take this”—pressing her hand hard to her breastbone, Emma shook her head—"whatever this is you have made of me, and give it to another man.”
Vincent looked down at the severed curl in his palm.
Gently, he set the ruined domino on the baize, then placed the scissors beside it.
“I—” Clearing his throat, he caught the tear slipping down her cheek with his thumb. “I suppose it goes without saying now that I don’t want you to either. Come, let’s get you home.”