Chapter 12
A gentleman who believes a lady should not have dreams outside of him and his happiness is not a gentleman worth marrying.
Mrs. Matcher
A Lady’s Guide to a Gentleman’s Heart
The Christmastide season must be a time of miracles, after all. Because for the first time in the whole of his life, Heath didn’t want one of his mother’s usually infernal house parties to end.
He wanted the event to continue on.
Nay, that wasn’t altogether true.
He wanted his time with Emilia to continue on.
Since their time together under the firs, when he’d confessed all, each moment of each day had been filled with a joy he’d not believed possible. Joy he’d never known. Because of her.
Only…
You didn’t confess all… There was one key fact you carefully omitted from your telling.
In the moments when that reminder slid in, along with it came a deserved guilt. He’d sought to ease his conscience by telling himself that Renaud’s secret wasn’t for him to share. That he had an obligation to keep that confidence close.
Yet, he recognized the selfishness in that.
“What of this one?” Emilia’s voice cut briefly across his musings.
She deserved the truth from him, because otherwise, all this joy they had found together now was predicated on a lie. “Splendid,” he forced himself to say. He wound a thread of berries around the garland he’d begun making with Emilia several hours earlier.
“Perhaps if I place this one here?” she was asking.
I don’t want this moment with her to end… I want… her. Nay, us. I want us to have a future, together. “Splendid,” he said again. Because everything she did was nothing short of it.
Emilia shifted closer to him on the workbench, and he stiffened. “Here we are, then,” she murmured, tucking a tangle of berries behind his ear.
He blinked slowly.
Emilia grazed her fingertips along his chin, bringing his eyes to hers. “You weren’t paying attention, were you?”
“I confess my mind was elsewhere.”
She grinned. “La, sir, you know how to flatter a lady.”
Actually, she was right with that jest. He was rubbish at it, which was what had seen him to this point.
Her smile slipped. Setting down the embellishments in her hands, she slid her palm atop his hand, twining their fingers. “I was teasing, Heath,” she said gently.
Forcing back the mountain of regrets and the ghost of Renaud, Heath refocused his energies on her… and this moment.
Leaning close, she tugged his lapels, bringing him closer. “Though I admit,” she whispered against his mouth, “you do wear holly berries well.”
“Minx,” he muttered, taking her lips in a quick kiss, wanting to explore those supple contours further. Alas… He glanced about for the pair of servants who were never far from any activity he and Emilia took part in.
“They are not around,” she tempted, lifting her lips once more.
He swallowed, battling himself. “They might return at any moment.” Even as he knew that, the urge to taste her was an even greater temptation than that succulent fruit Adam had traded his soul for. He kissed her.
“They won’t,” she promised when he again ended their kiss. “They are otherwise occupied.”
As they always were, with some task or another she gave to Stanley and the Scottish girl, Isla.
“They are in love.”
He cocked his head.
“They’re smitten with one another, and so…” Her eyes twinkled with mischief.
“And so you invite them along as absentee chaperones.”
Emilia tapped her index finger to the tip of his nose. “Precisely.” She went back to winding the strand of beads around the length of garland.
“Why…” Heath opened and closed his mouth several times. “You are playing matchmaker.”
“Incorrect,” she clarified, clipping out each of those three syllables. She reached the end of the greenery and knotted off the end of her beads. “I played matchmaker.” A pleased grin curled her lips into a wide smile. “Stanley asked her to marry him.” The announcement had an almost wistful quality.
He sank back in his seat. Was there nothing she couldn’t do? “How…?”
“I’d noted the way they stole glances at one another. They simply required, and deserved, time to be with one another. And the rest?” She lifted her shoulders in a little shrug. “It came together when they had the opportunity to be together.” Emilia’s eyes grew distant. “How singularly odd.”
He roamed his eyes over her face. “What?”
“That I should see it so clearly in others and yet failed to see…” He trailed the pad of his thumb along her lower lip. The flesh trembled under his caress, and she looked at him, then her long golden lashes swept low. “You and everything you were feeling.”
Heath drew his hand back. “It is oftentimes easier to see in others what might not be so clear in one’s own circumstances.”
They resumed working on their garland until Emilia hesitated, toying with her strand of beads. “I’ve something to… share with you.”
He set aside his greenery and waited.
Swinging a leg over the bench, she matched his position. Only… straddling the bench as she was, her skirts rucked about her ankles and mid-calves, revealed the well-muscled limbs that were a product of a woman skilled at riding.
She pinched him.
“Ouch,” he muttered. “What in blazes was that for?”
“You aren’t paying attention.”
Heath bristled. “I certainly was.” He had been. Mayhap just not to what she’d intended.
“To my pink stockings.” As if there were another pair in question, the lady pointed at her slippers.
Heath’s gaze fell lower, and heat wound its way through his veins as an erotic image played in his mind of him stripping each sheer, shimmery article from her shapely calves. Winding them lower. One at a time. “Oww.”
“You were doing it again, and I am trying to confess something to you.”
That penetrated the haze of lust. His mouth went dry as he braced for the declaration he’d hungered for—
“I’m Mrs. Matcher.”
She was… and then it was not the surname that registered, but rather, the form of address before it. “You are… married?” His stomach muscles twisted. Only Emilia Aberdeen would secretly wed, and Heath was riddled with a blinding rage to end—
“Do stop. I am not married.” A relief so vast swept through him that it brought his eyes briefly closed. She gave him a slight shove. “I am Mrs. Matcher,” she repeated, as if that should mean something to him.
He shook his head slowly. “I am afraid I am not following.”
“It is a column in the London Post. I provide guidance to men and women on how to snare the heart of their beloved. Quite scandalous, isn’t it? A lady paid for her work.”
Yes, her mother and his mother and all of Polite Society would be horrified at the mere prospect of it. He peered at her and saw the telltale nervousness in her expressive eyes, the tension at the corners of her mouth. She expected him to take exception to her… revelation. A revelation she’d shared with no one before him.
“How long have you been the infamous Mrs. Matcher?” he asked, yearning to know every secret she carried.
“After—” Renaud. “After Connell jilted me, I despised leaving home. Everyone would stare, and everyone was talking about me and that day.”
“And so you began reading everything you could find.” That was when she’d taught herself Latin.
She brightened. “Precisely. I tortured myself by reading all the gossip columns.” They’d been riddled with her and Renaud’s names. Heath had despised those pages for raking her name through them. “And I came upon a column in the Post. It offered advice to ladies seeking the heart of a gentleman, and it was full of such rubbish, I penned a lengthy letter, informing the editor in no fewer than one hundred and twenty-six terms of everything wrong with that section.”
He grinned, imagining the expression of that nameless man as he’d been ripped into by the indefatigable Emilia Aberdeen. “I trust he was offended?”
“Oh, no, not at all. He hired me. It was but seven hundred words each post, and yet, it gave me purpose, and it taught me that which I’d failed to understand until that point.”
“And what was that?”
“That I didn’t want to marry. That I didn’t want a husband. Writing my column brought me a contentment and was safe in ways that loving was… is dangerous. I receive a pittance for the work I do, and the number of words I write each week is small, but it is something that belongs to me and something I’d be expected to give up were I to marry.” She spoke so matter-of-factly, with a pride and self-confidence in herself and the work she did, that he fell in love with her all over again.
He cupped her cheek, the skin silken smooth and warm under his touch. “Who is to say you cannot have both, Emilia?”
“Society,” she said instantly.
“Any gentleman who’d expect you to sacrifice any part of yourself is no man worthy of you.”
Her breath caught in a little inhalation. “I’ve not scandalized you, then?”
He gathered the scissors, snipped the top of a pink rose from the overflowing urn, and tucked it behind her ear. “Are you disappointed that I’m not?”
Emilia brushed her fingertips against the bloom, and then, gripping Heath by his jacket, she dragged him down for a kiss. “No,” she whispered, breathless, as she released him. “It makes me love you all the more, Heath Whitworth.”
It makes her love him all the more?
He went absolutely still. Afraid to move. Afraid to shatter the moment and find that he’d merely dreamed that utterance from her lips.
Emilia shifted onto her knees and then sank back so they were perfectly eye to eye. “I love you, Heathcliff Whitworth.”
It was everything he’d yearned to hear and not allowed himself even a dream of. Those five words, that vow and his name, filled every corner of his being with a lightness.
Gathering her hands in his, he kissed first one and then the other. “The guests will be arising soon.”
These were their stolen moments away from the busybodies who craved gossip and would intrude on this newfound relationship Emilia and Heath had found with each other.
Emilia’s lips pulled. “Yes, they have a tendency to do that, don’t they?”
I don’t want this to be a secret. But… neither could there truly be anything between them until the past was sorted out.
“You’re looking melancholy again, Heathcliff,” she murmured. Going up on her knees, she placed her lips close to his ear. “Do you know what they say helps with that?” she breathed, bathing his senses with the hint of peppermint.
You. You chase away all the darkness. She always had. “What do they say?” he croaked.
“Cutting down the holiday tree.” She winked.
He chuckled. “Minx.” He caught her lips in a quick kiss. Hell. You’re going to hell for betraying the only friend you’ve ever had. Heath forced himself to relinquish her mouth. “It is still snowing.” Their intentions to return for the holiday tree had been waylaid by the unrelenting storm that had blanketed the grounds.
“Pfft,” she scoffed. “It is slowed to a near stop.”
After three days of snow, the drives and paths and roads would all be covered. Heath tucked a loose golden curl behind her ear. “Fetch your lovebirds.”
A twinkle lit her eyes.
“I’ll meet you at the end of the drive,” he whispered, stealing another kiss.
Rapid footfalls echoed from outside the conservatory. “Oh, bloody hell,” he whispered.
“For the love of goodness sake, Heath, you had better be in there.” The frustrated utterance sounded from the corridor. “Or I’ll sack the servants you’d have hide your whereabouts from me.”
“You need to go,” he mouthed. Tossing his jacket around her shoulders, he guided her to the glass doors that led outside.
“There’s something wicked to these clandestine meetings.” She giggled, hurrying off.
He quietly opened the doors. “The next door—”
“I know my way about, and I’m hardly afraid of snow.”
With that, she darted off, slipping and sliding along the shoveled terrace, which was slick from the remnants of snow that coated the surface. He followed her flight, confirming that she’d reached the door.
She darted a hand up, waving at him, and as entranced as he’d always been, he stole another wave just as his mother burst into the conservatory.
“There you are!” she squawked, her chest heaving from her exertions, her cheeks flushed. “I have been searching everywhere for you,” she panted. “What…?” She blinked wildly. “What are you doing?” she blurted, glancing at the partially open doors out to the terrace.
Reluctantly, he drew the doors closed. “Nothing.” He’d not been made for subterfuge. “What emergency has struck now?” he drawled, strolling back to the worktable in a bid to stymie her questions.
Except, taking up a spot beside the two strands of garland only brought his mother’s focus to those ornaments. She picked one up and studied the gold beads. “Why… why… are you making garland?”
He swallowed a sigh. “I promised Creda and Iris I’d join them later to decorate.” Which wasn’t an untruth. He, however, had chosen to step around the fact that he and Emilia had made those strands. “I trust you’ve not come to speak with me about my duties as uncle.”
His mother abruptly released the decoration Emilia had been working on. “No.” The color slipped from her cheeks, leaving her pale. “There is a problem,” she whispered. “Renaud is here.”
There was a humming in his ears. He’d heard her wrong. Surely. The young duke didn’t leave his Cornwall estates. “Renaud?”
His mother nodded.
He shook his head.
“Connell,” she repeated and then wrung her hands together. “Your friend. Emilia’s former betrothed.”
The muscles of his stomach knotted from the tension that whipped through him. “I know who Renaud is.”
“Then why did you ask me?” she cried softly, tossing her hands up.
Renaud, who remained closed away from the rest of the world, had emerged from hiding and come here? For what end?
Except, as soon as the question slipped in, the answer was close behind.
For her.
It had been only a matter of time.
His heart fell and sank like a stone in his belly. “Renaud is here,” he said, his voice flat to his own ears, still unable to completely process. “He’s here now. What does he want?” He already knew. Already feared…
She eyed him with heartbreak in her eyes. “He is asking to see Lady Emilia.”
Just like that, all the light and warmth went out of him. This was the moment of inevitability, the reunion long overdue between young loves, that would see Heath forever cut from Emilia’s life.
“What exactly is it that you expect of me?” he asked hollowly.
His mother frowned. “Well, I think it should be obvious.”
Actually, no, it wasn’t. Nothing was. Everything was turned upside down.
With an exaggerated sigh, she filled each hand with the two incomplete strands of garland and, giving them a pointed look, arched an eyebrow. “Do you truly think that I believe you were here alone making garland, Heathcliff Whitworth?” she chided.
He squirmed. Yes, it would be foolish to expect his far-too-astute mother to fail to note just where he’d been these past three days, and with whom.
Releasing the garland, his mother rested a hand on his. “Was I mistaken in thinking you might… care for Emilia?” she asked gently. “Mayhap even love her?”
He dragged a hand over his face. All of her efforts at this house party had been with the intention of playing matchmaker.
His mother touched his arm. “Was I… Am I… mistaken?” she pressed.
“You weren’t. You aren’t,” he said tiredly and sank down onto the workbench he and Emilia had occupied… moments ago? A lifetime ago? Time had ceased to mean anything or matter in any way.
His mother fell onto the seat beside him. “Then you need to… do something.”
Do something? “What does that even mean, Mother?”
“Fight for her.”
“He is the man she loves.” Even saying that ripped a ragged hole inside his already breaking heart.
“Loved,” she amended. “And he betrayed her,” she tacked on. “Betrayed her, Heathcliff. Betraaaaayed her.” She stretched her hands out to emphasize those elongated syllables.
His mother spoke of feelings Emilia had had long ago. Except, any resentment Emilia had harbored over the years had been because she didn’t know the reasons for that betrayal.
“Won’t you say something, Heath?”
“What is there to say?” That I love Emilia and losing her again will shatter me beyond repair and leave me eternally empty inside. “He had his reasons,” he said tiredly. Ones only Heath knew of. Ones that were honorable, and yet, never could be explained because of what that would mean for so many.
His mother gasped. “You would defend him? I know he is your dearest friend, but you would simply allow him to sweep in here all these years later and win her back?”
His throat worked. “I want her to be happy.” He wanted to know she was loved and that she lived a life of joy… even if that meant she was with another.
His mother settled an arm around his shoulders and lightly squeezed. “You make her happy, Heathcliff. I’ve known Emilia since she was a babe, and I saw her with Renaud. She was never like she is when she is with you.”
He started. “How—?”
Her eyes sparkled. “A mother knows her child, Heathcliff. Just as a mother knows when a woman is in love with her child. Go fight for her,” she urged.
Go fight for her…
It was a primal urging to fight that reared deep inside him. Only… “It is not that simple.” He shoved to his feet and began pacing. He wanted a life with Emilia. He wanted her to want that life with him. It was not, however, his place to interfere in her relationship with Renaud. He stopped abruptly and stared at the doorway. “Where is he?”
“Your father hid him in his office. He’s refused to allow him out.” For the first time since she’d stormed the conservatory, a smile pulled his mother’s lips up. “He’s occupying him with his snuffbox collection.”
Were Heath’s world not crumbling about him, he’d have laughed uproariously at the idea of his father serving as sentry with snuffboxes as his weaponry of choice.
There was only one thing, however, he could do.
Heath started for the door.
“What are you going to do?”
He didn’t break stride. “The right thing.” His heart breaking, Heath wound his way through his family’s estate. The same corridors he and Emilia had stolen down these past days together. Emotion stuck in his throat. Damn it all.
At last, he reached his father’s office and froze with his fingers on the handle. “…and this particular box was gifted to Nelson by his personal secretary, Unwin,” his father was saying. “I have it on good authority—”
Heath let himself in, and it was hard to say who was more relieved to see him—his father or Renaud.
“That particular box was gifted during a dinner party in Sicily in ’98,” Heath finished.
“It is good to know someone listens around here.” His father thumped the desk in a primal mark of paternal approval.
“Father, may I have a moment?” he asked quietly.
The older duke was already moving out from behind the desk. Not bothering with a parting greeting, he paused alongside Heath. “Your mother will hang me by my feet if you allow that one free reign of these halls.”
Yes, Heath’s mother was nothing if not loyal. Loyalty seemed to be the bane of the Whitworth existence.
“And another thing”—his father tossed a suspicious look over at Renaud—“watch my snuffboxes around that one. Don’t trust a gent who won’t honor his word.”
When his father had gone, Heath closed the door and stared at the panel for a moment, unable to face his friend.
“You needn’t feel badly about that. I quite deserved it,” his friend called over in somber tones that brought Heath around to face him.
No, but there were all manner of other things he did and should feel horrid over. Betrayals that spoke to Heath’s blackened soul. “You’re here,” he said needlessly.
“It is overdue,” Renaud said, glancing around the office. A small smile formed on his lips, though sad and empty. “Nothing has changed here, I see,” he murmured, directing that to the duke’s snuffbox collection.
Everything had changed here.
“My parents are insistent that you leave,” Heath said, tired of sidestepping the reason for his friend’s visit.
Renaud’s shoulders came back. “And what of you, Mulgrave?” he returned, coming to the middle of the carpet. Suspicion darkened his friend’s life-hardened gaze. “What do you want?”
Heath fisted and unfisted his hands. For, God rot his soul, he wanted Emilia. He wanted Renaud gone. And he wanted to go back to the joy he’d known with Emilia. Heath met the man he’d known since Eton in the middle of the room. “It’s been ten years, Renaud.”
A muscle ticked at the corner of the duke’s right eye. “I don’t need you to tell me how long it’s been since I’ve seen her.” He took another step toward Heath. “Just as I don’t intend to let your parents”—he gave Heath a hard look—“or you prevent me from seeing Emilia because of some misbegotten fear of what the ton will say about our meeting.”
He started past Heath.
“Before you do, there’s something I’d say to you,” he said after Emilia’s former betrothed.
The duke stopped and wheeled slowly around. “What is it?”
Nihil durat in aeternum…Nothing lasts forever…