Chapter Five
Emily froze when Bracebridge vaulted into the gig. The world had become fragile, and she feared it would shatter if she so much as breathed too hard. Mr. Davener remained on the ground, motionless. None of the servants, her father’s or Mr. Davener’s, moved or uttered a word of protest.
“Papa is at the window,” she said quietly.
“To the bloody devil with your father.” Bracebridge gave his pair a light touch of the whip, and they were off, leaving Walter Davener stretched out on the ground.
She looked behind her when they reached the curve of the driveway before it went straight to the road. Mr. Davener remained supine, though one of his feet twitched. One of the servants was heading to his aid. “You hit him awfully hard.”
Bracebridge shrugged.
“I’m glad you did.” She stayed turned around on the seat until Bracebridge directed his gig around the corner, and her last glimpse of the house disappeared. “I don’t suppose I shall ever go back,” she said.
“I expect not.”
If she could have her way, she would live with Lucy, but unfortunately, the sister with whom she was closest was too newly married. Anne it was, then. She loved all her sisters, including Mary, but she was least pleased by the idea of living with Mary and Aldreth. She and Mary had never got on. They were too different, or perhaps too much alike.
She patted Frieda’s head. Her heart continued to beat too fast, her hands shook, and her stomach was one huge knot of anxiety. “This is her first ride in an open carriage.”
“She is an excellent traveler.”
Emily settled onto the seat as he headed the gig toward Rosefeld. “Suppose Mr. Davener comes after us?”
“I’ll hit him again, that’s what.”
“He’s bankrupt,” she said. “Papa, I mean to say. Not Mr. Davener.” It was a thirty-minute drive from the Cooperage to Rosefeld, which was why she almost always walked, since it was half that time through the fields. She took a breath, to little calming effect.
“I am aware.” He stared straight ahead.
Her heart gave an unwarranted leap at the thought that Bracebridge had come to her rescue. Nothing in their past supported such a conclusion. “Why were you at the Cooperage?”
“I had urgent business with your father.”
“Does he owe you money?”
He let out a breath. When he spoke, he sounded oddly amused. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“I am sorry to hear that, for he won’t repay you.”
With an inscrutable look at her, he said, “It happens that I am the new owner of your ancestral home.”
Oh good heavens. Emily swallowed hard. “You? But Papa said it was Mr. Davener.” Her anger took root again. “He lied to me?”
“Until this morning, I was unaware of the change in your father’s circumstances and mine.” He patted his upper left chest. “I came the moment I was presented with the deed to the Cooperage. So, no. The charge of lying cannot be laid at his feet, in this case. Until I arrived, I’m quite sure he believed Davener had taken care of matters.”
For several seconds, she considered the implications of what Bracebridge had said, the first of which was that this had nothing to do with her and everything to do with Anne. “You came to crow over him, didn’t you?”
He chuckled. “I won’t deny that.”
“Was it satisfying to tell Papa?”
“It was.”
She leaned the back of her head against the seat and stared at the sky. “I don’t blame you. I’d want to do the same, were I in your position.” She straightened. “You really have the deed to the Cooperage?”
“Yes.”
His answer shook her to the point where she was nearly incapable of speech. She pressed her head to her knees, shaking at the thought of what her future might have been.
“Em?”
After several deep breaths, she sat up. “I know you did not intend it, but if not for you, I might this very moment be standing before the vicar with Walter Davener. You were correct. I did not wish to marry him.”
“I confess, I took no small satisfaction from connecting my fist to his chin.”
“Does Aldreth know about the Cooperage?” He must, she thought. Surely, Bracebridge would have told him.
“Not yet.”
They’d reached the point where they would make the turn toward Rosefeld. For some reason, Bracebridge pulled the rig to the side of the road. He stared at the reins clenched in his hands. “You’ll never be safe from him. Not until you’re married.”
“Are you suggesting I ought to have married that awful man? No. Believe you me, you did me a very great turn, whether you intended to or not.”
“May I ask why you did not refuse? That would have been more like you than the meek acceptance I saw from you at the Cooperage.”
She picked at a snagged thread on her cloak. He wasn’t asking in a disapproving manner. “I tried. That is, I did say no, but he wouldn’t let up, and then Mr. Davener came in with all his ridiculous, dreadful poetry and, well, I can tell you, I was going to tell the vicar I refuse to marry anyone at all, for heaven knows Mr. Davener wouldn’t listen to me any more than Papa does. And then you hit him, and it wasn’t necessary.” She smiled, and it felt like the first true smile of her life. “I thank you for your timely assistance.”
He turned his head very slightly toward her. “Is there anyone you’d marry?”
“No.” What a miracle. They’d gone nearly twenty minutes without arguing.
“Not even Harry Glynn?” he asked.
“No. Especially not Harry.” She stroked Frieda’s head. “My lord, I have had a wretched, wretched day. Why are we sitting here?”
In the ensuing prolonged silence, she resigned herself to frustration. At last, he answered. “I’ll take you to Scotland.”
“Scotland,” she said, thoroughly confused. She rearranged the sentence in her head, substituting words she’d misheard for ones that made sense. Sainsbury? Salisbury? The Cotswolds? Constantinople? America? “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me.”
Very well. She had heard correctly. But she remained so confused, she did not respond to his intentionally vexatious tone. “For what possible reason?”
He cocked an eyebrow with that devil-may-care look that had so attracted her from the start. “The same reason any other couple hares off to Gretna Green.”
Her breath stopped, but no. Not that. That was impossible. And yet, she was filled with the same giddiness that had overcome her all those times she’d imagined he’d say such words to her. “Forgive me,” she said as coolly as she could. “I do not comprehend you.”
With exaggerated and infuriating patience, he said, “I propose to take you to Scotland and, there, marry you.”
She blinked. “What about Clara?” He glanced away, but too late, for she saw bitterness in his eyes, and her heart disintegrated. “But why? Bracebridge, what happened?”
“I have been firmly told there are no circumstances under which I shall be permitted to marry Miss Glynn.”
Emily was momentarily stunned to silence. “What? Clara never said that.”
“No,” he said in a weary voice. “Her brother did.”
“That can’t be. Why would he? You’ve been courting her for months.”
“His objections arose today.”
“Was it because of something Papa did?” His silence made her heart drop to her toes. “What did he do? Tell me. Tell me, Bracebridge. What lie has he told?”
“He’s let it be said that I intentionally bankrupted him.”
She let out a sharp laugh. “As if Papa needs any help with that. Of course I know about him.” She was done with her silence on the matter. Before the end of the day, she would be with one of her sisters, because under no circumstance would she return to the Cooperage. “What happened?”
Emily listened with an ever more painful knot in her stomach as Bracebridge set out what had happened, including several details her father had omitted in the tale of woe he’d spun for her. A dozen reactions whirled through her, variations of dismay, anger, and sorrow. When he was done, she put a hand on his arm. “I am so sorry. For you both. Clara cares for you. I know she does. Can this not be repaired?”
He squeezed the reins and looked directly at her with dead, black eyes. “Scotland. Yea or nay?”
“You don’t want to marry me,” she said calmly. Was she truly refusing an offer of marriage from him? It seemed unreal she could do so. A dream. “You don’t.”
“You must be free of your father, or you’ll end up married to someone worse than Davener.”
“You’ve gone mad.”
One corner of his mouth curled. “I am at liberty to assist you in your escape.”
“You can’t be serious.” A year ago, less than a year ago, she would have told him yes without a moment’s hesitation. Those words lay between them, those hurtful words he’d given her, and even after a year of reliving and reinventing his meaning, she knew he’d told her the truth. He did not love her.
He grasped her arm just above her elbow and drew her close. She was too shocked by the contact to pull away, and for several seconds she stared into his eyes and fell straight into the abyss of her attraction to him. She had always reacted to him like this. Always. She shivered.
“I assume it’s true you don’t wish to marry Davener or someone like him.” He reached for the compartment beneath the seat and took out a blanket. He unfurled it and spread it over her lap. Since they both knew the answer to that, she didn’t bother with a reply. His eyes held hers, pulling her in.
“Why? Tell me why, Bracebridge.”
His gaze held hers, and his smile was truly terrifying. “Revenge.”
She swallowed heard. “Against me?”
“Your father. He’ll be enraged when he hears what we’ve done.”
Her heart beat so fast, she wondered whether she might faint for the first time in her life. “God in Heaven,” she whispered. “Won’t he?”
He grinned, but it was a smile that turned her cold. “He’ll never recover from his most beautiful and last unwed daughter marrying a man he despises. The very man whose life he intended to ruin.”
The bloodlessness of his reasoning robbed her of words. She had no doubt of his sincerity. None at all.
“Marry me, and your father and the likes of Walter Davener can hang in the wind.”
“You aren’t in your right mind.”
There was not an ounce of warmth in his eyes, the way he held himself, or his voice. “I am. Believe you me, I am.”
She could not catch her breath, and for several seconds she was convinced she could not hear. But then the sound of the wind through the trees filled the silence. He adjusted his greatcoat and, without thinking, she brushed away a brown and lifeless leaf clinging to his sleeve.
They said nothing while a wagon passed heading north. When they could speak in normal tones, Bracebridge sounded as if he were discussing the weather. “You and I understand each other as well as any two people can.”
An ocean lay between the words he was saying and the meaning she wanted them to have. She tipped her chin to get a good look at his face. His eyes were so dark, she could scarcely tell the difference between his pupils and his irises. Her father had destroyed his hopes not once, but twice. First Anne and now Clara. It was not right or fair.
“Come now,” he said in a voice intended to beguile.
Her heart lurched horribly, as all her stupid, girlish hopes flooded back despite knowing better. She’d spent a year convincing herself she no longer loved him, and in the space of a breath, he’d returned her to that awful state of unrequited love.
He could be hers. Bracebridge could be her husband, and she could love him as any wife ought to love her husband, and no one would take her aside and warn her not to wear her heart on her sleeve. No one would tell her she should not love the man she’d married.
“You are absolutely certain you cannot repair this break with Clara?”
“Even if I could, perhaps I should not.” He released a breath and stroked Frieda’s dome of a head. “I am not capable of loving anyone but Anne,” he said gently. “You know that. You’ll never expect me to fall in love with you, for you know it cannot happen.” He waited a long moment before continuing. “I wish I were different. I wish I were a better man than I am, but my heart is not mine to give.”
“No,” she said, only no sound emerged from her throat. She tried again. “No.”
“Marry me,” he said, without any sign of admiration or affection. “Marry me knowingly. No compliments from me I would not mean. Just truth. Marry me, and I shall have the coldest revenge possible, and you shall forevermore be safe from your father’s machinations.”
His low, smooth voice melted her, drowned her, pulled her under forever. He offered her what she’d longed for in her most private moments. How could she possibly tell him no?
“Well?” he asked. “What do you say?”
She needed to think and could not. He moved and for a moment, only a moment, she thought, There, it’s over. No more of this nonsense. But he wasn’t done destroying her.
“Marry me, Em.” He tapped the fourth finger of her left hand. “Even for the Divine Sinclair, countess isn’t too far a comedown.”
He meant this, and she hadn’t the will to refuse him.
He bared his teeth in a joyless smile. “Give me the satisfaction of knowing I’ve repaid your father in kind. Tit for tat. He took your sister from me. I’ll take everything that matters to him. The Cooperage and you.”
Her heart flew away with her breath, her hopes, and her sense. He meant it. For all the wrong reasons, he meant it.
“Say yes,” he said with an awful amusement, “and where you are concerned, your father’s pockets are permanently to let.” He shifted on the seat. “Which is it to be, Em? Rosefeld? Or Gretna Green?”