Brandon would have had a great deal to say about it if he’d been informed. As it was, his mind was caught up with the events of the day as he changed for supper with the dubious help of Noonan.

“When the hell are we getting back to Scotland?” the old man demanded. “The longer I stay down here in this place the more nervous I get. Throwing rocks at the British Army can be considered treason, you know.”

“It was twenty years ago if it was a day, and no one even remembers,” Brandon replied. “I’ve still got things to do down here. Besides, I’m supposed to get married.”

Noonan dismissed that particular notion with a colorful phrase. “You’re no more going to marry that dishrag of a girl than you’re going to win a beauty contest,” he said with his usual devastating frankness. “Just leave off and let’s go home.”

“Trust me, there’s nothing I’d like better.” But was there? Was there any other woman whose lithe, strong body felt made for his, whose mouth tasted of paradise? He’d been an idiot and a rare bastard for kissing her this afternoon, but he hadn’t been able to help himself. He’d been wanting to for so damned long, and the chaste kiss of the night before had only whet his appetite.

But he couldn’t have her. Even if he managed to find his way out of this absurd marriage idea, he still couldn’t have Emma Cadbury. She didn’t even like him, for all that she’d put her arms around him and almost kissed him back, and she would have no interest in. . .

“What do I do with this thing?” Noonan interrupted his conflicted thoughts, clenching a spotless neckcloth in one hand. Brandon grabbed it away.

“You don’t crush it,” he said, tying it haphazardly around his neck. “Damned things.”

“You’re right about that, me boy. Those things could strangle you, and there’s no way you could fight in one.”

Not even with a blink of an eye did he show his reaction. Noonan brought up the war at regular intervals, and each time a part of him wanted to recoil. He’d accepted it: the things he had done, the trust he’d betrayed, the monstrous things. . .

Deliberately, he looked in the mirror. In Scotland they had no mirrors, at least, none in the gamekeeper’s house where he and Noonan had lived for the last three years. The main house was shuttered, the furniture covered, and they could have walls and ceilings made of mirrors for all he cared. Noonan didn’t give a damn, and Brandon hadn’t wanted to look at his ugly mug, the constant reminder of all he wished he could forget.

In truth, though, he wasn’t ready to let go of it, of the harsh, damnable past. He looked at the monster in the mirror with steady regard. It was no wonder his pathetic little fiancée had screamed and almost fainted at the sight of him. The thought of being forced to look at him across the breakfast table must have horrified her.

“No beauty contests, eh?” he said out loud, surveying himself.

The left side of his face had looked like raw, bloody minced meat in the beginning, but now it was merely a spider web of scars, his nose had been broken several times before the last battle, and he couldn’t say much for the rest of him. The scars tugged his mouth into a perpetual glower, his left eye was tilted, though praise be he still had vision in it. He could stand there and catalogue the deficiencies, the damaged ear, the deep vertical scars, but he didn’t bother. He was repulsed enough by his reflection, knowing that he deserved it. It was the outward sign of all his inner torment, a punishment for the horrors he’d committed. He’d never shirked responsibility—he took his punishment like a man.

“I pity that poor girl having to look at the sight of this every morning,” he said.

“She’ll get a crick in her neck if she keeps trying to avoid the sight of you,” Noonan said with a certain malice. “I’ve always told you that if someone won’t look you in the face then they aren’t worth knowing.”

Brandon grinned, turning from the mirror. “You think I’m pining for my lost beauty, Noonan? I mind my bad leg more. And I’m more than used to people staring at my shoulder instead of meeting my gaze. It no longer bothers me.”

“I know, laddie,” Noonan said, and there was an unexpected note of sympathy in his scratchy Irish accent. “You know one thing that’s odd? That woman—the pretty one, what used to be a doxy. What’s her name?”

“Emma Cadbury,” Brandon said in an expressionless voice. For some reason he’d bristled at the word “doxy” but it was nothing more than the truth, and a man like Noonan would pass no judgments.

“Aye, that’s the one. That one looks you straight in the eye and— she doesn’t flinch. To my mind she’s worth ten of anyone else here, saving your family.” He took a step back and ran his eyes over Brandon. “You look as pretty as you’re going to, though I don’t know why you bother. I’m going down to the kitchen to get meself a drop of good whiskey and maybe an armful of that plump scullery maid while you have to sit all stiff and proper. When you come to your senses and are ready to head north all you have to do is say the word and I’ll have our horses saddled.”

It was tempting, so tempting, just to run away from this mess his once simple life had become. Running away from Emma Cadbury made even more sense—she upset his hard-won equilibrium.

“Soon,” he promised. Turning away, he moved toward the window as the door closed behind Noonan. It was still raining—did he need to build an ark to get out of here? He was used to rain in Scotland—liquid sunshine, they called it, and then ignored it, going about their business anyway. Here it seemed to call a halt to everything, and he was ready to explode.

Damn, damn, damn. Why had he kissed her? She was broken, perhaps as broken as he was, and despite her prickles she needed to be treated gently, and instead he’d been on her like a teenage boy, ignoring her injuries, perhaps even ignoring her dislike of the whole situation. He’d been so aroused, had been fighting it for so long that once his infernal lust had slipped its bonds he might have been too far gone to notice her dislike.

But no, she’d put her hands on him, closer than he’d expected, and her body had melted against his, and he’d felt, absolutely felt her own longing. He wasn’t a man who deluded himself, and he knew that, despite her antipathy, despite her very rough history, she was as deeply attracted to him as he was to her. Strange—he’d never had such an instantaneous feeling that someone was important to him, someone seemingly so strong, yet he suspected was far more vulnerable than she let on.

He’d once had a baby hedgehog when he’d been a boy—he’d always been collecting animals back then. His mother had told him his room was like a zoological garden, but she never forbade him to bring in the wounded birds, the motherless rabbits, the companionable ferret with the missing leg.

Emma was like a broken bird, he thought, staring out into the rain. A raven in a wren’s costume, that mesmerizing beauty banked down and hidden.

She was neither a raven nor a wren. She was a robin—bright and smart and strong, but she was hiding, and he wasn’t the man to lure her out into the sunlight, not when he lived in darkness himself.

She’d tasted so good, so right. It had felt like coming home, that kiss, all those kisses behind the door of the salon, and his head kept filling with fantasies so depraved he should be ashamed of himself. He wasn’t. He’d always had strong sexual appetites, ones he’d done his best to bank down since the horror of his time with the Heavenly Host, but Emma Cadbury woke something in him he’d forgotten.

A visit with the discreet Widow MacKinnon would take care of it, he told himself. All cats were gray in the dark, and Fiona MacKinnon was a talented and enthusiastic lover. If anyone could put Emma out of his mind it would be Fiona. If anyone could.

In the meantime he had to go downstairs and be attentive to his meek little fiancée, unless someone had been kind to her and set her at a distance from him, and he’d try to remember his duty, when all the time he was wishing he was in the kitchen drinking whiskey with Noonan. No, he didn’t miss the whiskey, he thought, prodding that old desire like one prodded a sore tooth to see whether it still hurt. He just missed his simpler life.

Would Emma even come down to dinner? Could he sit, expressionless, pretending? He had no choice in the matter, and Benedick would skin him alive if he knew he’d kissed his wife’s best friend.

He straightened his shoulders. He was a Rohan, more than anything. He did what he had to do, by conventional or unconventional means, and he tried not to let anyone bear the results of his wayward desires and morals but himself. His grandfather Francis would approve, the old satyr.

There was a definite pall over the group gathered for dinner that night. Charles was gone, and Brandon neither knew nor cared where. To the devil, he hoped. His absence was about the only good thing about the evening. He entered the grand dining room, Miss Frances Bonham’s tiny, gloved hand on his arm, looking around for Emma. He couldn’t decide whether her absence was a blessing or a curse.

He’d done his duty with the perfect air of courtesy and amiability, meeting with his intended to give her a chance to get used to him. After the debacle in the reception room he’d been sure she’d cry off, but his hopes were in vain. She didn’t like this any more than he did, but she had fixed her gaze on his shoulder, determined not to see the ruination of his face, and she made the proper responses as if she’d memorized them, while the dragon beside her kept a strong, comforting hand on the heiress’s shoulder. She seemed to like their proposed marriage even less than the bride and groom did, and he wondered if there was something she could do that would put an end to this. Miss Marion Trimby was in her mid-thirties, and she looked like someone who was used to being in charge. If he really was forced to marry Miss Bonham, there’d be a battle over who controlled her. It was quite clear that young Frances had no interest or ability to assert her independence.

The other guests had already been seated when he escorted her into the dining room, and they all immediately rose, applauding politely as he led Frances to her seat between Benedick and one of the chowderheads who’d gone in search of the maid and apparently became violently ill over her remains. He settled the girl carefully, the perfect husband-to-be. The word was out, then, not that it made any difference. Once a Rohan agreed to something he didn’t renege—he had promised to give this terrified young creature the protection of his name, what little protection it was. As a married woman she would exist on a completely different level of society, and while there was no way to erase his hideous accusation, the fact that he married her would speak for something. This was her only way to return to the kind of life she’d been born to.

“Is something wrong?” his nervous fiancée whispered when his arm jerked.

He smiled down at her with determined benevolence. “Nothing at all, my dear.” He couldn’t call her Frances, and Miss Bonham seemed ridiculously formal. He looked up, and there were two empty seats at the table. Correct social behavior was automatic, and he headed toward the proper seat, wondering who could be even later than he had been, when there was a shadow at the door, and whom he had been looking for, whom he had been dreading, had arrived. Emma Cadbury stood in the door, murmuring abject apologies, never sparing him a single glance.

She had her thick black hair scraped back away from her face, and the bruising near her temple did not show as prominently, although he thought she had helped that along with rice powder. There were still shadows under her eyes, her mouth was tight and thin with determination, and the gray dress she wore was even frumpier than her previous ones, something he wouldn’t have thought possible. She was breathtaking.

He moved behind her chair, ready to pull it out for her, and for a moment the memory of their afternoon kisses flared in her eyes before it was quickly extinguished.

Everyone had, of course, risen again, including his sister-in-law, and for some indiscernible reason Melisande had a truly miserable expression on her face. “Emma!” she cried, and there was an odd tone in her voice. “I didn’t think you’d be able to join us for dinner.”

Emma looked suddenly alert. “A short rest improved everything,” she said, and Brandon could attest to it. He wanted to cross the room, take her hand and pull her out into the hallway, back to the salon with the divan and the door to hide behind, or back to his vast room and his empty bed. He didn’t blink, his face impassive.

Melisande had already started around the table in Emma’s direction. “You cannot be too careful, my love. You’ve been through an awful experience—I can’t imagine even being out of bed, much less coming downstairs twice in one day. Why don’t you retire and I’ll have a plate brought to you?”

The extreme oddness of the conversation didn’t escape the other couples at the tables, but then, Melisande was known to be eccentric and egalitarian in her views and behavior. For some reason she seemed intent of sending her friend away from the dinner table. All eyes swerved back to Emma, awaiting her response. As he was, he realized, not even glancing at Frances.

Emma narrowed her magnificent eyes for a moment, as if trying to understand what Melisande was hinting, and then she did something very interesting indeed. She cast another glance at him as he stood there waiting, as if he had something to do with Melisande’s very odd behavior.

Benedick caught Melisande’s arm before she could reach Emma, and he shook his head, frowning at her. What in Christ’s name was going on with them, Brandon thought. He had enough frustration on his own without some new disaster involving his brother.

Emma wanted to run, he knew that as well as he knew his own name, even if her expression remained politely blank. He didn’t blame her—if he could get his horse out of Benedick’s clutches he would take off like a bat out of hell. He could even offer Emma a ride to escape whatever she was trying to avoid, and the two of them would head to Scotland, with Noonan barely able to catch up.

But he wouldn’t do any such thing. He had too much to atone for, so many things that he couldn’t do anything about. He could do something about Frances, and he would do his duty.

Emma straightened her shoulders and smiled politely. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen a real smile from her, one that reached her eyes and her heart. He had the odd sense that she had smiled at least once, but that was impossible. He would have remembered.

“I’m feeling well, my lady,” she said formally. “I wouldn’t have come down if I weren’t up to it.”

“Perhaps we might change the seating, and you could sit by me. . .”

“My dear,” Benedick murmured, and Melisande seemed to come to her senses.

“I’m fine,” Emma said meaningfully.

“Of course you are,” Benedick said, releasing Melisande and moving to take Emma’s arm. “Don’t mind my wife—she has her moments of extreme silliness.” He brought her over to Brandon’s side. “You’ll take care of Mrs. Cadbury, won’t you, Brandon? She’s not the frail flower my wife seems to think she is, but if she seems ill you might see her out and find a maid to assist her.”

Emma was stoic once more. “What a huge fuss over nothing. Good evening, Mr. Rohan.”

Brandon looked at her. He almost missed her calling him Lord Brandon, simply because she did it to annoy him. “Good evening, Mrs. Cadbury,” he replied, helping her to the chair before taking the seat beside her.

Everyone at the table had been watching this little drama with avid eyes, including, he noticed, his fiancée. Conversation immediately began again, but rules were rules and Frances was following her hostess’s lead and making desultory conversation with the elderly knight on her right. Halfway through the meal the very polite guests would then turn and talk to the person on the other side, rather like a stately court dance his parents might have been involved in.

Then Frances had left his mind completely. He was damned if he was going to wait until the fish or roast course to talk to Emma. “What’s going on?” he demanded in a whisper. The lady on his other side, Mrs. Beauchamp, had a consuming passion for rolls, and the wise server had put three on her plate. She was busy ripping small pieces off them and slathering them with butter—she wouldn’t want to be interrupted with polite conversation.

Emma’s face was expressionless. “The weather is positively dreadful, is it not? It is a great deal too bad that you missed getting out while the sun shone.”

Considering that those who’d been out had found the mangled body of the murdered maid, that was less than felicitous, and there was a troubled murmur around the table. She flushed for a moment, realizing her mistake.

“The company in the house was more appealing,” he said in the same polite voice.

“I’m so glad,” she murmured, and there was just a trace of malice in her rich, sweet voice. He liked it. She was angry with him over those kisses. That made two of them—it had been incredibly foolish of him. He’d do it again in a heartbeat.

He watched her clever gray eyes sweep the table, linger for a moment on Benedick’s taut expression, then at Melisande’s clear misery, and then light on Miss Bonham, who looked only half as terrified as she had earlier. Emma turned back to look up at him, her beautiful gray eyes serene. “I gather we are to wish you happy,” she said softly. “Will you be taking your bride to Scotland?”

Emma had known the minute she’d walked into the room. It had started as a sinking dread, and Melisande’s less than subtle behavior made it more and more clear. Despite Melisande’s certainty, Brandon Rohan, Lord Brandon, was indeed going to marry Miss Frances Bonham, half-sister of the late Harry Merton. Which was lovely, absolutely right, he’d do well with a sweet, unquestioning young virgin to adore him, once she got over that look of cornered prey in her unremarkable eyes.

Which begged the question—why did Emma suddenly want to throw up?

Brandon was frowning at her simple words, not looking the slightest bit gratified. In fact, he had barely glanced at his new fiancée once since Emma had entered the room.

Emma was concentrating on her water, the voices surrounding her, when she realized he hadn’t said a word. She was used to being rebuffed, but not even this new Brandon would behave so badly. She lifted her gaze to glance at him.

“I doubt it,” he said, and he gave his future bride the briefest of glances before turning back to Emma. “She seems much too civilized a creature for the wilds of the Scottish Highlands.”

At that moment Emma wanted to use Benedick’s vile curse herself. “Then London will have the pleasure of your company? Or will you reside in the countryside?”

Another moment of silence, and she realized she’d been far too inquisitive. There was a fine line between polite conversation and rampant curiosity, and she was stomping all over it. She should have said nothing—what business was it of hers where Brandon Rohan chose to live—but she had a desperate need to know, in order to fortify herself if she was doomed to run into him.

Doomed. Such a dramatic word, she chided herself, glancing up at him. When had she become so infantile?

Brandon was as good as she was at hiding his thoughts. “I will arrange for Miss Bonham to live wherever she chooses, be it London society or a quiet country estate. I intend to return to Scotland posthaste, which I expect will make my wife extremely happy. Would you care to come with me?”

The question was added so casually that for a moment Emma didn’t understand him. “I beg your pardon?”

“I asked if you wanted to come with me. To Scotland. To stay,” he clarified. “It’s cold and rainy and miserable a great deal of the time, and I live in the moldering ruins of a gatekeeper’s cottage, but we manage to keep warm and Noonan does all the housework. He’s not a half-bad cook.”

She had slowly turned to stone at his abrupt words. Stone, with a ripped-up, bleeding heart inside. “I thought I explained to you, Lord Brandon, that I was no longer for sale.”

She saw him blink, but instead of offense she saw a flash of humor. “Oh, I had no intention of paying you, Mrs. Cadbury.” He returned tit for tat. “I rather thought you might like it.”

Her expression could be withering indeed, and she gave him the full benefit of it. “Clearly you rate your attractions a bit too highly, my lord. If performing such services are not worth the money that’s usually offered then I would hardly be tempted to perform them for free.”

She could have remained cold and offended and walled off, except that he smiled at her, and for the first time she saw a glimpse of the old Brandon, the wounded soul who had made light of his grievous injuries, the young man who teased and enchanted her. “Now that’s definitely going too far, sweet Emma,” he said. “’Lord Brandon’ is bad enough, ‘my lord’ is impossibly stuffy. And I could most definitely change your mind,” he added softly, and his low voice beneath the hum of conversation made her flesh heat. “Have you forgotten this afternoon so quickly?”

It was instinctive, a bad move, but she didn’t stop to think, she simply kicked him, hard, under the table, and then let out a little yelp of pain. He was wearing riding boots, the bastard, and her soft slippers only did damage to her own foot.

He made a soft, disapproving noise, his eyes still alight with mischief. “Temper, Emma,” he chided. “You don’t want to give anyone the wrong idea.”

“What wrong idea?” she whispered fiercely. “That I kicked you? I don’t care who knows it—my mere existence is already considered highly inappropriate. I could hardly make things worse with my behavior.”

There was a faint softening in his expression, and it was even more painful than his mockery. “Emma. . .” he began gently, but she interrupted him.

“Say one more word to me, Lord Brandon, and I will spill my water in your lap.”

His humor was back. “A cooling off might prove beneficial.” He glanced down at his lap, and before she could stop herself she did the same. Oh, he was a gorgeous man, with those narrow hips, long legs, his. . .

She jerked her eyes away, then reached out and picked up her water, contemplating it meaningfully. “Your supposed injury isn’t going to pass muster if you keep finding yourself in that condition,” she said dryly.

She heard his soft laugh. “Don’t worry—it only happens when I’m around you,” and in the next minute he was deep in conversation with the matron on his left, dismissing her.

The rest of the meal passed in a painful blur. He never addressed another word to her, nor glanced her way as far as she could tell, though it seemed to her fanciful mind that she could feel his eyes on her. Every now and then she stole a glance at Frances Bonham, trying to imagine her with Brandon. Trying to imagine her in bed with him, beneath his large, strong body, taking him inside her, reveling in the act.

No, that was unlikely. Miss Bonham was small and slight and easily frightened—she would not be eager for bedsport. Brandon would force himself on her on their wedding night, but at least then he’d probably leave her alone.

It didn’t matter that she couldn’t really see Brandon forcing anyone. In fact, she couldn’t even imagine that he’d ever had the need to. With his deep, rich voice, his gorgeous eyes, his strength and power he probably had women throwing themselves at him. His ruined beauty would be an aphrodisiac to a discerning woman—she imagined he’d been simply too pretty before he’d gone to war. She knew men—it had once been her business—and she knew he’d be a good lover, a generous one, the kind of man who found little pleasure if his partner didn’t. During the years she’d spent on her back she’d never run into that sort of customer, but the other girls had, or so they swore, and indeed, a number of them had tried to stop charging their favorites.

Emma rubbed her head. It was throbbing, though whether from the blow or something else she wasn’t quite sure, and she wanted to go back to bed and bury herself in the covers. She’d had such hopes for this week—a quiet time with Melisande’s family, playing with the children, walking in the woods for exercise, taking Benedick’s favorite, smelly old spaniel with her for company. Instead she’d found rain and Brandon Rohan, and Brandon was definitely the worse of those two trials. She’d be better off in the city.

Melisande wouldn’t fight her any longer. At least this would put paid to any fantasies her best friend might harbor. A man would never cry off from an engagement, particularly not a good man, and she was convinced that beneath everything Brandon was a very good man.

There was no doubt in Emma’s mind that Miss Bonham would accept him. She had always been an expert of eliciting gossip—it was an important part of her former trade. She knew all about the young woman’s reputation, about her brother, she even knew about the legalities that tied up her inheritance. Men talked to their whores, and women talked among themselves. No, Frances Bonham had come here, accepted him, despite being completely spineless and terrified. 

Emma immediately felt wicked. Despite Miss Bonham’s very rational fear of Brandon, she had accepted his haphazard suit. She was braver than she seemed. She wouldn’t cast him off lightly, and she didn’t to be judged.

Emma barely touched her food, pushing it around on her plate with desultory disinterest. Usually she was blessed with a healthy appetite, particularly in London when she was working. Missing a meal or two would do her no harm.

She looked up suddenly, and her eyes met Melisande’s speaking ones across the table. The men on either side of her had broken protocol in the face of her abstraction—Brandon listening with polite interest as the matron described her eligible daughters, and the elderly knight next to her attentive to the woman who’d accompanied Frances Bonham, who presumably was accompanying her into her marriage as well. It left Emma in a quiet sort of bubble, free to observe, free to feel sorry for herself, she thought with a fair amount of mockery. Melisande’s bright blue eyes were troubled, and there was a tightness to her usually full mouth that signaled her distress as they looked at each other across the table.

Abruptly Melisande rose, causing a flurry of scraping chairs and clanking silverware. By rights she should have waited until the last course was removed, and normally the husband would then dismiss his wife and her female friends so they could smoke cigars and drink port and crack nuts.

Emma was fond of walnuts and white port, and she found the scent of cigar smoke oddly comforting, but no lady was allowed in the sacrosanct dining room once they’d been dismissed. It was different when it came to whores, and she’d worked two such gatherings in the past. Her own memories were far from pleasant, but there’d been something enticing about the ritual, at least, until she and her friends were put into play.

She shuddered. “We’ll have dessert in the salon,” Melisande was saying, her lush mouth tight with anger. “You gentlemen may enjoy your various indulgences. . .” and to Emma’s horror she cast a fulminating gaze at Brandon. To Emma’s relief the man beside her either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

Trying to extricate herself from between the two gentlemen, she momentarily found herself trapped. The knight was stolid and unmoving, his back to her as he conversed with Miss Bonham’s friend, but Brandon Rohan was standing, looking down at her, making no effort to pull out her chair or guide her from the table as the other gentlemen did.

She knew the rules of society—her family had been seemingly proper, and the rituals of the upper class had been simple to assimilate. Brandon was flaunting the rules, his big body trapping her.

She knew how to behave, but she also knew that at least half of polite society didn’t feel similarly obligated when it came to her. Melisande’s house had usually been a safe place, and if, for a scant moment, she considered whether Brandon was treating her as the vicar and his ilk did, she dismissed it. Brandon didn’t a damn who she was or what she had been, which was both a relief and . . . something else she refused to name.

She looked at him, wondered if kicking him at this vantage point would have any more effect. Probably not. “If you please, Lord Brandon,” she said in a cool voice.

He still didn’t move, looking at her, his expression totally unreadable, and he gave that cynical half smile, and shrugged. “Of course, Mrs. Cadbury,” he said, pulling the heavy chair out of her way so she could join the other ladies. She moved quickly, her skirts brushing against his long legs, and to her shock she felt his fingers close around her wrist, just for a moment, slowing her pace, and she felt his thumb stroke the inside of her wrist, where her blood was hammering wildly. “That’s better,” he murmured, and releasing her, he turned away.

Once the door to the dining room was closed behind her she stopped, taking several deep, calming breaths. She had no idea why she had allowed him to rattle her—it was probably lack of sleep and general exhaustion that had made her so vulnerable. She was behind the other women, and she could see Miss Bonham and her companion with their arms linked, their heads close together. It looked like nothing more than an intimate chat, until she saw the panic in Miss Bonham’s eyes, the despair in the other’s, and Emma felt sympathy rush through her. It was like that, was it? There would be no happy ending for Miss Bonham and her friend—society wouldn’t even admit such feelings existed, much less condone it. Miss Bonham was being traded to the highest bidder, Brandon, and the best Marion and Frances could hope for would be if he kept his resolve, married her, and then removed to Scotland.

It wasn’t a particularly happy group of women in the salon. Mrs. Beauchamp had found the cookies and was devoting her attention to them, and Melisande’s neighbor, Elizabeth, Lady Carlyle, was leaning back in a chair with complete disregard for those around them, her pregnant belly burgeoning in front of her. She had about five weeks left, Emma decided, and her color was good—she was, as most expectant mothers were, simply tired.

The others weren’t much livelier. Melisande looked murderous, Frances Bonham tragic, her friend Miss Trimby defensive, and Emma herself wasn’t certain whether she wanted to laugh or burst into tears.

She took her seat beside Melisande and a moment later polite conversation became the norm, aided by the social lubricant of tea. “I don’t know what happened,” Melisande muttered under her breath between declarations about the weather. “I never thought he’d go through with it. I’m going to kill Charles.”

“He’s simply looking out for his baby brother,” Emma said calmly. “And I have no idea why you consider it a problem.”

Melisande let out a quiet breath of exasperation. “Don’t lie to me—I’ve known you too long. You’re. . .”

“Felicitations on your engagement,” Emma said to Frances, speaking over Melisande’s whispered speech. “You must be looking forward to the happy day.” It was the first thing she could think of to say, more of the social piffle so beloved of society, but Frances’s martyred look reminded her it wasn’t the best topic.

“They have yet to set a date,” Miss Trimby announced repressively.

Frances managed to summon a wan smile. “It’s all so new. I imagine Lord Brandon is in no particular hurry.”

Oh, my. She was calling him by his title—that didn’t auger well for the future. “I’m certain you’ll be very happy,” she said with complete insincerity. Brandon would be kind to such a meek creature, but completely bored, and Frances didn’t appear as if she’d get over her terrors easily.

Miss Trimby surveyed her with a piercing look. “Have you hurt your wrist, Mrs. Cadbury? You keep rubbing it.”

Dropping her hands to her lap, Emma felt embarrassed heat rise to her cheeks. She’d been holding her wrist where Brandon had grasped it, rubbing the skin, caressing where he’d touched her. She was going mad.

“How kind of you to notice,” she said stiffly, and then managed a smile. She recognized Miss Trimby as well as if she knew her life’s story—living on the edge of society as Emma now did, prickly and defensive and devoted to her best friend.

But Emma had lived among women who were open and honest with their affections, and she had no doubt that Miss Trimby’s feelings for Frances were more passionate than sisterly, and those feelings were returned. That was all well and good in the world Emma inhabited, but there was no way for Miss Trimby and Frances to find happiness together, more’s the pity, though if Brandon gave her the protection of his name and then abandoned her that would go a long way toward it.

And why was she so busy trying to come up with happy endings for everyone else when her own were to be forever denied? Not that she actually knew what she wished for. The chance to work, to practice medicine without having to hide behind some incompetent man, would be enough. The chance to help her friends and the women who’d survived by selling their bodies, either out of choice or necessity, would add to her satisfaction with a hard life.

She’d learned ways to compensate for the things she could never have. She had never had to resort to the kindly old lady down by the docks who assisted professional women whose less than reliable protection had failed them. In the beginning there’d been no protection at all, until the other women had taken her in hand and told her what little she could do to keep herself from the unwanted consequences of their profession, but she knew she hadn’t needed it. She would never be able to bear children, but she could revel in Melisande’s growing brood. She had no interest in the attentions of men, but she could enjoy their good points with the company of Benedick and . . . and . . . surely there must be other good men, though at the moment she couldn’t think of any. Except, strangely, Brandon.

In fact, she should be delighted that she would never have to worry about men and their invading bodies again. The one man who had stirred unwanted, unrecognizable feelings inside her was now safely out of reach, engaged. She should be feeling happy and relieved.

Instead she was anxious, uneasy, restless, wanting something and not knowing what it was.

She did know what it wasn’t. It wasn’t sitting in an overheated drawing room with a group of torpid women in the throes of various emotional upset. Melisande was still simmering with rage, even comfortable Lady Beauchamp’s love affair with the biscuits seemed to wane, and Lady Carlyle was doing her best to hide her worry about her first confinement, taking refuge in a not quite believable somnolence. Emma knew she would explode if she didn’t escape.

She rose abruptly, and Melisande stared up at her in alarm. “Is something wrong?”

“I’m exhausted,” she announced, even if she felt as tightly coiled as some hideous foreign snake. “I pushed myself a bit today, and if I’m to leave tomorrow I’ll need a good night’s rest. If you don’t mind I think I should make for my bed.”

No one in the room protested her early departure from the house party, she noticed with slightly grim amusement, though it might, perhaps, have nothing to do with her inconsequential self and more with the unhappy preoccupations of the women. It didn’t matter—soon she’d be back in her own world, facing Mr. Fenrush and his coterie of bullies, and she wouldn’t have to waste a moment thinking about the people here.

Melisande rose beside her, a smile on her face, rebellion in her eyes, and Emma knew that escape was still going to require an effort. “Of course, my dear. Would you like me to call for a maid to assist you?”

It was an infelicitous choice of words, reminding all what had happened to the young woman who had previously taken care of her, and the tense atmosphere in the room heightened.

“I’ll be fine,” Emma said firmly. “I’ll bid you all good evening, and if I’m gone by the time you arrive downstairs, then a goodbye as well.”

Miss Trimby was watching her with that peculiar fellow feeling of the classless, and even young Miss Frances looked a little distressed at her defection, which was ridiculous. She might be terrified of her new fiancée, but she could hardly think Emma might be the one to distract him.

She was ready to collapse when she finally made it to her bedroom. All her clothes were loose, designed to be easily removed without the aid of anyone, and she almost left them on the floor where they dropped. The dress she’d worn when she’d been attacked was hanging up, and it appeared that most of the blood had been successfully removed, though there were still some faintly darker patches. From now on it would be her primary work dress—even with enveloping jackets, surgeons tended to get splashed with blood. With a sigh she scooped her clothes from the floor, flung them across a nearby chair and crawled into bed, the heavy linen sheets cradling her.

She stared up at the ceiling in the darkness, only the faint flickers from the damped fire making any movement. It was warm enough there, though it would doubtless chill during the night, but in the meantime she was safe, tucked away, and if luck was with her she might never see Brandon Rohan again.

Turning her cheek, she buried her face in the pillows, letting the night close around her, and for a rare, precious time, she slept.