Chapter Eleven
Emma stepped out of her chamber to find her mother already in the hallway waiting. And waiting rather impatiently, if her tapping foot was any indication.
“Good afternoon, Mama,” Emma said with as bright a smile as she could manage in the face of her mother’s focused expression. “Are you looking forward to the picnic?”
Mrs. Liston’s eyes lit up in mercenary glee. “Not as much as you should be, Emma, for I have heard a rumor.”
Emma slowly counted to five in her head before she said, “A rumor, Mama?”
Her mother caught her hands and leaned in. “The Duke of Abernathe’s very public and rather physical argument with Sir Archibald, the one that led to Archibald storming away on his horse…it was over you.”
Emma’s lips parted in disbelief as she stared at her mother. There had been much buzz amongst the guests on the walk back to the house earlier in the day as to what could have caused such a shocking and public confrontation between the men. Emma had been curious, of course, for she had never expected James to act in such a way.
But over her?
“No,” she said slowly. “That cannot be possible.”
Her mother was almost bouncing now. “Oh, but they say it is. He didn’t like the attention Sir Archibald was paying to you earlier, and here we are.”
The blood in Emma’s ears was rushing and her arms had begun to tingle, but she fought to keep a serene face as her mother prattled on and on. Was it possible this was correct, that James had almost fought with another man over her? That was taking their ruse mightily far, for he had claimed to want to bring men to her side, not push them away. Literally push them.
“…an opportunity you cannot turn down, so you must put your best foot forward and catch Abernathe at all costs,” her mother said, grabbing Emma’s arm.
Emma shook her off as her words became clear. “Catch Abernathe?” she repeated.
“Yes. When we came here, I would have, quite honestly, settled for someone like Sir Archibald for you,” Mrs. Liston said.
Emma clenched her jaw. “He is older than Father and he has a brood of awful, awful children, some of whom are older than I am!”
“And what other options did you have?” Mrs. Liston snapped. “But now I can see we must reach much, much higher. Emma, you could catch a duke. A duke!”
Emma could hardly breathe. Oh, this was exactly what she and James had planned together, but her mind still spun regardless.
“I will not catch Abernathe,” she whispered.
Her mother arched a brow. “Not with that attitude. Emma, you must be aggressive now. And…oh, how shall I put this…you must fight dirty if the opportunity arises.”
“Dirty?” Emma repeated, nervous now about her mother’s tone.
“It is true, he might be reluctant, despite his actions today,” Mrs. Liston said, rubbing her hands together. “But that cannot stop us. If you must than I would suggest you…you…”
“What?” Emma burst out.
“Compromise yourself with him,” her mother finished.
Emma stared, her mouth agape with horror. “Mama, you cannot mean that.”
Her mother folded her arms, a smug expression on her face. “Why not? Sometimes that is the way these things are done. And you can bear it, Emma. You shut your eyes and you just imagine the wonderful life you could have and what you could provide for me. Picture the freedom from any damage your father could do, the freedom from fear of the unknown. It will make his touch bearable.”
Emma shivered, for her mother was so in the dark. Not only did she have no idea of Emma’s plan with James, she also didn’t know that Emma had, for all intents and purposes, already compromised herself with James. Bearing his touch was not an issue. She couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“Emma!”
Both women turned down the hall to see Meg coming toward them. She was smiling but there was something in her eyes, some tiny look that made Emma’s heart skip a beat. Had she overheard this horrible conversation? Certainly Meg wouldn’t want to be her friend if she knew what her mother had just said.
“Just think about it,” Mrs. Liston hissed before Meg met them and linked her arm through Emma’s.
The affectionate gesture soothed Emma a little as they made their way down the stairs toward where the others were gathered for their short walk to the picnic site, but she still felt an unease in her stomach. It seemed at all sides she was besieged with plots. And none of them felt right.
Emma slowly dropped back through the crowd of partygoers until she trailed behind them. Only then could she breathe again. The past quarter of an hour had been a nightmare, with James shooting her looks, her mother’s suggestion ringing in her ears and Meg smiling and chatting with her, utterly oblivious to all the betrayals Emma was committing.
She felt like rolling into a ball and hiding away forever, but that wasn’t possible. So the best she could do was provide some distance between herself and the others and try to regain some purchase on her emotions.
Something that became clear was impossible when she looked up to find James standing along the side of the path, leaning against a tree. She let out a sigh as she approached him.
“Waiting for me?” she asked.
“Hiding from me?” he retorted.
“No,” she lied, for she had, of course, been doing exactly that. “I needed…I needed space.”
He straightened up and looked at her more closely. “What’s wrong?”
She worried her lip for a moment and shook her head. “Just…my mother is pushing me. And she told me…”
When she trailed off, he reached out and took her hand. She caught her breath as she looked up at him. His gaze was heated, hooded, and her body responded even though he was barely touching her. Everything felt hot and tingly and the world went blurry, the only thing in focus was him.
“What did she tell you?”
She drew in a deep breath. “That you fought with Sir Archibald over…over me.” His face twitched, and in that moment she saw the truth. She would not have been more shocked if the man had started singing and dancing right there on the path. “You did?”
James nodded. “He said something very untoward. And I admonished him for it.” His tone was dark and dangerous, and once again it hit her in the most inappropriate places.
“Something untoward about me?” she gasped. “He doesn’t know about—”
“No!” James said. “Not about us. He just made some implications about his intentions toward you that I didn’t care for.”
She shivered, for she could well-imagine what Sir Archibald had in mind. He had always spent a great deal of time staring at her chest, and whenever he touched her, it was like a snake curling around her skin. But still…
“You grabbed him, you pushed him, you sent him away,” she stammered. “James, you…you made a scene.”
“He deserved far worse than I did to him,” he said. “But how did your mother know?”
She shrugged. “I have no clue. Someone overheard you, perhaps, or Archibald talked before he fled your house. What matters is that people are going to be talking about this. It is too good a story not to repeat.”
“You seem troubled by this,” he said, his brow wrinkling. “Why?”
“Aside from the fact you nearly came to blows over me? I am troubled because it casts too big a shadow on me.”
“No, it puts focus on you, which was exactly our plan from the beginning,” he said, but his tone was falsely bright.
She pulled away from him at last with more reluctance than she should have had and folded her arms. “If this is exactly what you intended when we began, then why do you sound tense, why is there concern in your eyes?”
His brow wrinkled and he stared at her. “I-I…I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, and the negative emotions wiped from his face at last.
She shook her head. “You can’t pretend it away, James. This obviously concerns you as much as it concerns me. While I appreciate this protectiveness you are displaying, I feel it is better that I just know the worst of it so I can be prepared.”
“You see too much,” he muttered as he ran a hand through his hair. “Emma, I’m not concerned about Archibald. He’s an idiot and the gossip about his leaving will fade long before it does any permanent damage, especially if we choose not to address it so as not to feed it.” He let out a short sigh. “There is…something else, though. And you’re right, you should know about it.”
Her heart began to throb as she stared at him, trying to read whatever was on his mind before he said it. Failing even as she came up with horrible scenario after horrible scenario.
“What is it?” she asked, barely above a breath.
“Margaret knows about our ruse,” he said softly.
Emma staggered and he lunged forward to catch her arm, steadying her. She looked up at him, too close, too handsome, too perfect, and she could hardly recall how to breathe, let alone speak. He waited patiently, not trying to force her, not trying to fill the space between them with words.
“She knows we’re pretending a courtship?” Emma asked. He nodded once, and she let out a tiny, strangled cry. “That was why she looked at me so strangely. I thought it was my mother, what my mother said, but it was this. How does she know?”
He released her at last and motioned down the path. “We should walk so we aren’t too far behind the others,” he suggested.
She thought about fighting him a moment, but decided against it. He was correct, after all. Arriving together too far behind the others would open them up to impertinent remarks and even more encouragement about compromise from her mother.
They stepped forward together and Emma said, “Tell me, please.”
He bent his head. “I told her, Emma.”
She jerked her face toward his and found him looking at her. She swallowed hard, choking back the sense of betrayal his confession created in her chest. He couldn’t betray her. They were nothing to each other, despite the kissing. She had to remember that.
“Why?” she whispered. “Why did you tell her?”
He was silent a long beat. “I have this huge group of very good friends,” he said. “But the person who knows and loves me most is Meg. We are the only two who fully understand our…past. Our situation with our parents. I do not lie to her, not when I can help it. Nor does she hide things from me. She came to me, thrilled as could be about the idea that you and I were courting. I could not mislead her and let her be hurt in the end. So I admitted our ruse.”
Emma wanted desperately to be angry at him for doing it, but she found she wasn’t. Not when he explained himself in such a way. How often had she longed for someone to share things with like he described? She had no one as a confidante. In some ways, she was jealous rather than angry.
“I…understand,” she whispered at last. “And I know it is for the best. I also wouldn’t want to hurt Meg. I just wish…”
She trailed off, unwilling to confess her foolishness to this man. After all, he was not her confidante either.
“What do you wish?” he pressed.
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
He stopped in the path and turned toward her. “We will crest this hill in fourteen steps, Emma. When we do, the picnic site will be just on the other side. Everyone will be watching for us, waiting for us, and this conversation will be over. There is no time for pretending. I have done something that I do not regret, but I also have no illusions that my confession doesn’t affect you. So if you wish something, tell me what it is now.”
His tone was sharp and dark, his gaze focused and compelling. In that instant, her wishes morphed from ones regarding Meg to ones about his mouth. His lips on hers.
She blinked those thoughts away. “I wish that I could have stayed friends with Meg. I did truly like her.”
He stared at her. “Why wouldn’t you stay friends with Meg?”
“Why would she want to be after this?” she asked, humiliated by tears that stung her eyes. “What she must think of me!”
“Meg likes you, she understands why this path is one you felt you must take. If anything she is angry at me for—”
He cut himself off and jerked his gaze away. She leaned forward. “What is she angry at you for?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, and looked back at her. “I had one other topic I wanted to address with you before we join the others. At least broach it for further discussion.”
Her lips parted. He had neatly cut her off from anything deeper in his heart and even though what they shared was not real, she felt disappointed. She cleared her throat. “What is that?”
“Your father, Emma,” he said softly.
All her thoughts of Meg, of her mother’s inappropriate suggestions, of wanting to kiss James, they all vanished in an instant and the world felt like it slowed to half-time.
“My…father,” she repeated, the words feeling like they were yanked from her body with painful force.
He nodded. “Yes. I’ve heard things here and there. I wanted to bring up the subject because of our situation.”
“Our situation,” she repeated. “How does my father have anything to do with our situation? You aren’t truly courting me. You have no fear of what he could—” She broke off and caught a ragged breath. “What he could do. I do not wish to discuss him.”
He stared at her in true surprise. “I am not trying to pry, I just want to help.”
“You can’t help,” she said. “And you are prying.”
“Emma,” he said more sharply. “It is a perfectly reasonable question.”
“Yes, for a man who would be my husband,” she snapped. “You have made it clear you don’t want that role in reality. So you have no right to ask me about private things. After all, would you wish to tell me about your mother? About why she...why she is the way she is?”
He recoiled, turning his face like she had physically struck him. His jaw flexed as he kept his attention focused away from her. Finally, he said, “I see what you mean. Come then, let us return to the others.”
He motioned her toward the hill and began to walk again, without waiting for her. She stared after him a few steps before she scurried to catch up with him. He was quiet the entire way over the hill and then he smiled and all the pain, all the upset was gone. No one would ever guess they had quarreled from the way he waved to the group and gave some explanation about a rock in her slipper.
But even though no one else knew the truth, she did. She knew she had very likely ruined everything between them. And even though most of that everything was predicated on a ruse, her chest still hurt at the idea that this man now thought differently of her.
And there was nothing she could do to change that.
James sat at his desk, staring with unseeing eyes at the estate paperwork strewn across the top. He’d been in here for an hour, trying very hard to concentrate and failing miserably. All he could think about was Emma.
The picnic had been successful as far as Meg was concerned, but for James it had been torture. First, his attention to Emma didn’t seem to be working entirely as he’d hoped. He still caught the interested glances and whispers from some of the woman at the gathering. Certainly many of the freshest debutantes put their eyes elsewhere, but there were other women who gave him looks. The Countess of Montague, a notorious flirt, kept putting herself in his way, batting her eyelashes and talking about…honestly, he didn’t know what exactly.
Of course, that didn’t trouble him as much as the fact that Emma had sat as far from him as possible, never looking at him. Worst of all, she had become the focus of several of the men in attendance. Unlike at the ball, these had been men of higher quality. Younger, many with money, there was even one viscount in the group.
In that respect, his plan was working as far as Emma was concerned, but he did not celebrate that fact.
There was a light knock on the door and his body clenched. He knew who it was. He knew what he had to do.
“Come in,” he said as he rose to his feet.
The door opened and Emma stepped inside. He caught his breath. She was dressed for supper, in a sunny yellow gown with a hand-stitched skirt. The color brought out the highlights of her hair and made her a bright beacon in what had been a dark evening so far.
“You wished to see me,” she said, her tone formal and uncertain. She didn’t look at him.
“Come in. Shut the door.”
She looked at him then with uncertainty and whispered, “That isn’t appropriate, James.”
“Neither is the conversation we must have,” he said on a sigh. “Please, Emma. Close the door.”
She took in a long breath, almost as if she were steadying herself, and did as she had been asked. She didn’t move toward him, though, but stayed at the entryway, hand ready to open the door again.
“If you want me to leave, I understand,” she said softly. “But it will take some convincing to get my mother to do so.”
He stared at her, seeing now the way her hands trembled, how pale her skin was, and worst of all, the redness of her eyes that indicated she had been crying.
He stepped toward her almost without willing himself to do so. “Emma, I didn’t call you here to ask you to leave. Why would you think I would want that?”
She swallowed and her voice was thick as she said, “Our conversation earlier today wasn’t exactly positive. You are doing me a favor with your bargain and I rewarded you with dismissal and rudeness. Why would you wish to keep me here? You don’t need me.”
In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to cross the distance between them and fold her into his arms. To hold her against his chest in comfort and whisper that he did need her. Even though he didn’t want to. Even though he fought it with every fiber in his being. He was coming to need her.
He didn’t. Instead, he cleared his throat. “I asked you to tell me something today about your father. And you made a good point that I have not told you anything personal of myself. Since you know my mother and you have seen her at her…at her worst, perhaps you are owed that explanation.”
“What?” she breathed, bright eyes going wide with surprise. Now she left the safety of the door and moved in his direction a few steps.
“You asked me why my mother is the way she is,” he said, each word stabbing him in the heart. “The answer is simple. She married a man she did not love and one who most definitely did not care for her.”
She swallowed. “She was unhappy?”
He nodded slowly. “I have never known her not to be unhappy. She drinks to forget it, I suppose. And that is why I do need you, Emma. I have no interest in entering into the same kind of arrangement.”
“A marriage, you mean,” she whispered. “What you saw between your mother and father is why you do not wish to marry.”
“In part, yes.”
“But couldn’t you—” she began, and cut herself off. Like the topic was too intimate. It was, but he found he wanted her to speak freely.
He moved toward her a step. “Couldn’t I what?”
“Couldn’t you find someone you did love?” she whispered. “Someone who loved you?”
He lifted his chin and shook his head. “That is a fairytale talking, Emma. Those who find true love are very rare. Even with those who do, it doesn’t always last. No, I know my limits and I don’t expect anyone else to save me from them.”
She stared at him, and in that moment he saw something in her eyes that terrified him. He saw pity. Like she knew the truth of him and felt sorry for him.
And then she moved toward him again, only this time she didn’t stop until she reached him. Slowly she lifted her hands, touching his cheeks. He didn’t pull away, but gazed down into her eyes. He wanted to run from her, but an equally strong part of him wanted to stay. She was looking into him, deep into his soul, and there was some tiny sliver of him that wanted her to see the truth. Like he wanted her to do exactly what he claimed he didn’t desire.
Save him.
“That is where the sadness comes from,” she whispered.
As what she said sank in, his eyes widened rapidly and shock spread through him. He’d spent a lifetime teaching himself to hide his emotions. As a boy he’d done it to protect himself. As a man, the driving reason was little different. But what was clear in this moment was that Emma saw him. She saw what he didn’t want to admit to himself that he felt, let alone say it or show it to anyone else.
Terror gripped him as he jerked his face from her hands. “There is no sadness, Miss Liston, I assure you,” he said, his tone clipped and as unemotional as he could make it.
She let him pull away, but didn’t retreat from him. She stood her ground like she belonged on it. “There is sadness in everyone, Your Grace,” she insisted. “No one gets through this world without some of it.”
“Well, there is none in me, Emma,” he ground out, frustration in his tone at her insistence that he face himself. Face her. He clenched his teeth and fought her the only way he knew how. “Certainly, there is none right now. Right now I am standing in a private room with a beautiful woman and the last thing I am thinking of is my troubles. What I am thinking about is this.”
He dropped his mouth to hers and kissed her. A punishing kiss, a hard kiss, but she didn’t pull away from it. On the contrary, she opened to him right away, inviting him in, taking what he offered with only a soft sigh of acquiescence.
His fear and his sadness, his anger and his frustration, they melted into her, and he gentled his lips on hers as he tugged her even closer. Her arms came around his back and she moved her head so he could deepen the kiss. Lose himself in it and in her.
And he did. He forgot every other thing in the world except her taste, her feel. He drowned in her and he didn’t care if he ever came up for air again.
He pushed her backward, turning her until she leaned into the edge of his desk. He wanted to feel her against him, he wanted to touch her, he wanted to make her come like he had before. More than that, he wanted to bury his body deep in hers and shatter with her.
But that wasn’t possible.
He pulled away from the kiss and stared at her. Her gaze was bleary and unfocused, her lips red and full from his kisses, her breath coming short and raspy.
“I want to touch you again, Emma. I want to do more than just touch you, even though I will keep my vow not to claim you.”
She bit her lower lip gently. “Yes,” she whispered in answer to the question he hadn’t asked. “Please.”
The please nearly unraveled him right then and there, but he managed to gain some control over his lust. He smiled at her, lifting her more securely onto the edge of his desk. Then he began to slide her skirts up as he sank into a chair, and positioned himself as he parted her legs.
She stared down at him, eyes wide, body trembling. “What are you doing?” she whispered.
He glanced back up at her, wicked because wicked was the one thing he could control. “Tasting you, Emma. I’m going to taste you.”