Lady Hollingsworth did not nod. The woman’s eyes were cool, her nose held high in disdain. Emma met her gaze boldly. Refused to be embarrassed. Smiled with amusement, then moved her gaze along to Hollingsworth’s daughter, Lady Persephone, with her pale golden-blonde hair and her perfect pout, and the way she was flirting with the gentleman by her side, no doubt the suitor Hollingsworth was hoping to land for her. The gas lighting dimmed just as Emma’s gaze shifted to the man, but for one glimmer of a second she saw him. Or thought she saw him. And what she saw made her heart miss a beat and her stomach turn a somersault.
The music started. The ringmaster, red-coated and waxen-moustached, the ultimate showman, appeared, his booming voice carrying promises of what lay ahead that drew gasps of astonishment from the audience. The performance was starting, but Emma did not look at the ring. Her focus was still on Lady Persephone’s suitor. On the fine dark tailored tailcoat, on the gleam of white evening wear that showed beneath. On the fair hair and face that was so like another, a world away in Whitechapel, that they might have been twins. And yet it could not be him. It was not possible.
Her eyes strained all the harder, her heart thudding faster. But in the dimmed light and across the distance she could not be sure.
As if sensing her stare his eyes shifted to hers and held for a second. She moved her gaze to the stage, embarrassed to have been caught staring.
Six white horses galloped with speed around the ring while the scantily clad women on their backs rose in unison to balance on one leg.
There were gasps and applause.
‘Heaven’s above,’ muttered the dowager, but she applauded.
Emma clapped, too, but she was barely seeing the horses or the women on their backs.
It could not be him, she told herself again and again. But every time she stole another glance in his direction the man was watching her and her heart missed a beat at the uncanny familiarity. She stopped looking, aware that she was giving a strange man altogether the wrong impression. The lights would come up at the interval and she would see she was imagining things.
Ned was too much on her mind. The touch of his kiss. The feel of his strong arms around her. The promise in those last words between them. But I’ll be back... We need to talk when I return, Emma.
I am not going anywhere, Ned Stratham. I will wait.
Guilt squeezed at her heart. She wondered what he had said when he discovered her gone, wondered if his heart ached like hers. Had she stayed he would have bedded her. Had she stayed he might have married her. She closed her eyes at that. Reined her emotions under control. Was careful not to look at Lady Persephone’s beau again.
* * *
The interval arrived at long last.
The lights came up.
‘Tolerably interesting, I suppose,’ pronounced Lady Lamerton with a sniff. ‘Would you not say?’
Emma smiled. ‘I would agree wholeheartedly.’
Then, as Lady Lamerton’s footman arrived to take her drinks order, Emma’s eyes moved to the Hollingsworths’ box.
Both the earl and the suitor were gone, leaving only Lady Hollingsworth and Lady Persephone surveying with smug arrogance. Emma’s heart dipped in disappointment.
What if he did not return before the lights dimmed once more?
It was not him. It could not be him. It was ridiculous to even think such a thing.
The moments stretched with an unbearable slowness. She focused all her attention on the dowager. Only when the bell sounded for the end of the interval, only when she knew the dowager’s gaze engaged once more on the melee of bodies returning to their seats, did she look again at the Hollingsworths’ box.
The man was there, looking directly at her. But this time she did not avert her gaze.
She could not move, just sat there and blatantly stared.
Her heart was hammering fit to burst, her breath was caught in her throat. Something constricted around her chest and squeezed tight at her heart. She felt as though all the world had rolled away to leave nothing in its wake, save Emma and the man at whom she stared.
Only Emma and Ned Stratham.
In those tiny seconds that stretched between them to an eternity Ned knew that fate was playing tricks with him. He saw a reflection of his own shock in Emma’s face. And with it was hurt exposed raw and vulnerable, there for a heartbeat, and then replaced with accusation and angry disbelief. Her eyes flicked momentarily to Lady Persephone by his side before coming back to his.
Ned’s gaze lingered on Emma even after she had turned her face away.
‘Is everything all right, Mr Stratham? You seem a little preoccupied.’
‘Forgive me, Lady Persephone.’ He forced his attention to her rather than Emma.
He could feel his blood pumping harder than in any fight, feel the shock snaking through his blood.
‘Such a pleasure that you agreed to accompany us tonight, sir.’ Lady Persephone smiled and struck a pose to show her face off to its best. She was pampered, self-obsessed and with the same disdainful arrogance that ran through most women of her class. Her figure was plump and curvaceous from a lifetime of good living. Pale golden-blonde ringlets had been arranged artfully to cascade from her where her hair was pinned high. Her dress was some kind of expensive white silk edged with pale-pink ribbon. Her shawl was white, threaded through with gold threads that complemented her hair. A fortune’s worth. Little wonder that Hollingsworth needed an alliance.
‘The pleasure is all mine.’ He made the glib reply with a smile that did not touch his eyes.
She fluttered her eyelashes, but as the lights went down, his eyes were not on the earl’s daughter or the sleek black stallion that had galloped into the amphitheatre ring, but on the woman who sat by the Dowager Lady Lamerton’s side. A woman he had last seen walking down a deserted sunlit road in Whitechapel on a morning not so long ago.
He watched her too often during the remaining performance, but she did not look at him again, not once, her attention as fixed with determination upon the ring below as the smile on her face.
The performance was long. Very long. He bided his time.
* * *
The end came eventually. He escorted Lady Persephone and her family out.
Across the crowd in the foyer he could see Emma and Lady Lamerton making their way towards the staircase.
Emma glanced up, met his gaze with icy accusation before she turned and was carried away with Lady Lamerton and the crowd.
‘If you will excuse me,’ he said smoothly to the Hollingsworths.
‘But, Mr Stratham!’ He heard the shock and petulance in Lady Persephone’s voice.
‘Well, I never—’ Hollingsworth was beginning to say, but Ned did not stay to hear the rest. He was already weaving his way through the crowd towards the staircase down which Emma had disappeared.
He caught up with her in the crowd on the ground floor, came up close behind.
‘Emma,’ he said her name quietly enough that only she would hear as he caught a hold of her arm, unnoticed in the crush that surrounded them, and steered her into a nearby alcove.
She tried to snatch her hand free of his grip, but he held her firm. ‘Do not “Emma” me!’
Her spine was flush against the wall. He stood in close to protect her from the sight of passing eyes. So close he could smell the familiar enticing scent of her, so close