Much to her mother’s delight, he had seemed to show a friendly interest in her, but Emma knew it was all designing and insincere. For at that time his friend, Viscount Courtenay, had been laying siege to her own dear friend, Victoria Hart, and David had wanted Emma occupied so he could trap Victoria alone.
Despite the two men having infamously shocking reputations, they had been polite society’s most popular bachelors, keeping the ton in a constant state of fascinated curiosity as to their philandering and drunken brawling. No scandal had seemed base enough to deter top society hostesses from fawning over them and sniping at each other to secure their coveted presence at balls and soirées. Once they were lured across the threshold, no freshly circulating gossip regarding that week’s carousing had deterred ambitious mamas or their debutante daughters from beelining towards them with seriously immodest intent.
Emma felt her face stinging with heat on recalling how, at her twenty-fourth-birthday ball, her own mother had gladly foisted her upon this man as though she had been so much unsaleable baggage. Yet even now, despite that mortifying memory…or perhaps because of it…she could feel again the aggravating need to throw back her head and antagonise him. Perhaps acidly comment that it was obvious his morals hadn’t improved along with his looks since last they’d met. What? What concern or consequence were his looks?
Her lids pressed closed again as the still silence throbbed with more intensity than the cased clock in the corner. Why won’t he go? Why won’t he say something? I know he’s staring, she fretted.
‘Are you waiting for Madame Dubois?’
His low, level tone was exactly the same; still it resulted in a jump and fluttering stomach. Her bonnet nodded at him. ‘Yes, sir,’ was stiltedly muttered in a voice even she didn’t recognise. He remained quiet on learning that. Relief sang through her. Had he remembered her he would surely have mentioned the fact or swiftly removed himself.
Dainty footsteps tripped along the corridor and Emma managed to face the woman approaching without once revealing her face to the man standing opposite.
‘So sorry to ‘ave kept you waiting, mademoiselle…Are you still ‘ere, chéri?’ The woman interrupted her address to Emma on noticing the man, her voice taking on a completely different, husky inflection. The hem of a rose-pink gown was immediately sweeping away again as, ignoring Emma’s presence, Yvette Du-bois diverted her attention to him.
Involuntarily, Emma’s head raised a little to watch them. She stared at the blonde woman’s pretty profile, a delicate, pleased flush on a softly rounded cheek as she talked in a quiet, pouty way to her lover. An arch smile, then Yvette was onto tiptoe to whisper in his ear while a small finger trailed his dark sleeve.
Richard Du Quesne frowned at his mistress as though this untimely display of intimacy irritated him, then an icy grey glance shifted sideways. Emma was too late to avert her face and their eyes met and held.
He didn’t know her! There was nothing at all in his expression that showed the least interest or recognition. The release was enervating, as was the desperation to be away from this house, these people. She glanced at her nervous hands on her lap, wondering how on earth she could extricate herself.
Yvette realised straight away that she had failed to lure Richard’s eyes from the mouse-like creature seated on the hall chair. She was incessantly alert to a possible rival deposing her. Within a second a very female assessment had raked her prospective employee from head to toe. With intense satisfaction she concluded that the woman was as drab as she could possibly have wished, and no threat whatsoever.
A tilted blonde head draped ringlets over a pretty pink shoulder and a tight, malicious smile formed a rosebud of pink lips. Richard was unused to being in the company of such dowdy women and probably feeling some curiosity and sympathy for the thin little thing. La pauvre looked as though a nourishing meal would go down well, Yvette spitefully noted as her blue eyes narrowed on those fragile white wrists resting neatly on the girl’s duncoloured lap. It made her happily examine her own plump, bejewelled hands as she said sweetly, ‘I must apologise for the delay, ma’mselle, and for ‘aving forgotten your name. A moment ago I ‘ad it and yet now…it is gone.’ She gave a careless, continental shrug. ‘Miss Woodman, is it, per’aps?’ she guessed a trifle impatiently when Emma didn’t immediately offer up her identity.
‘Yes,’ Emma confirmed after a further silent second. ‘Miss Eleanor Woodman,’ she quietly, firmly lied, and raised her face to them both.
The doorbell clattered shrilly, making Emma start and the butler appear from nowhere. He opened the door and received the post.
An enticing glimpse of sun and sky and a rattling coach drew Emma to her feet and towards freedom. ‘I’m sorry, I have another appointment and am already a little overdue. If you will excuse me…’ The words tumbled out breathlessly, for she was obliquely aware of the butler starting to push shut the large white door, cutting off her escape route. She also glimpsed Madame Dubois’s pout slackening as she realised she had been summarily rejected. But it was Richard Du Quesne’s pitiless grey gaze following her that hastened her nimble dodge through the shrinking aperture.
Once in the air, she sped down the elegant steps and, skirts in trembling fists, was running without thought for direction. What halted her several streets away was the need to gasp in more breath to put further distance between herself and those narrowed silver eyes. She backed against a wall and wrapped herself concealingly into her cloak as though still afraid she might be exposed as an impostor. A trembling hand went to the coldness on her face and came away wet. She angrily scrubbed away the bitter tears and slowly, sedately walked towards an area of railed park she could see in the distance.
She had no idea where she was but had a depressing, sinking feeling that Mrs Keene’s boarding house in Lower Place was some considerable way away and probably in the opposite direction. As she took a second slow turn around the small recreation area, she slipped unobtrusive glances at fashionable people promenading; nurses tending their young charges, while taking the late afternoon air. Most were now making for the exit, mentioning teatime or the need to be home now the air was cooling.
Emma scoured the skyline for a familiar spire or rooftop that would point her home. She sighed on finding nothing but lowering storm clouds in the west. She should really ask someone for directions but was loath to bring herself to anyone’s attention.
She approached a small wooden bench as a young couple vacated it and strolled away arm in arm. Seating herself, she drew her cloak tight about her. The sun was setting behind that purply-grey nimbus, spearing golden rays into the chilling atmosphere. She’d obviously been lost for some while. She should have accepted Matthew’s offer to wait and deliver her home, she inwardly chided herself. She would, by now, have been back at Mrs Keene’s with the prospect of eating soon.
Thinking of food made her stomach grumble. The exertion of sprinting so fast and so far had sapped her energy and left her quite light-headed. She would be late and miss her dinner…and she had already paid her shilling for it. Well, it would be salt bacon again, she wryly consoled herself.
She searched in her pocket and drew out her small pouch. Tipping the coins into her palm, she carefully counted, wondering whether she could afford to purchase something to eat on the trek home. The idea of something tasty and different made her stomach roll hollowly again, yet even that consuming thought couldn’t completely drag part of her mind out of that opulent, cool hallway and away from a man with piercing metallic eyes.
The shock and humiliation at meeting him again under such degrading circumstances were receding, allowing another worry to compete for notice. If Richard Du Quesne had recognised her but had been unwilling to embarrass himself in front of his mistress by saying so, he might not display such reticence in London on his return there.
He owned a smart residence in Mayfair; she knew that. Should he soon go to London and mention he’d seen her in Bath and Jarrett Dashwood came to hear of it…She recalled dark olive eyes sliding over her body with sly, nauseating inspection. That blackguard would make a vicious and vengeful enemy; of that she was absolutely