“You can’t stay for supper?” Emmaline inwardly winced, wondering if her lack of disappointment was evident in her voice.
“No, I’m sorry, I can’t. Oh, but I forgot!” Charlotte reached into her pocket and pulled out a small package wrapped in ivory paper and tied with a small red bow. “Happy birthday, Emmy. It’s only a silly bookmark, and I’m afraid my embroidery isn’t what it should be. But please know I give it with love,” she said, and then kissed her friend’s cheek. “Captain,” she said, dropping into a quick curtsy, “it was a pleasure to meet you, and I thank you for being so considerate as to offer your support to Lady Emmaline during this trying time. I’m sure I’ll see you again, at the memorial service?”
The captain looked to Emmaline, who realized she was suddenly holding her breath, and then back to Charlotte. “Why, yes, Miss Seavers, I shall look forward to that.”
Emmaline watched the captain as he watched Charlotte depart the room, and then she quickly looked away as he turned back to her, so that he shouldn’t know that she’d been staring. But who could resist staring, when the man’s presence seemed to fill the room with light, charging the very air with an excitement she could not name, yet knew she had never before experienced.
“May I add my congratulations to Miss Seavers’s sentiments, ma’am, and wish you as pleasant a birthday as possible under the circumstances,” he said, inclining his head toward her.
She didn’t know where the words came from, what part of her normally reticent self had allowed such a thought to enter her head yet alone escape her lips, but suddenly Emmaline heard herself saying, “Captain, I would consider my natal day to be more of a blessing and less of a reminder of my continuing gallop into old age if you could please resist addressing me as ma’am again.”
His low chuckle sent hot color flooding into her cheeks. “A thousand apologies, Lady Emmaline. Are you feeling quite decrepit? Surely you’re not anything so ancient as ma’am would suggest. At six and thirty, I believe I have some years on you.”
“Good Lord, yes,” Emmaline shot back, suddenly willing to give as good as she got. “You’re positively tottering on the brink of the grave.” Then she realized what she’d just said. “Oh, dear. No matter what anyone says, we seem to keep circling back to Charlton and the boys, don’t we? I still imagine they’ll all come storming back in here at any moment to put the lie to what I know is true.”
Did she sound as if that was a prospect much to be wished, or the thing she would dread most in the world? Really, she had to take control of her tongue, and quickly, or the captain would wonder if he’d blundered into a madhouse.
“May I?” Alastair asked, indicating with a small gesture that he’d like to join her on the couch.
“Oh, yes, please do,” she said, tucking her horrid black skirts more closely around her just as if he’d planned to plop himself down right next to her when the couch could easily accommodate a half dozen people. “And would you care for some wine?”
“Thank you, no,” he said as he sat, and then bent down to pick up something that had fallen to the floor. “Yours?” he asked, holding up the ruby ring.
Denying the dratted thing would open up questions about Charlotte, and as the story could only reflect badly on her brother and Harold, she quickly claimed the ruby as her own. “Thank you, Captain,” she said, reaching for it. “It was my mother’s, and always much too large for me.”
And then the dratted ring made a liar out of her by stopping at her second knuckle as she attempted to slip it on her finger. She resisted the urge to fling it across the room.
“Ma’am—Lady Emmaline...?”
“Just Emmaline, please,” she said, sighing. “And I shall call you John, since we’re just the two of us here. And then, John, I should tell you that I just quite blatantly lied to you, shouldn’t I?”
“About the ring. Yes. But you don’t have to explain.”
She relaxed. “Good, because I really don’t want to.” She slipped the ring into her pocket and picked up the small wrapped present. “Shall we open this instead? I love presents, and Charlotte is always so inventive with hers, even if she insists she has no talents. Just this past Christmas she gave me a small, smooth rock she’d painted to look like a toad.”
Actually, Charlotte had given the toad a face that greatly resembled that of her nephew George, but the captain didn’t have to know that.
The captain put his hand on her wrist. “Lady... Emmaline,” he said, so that she forgot all about Charlotte’s present. “I should leave.”
“Leave?” Emmaline squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, hating that she had seemed to squeak out the word. “But...but why? I know the rain has stopped, but it’s coming on to dark soon, and we’ll be called in to dinner at any moment, and—”
“I didn’t mean tonight,” he said, cutting her off, thankfully, before she could say something so silly as to mention how much she really wanted him to stay. “I would go only as far as the nearest inn, if you still wish my assistance for a few days, until we can summon your brother’s solicitor, set up a search for your nephew and anything else I might do for you.”
“You’re saying without saying it that we are unchaperoned here.”
“No, I’m saying without saying it that you are unchaperoned here. I would suggest that Miss Seavers come bear you company, but as she is quite young, and there’s the problem of her mother being unwell...”
“John, there are twenty-seven servants in this house, at least three of whom, I have every certainty, are spying on us even now. I hardly call that being unchaperoned.”
“No. However, Society would. You’ve just been dealt a serious shock, Emmaline, but one of us must think clearly.”
She nearly let her shoulders sag as she realized what he was saying. “You feel responsible for me. Because it was you who brought me the news about Charlton and the boys. And I did nothing to dissuade you of that impression, absolve you of your gentlemanly impulse to protect a clearly helpless woman.”
His slow smile sent her stomach to doing a small flip inside her. “That sounds so very noble, doesn’t it? Actually, I came here to deliver my news and then depart as quickly as possible. Until I saw you out there in the gardens and thought you the most exotically beautiful woman I’d ever seen. You’ve had the most immediate and remarkable impact on me, Emmaline. I am in no hurry to leave.”
“Oh.”
“Yes—oh. And, hopeful idiot that I surely am, I don’t think you have taken me in disgust. Now do you understand? The proprieties must be adhered to, no matter the circumstances. I won’t go far, unless you’ve now decided that I should, but I cannot remain here, the two of us beneath the same roof.”
“There are sixteen bedchambers under this roof,” Emmaline said, as if that meant anything to Society, that same Society that had condoned Charlton’s behavior, George’s and Harold’s behavior, but would condemn her, a confirmed spinster, for the most minor infraction of their silly rules. “There’s no need for you to be put to the expense of staying at the inn.”
His smile in response to that statement had her looking at him strangely, and she quickly attempted to explain what she’d said.
“Not that I’m intimating at all that you might be...that you cannot afford, um, that is— Oh, stop that! I’m not saying anything in the least amusing.”
He took her trembling hands in his and raised the right one to his lips, turned it over, and pressed a bone-melting kiss