“I’ve always liked herbs,” he said as, together, they departed the dining room through the French doors conveniently placed there so that gentlemen could end their meals by stepping outside to blow a cloud, spit or relieve themselves over the railing of the stone terrace. John’s father used to hold contests as to who could aim best and shoot farthest, much to his son’s embarrassment. He pushed the memory from his mind.
“Rosemary is one my favorites,” Emmaline told him as they descended the flagstone steps into the gardens.
“Mine, as well. Along with parsley and sage and...”
“Thyme,” she finished for him. “I’ve always thought ‘Scarborough Fair’ a most confusing poem. If you wish someone to be your true love, why would you then make impossible demands on that person in order to become that true love?”
John bent and broke off a perfect pink rose, stripped it of its thorns and then bowed as he handed it to her. “‘Love imposes impossible tasks,’” he quoted from memory, “‘though not more than any heart asks.’”
“Oh? And do you think that sounds as asinine as I do, John? Why should a heart that cares make demands?” Emmaline asked as she held the rose beneath her nose and sniffed. “Ah, nothing complicated about a rose, is there? It is pretty, it smells heavenly, and if you aren’t careful in the way you handle it, it pricks your finger. Still, you can see the thorns, so it isn’t as if you weren’t warned, correct?”
They threaded their way along the curving brick path. “Am I being warned, Emmaline?”
She stopped, turned to look up into his face. “Someone probably is, but I’m not sure which one of us that person might be. John... I think you should know that I’m not a very...nice person.”
“Is that so?” He cocked one eyebrow as he offered her his arm once more and they continued down the pathway. “Do you abuse kittens? Snore in church? No, wait, I have it—you pull faces behind Grayson’s back.”
“Well, sometimes—that last bit about Grayson. But I’m attempting to be serious here, John. I’m... I’m an unnatural sister, an unnatural aunt. I’ve been trying all day long to work up even a single tear over Charlton and the boys, and I simply can’t manage it.”
“You didn’t love them?”
“No, no, of course I loved them. One doesn’t have much choice in that, seeing as we’re related. The question is, did I like them? And I didn’t.”
John kept moving toward the tall thick shrubbery that he was sure concealed the herb garden. “They weren’t likable?”
“I suppose that would depend on whom you applied to for their opinion. Their friends seemed to like them well enough.”
“And did you like their friends?”
They stopped at a slatted wooden gate and John opened it. “No, I didn’t. Why would you ask that?”
He ceremoniously bowed her through the entrance to the herb garden, where they were immediately cast in the shade of the towering evergreens. “I don’t know. It simply occurred to me that, if you didn’t care for the people who cared for them, then perhaps the only reason you cared for your brother and nephews at all was because of an accident of birth. We can’t choose our relatives, Emmaline. Only our friends.”
“You’re only trying to make me feel less guilty.”
“I know,” he said, leading her to a curved stone bench at the center of the small garden. “Am I succeeding?”
She sat down, gracefully arranging her skirts around her, and looked at him. “Why, yes, I believe you are. Charlton and his sons are dead, and I’m sorry they didn’t lead better lives while they had the chance. I think I could weep for that.”
He joined her on the bench. “Now?”
Emmaline was slowly twirling the rose stem between her fingers, and looked up at him in some confusion. “Pardon me? Now what?”
“I was asking if you were going to weep now,” he explained, biting back a smile.
“Oh. Oh, no, I don’t think so. But at the service it will be better if I don’t disappoint Vicar Wooten. So then I shall think about what might have been.” She sighed. “What might have been is always so sad, isn’t it? What we could have done, what we should have done. What we missed because we didn’t dare to—”
John brought his mouth down on hers, cutting off any chance that either of them would ever look back at this moment and think, If only.
He pulled back slightly, smiling into her eyes. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t seem to resist. In fact, I still can’t...”
This time when he kissed her he also slid his arms around her, pulling her closer against his chest. She responded by sliding her arms around his back, signaling without words that she didn’t dislike what he was doing to her.
What she was doing to him.
A kiss. A simple kiss. And yet his world was tilting on its axis. He prodded at her with his tongue, and she responded by opening her mouth to him, and the flame she had lit inside him the first time he’d seen her threatened to consume him.
He kissed her hair, her perfect shell-like ear, her throat. He heard her quick intake of breath as he moved his hands forward, to her rib cage...and then slowly slid them upward, to cup her firm breasts.
“John...” she breathed, but not in protest, as she still held him tightly, her head tipped back as he dared to press his lips against her bare flesh above the neckline of her gown.
Her mourning gown.
Christ!
He took her hands in his and raised her to her feet, not letting go of her as he looked deeply into her eyes. “I’m sorry. I had no right...”
“You were not lacking an invitation, Captain Alastair,” Emmaline told him quietly, shifting her gaze to the ground at her feet. “Shall we just put this down to an aging spinster feeling reckless, even desperate, on the event of her twenty-eighth birthday?”
“I don’t think so, no. Not unless we explain my behavior with the notion that I’ve been too long at sea, and haven’t seen a woman in months and months, so that any woman will do. You’re not that old, Emmaline, and I’m not that young.”
She smiled weakly and pulled one hand free, turning so that they could retrace their steps to the house. “You’ve quite the way with words, or else I’m eager to be convinced.”
She shivered then, only slightly, as the setting sun had slipped behind a blanket of thick clouds, and John slipped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer beside him as they walked along the path.
“I had an idea as I dressed for dinner,” he told her as they approached the doors to the main saloon. “I’ve remembered the name of the brother of Josiah Coates, my steward aboard ship. Phineas. Yes, I’m positive that’s it. Phineas Coates. He’s with the Bow Street Runners, but Josiah told me the man is unhappy with his position, so that he’s actively seeking employment as a valet. Josiah and his other brothers are all gentleman’s gentlemen, in one form or another, you understand.”
“Not really, not yet,” Emmaline admitted as they stepped inside the main saloon, to see that Grayson had already ordered the evening tea tray, a not-quite subtle hint that he believed her ladyship should soon be saying her good-night to the captain. “But you’ll explain?”
John availed himself of the well-stocked drinks table, pouring a glass of wine while Emmaline prepared a cup of tea for herself. He returned to the main seating area, but did not sit down.
“Josiah left for his home at the same time I was coming here, to Ashurst Hall.