“I can’t understand why you’re avoiding her. I find the duchess’s company delightful.” Granville lifted his glass. “A toast to the Duchess of Wrexham.”
Swimmer lifted his glass half-heartedly. “I enjoy my mother’s company in small doses. And in addition to being good company, she’s a shrewdly intelligent woman who sees right through your boyish charms.”
“Ha! She resists me only because I’ve reined in my considerable appeal around her,” Granville retorted. “How would it look, seducing my old friend’s mother? But if you’re truly concerned, and well you should be, you should join us at the ball this Thursday.”
“Not on your life! That’s exactly the kind of event my mother dreams of attending with me. She’s probably already scoured the guest list to identify all the suitable prospects for the role of the next duchess.” Swimmer gave a mock shiver. “All the more reason for her to keep believing I’m at the country estate.”
“Well, you do have a duty to the title to provide an heir,” Granville said.
“All in good time, Granville.” Swimmer lifted his glass again. “But for the next year or two or five, I’d prefer practicing begetting an heir to actually having one.”
Granville guffawed. “Hear, hear!” He slapped Daniel on the back. “Come on, then, lift your glass.”
Daniel did so, albeit with little enthusiasm, resenting the interruption to his thoughts of Emme and the afternoon they’d spent together. The way she’d gripped his arm so tightly and had widened her eyes and blushed when he’d teased her about his preference for blondes. He must remember to use that to his advantage in the future.
Granville slapped him harder on the back and startled him out of his pleasant reverie. “You’re quite the bore tonight, Hallsy. Come on, be a good guest and toast our host’s sordid plans.”
“Leave him be, Granville.” Swimmer patted Daniel’s shoulder. “The man is in a bad way. He has all the signs the most dreaded of diseases.”
Granville widened his eyes in a pathetic imitation of an innocent. “The French disease?”
“All right, the second most dreaded.”
“Ah.” Granville nodded. “Of course. Love sickness.”
Daniel tossed back his whisky and scowled. “The pair of you really should tread the boards. This amusant commentary of yours might play well as a bit of theater.”
Swimmer filled Daniel’s empty glass, then topped off his own. “That would go over worse with the duchess than my plans for a few years of debauchery.”
Daniel grinned at his incorrigible friends and lifted his glass high in the air. “To the duke’s impending debauchery.” He glanced at Granville. “And to your never-ending pursuit of it.”
“Hear, hear!” Granville said again, and tossed back the rest of his drink.
Someone knocked at the door, and Swimmer bid them entrance. One of the club’s managers bowed in the doorway, then announced Viscount Meriden.
Daniel’s lighthearted mood evaporated.
The manager left, closing the door behind Steady Eddie. Daniel clutched his glass and stared into the fire, hoping if he wished hard enough, the bloody man would prove to be a figment of his imagination.
Swimmer and Granville greeted him warmly and poured Meriden a drink, but Daniel remained seated and silent. After a few minutes of camaraderie, Meriden spoke to him.
“I have need of a word.”
“Of course,” Swimmer said.
“With Hallsworth. Alone”
Swimmer nodded. “I see. Well, take the room, then.”
Granville’s seemingly perpetual smiled faded. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
Swimmer exhaled loudly. “I’m sure we can trust these two to be civil. Hallsy?”
Daniel continued his best imitation of a rock until Swimmer slapped him on the back every bit as hard as Granville had earlier.
“Yes, I’ll be civil.” He stared at Eddie. “Although I can only speak for myself.”
“I haven’t come here to call him out,” Meriden said without taking his eyes off Daniel.
“All right,” Swimmer said. “We’ll be outside.”
“Right outside,” Granville added. “And if anything untoward happens, I’m prepared to break down this door.”
“Oh, are you?” Swimmer asked. “Now that I would like to see.”
“Don’t believe I can, do you?”
Their voices were cut off as the heavy door closed behind them. Daniel motioned for Meriden to sit, then poured whisky into one of the clean glasses on the serving table in front of them and held it out to his nemesis.
Meriden hesitated.
“I hardly had time to poison it,” Daniel said. “And it’s Swimmer’s hospitality, not mine, so you won’t be beholden to me.”
Meriden took the glass. “Neither of those were my concerns. I was contemplating whether I trust myself to remain civil with a good glass of whisky in me.”
For his part, Daniel was curious about what had brought the man here. Being hostile probably wouldn’t be conducive to finding out. He lifted his glass in salute. “To a truce.”
Meriden nodded. “Fine, a truce.” They both took a swig. “As long as can come to an understanding.”
“Which is…”
“You are not to see my sister again.”
“Word does travel fast in this town, doesn’t it?”
Meriden scowled. “Especially when Lady Lucinda Fairbank is a dinner guest. As soon as my sister left the room for a few minutes yesterday, her friend couldn’t resist regaling my aunt with the details of your afternoon tête-a-tête with her.”
Daniel wondered if that were true, or if Meriden had stooped so low as to set spies upon Emme. “Lady Lucinda didn’t strike me as the type to gossip.”
Meriden gave a mirthless laugh. “Not within her father’s purview. But when he’s out of earshot, she’s quite the talker. And she couldn’t stop talking about you and my sister.”
“You needn’t make it sound so base. We were both invited to take afternoon tea with the duchess and a few other guests and found ourselves seated next to each other.”
“A happy coincidence, no doubt.” Meriden took the last swig of his drink and eyed the bottle, then shook his head and set down his glass.
Daniel considered being tactful, a feint, perhaps, but decided a lunge would be the more satisfactory course. “Lady Emmeline and I were merely discussing a project. She has agreed to help me find a wife.”
Meriden jumped up from his seat. “You will not marry my sister, and I will not allow you to ruin her reputation.”
Daniel set down his glass very slowly and stood as well. “Where was all of this brotherly protection a year ago, when a blackguard preyed on your sister and you allowed it to happen?”
Meriden’s face went red. “Whatever you think you know, trust me, Hallsworth, you have no idea. Never speak of that again. Not to me, not to Lady Emme, not to anyone, or I will come for you.”
No one had ever looked at Daniel with murderous intent before. If Meriden had come armed with a pistol or a blade, Daniel might be meeting his maker this very minute.
Meriden stalked to the door and turned to face him again. “Never, Hallsworth. Do you understand me?”
Daniel nodded and watched Meriden leave, then let out a long, slow breath. Perhaps he’d judged Meriden too harshly. Perhaps the man had done his best to protect his sister, but had fallen short. And perhaps some of the hatred he felt for Meriden was really for himself.
“No blood that I can see.” Granville stepped into the room and circled slowly around him.
“Meriden looked intact as well,” Swimmer added. “Although, I wouldn’t want to be the poor sod who says one wrong word to him tonight, given the look on his face.”
Granville shook his head. “You really do bring out the worst in him, don’t you?” He glanced at Swimmer. “Pity, isn’t it?”
“Hm.” Swimmer nodded and poured another shot of whisky for himself and Granville
, and they clinked glasses.
Daniel looked back and forth between them. “What meaning am I to take from that?”
Granville sighed. “You want the girl. The girl adores her older brother.”
Daniel waited, but Granville offered no more explanation. He glanced at Swimmer.
“What Granville is trying to say is that you’re a fool. If you want to win the hand of Lady Emmeline, you’ll need all the help you can get.” Swimmer sloshed whisky into Daniel’s glass and handed it to him, then clinked his against it. “There’s one man in all of England who might be able to help you, but you insist on making him your enemy.”
Chapter 11
Emme entered the breakfast room at an impossibly early hour. The spinsters believed in “early to bed, early to rise,” and if Emme hoped to be one of them, she had to adopt the habit, even if she did startle more than one of the servants who hurried to set a place for her at the breakfast table. It all would have been easier to manage if she and Aunt Juliana hadn’t stayed up late two nights in a row with Mother, but even a day-and-a-half after being reunited, there still seemed to be so much more to share about the year they’d been apart.
She could tell by the unused place settings that she’d arrived even earlier than her father and brother this morning. And from the missing one that her mother didn’t plan on joining them. The only one Emme could never have beaten to breakfast had been Eleanor.
As the footman poured a cup of tea and served her a plate salmon and eggs fresh from the kitchen, she could almost picture her sister there, in the seat just across from hers, peeking at the morning papers before Father arrived to tell her ladies don’t read at the breakfast table. Emme smiled, remembering the few mornings she’d had breakfast alone with her sister. Eleanor was always full of good cheer, but never more so than first thing in the morning. Except when Emme vexed her, as she had that fateful summer she’d made the dastardly mistake of falling in love.
Emme had risen at the crack of dawn, full of energy she couldn’t contain, despite the late hours she’d kept to rendezvous with Daniel in the library. She’d found her sister in the breakfast room with a nearly finished plate of food in front of her and a book balanced on the edge of the table. Emme had forced herself to slow down as she’d entered the room, not wanting to rouse her sister’s suspicion that something was amiss.
“Good morning, sister,” Emme said.
Eleanor surveyed Emme silently, sweeping her eyes from Emme’s head to her toes with a penetrating gaze. As Emme piled eggs, bacon, and fruit onto her plate, Eleanor didn’t speak. When Emme sat down opposite Eleanor, her sister leaned back in her seat.
“What have you done now, Emme?”
Emme struggled to swallow the forkful of eggs she’d shoveled into her mouth. Daniel’s late-night attentions had left her famished, but now she worried her older sister would deduce the reason for her early-morning appetite. Emme longed to confess to Eleanor, to share her delicious secret, but she only wanted to share her hopes for a bright future with Daniel, not the details of what had passed between them. Those should remain between lovers.
“Why do you assume I’ve done something?”
“Because I’m not an idiot, nor am I blind.” Eleanor leaned forward and dropped her voice to a whisper. “It’s Edensbridge, isn’t it? What happened? And where were you yesterday afternoon when you asked your maid to lie and say you’d taken to your room with a headache?”
Emme’s face flushed hot. “How do you know? Does Mother know? Does Father?”
“She knows you were gone, he guesses, and they both assume you simply went off into the woods by yourself, despite being told a thousand times not to do it. And while you were taking dinner in your room to avoid scrutiny, I was listening to them speaking about you in Father’s study.”
Speaking, said about the earl and countess and in that tone, was code for arguing. Loudly. Usually about yet another of their younger daughter’s transgressions.
“I don’t know what happened between you and Edensbridge, and I don’t care to. But if you can’t bring your behavior to heel for your own sake, think of how others might be affected. A friend of Edward’s, let’s say. A young man who, were he to land on the wrong side of a man of Father’s stature, might be irreparably damaged.”
Emme closed her eyes and took a deep breath. If Father ever learned what had transpired between Daniel and her, the way she’d met him while wearing only her shift and whisper-thin wrap, both of which had, at some point, become half undone, damage to his reputation wouldn’t even be the worst of it. While not fully debauched, she had enjoyed carnal pleasures with a man not her husband, not her fiancé, not even her suitor. Once again, she was unredeemable.
“At least have the decency to look less guilty,” Eleanor whispered. “And next time you think of doing something so selfish, think of Mother.”
Eleanor didn’t have to elaborate. Father blamed Mother for Emme’s behavior. He said she’d become too permissive after the twins had died of the fever. Emme didn’t know if that was true. All she could remember from that time was the deep, quiet loneliness of the house with the twins’ laughter gone, Edward off at school, Eleanor with her tutor or hunched over her needlework, Mother taken to her bed for days at a time.
The sounds of the woods—birds singing, the brook babbling, furry creatures digging for food or shelter—had comforted her. She’d talked to the forest creatures when there’d been no people around her who would to listen to a ten-year-old girl. It wasn’t until the following year, when Mother had arranged to have Tessa and Luci join her for studies with her tutor, that the loneliness had abated. Soon after that, Eleanor’s own pleasant nature had returned, and life had seemed hopeful again, but never more hopeful than the summer she and Daniel had fallen in love.
If only Emme had learned the lesson Eleanor had tried to teach her that day over their early-morning breakfast. But after Daniel had disappeared from her life and Eleanor had died a few years later, Emme had returned to her reckless ways. If not for Edward rescuing her from Gretna Green as she’d counted on him to do, she could have found herself doing penance in a disastrous marriage. Now she had the opportunity to do her penance in her own way, working with the Spinsters’ Club. She’d make Mother proud of her, and perhaps even mollify Father. But first, she had to get Mother’s blessing, secure the duchess’s support, and find her first love a respectable wife who was worthy of marrying him.
She stared down at the eggs and salmon on her plate and wished she’d stayed in bed.
“Emmeline, how lovely to see you so bright and early.” Her mother swept in behind her and dropped a kiss on the top of her head.
Emme’s spirits lifted immediately. “And you, Mother. It’s wonderful to have you home. But I didn’t expect you at breakfast.”
“I couldn’t wait to see you again. And I just had a lovely chat with Aunt Juliana. She’ll be down shortly. Today, I hope the two of you will tell me everything about your time in Valencia. Then tomorrow, we must go shopping. You’re so thin. Do your dresses even fit you anymore?”
Emme rolled her eyes. “I’m exactly the same size I was when I left for Spain. And I don’t need many things.”
As Mother sat down, a servant stepped forward to pour her coffee, then disappeared back into the kitchen.
“What about the ball on Thursday?” Mother asked. “Surely, you don’t plan to wear something from your Season three years ago.”
Emme planned to do exactly that. After all, she was only attending to fulfill her obligation to the duchess. It wasn’t as though she need impress anyone. The only man she’d ever cared to impress would be looking for a wife, not at her.
Her mother stirred sugar into her cup, then sighed. “Emmeline, you know your father expects you to entertain suitors this Season.”
Emme reached for her mother’s hand and gently squeezed her fingers. “We wrote about this. There are other things I’m doing right now, women in need whom I’m helping.”
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br /> “It’s a lovely thought,” her mother said, despite not knowing the half of it, “but it’s not in your father’s plans.”
“Then you must help me with him. Talk to him. Convince him. I’ll make both of you proud of me, I swear it. I just can’t do it as someone’s wife.”
Her mother leaned back in her chair while Emme waited for her promise. Before Mother could give it, Edward and Father’s voices echoed in the hallway.
Emme’s mother jumped to her feet and gave Emme a kiss on the cheek. “My darling girl. We’ll discuss this later with Aunt Juliana. But right now, I must get more rest. Ask Edward to stop by my room before he leaves the house.”
“Of course, Mother. Sleep well.”
The countess slipped out one door while her husband and son entered through another. Emme greeted Edward and Father, then sank back into her own morbid thoughts. She’d done this to her parents, to their marriage. And now there was nothing she could do to save them. She could only hope to save herself and some poor, unsuspecting man from the same fate. If a woman like her mother—upstanding, respectable, chaste until wed—couldn’t find happiness in marriage, what hope could there be for a woman like Emme, who was so undeserving?
* * *
Perhaps Emme didn’t deserve to witness Daniel’s behavior, but he was so enjoying her look of disapproval. which didn’t quite mask her jealousy. For his part, he had trouble keeping his eyes off her, though he hid it from her as best he could.
She’d arrived at the ball in a stunning dark green gown, the color of a forest at dusk. He’d seen her in that color before, but this dress was cut lower and included intricate gold stitching along the sleeves and bodice that drew the eye, or at least certainly drew his. Her hair was swept up into a ridiculously intricate mass of curls piled onto her head, revealing the fine bones and flawless skin of her face to glorious effect. It had taken everything he’d had to hold himself back from rushing to her side and kissing her hand, as a few other bachelors had been moved to do.
One Kiss From Ruin: Harrow’s Finest Five Book 1 Page 12