After introductions, which included Daniel holding the young lady’s gloved hand for longer than Emme thought appropriate, Lady Anastasia touched Emme’s shoulder.
“Mother’s been meaning to host a tea since I returned home weeks ago,” the girl said. “You simply must come. It will be this Saturday.”
“In two days?” Emme panicked. Her palms sweated and her mouth filled with sawdust. This could be the woman Daniel ended up courting. Or worse. Emme could barely survive this conversation, no less an entire afternoon with the young lady. “I’m afraid we have a previous engagement. Involving my great-aunt.”
Emme’s mother shot her a withering look, but Emme would deal with the consequences of upsetting her later.
“One day next week, then,” Countess Bower said.
“That would be lovely,” her mother answered before Emme could protest.
“And you, Mr. Hallsworth,” the countess continued, “are you available Saturday afternoon? Will you join the earl and our daughter and I for tea?”
Daniel remained silent for several heartbeats, and Emme wanted to kiss him for it. When Edward nudged his shoulder, he finally spoke.
“Yes, my lady, I’m available. I would be honored to attend.”
He may as well have announced their engagement.
This is how it would start. If afternoon tea went well, Daniel and Lady Anastasia would begin a brief but respectable courtship. That in and of itself would please the Committee for Privileges immensely. Then would come their short but proper engagement, culminating in—as the Duchess of Wrexham had wished—Daniel’s celebrated and auspicious marriage to the lovely and virginal young lady by midsummer. Reinstatement of his marquessate couldn’t be far behind.
It was what was meant to happen, what had to happen so they could each get on with their own lives. But right now, it only made Emme’s headache intensify and travel down into her neck and shoulders.
The conversation around her continued.
“Oh, no, he sees far too much of me as it is.” Edward was speaking to Countess Bower.
“You don’t mind, Lady Limely?” the countess asked.
“Of course not,” Emme’s mother replied. “Please, all of you, enjoy the rest of the performance.”
As the countess and her daughter walked away from them, Daniel said goodnight to the Radcliffes, then followed Countess Bower and Lady Anastasia. It was then Emme realized they’d invited him to spend the rest of the evening in their box. Her time with him—for the evening, and possibly for the rest of their lives—had unceremoniously ended. Again.
“Emmeline, you don’t look well.” Her mother’s warm hand gripped her own ice-cold fingers. “You’re shivering.”
“Am I?” All Emme knew was that her head pounded and her body hurt and Daniel was gone from her life.
Edward and Mother exchanged some words, then his hand was on her elbow as he led her toward the exit.
“Mother will join Aunt Juliana while I get you home, and I’ll come back for them later,” her brother told her.
She meant to shake her head to protest, to insist they keep up appearances and stay for the duration of the evening, but she needed every bit of her strength to keep walking. When they stepped outside to wait for their carriage, Emme shivered. Edward pulled off his tailcoat and wrapped it around her shoulders.
“Thank you,” she said. “There’s suddenly a chill in the air.”
Edward frowned. “Actually, it’s quite stifling this evening. I’m afraid you’ve come down with some malady.”
He didn’t lecture her on the time she’d been spending with Mrs. Billings and Mrs. Carter and their children in their rundown neighborhood, and for that she was grateful. But that, and the sour expression he’d worn for hours, weren’t like him.
When they were finally settled in their carriage and Emme no longer had to expend so much energy to stand on her own two feet, she observed her brother more closely.
“Something’s the matter,” she said. “Tell me.”
He scrubbed his hand over his face. “It’s been a difficult evening for all of us.”
“Yes, it has. But you had this look about you when you arrived home this afternoon.”
He stared out the carriage window, refusing to meet her eye. “In anticipation of this difficult evening.”
“Edward, please.”
She reached out her hand to him. His hand was warm when it closed around hers.
“There is something, but it can wait until tomorrow, when you feel better.”
“No, I need to hear it now. I need to hear all the bad news there is to know tonight.” She leaned back against the seat cushions and waited, trying very hard to ignore the fact that the bouncing carriage was exacerbating her splitting headache.
With a shake of his head, he conceded. “It’s about the Bond Street property. The landlord sent word this afternoon that he won’t be leasing it to us, as he’s selling the building. He received an offer he couldn’t refuse, so he didn’t.”
“But...” She gripped the side of the carriage for purchase. Nothing in her world made sense anymore. Everything she loved, everything she needed in her life, was slipping away from her.
“How can he do this? Our contract.”
“It wasn’t finalized yet.” Edward leaned forward to take her hand again. “I don’t want you to worry about this. I’m looking into it. We should know something in a few days. Perhaps the new landlord will lease the space to us, or will decide not purchase the building after all, or we’ll find something even better.”
That was doubtful at best, and they both knew it. There were few options available, even fewer that were in areas safe enough for both the women who would work in the store and the ladies who would shop there.
“Perhaps,” she said, because he meant well.
“I’m sorry, Emme. If it were a year from now, I’d have my trust and this would already be taken care of. As it is,” he closed his eyes, “I’ll do everything I can.”
Edward, ever true to his word, would do everything he could for her, but it might not be enough. Besides, she couldn’t expect him to take care of her forever. There was one last possible solution to her problem. She’d been avoiding it for more than a year, but now she’d run out of options and needed money, and there was only one way for her to get her hands on such funds. It was time to convince Father that his only daughter must remain a spinster.
Chapter 18
After a day in bed with a fever and another day recovering her strength, Emme finally felt like herself again. But losing that time left her in an even more precarious position. The building on Bond Street might already be in the hands of its new owner. If not, she might still be able to purchase it with her brother’s help, but they’d have to move fast and have funds at the ready.
She stopped outside her father’s study to gather her courage as much as her strength, reminding herself that it wasn’t just her chance at redemption at stake. The hopes of the craftswomen she’d met and the future of their children mattered more than she did. They had suffered and sacrificed so much, the least she could do was endure the brief discomfort of begging her father’s indulgence.
He sat alone in his study, behind his heavy, carved walnut desk with his reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. He pored over the household ledgers. It didn’t escape her that the household accounts used to be one of her mother’s responsibilities, and she wondered which of them had wished to alter the arrangement. Perhaps they’d soon wish to return to their former routine, once Emme no longer posed a problem. Once she’d settled into her role as a respectable patron of young women in need.
Butterflies fluttered in her stomach. This moment had been so long in coming, and she’d hoped she’d have more to show her father in the way of accomplishments before asking for her dowry to use for her cause, but circumstances had forced her hand. Still, she was strong and capable. Nothing would break her. She’d let Daniel go, forever this time. If she coul
d still stand upright with that gaping, unhealed wound in her heart, she could accomplish anything.
She screwed up her courage and knocked on the partially opened door. Upon Father’s invitation, she stepped into the study and closed the door behind her.
He pulled off his readers and observed her as she sat in the upholstered chair opposite him. “You still don’t look well, Emmeline.”
“I’m fine, sir. Much recovered.” She forced a smile to prove it, but couldn’t hold it for long. “I’ve come to discuss something of utmost importance with you.”
“Oh?” He leaned forward. “What matter is that?”
Her hands shook with nerves. She clasped them tightly in her lap and steadied herself with a breath. “The matter of suitors, of doing things differently. I’ve been discussing it with Mother and Edward.”
He set down his glasses on the ledger. “Edward has been bending my ear on your behalf. Something about spinsterhood.”
Her stomach flipped over itself. She slid to the edge of her seat. “And?”
He sighed and shook his head. “Emmeline, I don’t know where you get these silly notions. At your age, your sister could think of nothing but her imminent wedding and the future children she would have.”
And at the same age, she’d drowned, taking with her all their parents’ hopes and dreams.
“I’m not Eleanor.”
“That much I know.”
There was no warmth in his eyes when he said it. Had there ever been, when he’d looked at her, or had all his sentimentality been reserved for her older sister? At the moment, she truly could not recall.
She wrapped her arms around herself. “Please, Father, don’t ask me to take up her life where she left it.”
He jumped to his feet and leaned forward over his desk, fisted hands pressed into it. “Don’t you ever speak to me that way, Emmeline. I’ve tolerated your selfish wallowing long enough, and your childish recklessness even longer. You’re an adult, a grown woman, and it’s time for you to take your place in the world.”
“My place in the world?” She rose to her feet, her legs wobbling. “A wife has no place in the world, only in her husband’s home. A wife is chattel, a thing to be bargained over by a father and a suitor. For most men, a wife is worth less than the animals housed in his stable, and treated more poorly.”
Her father rose to his full height and walked slowly around his desk. Emme’s instinct told her to run, but fear rooted her to the spot. He stopped just inches from her. He moved his right hand and she flinched.
“I should.” His voice was a low growl. “I should spank you into submission. It might be the only thing to cure you of this delusion that’s had you in its grip since Eleanor’s death. No daughter of mine will be a spinster, an object of gossip, a spot on the family name. Do you understand me?”
Her legs shook so hard, she had to lower herself back into her chair. Her plan for her own future was the one thing in the world that was hers, the one balm that might soothe the slightest bit of the pain of losing Daniel. No matter what her father said, no matter what he did, she had to win his support. “Please, Father, hear my side of it.”
Face red, fists clenched at his sides, he shook his head.
She laid a shaking hand on his arm. “Please, sir, I beg you. My only intention is to do good works, to be a better person, to make up for all the awful sins of my past.”
He turned his back and walked away from her, putting space between them. She slipped out of her chair and crossed the room to stand beside the empty fire grate. She laid one hand over her churning belly and reached out with the other to grip the cold marble mantel. How she longed for a roaring fire in the hearth to spread warmth through her ice-cold limbs. Perhaps she wasn’t as recovered as she thought. Or perhaps it wasn’t her malady at all, but the dawning realization that Father might be immovable.
He stepped closer to the hearth. “You’ve begged my indulgence. Now I’m granting it. I’m listening, Emmeline. What awful sins have you committed?”
She stepped away from the hearth and perched on the edge of the blue silk-covered divan, a long-ago gift from her mother to her father, from a time when they’d all been happy. “First, there was Eleanor’s death.”
“No.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I will not allow you to think such nonsense for one more minute. You did not cause your sister’s death.”
She nodded. “I’ve begun to see that, I truly have. But it was an argument with me—over my childish recklessness, as you so succinctly put it—that drove her from the house in anger that day she fell into the lake. And after that, my behavior…”
She stared down at her hands, knowing what she must do, wishing for lightening to strike her or the earth to open up and swallow her whole before she could choke out the words. Heaven and earth both failed her as her father stood in silence, waiting for her confession.
“I made a foolish decision, inviting Mr. Sanderson to court me.”
“Yes, I remember Sanderson. I ended that courtship for your own protection.”
“I know that now. But at the time...” She glanced at him, standing so still, his gaze fixed on her face. “I kept up the courtship in secret.”
He scowled. “You defied me. I assume Edward knew or learned of it, which was why he argued so hard for your year abroad.”
“None of it was Edward’s fault. In fact, he saved me, the night I made the worst decision of all.” She stared at the fireless hearth, finding no solace there. “I led you and Mother to believe I’d stayed with a friend.”
When she saw her father shift his stance back to anger, with clenched fists and a puffed chest, she knew her words had connected. “Of all the selfish, reckless, foolish things to do!”
“I’m sorry, Father, I truly am. I don’t know how to justify it.”
“There is no justification for it! If anyone were to learn you spent time alone with that man, the Radcliffe name would be sullied beyond repair. You’d never find a respectable husband. Even Edward’s chances might be ruined.”
Her father shook with rage, making Emme shake with fear. Once again, she wanted nothing more than to run from the room and hide, like a scared, feral kitten. And once again, she stayed rooted to the spot, ready to endure the worst he had to give if it meant she’d get what she needed to establish her ladies’ cooperative.
“If I devote myself to good causes and don’t attempt to make a match, no one will have reason to care. There’ll be no wedding night to reveal my shame to an unwitting husband.”
Time stopped while Emme waited for the sign that the underlying meaning of those words had connected with her father as well. She knew it had happened when he reached out one hand and grasped the mantle so tightly, his knuckles turned white.
“Leave.” His voice was quiet, so quiet. Barely above a whisper.
“Father, I—”
“Leave my presence. Get out of my sight. Get out of my house.”
She jumped to her feet and backed toward the study door. “Father, please—”
He slammed his fist down on the mantel so hard, she was sure the house shook around her.
“Do not call me that.” His voice was calm now, steady and low. “You are no daughter of mine. Understand that. Understand I would put you out on the street today, this very minute, if it weren’t for the scandal it would bring down on all our heads, when only one of us is deserving of scorn.”
She pressed her hand to her belly, sure she was about to vomit, to collapse, to make everything worse than it already was.
“I’ll find you a husband.”
Emme froze with one hand pressed over her mouth to keep from gagging.
“The vicar we knew when the twins died is a good man. Kind, understanding, imminently forgiving. He helped us tremendously in our hour of need. He’s since moved to Staveley, but last I knew, he had an unmarried son.”
Emme dropped her hand from her mouth. “The vicar’s son? He must be at least thirty-five.”
“Closer to forty. But beggars can’t be choosers, Emmeline. I’m offering you a way out of ruination.”
“I’ve never even heard of Stavely.”
“It’s quite a bit north of Nottingham.”
“North of Nottingham?”
He might as well banish her to the ends of the earth.
She twisted her hands together. “How will I see Mother? And Edward.” And her friends. And at least a glimpse of Daniel from across a crowded room.
“You won’t, at least not often, I’d presume."
She didn’t even bother to ask about him. He would marry her off with as little pomp and circumstance as he could, then would go about his life as though his only daughter had died two years ago. But her mother wouldn’t forget her only living daughter. She’d grieve for Emme every day. The guilt crushed the breath from her chest. She stumbled to the door, not knowing what to do other than escape her father’s presence.
“I’ll send word to the vicar tomorrow, explaining our need for his assistance, and will ask that he reply by the end of the week. After that, it will take some time to prepare for the wedding. No Radcliffe will embarrass the family name by getting married with a special license.”
Emme pressed one shaking hand to her breast and the other to the door, praying for the moment she could turn the knob and run from the room. But still her father continued.
“In the meantime, you will be on your best behavior. To that end, you’re not to leave this house without your brother chaperoning you. Is that clear?”
The volume and brashness of his voice startled her. He hated her. In every word he uttered, she could hear it. Her own father hated her. She had no doubt that if she didn’t marry the vicar’s son and move to the country, she’d be exiled to some other dreary, distant corner of England, possibly with nothing more than the clothes on her back. He’d do it because he couldn’t stand the sight of her.
One Kiss From Ruin: Harrow’s Finest Five Book 1 Page 20