Phillip shrugged. “I don’t know. What I really want is a good long respite.”
“Not now, Phillip,” Henry said, trying to moderate the disapproval ringing in his voice. “Finish this term and the next, and then you shall have most of July through September for your respite.”
Ignoring Henry’s counsel, Phillip said to Sir Giles, “I’ve been thinking, Father. Perhaps it is time we consider my grand tour.”
“Your grand tour?” Henry’s voice rose. “When I have yet to have mine?”
“That isn’t my fault, is it? I want to live life, Father, not merely learn about it in the dusty, hallowed halls of your alma mater.”
Their father’s jaw tensed. “I always meant for you to have your tour after you earned your degree. That is the way these things are done, my boy—as well you know.”
“But I think travel would give me the inspiration I need to return and finish strong.”
Sir Giles shook his head. “I don’t know, Phillip. This isn’t a good time.”
“Why? Do you mean because of him? Or because of the Smallwoods?”
Sir Giles looked at Henry, then replied, “Both.”
“Personally, I think either is beside the point,” Henry said. “You need to earn your degree, Phillip. Westons don’t quit; we finish what we start. Have you not always said so, Father?”
“Have I?” Sir Giles looked troubled.
Henry nodded and said quietly, “You used to say it, when we were boys.”
Sir Giles nodded vaguely.
Did his father not remember? He had certainly changed since he and Phillip were young.
Henry asked, “What does your Oxford tutor have to say about all this?”
“He will clear things with the dean, I know, if I ask him.”
“Are you telling us you’ve come home without informing your dean?”
Phillip threw up his hands. “It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. But now that I’m here, I cannot stomach the thought of returning.”
Sir Giles challenged, “Is all the money I’ve spent on your education to be wasted?”
“No,” Phillip insisted, yet sullenly refused to look his father in the eye.
“Need I remind you, Phillip, that you are not my eldest and heir? I will make what accommodation for you I can, but you will need a profession.”
“No, you needn’t remind me, Father.”
Over Phillip’s bent head, Henry and his father shared bewildered looks.
Sir Giles sighed and heaved himself to his feet. “Let us speak no more of this tonight. We are all of us tired and frustrated. And I fear further arguing will only lead to words we might regret. Let us leave it for now. I shall write to your tutor and explain.”
Henry erupted. “You ought not lie for him, Father.”
“I don’t intend to lie, Henry. I shall tell him the truth. That there are family troubles here at home and Phillip is needed.”
“Family troubles?” Phillip echoed dubiously.
“That is true enough. And, now I think of it, Phillip may help you in our search. Perhaps he might have more success than you have.”
Phillip looked worriedly at Henry. “I . . . I am happy to help, of course. But Henry is the best man for the job.”
“That has yet to be proven.”
Henry was about to protest when lightning flashed outside the window, followed by the rumble of thunder. He glanced at his father but saw no concern or even awareness there. With an inward sigh, Henry rose and quickly excused himself.
An unlesson’d girl, unschool’d, unpractised;
Happy in this, she is not yet so old
But she may learn.
—William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
Chapter 7
That evening, Emma sat with her father and Mr. Davies, lingering over tea, pudding, and guttering candles. Outside, thunder rumbled and rain pelted the windows. There seemed no point in going upstairs and trying to sleep until the rainstorm lessened.
The two men discussed recent parliamentary news, their aching knees, and several other topics, but Emma barely heard them. Now and again she nodded or smiled when her father chuckled at something the steward said, to give the impression she was listening, but in reality her thoughts were of Phillip Weston. She remembered how he had smiled at her, that familiar teasing light in his eyes as he called her “old girl,” as though he were seeing her again after an absence of a few days rather than nearly three years.
As she thought back to Phillip’s days at their academy, one long ago Longstaple evening came to mind, and Emma recalled it in vivid detail. Her mother had already left for a women’s charity meeting when her father decided to pay a call on the vicar. . . .
“I’ll only be gone an hour or so,” her father had said, wrapping a muffler around his neck. “The boys are busy over a geography game of my own invention. It should keep them occupied while I’m gone, but if there is any trouble, just dash over to your Aunt Jane’s. She knows I am popping out for a bit.”
“Very well, Papa,” Emma had said evenly, pretending not to care one way or the other. She would not admit she was wary of being alone in the house with her father’s pupils, should one of them decide to tease her or pull some prank. She reminded herself that Phillip Weston was in residence, and she didn’t mind his teasing and mischief quite so much. In fact, she secretly rather liked it. He was fifteen—less than a year younger than she was. And such an amiable young man. He would not allow the other boys to give her any trouble, she thought.
She hoped.
But her father had not been gone a quarter hour when the boys deserted their educational game around the table. It was winter and the sky had darkened early. Candle lamps had been lit for several hours by then, and the four boys shuffled and slid in stocking feet across the room and around the house, extinguishing candles and oil lamps as they went, laughing and jesting with one another.
Alarm needled its way through Emma. From the sitting room, she commanded, “Boys, stop that this instant.”
“We needn’t listen to you,” one of the pupils, a Frank Williams, had said. “You’re barely older than we are, Emma. So don’t call us ‘boys.’”
“I shall call you what I like, Mr. Williams.” Emma sniffed. “And it is Miss Smallwood to you.”
Whoosh. Someone blew out the lamp behind her, darkening the sitting room. Mrs. Malloy had not bothered to light the fire in there. Where was Mrs. Malloy? Emma was surprised their no-nonsense cook-housekeeper was not already scuttling about the house with a lit tinder, relighting the lamps and giving the boys a stern tongue-lashing, reminding them they were supposed to act like gentlemen, not wild animals.
But then she recalled that Mrs. Malloy spent Sunday evenings with her elderly mother, who lived in the High Street. Had Emma’s father forgotten it was her evening off?
Emma stiffened her spine and drew her shoulders back, reminding herself that a cool, aloof tone had a way of making the boys give her distance, if not respect. She said in her most imperious, grown-up voice, “I insist that you light the lamps and cease running about the house.”
“We only want to play a game of hide-and-seek,” someone whispered near her ear. She started, then stilled when she recognized Phillip Weston’s voice. “You won’t deny us such an innocent pleasure, I hope?”
His whisper tickled the back of her neck, where she’d coiled her hair atop her head. “I . . .” she faltered, protest fading.
“Em-ma . . .” He drew out her name in two long, low syllables, his breath prickling her skin with gooseflesh. His warm hands touched her waist, and she jerked in surprise. His hands lifted, hovering near, whispering over the fabric of her frock. When she did not step away, they settled back on her waist.
In the passage outside, stocking feet thudded past on the floorboards. Emma stiffened, but whoever it was flew by, followed by a slamming collision of bodies.
“Found you, Frank!” a youthful voice called in triumph.
�
�Bowled me over more like.”
“Frank’s the seeker now!”
Phillip’s hands tightened slightly on her waist. Although many layers separated their skin, the pressure sent a forbidden thrill through her. If anyone else had tried to touch her, she would have slapped him smartly and given him a setdown he wouldn’t soon forget. But this was Phillip Weston. A friend who suddenly seemed like much more. How secret, how exciting, to stand there with him in the dark room, knowing they were surrounded by others who could not see them. Emma knew she should pull away, and she would. In just one minute more. . . .
“Emma, are you still in here?” Frank’s voice, from the doorway. “I’ll find you.”
Phillip pulled her nearer yet, out of the path of the approaching figure. She turned toward her captor, unsure whether she ought to abrade him, or . . .
Releasing her waist, he pressed his fingers over her mouth and softly hissed in her ear, “Shh.”
Footsteps passed inches from them.
Phillip’s fingers moved tentatively from her mouth. When she inhaled to reprimand him, he pressed his lips to hers. She had no idea what to do, how to respond. Her first kiss. In the dark with Phillip Weston.
Somewhere in the house, a door closed. Light flashed in the passage.
“What is happening here?” Aunt Jane’s voice, coming to check on them in her father’s absence.
Emma lurched away from Phillip.
Aunt Jane called, “Emma?”
Emma didn’t trust her voice. It would certainly give her away. Her aunt knew her too well. Emma stepped toward the door. Made it to the threshold just as Jane’s light did.
Her aunt’s wide eyes searched her face. “Are you all right?”
“Of course,” Emma said, a bit too brightly, forcing a smile. “The boys insisted on a game of hide-and-seek. I tried to tell them to leave the lamps burning, but they would not heed me.”
As her aunt stepped closer, the light of her lamp arced into the room behind Emma.
“Mr. . . . Weston . . .” Jane’s eyes widened yet farther as she looked from the young man standing so near her niece, to her niece’s no doubt blushing face.
“Good evening, Miss Smallwood,” Phillip said, giving her aunt a little bow, as though nothing untoward had just happened.
Jane Smallwood’s face stiffened. “I don’t approve of young men and women being alone together in the dark, Mr. Weston.” She aimed her words at him, though Emma felt the pinch of them far more than Philip did by the look of his cheerful face.
“You are perfectly right, Miss Smallwood,” Phillip said. “I’m afraid Mr. Williams nearly knocked poor Emma over in the dark. But . . . no harm done. Thank goodness you came when you did.”
Jane Smallwood eyed him skeptically. “I think it a very good thing I came when I did, Mr. Weston. And not because of Frank Williams.”
Phillip said soothingly, “It was only a game, Miss Smallwood. No one was hurt. Nothing broken.”
“Only a game, was it?” She arched one brow. “Whatever it was, let us have no more of it. Understood?”
“Perfectly.”
Turning away, Aunt Jane began relighting the lamps and candles in the other rooms.
Emma turned to Phillip and tersely whispered, “Don’t tell anyone, all right?”
He placed a hand on his heart. “You have my word. It never happened.”
She believed him.
Later the words he had spoken registered more fully. “It was only a game. . . . It never happened.” The truth of that left an odd prick of disappointment in her heart.
Sitting now with Mr. Davies and her father, Emma remained lost in reverie until running footsteps echoed in the hall beyond the office and tattooed up the stairs. She wondered what the matter was, but before she could rise to check, someone knocked on the doorjamb. She glanced over and felt her cheeks warm. For there stood the object of her reminisces.
“Pardon the intrusion, Davies,” Phillip Weston said.
Mr. Davies waved the apology aside. “You are always welcome, Master Phillip. Come in.”
Phillip stepped inside and beamed first at her, then her father. “Miss Smallwood. Mr. Smallwood. I hope you will do us the honor of joining the family for breakfast from now on in the breakfast room.”
Emma stammered, “But . . . Lady Weston . . . that is, we are perfectly content here with Mr. Davies. Are we not, Papa? We don’t want to be any trouble while we’re here.”
“Nonsense. You are no trouble,” Phillip insisted. “I am delighted you are here. Please. I know Lady Weston is a stickler for certain formalities, and unfortunately I cannot ask you to join us for other meals, but she has agreed to your having breakfast with the family.”
Emma bit her lip. “But if that is not her preference . . .”
“It is my preference,” Phillip said. “As well as my father’s, and even Lizzie’s.” He grinned. “You have made quite an impression on the girl.”
“She is a dear, yes, but—”
“Please say you’ll join us. If it makes you feel more comfortable, Lady Weston rarely ventures down before ten.”
Her father interjected, “I for one would very much like joining you for breakfast, Phillip. Though I am an early riser, I fear, and may be off on my ramble before you raise your bonny head from the pillow. Never one to rise with the birds, if I recall correctly. I had to rouse you from bed myself on more than one occasion when Mrs. Malloy’s attempts failed.”
Phillip ducked his head, chuckling sheepishly. “I am afraid I have changed little in that regard, sir. Although if you two are at breakfast, I shall have incentive to rouse myself earlier.” He smiled hopefully at her.
Emma exhaled and smiled tentatively in return. “Very well. If you are certain. It would be a pleasure for Papa, I know. For us both.”
Phillip grinned. “Excellent.”
Her father asked Phillip if he’d seen Henry lately, adding, “He usually joins me for a game of backgammon about now.”
Phillip hesitated. “Ah. Well . . .” He grimaced toward the door. “With this storm he’s already gone up, I fear. I don’t imagine he’ll be coming back down tonight.”
Confusion passed over John Smallwood’s face, but he was too polite to express any doubt over the unlikely excuse. “Well, what about you, Phillip. Will you join me?”
Phillip nodded. “Very well. If Emma will stay and cheer me on. Or at least console me when I lose.”
Emma assured him she would be happy to do both.
Later, after the game ended and the rainstorm subsided, Emma took herself upstairs and rang for the maid.
Morva came in a few minutes later, muttering, “What a racket. Did ’ee hear it, miss?”
“The storm?” Emma asked.
Morva opened her mouth to reply, then seemed to think the better of whatever she’d been about to say. “Ess, that’s what caused it.”
The nimble housemaid helped Emma change into her nightclothes, and bid her good night.
Emma climbed into bed and wrote her impressions of Phillip in her journal, cataloging the changes in him. How his broad shoulders and height bespoke the man he had become. Yet how his boyish face and warm smiles reminded her of the lad she had once called friend.
She dipped her quill and paused, wondering if he remembered that night in the Smallwood sitting room in the dark. She hoped and feared he did.
She hoped and feared he did not.
When Emma finally blew out the candle and went to sleep, she dreamt they were all back in the Smallwood sitting room—her, Phillip, her father. Emma and her father sat reading while Phillip played the old harpsichord. His fingers drew reverberating, plucked-string sounds from the instrument as he attempted some piece she did not recognize. The sitting-room door opened, and her mother stepped inside. Emma expected Phillip to stop playing, but he continued on as though he had not seen Mrs. Smallwood enter. Emma shot him a look, tilting her head in her mother’s direction. But Phillip only smiled at Emma and went on
playing.
Did he not realize? There stood her mother, alive and well.
Emma rose and crossed the room, heart tingling with happiness to see her mother again.
Rachel Smallwood looked her up and down, shaking her head in exasperated admonition. “Stand up straight, Emma.” She looked at the thick book in Emma’s hand. “And why do you insist on reading scholarly books in front of Mr. Weston. You know he will never marry a bluestocking.”
Mortification swept over Emma, drowning the happiness of a moment before.
She opened her eyes and the strange dream faded. Yet the sounds remained. Lying there, she stared into the darkness and listened. The music was real. Someone was playing the pianoforte in the distant music room. Julian again? Or was it Phillip at the keys, as in her dream?
The dream . . . Emma was disappointed her mother was not alive in reality but relieved she had not actually been so blatantly embarrassed in front of Phillip.
Too awake now to return to sleep, Emma slipped from the bedclothes, slid her feet into the slippers beside her bed, and pulled on her wrapper. She wondered if her hair was a mess. She told herself it did not matter. She would not let Phillip or Julian, or whoever it was, see her in her nightclothes. Though Phillip had certainly seen her in wrapper and unbound hair on any number of occasions when they were younger.
The small fire in her hearth had burnt itself out, so she took her unlit stubby candle with her, hoping the landing lamp would still be burning. She could light it there.
She inched open her door and slipped into the dark corridor. She rounded the corner, passed her father’s room—still and silent within—and continued to the stairway. There the candle lamp guttered in a small puddle of wax. Lifting the glass, she tipped her candle into its dying flame, thankful when it flickered to life. The lamp wick glowed orange, then fizzled into a grey string of smoke, as though she had stolen its flame.
Emma replaced the glass, wincing as it chimed against the brass base. Hearing no answering noise, she turned and made her way gingerly down the stairs.
The sad music continued to weave its way up the stairwell, drawing her closer, kneading her heart like a needle-clawed kitten, pleasure pricked with pain.
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