Natalia’s Secret Spinster’s Society (The Spinster’s Society) (A Regency Romance Book)

by Charlotte Stone

  After the pair left, Cherry turned wide eyes to her brother.

  “So... that was the Wellford you wanted me to meet? You made him sound... very, very different.”

  “Yes, well, things have rather changed,” Charles said thoughtfully. “I had hoped that perhaps you two might find a match in each other, but now I see that the ship might have sailed on that particular venture.”

  “Is Emily going to be all right?”

  “Oh, I should think so. I was probably in more danger here than either of you. If I’d been sitting any closer to Lady Emily, Wellford probably would have slit my throat.”

  * * *

  The west passage led down to the garden, and from there, a gate led directly to the street. Victor was in too much of a hurry to locate his own coach, and instead, waved down a hack that was cruising by, hoping for some custom. The windows were baize paper instead of glass, and the whole thing smelled terribly of old tobacco.

  Emily made a face.

  “What in the world are you doing, Victor? I was just sitting with Charles and Cherry.”

  “And it smells like you were having a fine time as well. On a night when you had so much to do, were you really going to get drunk on top of it?”

  “Well, that’s my affair, and not yours, isn’t it?” asked Emily, thrusting her chin up proudly. “I had a rather disturbing upset, and they were both very kind to me.”

  “Wait, what upset?”

  “I don’t believe I shall tell you if you are going to fly off the handle.”

  Victor wrapped his hand around her arm, forcing her to look him in the eye.

  “What upset?”

  “Oh, for the love of all that’s good, do not be so dramatic. It was just Lord Bagley hinting into the void and hoping it might get him a desperate girl.”

  “Emily!” Victor said, slightly shocked by her tone.

  She waved her hand at him, shooing his shock away.

  “As if you and Aunt Winnie and Sir Genie don’t say the same and worse. Why do I have to be so very good?”

  “Because... because you are, and you wouldn’t be saying it at all if you weren’t foxed.”

  “I am not foxed! Cherry Hartley gave me some very delightful pear cordial that she got from a friend, and it is not very strong at all.”

  “I can smell it from here, so it is strong enough. Were you playing your little game with Charles?”

  “It’s not a game, Victor! It is a matter of life and death, and you are being very crude to think I take any of this lightly.”

  “All right, your deadly serious matter of life and death. Were you trying to get Charles involved? Were you assessing him for your husband?”

  Emily peered at him from her seat, and Victor felt his heart beat faster. If she said yes, what in the hell could he do? Hell, Charles was one of the best men he knew. If he really cared about Emily, cared about them both, he would think this was a wonderful idea.

  He couldn’t even entertain the thought for a heartbeat. The idea of Emily with Charles, getting married, Emily in Charles’ arms... Victor gritted his teeth so hard he was surprised that one of them didn’t crack.

  “That was far from my intention, Victor,” said Emily. “Once again, he is not at all what I need. I did not come up with these specifications on a whim. I didn’t say I was going to look for old men because I didn’t think I could get a young one, you know.”

  “As a matter of fact, I know very little,” Victor said, slumping back in the seat. Now that the adrenaline had worn off, he felt both exhausted and on edge, like he had always felt after a battle.

  “Besides, you were the one telling me perhaps my specifications were all wrong. Why wouldn’t you want me to marry Lord Hartley? Unless...”

  He glanced at her.

  “Spit it out. We have been in too many damned strange situations to focus on decorum now.”

  “Unless you truly think I’m too awful to marry your friend. Which is fair, I suppose.”

  “Oh, close your mouth, Emily. I don’t think that.”

  “And you comfort me with such charm, too, Victor.”

  “If you wanted fair speech, you should have stuck with Charles.”

  “I couldn’t. You dragged me out of there so fast I left my wrap on their chaise.”

  “Ah. Right, I suppose I did. What I am getting at, Emily, is that I am jealous.”

  Emily blinked at him, and Victor felt his heart beating fast. God, she was the dearest thing in the world to him. She was beautiful, but there was so much more to it than that.

  “Emily, I can’t stand for a man I know so well to have you because I want you.”

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  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

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  If she didn’t say anything, Emily knew that the rest of the ride would pass in silence. They could pretend that Victor had never said it. Actually, he might depend on her being so foxed she didn’t remember this conversation in the morning.

  The cordial was strong, but it wasn’t that strong, and Emily stared at Victor across the hack, trying to understand what he meant.

  “What do you mean, want?” she asked, her mouth dry.

  Victor snorted at her wary look.

  “God, do you have to look at me as if I drown kittens in the well? I’m not offering to make you my mistress and set you up in a fashionable little place close to Grosvenor Street.”

  “Then what do you mean?”

  Victor sighed, and when he looked at her, there was something so intense in his eyes that she almost looked away.

  “I mean, I want you. I look at you, and I don’t see beauty, or well, I don’t just see beauty. I see... I see your spirit, and your kindness, and that hellish sharp tongue of yours, and your sense of humor. I see all the days we’ve spent together driving each other mad, and I see all the days to come when we will, of course, be driving each other mad. There are the kisses we’ve had together, and the ones I want to give you in the future, and the things I want to teach you, Emily, as soon as you are mine to do so. I want you. I love you.”

  “Victor...” Emily was terribly afraid she was going to cry again. He took her hand. leaning close enough that she could feel his breath next to her cheek.

  “I love you, and I don’t care about all the rest. If you want an old man, I will grow older. It’s inevitable. I’m rich enough for most, I think, and given how Society looks at me, you can always be assured that public sentiment will always take your side rather than mine.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “I love you, but you see me, too, don’t you?”

  “I love you,” she said helplessly, because it was true, but there were other truths as well, ones that hovered just outside, that waited in Swandon for her to come home, that were buried in the little cemetery behind Everly.

  “Then the rest doesn’t matter,” Victor said decisively. “None of it. As long as you love me, as long as I love you the way I do, nothing matters beyond me getting to keep you and you getting to keep me.”

  “Victor, you must be serious about this.”

  “I am. As the grave.”

  She winced a little at his tone, and she forced herself to speak.

  “Victor... if you truly mean this, ask me, and I will give you an answer. But you must truly mean this, or I swear, you will break my heart.”

  Victor didn’t even hesitate.

  “Emily, will you marry me?”

  This time, she could not stop the tears from falling. She reached to him and threw her arms around his neck.

  “Victor, I love you, and I will.”

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  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

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  Three week
s later…

  Victor arrived at Lady Caverly’s house early on Saturday morning, and the ancient butler gave him a long look before allowing him inside.

  “Your grace.”

  Victor had to hide a smile.

  “Don’t worry, Tolker, I didn’t bring along any chrysanthemums this time.”

  “It is not my place to say,” the butler said stiffly. “But they did make Lady Caverly sneeze terribly.”

  Sneeze until she wept and then laid her out for the day, as it turned out. Victor would be the last to say he was skilled at proper courtship, but that one had been a bit of a disaster. Fortunately, Emily had forgiven him and since Sir Eugene came to dance attendance on Lady Caverly during her ‘time of strife,’ the older lady wasn’t so very piqued either. He was getting the hang of things.

  He waited what he thought was a decent interval in the drawing room, and he was just wondering about going to search Emily out when she appeared at the door, dressed in what looked like a very plain white gown that had been pinned together instead of sewn.

  “Emily!”

  “Shh!”

  Victor went silent in surprise, and she paused by the closed door, listening carefully before she breathed a sigh of relief. “All right, I don’t think anyone followed me.”

  “Was that a concern? And what in the world could you be wearing?”

  “If they find me,” Emily said with a dark and fatalistic air, “they will drag me back to the morning room, where they will put me back on that stool and keep me there standing and spinning at their word until dinner time. Or until world’s end, I am no longer sure. They are relentless.”

  “Ah, I see. More gown-fitting troubles?”

  “Madame Dumar tells me that everything is going perfectly, though if I could lose some twenty pounds and shrink about four inches before the big day, that would be even better.”

  “Don’t do that, I rather like the way you are shaped.”

  “I like it, too! Madame Dumar does not, however.”

  “So, that explains what you are running from. What are you wearing?”

  “They tell me that someday, it will be a wedding dress. I have my doubts, but Madame Dumar is one of the most popular modistes in London, so what do I know?”

  “Poor love. Are you going to be quite all right? Come over here and sit with me.”

  She stepped close enough to him that he could smell her sweet scent, violets and something warm and perfectly her, and he never thought he had been so happy.

  “I can’t sit,” she said. “Not if I don’t want to be stabbed with a thousand pins. You could try to hug me, I suppose, but I do not like your chances.”

  “I don’t either, but I am a clever man.”

  He stood, and sliding his hands up her bared arms, he bent carefully and kissed her. Emily was tense after her flight from the modiste, but he could feel her relax against him. The kiss barely grazed her lips, and only when she parted them naturally did he deepen it. Victor felt the familiar ache of desire that he always seemed to feel when he was close to Emily. The wedding couldn’t come soon enough, or at least the wedding night.

  Without thinking, he pressed himself closer to her and was immediately pricked with a dozen tiny points of pain.

  “Son of a—”

  Emily’s hand shot up to cover his mouth.

  “If I can’t swear after doing this for hours, neither can you!”

  Victor wryly bit back the words he had been going to say and kissed her soft fingertips instead.

  They worked together to disentangle Victor from the pins while preserving the work the modiste had done with the dress pieces. When they were both finally free, Emily looked down at the dress with wry dismay.

  “Well, I do believe this style will be all the rage with Society mothers who want to make sure the gentlemen look but don’t touch. Now all they need to do is to prevent the pins from falling out and sending the whole thing to the floor.”

  Victor had a brief but powerful image of pulling out every single damn pin and revealing what lay beneath, and he shook his head to clear it.

  “I’m sorry you are having such a difficult time, and I won’t keep you if you are occupied. I’m on my way through, but I brought you a gift.”

  “Oh, Victor...”

  “Not more chrysanthemums, I promise. Here.”

  He handed her the velvet box from his jacket pocket, and she took it rather timidly for a girl who had wanted a rich man.

  Emily gasped when opening the box revealed a deep star sapphire set in rose gold and suspended from a delicate chain. Victor grinned, pleased. The blue was a near exact match for her eyes, as he had thought.

  “It’s too much, Victor!”

  “Certainly not. If I have to get used to being the duke, you shall have to get used to being a duke’s wife. Only tell me if you like it. Or, er, if you hate it so much, you are going to sneeze yourself sick.”

  “No, I love it. It’s beautiful. Put it on me?”

  She turned so that Victor could fasten the clasp and turned back to him shyly.

  “Does it suit me?”

  “Everything does. I wasn’t worried. I’m glad you like it.”

  “I like it very much, and I love you. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” He hesitated, because he had come to do more than give her a gift.

  “What is it, Victor?”

  “You have still not told me what drove you to London to seek a husband.”

  “Victor...”

  “Let me finish. I find that I don’t care. As long as you love me, as long as there is no one else? Everything else is... completely unimportant. I promise you. And because it’s unimportant, tell me when you’re ready to. I would wait for you for a hundred years, Emily, and the most important thing is that you want me.”

  Emily knuckled some tears away as she smiled up at him.

  “You are the most wonderful thing,” she murmured, and damn the pins, he was going to try to kiss her again. Then they both heard a call in the passageway behind them.

  “Mademoiselle? Mademoiselle, there is still so much lace to be pinned.”

  “And here I go,” Emily said with a sigh. “Shall we be seeing you for dinner this Sunday?”

  “Of course. Good luck, darling.”

  As he left the house, Victor thought about living with Emily and what it would be like to simply be with her every day. The thought made a deep and warm joy spread through his chest, and he knew that he had finally found what he was for.

  * * *

  Aunt Winnie was taking the air with Sir Eugene in his phaeton that evening, and so Emily ate alone. Instead of being lonely, however, she felt as if she were brimming over with a kind of light she had never known.

  Somehow, despite why she had come to London and the circumstances that had brought her there, she was marrying Victor. When she thought back to their inauspicious first meeting, she had to giggle a little. Who would ever have known they would become so very important to one another?

  Even as her maid undressed her for bed. Emily could not stop touching the star sapphire that Victor had given her. It was a gorgeous piece of jewelry, but there was more to it than that.

  “I think he trusts me,” she whispered.

  The maid looked up.

  “Pardon, Lady Emily?”

  “Oh, nothing. I just realized that his grace, the duke, really trusts me. Not just loves me but trusts me.:

  “Ah, well, that takes no leap of genius, begging your pardon, my lady. Everyone can see that the duke thinks you hung the moon.”

  Emily laughed at her maid’s pert response.

  “Thank you for the vote of confidence. Believe me when I say I certainly didn’t know that for quite a while.”

  After her maid had dressed her in a soft nightdress, Emily didn’t go immediately to bed, though she had been sleeping far better than she had in the past. She wondered if Victor had, too. When she first came to his house, he looked a fright, all dark r
ings under his eyes and a bedlamite’s scattered stare. Now he smiled more, slept more, ate more. He looked happy.

  Emily turned over the words that he had said to her that day. As long as it wasn’t another man, he didn’t care what secret she was keeping. And God, she was so tired of keeping secrets. She was never made for it.

  She knew that she should consult with Aunt Winnie first. A shrewder, cynical woman would wait for the banns to be posted and the vows said.

  Emily also knew that Victor deserved better, and so did she.

  She took her locket from its place in her desk and touched it briefly. She could feel a pang of that deep sadness, but it wasn’t the heart-wrenching, world-ending pain that it had been before. She supposed she was healing, with all the bittersweet regret that went with it. It was time for something new.

  Emily took out a sheet of paper, and after a few moments, began to write by candlelight.

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Wick:

  I hope this letter finds you and all of Everly well. It has finally turned warm here in London. I suppose by now that you have heard the news. I am to be married to the Duke of Wellford, and I cannot wait to bring him home to meet all of you and to see Everly. Dear Everly; sometimes I go days without thinking of it at all, but I never forget for long.

  It is time, I think, that I have Sophie with me, and time she met the duke. If you will make the arrangements to have her sent to London, I will be happy to meet her at any time, or, if that isn’t feasible, I will arrange to come back to Swandon to pick her up myself...

  She finished off the letter and sealed it, but when she got back into bed, Emily still couldn’t sleep.

  Soon she would have her sweet baby back with her, and the hole in her heart could truly begin to mend.