by Anne Stuart
“I wouldn’t think of it,” Melisande flatly.
Brandon gave her his most perfect smile, perfect for the unmarked side of his face, that was. “Someday you’ll have to tell me all about your little friend,” he murmured. “In the meantime, I suppose I owe my brother my support.”
“You owe him a great deal more than that. And leave Emma alone. She doesn’t need your kind of trouble.”
“You offend me! What kind of trouble am I?”
She reached up and whispered in his ear. “Catnip.”
He stared at her, nonplussed, but his sister-in-law whirled away. He glanced across the room. Benedick was trapped by the vicar and in between was a bevy of brightly clad young misses, many of whom were sneaking glances at him, both horrified and fascinated. They failed to interest him.
He would give the other side of his face to be back in Scotland, he thought, keeping his gaze impassive, or any place where people didn’t stare at him and whisper.
Benedick managed to detach himself from the vicar and he was moving among the guests, the perfect host. He needed no rescuing, more’s the pity. Sooner or later Brandon was going to have to abase himself, beg forgiveness for the copious and horrifying sins of the past, but for now he had better things to do.
He had to find the young woman who’d watched him so gravely. The woman with the bowed head and the gray eyes, the woman who reminded him of something, someone. He intended to find out what.
Chapter 3
The reception was even more crowded than she’d imagined, Emma thought, hiding her dismay as she slipped in the side door of the rooms. She knew very few of these people, and most of them would have nothing to do with her, which was just as well. She had no patience for the indolent upper classes. She only wished the Gaggle had been there, the hard-working women who’d serviced these very men and now simply wanted a better life. Melisande had invited them, of course. Her friend had never favored social conventions over generosity of spirit, but the Gaggle was more sensible. They’d sat quietly in the back of the chapel, they’d left quickly, and most of the guests hadn’t even realized they were there. None of them would allow Melisande to commit the social breach of inviting them into her home, and never would.
She could have done the same, Emma thought wearily, if she hadn’t been Alexandra’s godmother. She moved silently through the crowds, eyes alert, a polite smile on her face. Many of the guests were as accepting as their hosts, but there were a number of them who had to be invited despite Melisande’s protests, and the last thing Emma wanted to do was run afoul of them, particularly the vicar.
Emma despised him, and she made it a practice to do everything she could to avoid him. They’d been introduced once, and he’d ignored her ever since, much to her relief, but she couldn’t rid herself of the notion that he watched her, presumably dreaming about placing the wanton woman in the stocks, if they even still had such things.
Well, she had been a wanton woman, she reminded herself. She had sold her favors for money, not that she’d ever seen much of it, and such things were not to be overlooked by a man of God, apparently. She was tempted to brush by him, whisper “Mary Magdalene” in his ear, but that would have been a very bad idea. As far as she knew Mr. Trowbridge had no sense of humor and was best avoided all together.
She was instantly aware the moment Brandon Rohan entered the room, watching him as he bent over Melisande and the baby. She watched as emotions played over Melisande’s face – wariness, disapproval, and then laughter, and the unmarked side of his face lit with his own smile. She’d forgotten the power of that smile, and it struck her like a blow. She needed to leave.
She had almost made the stairs when she heard the baby’s fretful cry. She hesitated for just a moment, and when she resolutely turned again she came face to face with the vicar, his hand clamping painfully around her arm.
“Excuse me, Mr. Trowbridge,” she said politely, trying to free herself. It only needed this! “I was just on my way to help Lady Melisande. . .”
“I think that tiny baby would do well away from your wicked influence,” the man said, moving in on her, somehow managing to herd her toward the French doors that led to the terrace. He was very strong for such a thin, dried-up old man, possibly even stronger than she was, and for Melisande’s sake she wasn’t about to make a scene.
“I beg your pardon,” she said in the frosty voice that had cowed many a young surgeon. The vicar didn’t cow so easily.
“And well you might,” he said, moving her ahead of them, out the French door that still stood ajar, even though the pleasant spring breeze had sharpened. As he pushed her across the wide terrace toward the steps that led to the gardens, she stumbled slightly, unused to walking backwards. “Alexandra Rohan is a good Christian baby. She doesn’t need a handmaiden of the devil nearby.”
“Handmaiden of the devil?” Emma echoed. She wanted to laugh at the melodramatic phrase, but she sensed this was no laughing matter. “Don’t be absurd, sir. I’m no danger to anyone.”
He was holding her too close to him, and he smelled of sweat and dust, like dirty clothes left in a cupboard. She wrinkled her nose, wondering if she should call for help, but that would be ridiculous. A country vicar wasn’t a threat. Chances were he simply wanted to chastise her for the errors of her ways. She could survive being prayed over—it wouldn’t be the first time.
The terrace was deserted now. “Mr. Trowbridge,” she began, trying to sound conciliatory and failing. She was growing angry, and she had an impressive temper when riled, her greatest failing. “Would you please release me? We are both guests of Viscount and Lady Rohan, and they would be most displeased to know you’d manhandled me.”
He’d maneuvered her down the steps, and now he pushed her into the tall boxwood, out of sight. “I doubt he would care – he’s merely indulging his flighty wife by having you here,” Trowbridge said darkly. “I know your kind—degenerate and evil. You fornicate for money, you have unnatural congress with those women. . .”
He’d gone too far. “Males, females, dogs, cats, anyone who’s got the price,” she said, slipping into the familiar Cockney tones of the women she’d worked with. “Have a problem with that, do you, ducks?”
“Shameless,” he muttered. “Shameless, foul temptation in such a pretty package.”
“Well, I wouldn’t be much of a temptation if I weren’t pretty,” she pointed out in a practical voice. Really, this was too ridiculous. She didn’t want to slam her knee into his privy parts, but he might not allow her any other choice. “Let go of me, sir, or you’ll regret it.”
He moved even closer, and his foul breath was hot on her face. “You’ll be the one to regret. . .”
“I suggest you do as the lady requests,” a smooth voice interrupted them. “Or I might have to make you. May I remind you that my brother has charge of the living here, and he can easily replace you. All it would require is a word from me.”
Emma could feel the color drain away from her face. Of all people, it was Brandon Rohan standing there, quite negligently, a cool expression on his half-ruined face.
To her relief Mr. Trowbridge immediately released her, and she stumbled back, almost toppling into the bushes. She hadn’t realized how unnerved she’d been.
The vicar had regained his composure, giving him a pious smile. “Just a private conversation, Lord Brandon,” he said. “Mrs. Cadbury misunderstood my concerns.”
Brandon raised an eyebrow. “Did she, now?”
The vicar swallowed. There was a silky menace in Brandon’s rich voice, and Emma suddenly remembered he’d been a soldier, a war hero in fact. There was a deadly quiet about him that was threatening, even to a pompous cleric like Mr. Trowbridge.
The man cleared his throat. “Of course, you did, didn’t you, Mrs. Cadbury?” He turned to her, but there was no question in his beady eyes. He simply assumed she would cover for him. “She wouldn’t think of making a fuss and embarrassing her generous benefactors.”
Oh, wouldn’t she? Emma thought, annoyed. But Trowbridge had known just how to prick her—the Rohans were indeed her benefactors, though she had always thought of them as friends. The man’s words had forcibly reminded her just how separate and alone she really was.
She had too much experience stifling her reactions to let it show, and she met Brandon’s dark expression with a cool smile. “You’re very thoughtful, Lord Brandon,” she said, “but there’s no problem here. The vicar was merely giving me spiritual advice, but we’re done now.”
There was no sign of gratification in Trowbridge’s face, just solemn piety. “Perhaps you misunderstood, Lord Brandon, because you’ve been away for so long. I must say it’s good to see you looking so well. Your necessary sojourn in Scotland has agreed with you.”
Brandon’s cool expression didn’t change. “How kind of you to keep track of my whereabouts. The Highlands of Scotland are not for everyone, but I find them quite amiable. And as you reminded me, the trip was necessary.”
The words were softly spoken, but the vicar finally seemed to realize he was treading on dangerous ground. An awkward silence filled the afternoon, broken only by the buzz of conversation filtering into the garden. “I’d best leave you two—fortunately I have no need to worry about Mrs. Cadbury’s reputation, such as it is. Again, my lord, I’m delighted to see you again.” The vicar turned, making a hasty escape.
Emma knew she should make an excuse, follow the vicar. The last thing she wanted was a tête-à-tête with Brandon Rohan, the man who’d forgotten all about her, the man who still affected her, but for a moment she was frozen. He was looking down at her and for the first time in three years she felt alive again.
“Do I really know that man?” Brandon said in a lighter voice. “I would have thought he was one thing I wouldn’t forget.”
The words surprised her, but she had no intention of discussing his lack of memory. “I have no idea, my lord.” She looked up, forcing herself to meet his eyes. She no longer wore her enveloping bonnet, and her face was there for him to look at. “You’re very kind to come to my rescue,” she added. “But Mr. Trowbridge would never cross the line—it was simply a misunderstanding.”
His winter-blue eyes drifted over her, and she wondered what they saw. A woman past her first youth, pretty no matter what she did to disguise it, a woman who was shunned by society and disdained for her very existence.
But he wouldn’t know that. He didn’t know anything about her. As far as he knew he’d never seen her before.
“I see,” he said, and she knew he didn’t believe her. Brandon Rohan had come to her rescue without even knowing who she was. And he never would know, not if she could help it. The whole situation was absurd, laughable, but her sense of humor had vanished.
“I should go in,” she said suddenly.
“I’ll escort you.”
“There’s no need.”
“I beg to differ,” Brandon said, holding out his arm. “My sister-in-law would never forgive me if I allowed her dearest friend to wander around the gardens alone. What if someone decided to accost you?”
She looked up at him. The bright sunlight had faded, dusk was coming on, but she could still see him quite clearly. He looked so different from the dying man she’d tended in the hospital, so different from the ruined soul who’d run afoul of the Heavenly Host. The left half of his face was still a crisscross of scars and ruination, and she’d seen the almost imperceptible limp. But he was tall, towering over her own middling height, and his shoulders were broad. He radiated health and strength, so very different from the broken man she’d foolishly come to care about.
This man didn’t need her care. He was healed, or as much as he could be, a man seemingly at peace with himself and the world. Except that his smiles were few and fleeting, and there was a darkness in those icy-blue eyes.
“Most people wish to avoid me,” she said before she could think better of it.
“Why is that, Mrs. Cadbury?”
He remembered her name from their brief introduction, even if her face was lost in the mists of time. She managed a rueful smile. “I am not of your class, sir. I am a working woman, doing the best I can with no family to rely on.”
“Indeed. You are a surgeon, my sister-in-law said. That must require nerves of steel. It’s little wonder that the vicar failed to intimidate you.”
He was right, though she wasn’t about to tell him so. It did take a lot to frighten her. In truth, the unexpected return of Brandon Rohan was the only thing that had managed to break her hard-won calm in years.
“So you see, I’m entirely capable of returning to the house on my own,” she said, and yet she didn’t move. Didn’t want to move.
“Maybe I need you to protect me,” he said.
She laughed, as she was expected to, but his words gave her a strange start. She had protected him, watched over him, saved him. She would still do anything he asked of her, if only to keep him safe.
She was being absurd. She’d never seen someone less in need of saving now. “I think you’ll manage very well, Lord Brandon. Melisande has told me of your service in the late war. You are, in fact, a hero. Doubtless people will wish to shake your hand, not stab you in the back.”
“Yet they’d stab you in the back?” His voice was quizzical, and she once more cursed herself. Their long conversations so many years ago had been casual, free of social constraints. Now he seemed to pick up on every offhand remark she made.
“Of course not,” she said, mentally dismissing Mr. Fenrush, the surgeon in charge, and his hostile underlings who’d probably burn her at the stake if they could. It was little wonder that, despite the vicar, this country village still managed to feel peaceful and welcoming in contrast.
“Then what did the vicar want from you?”
She thought quickly, coming up with the best lie she could think of. “In fact, he was warning me about my habit of walking to the village and back. He was afraid I might catch a stray bullet.”
This guileless answer didn’t appease him. “It’s not hunting season.”
Emma bit her lower lip in frustration. “I thought it was always hunting season.”
“Clearly you’re not much of a country girl,” he replied.
“I am. I grew up in Devon. My family, however, were middle class, and hunting wasn’t a part of their life.” Unless they were hunting the devil and scouring it from their daughter’s flesh.
Brandon said nothing, simply surveying her in the gathering dusk. He held out his arm for her to take, but at that moment Emma’s precious courage failed her. She was exhausted from her long hours of work at the hospital, annoyed with the vicar’s bullying, but most of all she was shaken to the core by the sudden reappearance of Brandon Rohan.
She hadn’t allowed herself to think of him over the last three years, sternly dismissing him from her mind when he would appear. She had no such power over her dreams, and countless times she’d found herself talking with him, lying beside him, doing things with him that she knew she would hate in real life. But in dreams the touching, the tasting, the possession no longer seemed like an assault, and she would wake up damp and shaking with longing.
It was all too much. She couldn’t bring herself to put her hand on his arm, to touch him in any way—it brought back too many sensations. It was cowardice, pure and simple, but she wasn’t going to fight it any longer, no matter how rude or peculiar it might look.
“I believe I might retire to my rooms,” she said, annoyed to hear a breathless note in her usually calm voice. “I’ve very tired, and I have a long trip back to London tomorrow.”
He frowned. “Tomorrow? Why so soon? My sister informed me you were going to stay the week.”
She felt her stomach tighten. “You were talking about me?” she blurted out, and then shut her mouth, appalled at her bad manners.
He raised an eyebrow. “Melisande likes to talk, and I have learned to simply let her choose the subject. I wasn’t checkin
g up on you, Mrs. Cadbury, if that’s what you were thinking.”
She didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. She kept her expression calm. It was one of her great strengths—to appear unmoved despite the circumstances she was thrust into. She’d learned that in her childhood, and the life that followed had given her more than enough occasions to improve that particular skill.
“Of course you weren’t,” she said quickly. She was reaching the end of that vaunted calm, and she had to get away from him. “Why should you? But it remains that I’m too tired to return to the celebration. Good-bye, Lord Brandon. Have a safe trip back to Scotland.”
He was watching her, and there was no way she could read his expression, guess at what he was thinking. “Oh, I’m not returning to Scotland, at least not any time soon. My brother Charles is arriving tomorrow, and much as I’d prefer to avoid him I occasionally do my duty. Besides, there are far too many interesting. . .things here in the south of England.”
Was he suggesting one of those interesting “things” was her, or was it her wistful longing? It didn’t matter. Their paths wouldn’t cross again—she lived in a very different world, thank God, and she knew how to avoid occasions that were detrimental to her peace of mind. She wouldn’t, couldn’t give up visiting Melisande, who was more a sister than a friend, but she would take care to come when no one else was visiting.
“Then I wish you a pleasant visit,” she said hurriedly, turning to walk away.
Her hope of a quick escape was dashed as he caught her wrist, and she couldn’t help her sudden wince of pain. The skinny old vicar had been rougher than she realized.
Brandon immediately released her, his thunderous look made more menacing with his half-ruined face. “Did he hurt you?” There was danger there, which startled her. The sweet, broken soldier in the hospital, the lost boy fighting addictions and evil companions in his brother’s house—this was a far cry from those very different incarnations of Brandon Rohan. This man was cold, strong and dangerous.