by Mary Balogh
But by God, how could he have all but forgotten Emmy? And not even given her a thought during the voyage home? And not thought of seeing her in Luke’s ballroom? It was as if he had pushed her ruthlessly from his consciousness and slammed the door on her. He could no longer remember why he would have done so.
“Take me to her,” he said even as he watched another man step up to her and take her hand in his. William Webb, Lord Severidge, got to his feet.
“We are expecting an announcement tonight,” Luke said, “of her betrothal. To Powell, the man who is with her now. He has spoken with both Royce and me. She seems enamored of him.”
“Does she, by Jove?” Ashley had not taken his eyes off her. In full profile she was stunningly beautiful. He still could not believe she was Emmy. Emmy, all grown up, a woman and not a child. “Take me to her.”
He did not even notice his brother’s reluctance. Or if he did, he did not care about it. He had come here to dance. To dance with the prettiest young lady in the room. And she was the prettiest, by Jove. Emmy. He would dance with her. He had forgotten her deafness.
She seemed to know he was coming. She stood and turned to watch him come. But Emmy, he remembered with a jolt of recognition, had always seemed to possess that extra sense. She had always seemed to know when he was approaching from behind her. Even though she could not hear. Ah yes, there was that. He recalled it with a shock of memory. Emmy could not hear. Or speak. Or communicate except with her eyes and certain gestures he had grown adept at interpreting. And had they not devised something resembling a language between the two of them? Zounds but he had forgotten so much.
“My dear,” Luke said, “here is Ashley come home to us.”
She was Emmy, right enough. Emmy masquerading as a grand lady and doing magnificently at it. But Emmy all the same. There were the eyes, large and expressive, leaving one with the impression that one could look through them straight into her soul. But she was a woman. He felt strangely sad.
“Emmy.” He took her hand from her side. It was limp and icy cold. He smiled. “Hello, little fawn.” He had forgotten his old name for her until he heard it coming from his own lips. And how inappropriate it seemed now. She was an elegant, fashionable, beautiful woman. Again he felt that flashing of sadness. The name had used to fit so well.
Her mouth quirked into the most fleeting of smiles. But she was pale and serious. He brought her hand to his lips.
“Tell me you are glad to see me,” he said, almost instinctively speaking to her in the old way, mouthing his words carefully, speaking a little more slowly than he did with other people. “I have come all the way from India. It has been a weary journey. Tell me you are glad.”
She stared mutely at him and there was nothing in her eyes that he would instinctively have recognized. Ah. She was not glad. Seven years had passed. He wished unreasonably that she of all people and places and things could have remained the same—a wild and lovely and happy child. What a selfish thought!
“May I present Lord Powell to you, Ash?” Luke was saying. “My brother, Lord Ashley Kendrick, Powell.”
Ashley made his bow, as did Lord Powell, briskly, the annoyance unconcealed on his face. So this was to be Emmy’s husband? And he was already possessive of her? Even jealous, perhaps? Ashley turned back to Emily with a grin.
“They tried to put me to bed,” he said. “They tried to tell me I was tired. But I wanted to dance, Emmy. I am determined to do so. I promised to dance with the prettiest lady in the room. She is you. Come and dance with me.” Her hand still lay in his. He covered it with his free hand. “You see? The sets are forming.”
“This set is mine,” Lord Powell said stiffly. “Lady Emily has agreed to sit with me.”
“Besides, Ash,” Luke said, “Emily cannot dance.”
“Because she cannot hear?” Ashley grinned at her. “Is it true, Emmy? Does your deafness make it impossible for you to dance? Do you not know the steps? Can you not watch the other dancers? Do you not long to dance?”
Her eyes had taken on depth and he realized with some satisfaction that he could still read them, just as if seven years had not passed since he had last looked into them. Yes, of course she longed to dance. She always had. He knew it as surely as if she had put her feelings into words. Had no one else this evening seen the longing there? The longing to dance to the silent melody she could hear in her heart? And he was drunk with longing himself.
“Ashley.” His brother’s voice had taken on the firmness of authority. “Emily cannot hear the music. Besides, this set is promised to Lord Powell. Come, allow me to find you another partner.”
But Ashley was gazing into Emily’s eyes. “Let Emmy choose,” he said, smiling at her. “Which will it be, Emmy? Will you sit here, where I will wager you have sat all evening? Or will you dance with me? Will you dance with me?”
For several moments she merely stared. Her nod, when it came, was almost imperceptible. But they all saw it.
“Emily,” Luke said, but she was looking at Ashley, not him. “Ash—” But Ashley took no notice of him. He was still smiling at Emily, a look of triumph and recklessness in his eyes.
Lord Powell bowed. “I shall return to take Lady Emily in to supper,” he said.
“Come,” Ashley said, squeezing the cold little hand that lay in his own. “We will dance, Emmy. We will prove to these unbelievers that a man who is weary through to the marrow of his bones and a woman who cannot hear music or anything else can dance without missing a step.”
She walked beside him to take their places in a set. Emily had not grown taller since the age of fifteen, he noticed. She had been slightly above the average in height then, and slim and agile as a young colt. She had developed womanly curves since then, accentuated by the fact that she wore stays and hoops. But she had not really changed in any other way. Not physically, anyway.
He wondered if they really had tamed her during the seven years of his absence. If they had imposed all the trappings of civilization upon her. He hoped not. By God, he hoped not.
She looked up at him and he smiled at her as the orchestra began to play. Ah, yes. And her face was no longer that of a pretty child, but that of a lovely young woman.
He knew he had just done a dastardly thing. He had taken her from the man who was apparently to propose to her and announce his betrothal to her tonight. He had interrupted the set the man had reserved with her. He had stolen her away with the temptation of fulfilling a dream he knew very well she must always have had. Emmy would always have wanted to dance; anyone who had ever known her must surely understand that, he reasoned. He had not known her for seven years, but he remembered her as a child who was born to dance. He was drunk with emotion. He did not pause to analyze the strange thought.
He had done a dastardly thing. Another heavy burden to add to a dauntingly long list.
But he did not care the snap of two fingers. Tonight he had arrived home. Tonight he was going to enjoy himself. Tonight he wanted to dance with Emmy. And Emmy wanted to dance. And dance they would, by God. Together.
• • •
It was only later that she realized what she had done, how very unmannerly she had been. She was remorseful then, for herself and the selfish weakness she had portrayed and for Lord Powell, whom she must have humiliated. But it was only later that she felt those things.
She had been caught up in some magical spell, and reality did not exist for her. He was there before her, speaking with her, holding her cold, cold hand in his strong warm one, smiling at her, calling her his little fawn as he had used to do, just as if seven years had rolled back and they were as they had used to be. He was here again, real flesh and blood.
Ashley.
He was the same and different. His eyes were the same, his blue eyes that searched desperately for meaning, for peace. His smile was the same—boyish, mischievous, reckless. His restless energ
y was the same. He was the Ashley she had known and adored. But he was different. Peace had forsaken him, and with it . . . hope? Was it despair that impelled him forward now? It looked very like despair to her searching eyes. And he was no longer a boy to whom restlessness and eagerness were appropriate. He was a man, hard and harsh beneath the surface gaiety. He was thin, haggard. Not with the paleness of one who has traveled long and far, but with the paleness of one who has suffered almost more than he can bear.
He looked like a man who was close to breaking and who might yet break.
Ashley!
Yet he was there before her. He had come home. And he needed her to dance with him. Not only wanted it, but needed it. She sensed his need like a tangible thing. Even such a small thing as her refusal might snap him in two.
But despite that realization, there was magic. Irresistible, wonderful magic. He was asking her to dance. He did not doubt for a moment that she could dance. And he knew instinctively that she wished to dance, that she had always wanted to dance. She had almost forgotten how well Ashley had always understood her. Perhaps it was one reason she had loved him so dearly. He had seemed so nearly the other half of herself.
He was asking her to dance.
How could she possibly resist? How could she possibly say no? The temptation was just too powerful. Though at the time she did not even think of it as temptation. If she had, perhaps she would also have paused to realize that there was something wrong about accepting. But she did not realize it—until later.
And so she danced. A minuet. With Ashley.
It was not as easy as she had expected. Now that she was moving herself, she was not at liberty to watch as she always could when she sat at the edge of the floor, sometimes with her eyes half closed, seeing the rhythm and patterns of the dance as an ordered, visual kaleidoscope. Feeling them in the pulsing of her blood. Although she knew the steps, now that she was part of the kaleidoscope, she was not quite sure of the timing. But Ashley grinned encouragement at her and the magic caught at her again. She closed her eyes for several moments, not even trying to watch the other dancers, merely feeling the vibrations of their feet on the floor and of the instruments playing the tune. And then it was almost easy. She could feel the rhythm pulsing in her body. She moved her feet in time to the pulse, using the remembered steps and patterns of the minuet. As if she had stepped into a painting and had become part of the perfect symmetry of its composition.
It was, she thought, the most glorious moment of her life. She was dancing. With Ashley. And then she was smiling at him, feeling all her happiness flowing out to him, feeling all the joy of the music she had never consciously heard and never would hear.
“Ah, Emmy,” he said after a half hour, when sadly the set was coming to an end, “you need to throw off the disguise of fashionable woman and become again my little fawn. Though you never can be quite that again. You are all grown up. Is it a disguise you wear? Or is this what they have done to you? Have they tamed you and your heart has not cried out for the wild? Do they have you singing prettily here, like a linnet in a cage?”
She saw his words. In addition she could see the harshness and bitterness in his face. Ashley’s face, also in disguise. Like a grotesque mask that needed to be peeled away.
“Ashley.” Doris had come up to them and had taken her brother’s arm. She was laughing. “You came back downstairs. I thought you were exhausted. And Emily, you can dance. How very clever of you. How do you do it when you cannot hear?”
“Emmy can feel the music,” Ashley said. “’Tis inside her, Doris, whereas ’tis merely outside you and me.”
“Oh, fie,” she said, laughing, “how strangely you talk, Ashley. You are to take me in to supper. I have a thousand questions to ask, eight hundred of them about young Thomas. Here is Lord Powell for Emily.”
It was then that Emily too saw Lord Powell approach and that the magic was broken. She realized what she had done. She turned to smile uncertainly at her suitor.
• • •
“Egad, but the lad has the energy of a twenty-year-old,” Lord Quinn said to Lady Sterne as they sat at the supper table, watching Ashley talking and laughing with his sister and her husband, with his mother, and with Agnes and William. “One would have sworn when he first arrived, Marj, that he was on the verge of collapsing with exhaustion. He is happy to be home, I warrant you.”
“Lud, but so thin,” Lady Sterne said. “He looks ill, Theo, though he is as handsome as the devil when he smiles, it must be admitted.”
“Aye, but ’tis the voyage that has done that to him,” Lord Quinn said. “A few English dinners and a few draughts of English ale will soon coat his ribs and plump him out again.”
“Is he here to stay?” she asked. “’Twill mean much to Anna and Luke if he is. He has been sorely missed.”
“I daresay,” Lord Quinn stated. “He has made his fortune in India, or so ’tis said, and he has married a rich wife into the bargain. Her papa has died and left everything to her, and therefore to my nephy too. They have come home to stay, I warrant you, Marj. There is the young lad to be considered, after all. England is the place to raise children.”
“Yes.” Lady Sterne smiled. “And so I may drift into old age and know my adopted family and yours to be happily settled, Theo. ’Tis a comfortable feeling. All will be complete by the time this night is out, think you?” She raised her eyebrows and nodded in the direction of the dining room door. Lord Powell and Emily, having finished their supper early, were leaving the room together.
“Aye, by my life,” Lord Quinn said. “A wedding in June, would you say, Marj? And Lady Powell will be delivered of a boy come nine months following that same night?”
Lady Sterne sighed, too accustomed to the bluntness of her lover’s language to be shocked by the indelicacy of his remark. “Faith, but ’tis to be hoped,” she said. “My little Emily settled. I did not think to see the day, Theo. I thought no man would be willing to overlook the affliction.”
“Nay, but the gel is as pretty as a picture, Marj,” he said, handing her a large linen handkerchief, with which she dabbed at her eyes. He chuckled. “And not daunted by her affliction. She can dance, by Jove. Egad, but my nephy had some audacity to lead her out into the set as he did.”
“Dear Emily,” Lady Sterne said. “And dear Anna. Who will make the announcement after supper, do you think, Theo? Luke or Victor? I can scarce wait.”
4
“LUKE?” Anna touched his arm and looked in the direction of the dining room door. “They are leaving.”
He stopped cooling her face with his fan for a moment. “And so they are,” he said. “Neither is hungry and both find the indoors stuffy and long for air and exercise. ’Tis nothing to be alarmed about, my dear. ’Tis called youth and young love, I believe.” He smiled at her.
She gazed at him as if all the answers to life’s worries might be found in his eyes. “She will have him, you think?” she asked. “She feels an affection for him, Luke? She will be happy with him?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Your questions become progressively less possible to answer, madam,” he said. “’Tis my belief that the answer to all three may be yes. But only Emily and Powell can answer them for sure—and only with the passage of time. Are you intent upon creasing my cuff by gripping so hard?”
She released her grip immediately. “Luke,” she said, “why did he come back downstairs? He was so very tired.”
“I believe for that very reason,” he said. “He was too tired to sleep. Too emotionally excited, perhaps, at being home again after so long. I may have trouble sleeping myself, Anna—unless you can be persuaded to help me, of course.” His eyelids drooped over his eyes for a moment.
“Why did he dance with Emmy?” she asked. “And why did she dance with him, Luke? She danced with him. I had no idea she could.”
Luke shrugged elaborately. “H
e wished to dance with the loveliest lady at the ball,” he said. “Emily is the loveliest—after you. She danced with him because, apparently, she has wished all her life to dance. She did remarkably well, my dear. She did not make a spectacle of herself.”
“Luke.” She looked at him with appeal in her eyes. Yet she seemed to have no words for what she wished to say. “Luke . . .”
He drew his closed fan along one of her arms to the ends of her fingers. “Emily is receiving her offer at this very moment,” he said. “She has appeared somewhat enamored of him, my dear. Certainly she has grown into a sensible young lady who is unwilling to pine her way through life as either Victor’s dependent or mine. And she is not near the untamed creature she once was. Ashley has his wife and his son staying at a London hotel. Tomorrow I shall go and fetch them home. I will persuade him to stay here and rest instead of accompanying me. You must not upset yourself unnecessarily. There are realities to dictate everyone’s behavior.”
“I am so very happy to see him at home again,” she said. “Happy for you, Luke, because he is your only surviving brother and there is a close bond between you. And happy for him. I cannot believe that India is the place to spend more than a few years of one’s life. It is certainly not the place in which to raise a young family. I am happy.”
“But you could wish that his timing had been a little better,” he said with a smile. “That he had arrived at least a few days later, or preferably a few weeks.”
“Yes,” she said lamely.
“You have ever been overprotective of Emily, my dear,” he said. “You persist in seeing her as delicate and more than usually vulnerable merely because she lacks one of the five senses most of us take very much for granted. Emily is not delicate. Merely different—very different, I will confess. But she has a strength of character beyond that of almost any other woman I know, I do believe. Since the day he left, has she given one sign that she cannot order her life without him?”