“The earl used to be known around the campfires as a fine hand with the biscuit dough,” he rejoined. “I am not a stranger to the process of preparing food, Emmie.”
“Well, sit,” she said, some of the tension leaving her. “I’ll bake, and we’ll talk.”
“About Winnie?”
“Yes, about Winnie.” Emmie’s mouth compressed into a thin line. “She ran off yesterday morning. Stevens and I found her by the pond when it was all but pitch dark. She was not the least contrite, but rather chastised me for not having Cook set aside scraps for Scout’s dinner.”
“He was a puppy when I left. Somebody has been feeding him something.”
“He’s not a bad dog,” Emmie said as she slid hot scones onto a wire rack. “But Winnie has become increasingly defiant, disobedient, rude, and unpleasant. I am loathe to admit it, but she has reminded me lately of her father.”
“She was a little cool toward Val at breakfast. That is unusual, as Valentine is the most charming man in my family, save His Grace when he’s wheedling.”
Emmie dropped more batter onto the tray. “I am hoping she was just worried your absence would become protracted, and with you here, she will settle down.”
“But?” The earl resisted the temptation to help himself to a hot scone.
“But Winnie has been through a great deal, and she will go through another transition when I leave.”
“You are not leaving.”
“I will not argue the matter with you when Winnie can walk into the kitchen at any minute.”
“Fair enough, but you will listen to what I say, Emmie Farnum. You are too damned skinny, you aren’t getting enough rest, your temper is short, and I don’t care if your menses are going to start this afternoon, you have no call to be treating me like I’m your enemy.”
“Do not,” she hissed, “mention my bodily functions outside of a locked bedroom door.”
St. Just ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. “I want to help, all right? All I’m saying is you seem frazzled, and if Winnie is part of the problem, I’ll tackle that, but we need to find a way to talk that doesn’t leave us at daggers drawn.”
His tone was reasonable, almost pleading, and when he saw her shoulders relax, he knew he was making some progress—not much, but some.
“If you would keep Winnie occupied today, I’d appreciate it.”
“Done. And when you are through here, please just take a nap, Em.” He glanced around the kitchen. “Leave the mess. I’ve got staff, and they can clean up for once. Don’t come down to dinner if you don’t want to, either. Val understands—he plays his piano for hours most days, and if we see him at meals, it’s a coincidence. Just…” He looked her up and down, trying to keep the worry from his expression. “Just get some rest,” he finished with a tentative smile. “Please?”
She nodded, able to return a small smile of her own.
Taking his chances, St. Just stepped over to her, brushed a kiss to her forehead, and took his leave. He was more alarmed that she merely bore the kiss silently rather than swat him again with her towel.
He took Winnie up on Caesar and purposely hacked through the woods, but Winnie sat before him, silent and sullen, only occasionally calling to Scout.
He left her up on the horse while he himself got down, putting her above him while he spoke. “You’re in a taking about something, princess. When you want to let somebody in on it, talk to me. For now, are you ready to coach me over fences?”
“I am, but Caesar likes Vicar, so you might find him less willing to mind you.”
“Everybody likes Vicar.” Hell, I even like Vicar.
“I don’t. He seems nice, but he’s been kissing Miss Emmie, and that isn’t nice at all.”
What?
With admirable calm, St. Just merely tossed Winnie up onto the fence rail, resisting with saintly force of will the urge to turn the child into his spy.
“I rather enjoy kissing,” he said, “certain ladies, that is.” He planted a loud kiss on Winnie’s cheek—“and some horses”—another one for Caesar’s nose—“but not dogs, old lad.” He blew a kiss to Scout, who looked—as he usually did—a little confused.
“All right, you.” He plunked Winnie onto his shoulders as Stevens led the horse away forty-five minutes later. “Time for luncheon. What did you think of the rides today?”
“You ride better than Vicar,” Winnie said with heartening loyalty, “but I don’t think Wulf and Red are right-hoofed, you know? They like to go this way”—she twirled a finger counterclockwise—“better than the other way.”
“My heavens,” he exclaimed in genuine astonishment. “What a good eye you have. Have you told Vicar this?”
“I don’t talk to him.”
“I know. He kisses Miss Emmie.” Much as it pained him to—bitterly, piercingly—he went on. “You know, Miss Emmie might like kissing him, Winnie, in which case it is none of our business.” As Winnie was sitting on his shoulders, he could feel the tension and anger flowing back into her.
“It’s nasty. My father was always kissing the maids, and that was nasty, too.”
“Do you think it’s nasty when I kiss my horses?” the earl asked, hefting her to the ground.
“No.” Winnie shook her head. “Red and Caesar and Wulf don’t think so either.”
“What about when I kiss you?”
“You are always silly about it. That’s fine.”
Relieved and realizing there was more to discuss with Emmie, St. Just took the child into the house, supervised a thorough washing of the hands, then another washing of the hands as Scout required eviction after the first round.
They shared a convivial lunch with Val, who obligingly took Winnie by the hand and went off to hold a tea party with Scout and Mrs. Bear. St. Just repaired to his library, where he wrote his thank-you note to Their Graces for their hospitality, and then jotted off a similar note to Greymoor, in whose home he’d stayed for a couple nights in Surrey.
There was more of course—he eyed the remaining pile of unopened mail with distaste—but it would keep.
“Your brother is a demon for his technique,” Emmie remarked when St. Just found her at the kitchen table. “Is he making up for missed time, or is he always so dedicated?”
“He’s always dedicated. He was closest to our brother Victor and barely out of university when Bart died. In some ways, Val is my… lost brother.”
“Your ages are the most different. Can I get you something?”
Well, he thought, she was in a better mood at least, and something to eat in Emmie’s kitchen was never a bad idea. It gave him an excuse to linger, if nothing else.
“I will accept whatever you put before me, provided you made it.”
“It seems all I do these days is bake.” She was banging her crockery around, dumping ingredients into the large bowl, and stirring furiously.
“Val told me he got up to check on the piano, Emmie.” The earl watched as she flitted around the kitchen. “At five in the morning, you were mixing bread dough.”
“I usually am, and I had the wedding cake to start.” She was also frowning mightily at her bowl.
“And Stevens tells me,” the earl went on, “it now takes several hours to make your deliveries. And”—he rose and stood before her, frowning right back—“you used to have an assistant over at the cottage, and you told her she wouldn’t be needed for as long as you’re baking at Rosecroft.”
“My lands!” Emmie threw up her hands. “I suppose you also took it upon yourself to learn how I take my tea.”
“You like it very hot, rich with cream, and sweet,” he said, and somehow, though he hadn’t intended it, the words had an erotic undertone, at least to his ears.
“Is there a point to all of this?” Emmie whipped something into the bowl with a wooden spoon.
“There is,” he said, his frown turning to one of puzzlement. Why had she permitted him intimacies? Had she simply been too worn down to resist him? Too
weary and lonely? Was the vicar leading her a dance?
He sat and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I am trying to make your life easier here.”
“By poking into my business and accosting me while I work?” But then she stopped her furious whipping and set the bowl down. “Ye gods, I sound like Winnie. I’m sorry, I’m just… There is too much to do for us to be indulging in pointless conversation. I made a mistake with you last night, St. Just. I was tired and… lonely and I wanted…”
“Yes?” He kept his tone even, as if he were verifying expected dangerous orders for his next mission riding dispatch.
“I don’t know what I wanted, but misbehaving with you is not the answer.”
“What do you want, Emmie?” he asked in the same carefully steady tone.
“Now?” She sat with a thump. “I want… to sleep. But people will have weddings and this cake is supposed to be over at the assembly rooms tomorrow morning and even if you wanted to help, I doubt there was much call for decorating wedding cakes in the cavalry.”
“Now there you would be surprised.” He shifted to sit beside her. “The men were forever getting married, and their wives were forever running off or going home to mama or catching their fellows in the wrong tent, and so on. Compared to battles and drills, it was almost entertaining.”
In the room above the kitchen, Val switched to a slow, lyrical etude, and for a few minutes, Emmie just sat beside him while they listened.
“He is very talented, isn’t he?”
“Appallingly so,” St. Just said, eyeing her hands where they rested in her lap. “And at everything he turns his hand to. He rides better than I do, paints better than Her Grace does, sings as well as Westhaven ever did, but hides it all behind his keyboards. Em?” St. Just’s arm settled around her shoulders. “Do you regret what we did last night?”
When he thought of her eagerness, her ardor in the night, and then compared it with her behavior with him today…
She blew out a breath, and beneath his arm, he felt her shoulders drop. “I do not regret it the way you might think. I will always treasure the memory and…”
“And what?” His fingers began to circle on her nape, and he felt all manner of tension and anxiety flowing out of her.
“And that’s all.” She sighed, bowing her head. “I made a mistake with you. It isn’t my first mistake, but I hope it will be my last. I can’t survive another such mistake.”
He was silent, not asking her why it was a mistake. He could guess that.
“I think I’m getting better,” he said quietly. “I go for as much as a week between nightmares, and the last time it rained, I was able to stay away from the brandy. I haven’t had to build a wall now for a few weeks, Emmie.”
“Oh, St. Just.” She rested her forehead on his shoulder. “It isn’t you. You must not think it’s you. You’re lovely, perfect, dear… And you are getting better, I know you are, and I know some lady will be deliriously happy to be your countess one day.”
He listened, trying to separate the part of him that craved her words—lovely, perfect, dear—from the part of him that heard only her rejection.
“Is there someone else?” he asked as neutrally as he could.
Emmie shook her head. “Again, not in the sense you mean. I am not in love with anybody else, and I don’t plan to be. But I am leaving, St. Just. I have thought this through until my mind is made up. My leaving will be for the best as far as Winnie is concerned, and she comes first.”
“I don’t understand,” he said on an exasperated sigh. “You love that child, and she loves you. She needs you, and if you marry me, she can have you not just as a cousin or governess or neighbor, but as a mother, for God’s sake. You simply aren’t making sense, Em, and if it puzzles me, it’s likely going to drive Winnie to Bedlam.”
He glanced over at her, and wasn’t that just lovely, she was in tears now.
“Ah, Emmie.” He pulled her against him in a one-armed hug. “I am sorry, sweetheart.” She stayed in his embrace for three shuddery breaths then pulled back.
“You cannot call me that.”
“When do you think you’re leaving?” he said, dodging that one for now.
“Sooner is better than later.” Emmie wiped at her tears with her hand, which had St. Just tucking her fingers around his handkerchief. “When can you have a governess here for Winnie?”
“I’m not sure.” He spoke slowly, mentally tallying weeks. If he dragged his feet long enough, it would be winter, and Emmie would be bound to stay. “I’ve started the process for filling a number of positions, and we’ll have to see who comes along. Winnie won’t tolerate just anybody, and neither will I.”
“But certainly by Christmas?” Emmie said. “It’s more than two months away, and you are hardly parsimonious with your wages.”
“Is that why you’re accepting every order that comes along, Emmie?” He brushed a lock of her hair back over her ear. “You are saving against the day you leave here and your business might not be so brisk?”
“I am saving against the day I’m too old to work in the kitchens hour after hour, against the day I turn my ankle and miss a week’s business, or the day when I have to replace Roddy.”
“Petunia is trained to drive.”
“I can’t keep her.” Emmie got up and went back to work with her bowl and spoon.
“Do you mean you cannot afford to keep her or you do not think it proper to keep her?”
“Both.” She shot him an indecipherable look where he sat. “She is lovely, and the gesture was lovely.”
Lovely. He felt an immediate, irrational distaste for the word, but their discussion had been productive on a number of levels. First, he comprehended he had at least until Christmas to change her mind. Second, he understood part of Emmie’s bad mood and skittishness was due to sheer exhaustion, which he could address fairly easily. Third, Emmie had not expected him to react as he had to her lack of virginity. She had anticipated he would reject her for it or judge her, and it was a consequence she was willing—almost eager—to bear.
So he didn’t have her trust—yet. And he did not have all the facts. Emmie was keeping secrets, at least, and if Winnie’s disclosure regarding Bothwell was any indication, Winnie had a few things to get off her chest, as well.
Just like managing a group of junior officers. Always a mare’s nest, always making simple problems difficult, and always needing to be hauled backward out of the thickets they should never have blundered into. Except, he mused as he regarded Emmie’s drawn features, he hadn’t been in love with his recruits, and males were infinitely less complicated than females.
Thank the gods Bonaparte had not been female, or the empire would already have encompassed Cathay.
***
“So where’s your kitchen general?” Val asked as they settled in for a brandy in wing chairs before the hearth in the library. “She missed tea and dinner.”
“She’s asleep.” St. Just had sent a tray up to her at teatime, then checked on her just an hour or so ago. The food was half gone, and the kitchen general was facedown on her bed, one foot still wearing its stocking. He’d wrestled her out of her clothes and tucked her in, all without her even opening both eyes.
“She’s the prettiest kitchen general I can recall meeting,” Val said, toeing off his boots. “And she looks at you like you are the world’s largest chocolate cream cake.”
“She does not.” She might have once upon a dark night, but she was obviously retrenching from that happy aberration.
“She does too. When you’re out there on your horses, she glances repeatedly out the window, then just stops and stares and sighs and shakes her head and starts glancing again. When she came into the music room looking for the child, she asked me what kind of music you like best.”
“I like anything you play,” St. Just said, running his finger around the rim of his snifter. “When I was in Spain, I used to occasionally catch someone at a piano when I took dispatches int
o the cities, and even more rarely, hear a snatch of something you might have worked on. It made me more homesick than any letter.”
Val stared at him. “I had no idea. I’m sorry.”
“It isn’t something to be sorry for. A soldier needs to be homesick, or he forgets why he fights. Scents were even worse, as they’ve wonderful roses in Spain. They reminded me of Morelands in the summer, and Her Grace.”
“Did you read those letters she gave you?”
“I’m working up my courage.”
“Shall I read them for you?”
“Thank you.” St. Just smiled slowly at the fierceness in Val’s offer. “But no, I’ll read them. It’s just that things here at Rosecroft have gone widdershins in my absence. My womenfolk are not at peace.”
“Your womenfolk being Emmie and Winnie?”
St. Just nodded and slouched against an arm of the chair. “There’s a burr under Winnie’s saddle. Emmie thinks my absence did not sit well with the child. I suspect it’s Emmie’s flirtation with the vicar that offends Winnie.”
“Could be both,” Val said, pursing his lips, “but I doubt the local vicar has made any significant progress in your absence. I’ve seen how Emmie regards you, and Winnie must see that, too.”
“The child sees entirely too much.” St. Just eyed his drink. “She was allowed to wander the estate, more or less, when her father was alive, and Emmie has curtailed that behavior since his death. Just yesterday, however, Winnie purposely ran off.”
“Running away is usually an effort to draw attention, at least it was when we did it. Sophie and Evie ran off when you and Bart joined up, and spent the night crying in the tree house.”
“And you run off to the piano bench. I run off to wrestle with rocks. I take your point, and Winnie has seen much upset in her short life.”
“Are you sure Helmsley is her father?”
“Her mother said so, apparently.” St. Just blew out a considering breath. “The earl acknowledged the child openly upon her mother’s death.”
“Who was her mother?”
“Emmie’s Aunt Estelle.” St. Just set his empty glass down. “She was not a particularly virtuous female, nor was Emmie’s mother, though I gather they both were loyal to individual protectors and not available on street corners.”
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