“I can do whatever I like at Little Merton.” She was a stranger to him, this earnest young woman. His heart turned over at her tremulous smile. “I shall have a cheerful parlor with flowers and plants, and walls painted whatever color pleases me. Frieda and I can walk miles and miles every day. I can paper the walls with watercolors by my own hand if I wish.”
“You can do that here.” Where that deep and heartfelt response had come from he did not know, but now that he’d said it, he felt it was true to his very bones. “Paint a watercolor every day. I’ll hang them on every wall in the house if it pleases you.”
“It ought to please you.” Her eyes glittered with incipient tears. “You don’t even know that I happen to be better artist than Anne.”
“Are you?”
“I could be Michelangelo, and you’d think, ‘That’s not what Anne would have drawn.’”
“You exaggerate.” Did she? The was an uncomfortable ring of truth in her accusastion.
She continued to smile. Only a few weeks ago he would have believed she was amused. “Not much.”
Now, he knew better than to believe the surface she presented, but he did not know how to get past the polished perfection to reach the real and true Emily. He put a hand on her shoulder, and as he did, he felt he’d stepped out of time and place. Who was she, if she wasn’t the woman he’d had fixed in his mind all this time?
He wiped another tear from her upper cheek. “I’ve wanted my life to continue as it was before we were married.” He took a steadying breath, but his heart beat too fast. She was a person separate from her sisters. She had hopes and dreams, likes and dislikes that were her own. “You are correct. I am an inexperienced husband, and I have been unfair to you.”
She pushed away his hand and wiped both her eyes. “I don’t mean to be a water pot. It’s just, this isn’t at all what I thought it would be like.”
“If either of us thought we knew that, we were wrong.”
This time, her smile seemed more genuine, but again, he was out of step with the world, for she was not merely Anne’s sister. She was someone he ought to get to know, someone, he thought, he might actually like a great deal. “Indeed,” she said in a damp voice. “Indeed, we were.”
“We are new to our married life, and there must be bumps along the way. But, Emily, Emily, my dear, I mean to do better by us both. Please. I do not want you to remove to Little Merton. Stay here. With me.”
The room became quiet. She’d retreated behind the armor of her perfection, and there was no getting past to the real Emily.
“We should not be here.” She meant Corth Abbey. Lord, but his heart ached because his thoughtless assumptions had hurt her badly. “Not yet. Not so early in our marriage.”
Her insight was acute and intensely discomforting. She understood their situation better than he did. “All the more reason for us to go to London.”
“I don’t see how that would be any different.”
He took a deep breath. “I never imagined her at Cavendish Square. It was only here.”
She smiled sadly and briefly cupped the side of his face. “Don’t be sorry. Don’t be. We cannot change the shape our hearts take when we have loved grandly. I’d never ask that of you.”
“God, Emily, I am sorry. So sorry for what I’ve done. You deserve better.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Bracebridge stood twenty yards from his Cavendish Square house as he so often did before he went inside. His greatcoat was buttoned against a dreary and foggy day, and water dripped from the brim of his hat.
He hadn’t realized until he came here with Emily how thoroughly his feelings for Anne shaded every part of his life. The ache of losing her remained; his admiration of and respect for her was unchanged. Even here.
With the fog thickening, he peeled away the layers around his heart. As Emily had said, the shape of his heart had been forever altered, but he and Anne would never be, and that, too, had changed him. Emily had walked through his despair, bright and joyful, consuming him, capturing his notice, distracting him. He had been the one to act. He was the one who’d kissed her. Him. He had rejected his feelings for her at the same time he drew her in and blamed her for his sorrow.
Emily was there, inside his London home, and because of that, a pinprick of joy unfurled in the center of his chest, unaccustomed, unwarranted, but there. A fair part of his boyhood had been spent in Margaret Street. With ease, he called up memories of his brothers laughing, his mother whispering his name while she hugged him close. The scent of her perfume. The echo of feet on the stairs. The smell of beeswax and polish. The way the light came through the windows, the brilliant red of the roses his mother so loved. His father coldly informing him he would never be welcome here again.
Bracebridge gripped his umbrella. The sheer weight of those ghostly recollections ought to have brought the house down to its foundation, but the building stood as a monument to his resentment, his failures, and his duty to centuries of the dead and those yet to live. He and his father had always been at loggerheads. A dutiful son would have done what was expected of him, but that wasn’t the life he’d wanted for himself. He’d left with angry words to match his father’s and made his own way.
However vivid his recollections, or sharp the ache in his soul, his parents and brothers would never be inside. Within a fortnight of falling ill, his mother, father, brothers, and many of the servants had perished, and Bracebridge hadn’t known until the family solicitor arrived at Corth Abbey with the news.
Now, though, he was married, and the house held more than memories of his family or the bittersweet memory of the ball he’d held to show the world his support of the new Duchess of Cynssyr and the love of his life. Now he also had memories of Emily looking up from a book or needlework and smiling when he walked into whatever room she was in.
Emily, stretched out on his bed, spectacular to look at, but so very attuned to the mood of their intimacy: tender, serious, at the edges of crude and rough. She was there, rearranging, reordering, changing everything, with each breath sweeping away the past.
He could have gone to his club for dinner as he often did when he was in London. Or to Two Fives, or to his townhouse in Marylebone where Emily had burst in on him when he was still reeling from Anne’s marriage to Cynssyr. He understood now, years after the fact, just how much he’d lost during that encounter. He chose none of those, damn it to hell.
That moment in the house in Marylebone was the cause of his troubled relations with Emily. He understood that now. At last. She’d burst into his rooms, but he was the one who had transgressed. He was the one who had continued to cross lines of propriety. That moment, above all others in respect of the former Miss Emily Sinclair, had cemented the discord in him that persisted to this day. Unshakable, unwanted, and permanent, he feared. He had long resented her because his body recognized her and overruled his reason and, so he’d believed, his loyalty.
She wasn’t quiet, peaceful Anne, who smoothed all his rough edges. His wife was the fire that matched his own. Anne would never be his. He could do nothing to change that, not travel back in time, not change anything he had said or done. But oh Lord, Lord in heaven, he did not want his heart at war like this.
If he went inside, Emily would be there, all lightness and grace, and he would tell her about his day while he thought of how he would fuck her later, because more than any other lover of his, she had no trouble navigating both sides of his life, the polite and the crude. His wife liked his rawness in bed, though she appreciated tenderness, too.
So. No. Not his club. Not Two Fives. Not his townhouse, but here, where Emily was. He came in the front door rather than the side entrance. The quiet immediately told him his wife was not home. His disappointment was a visceral thing.
Pond glided in to take his things. “My lord.”
“Pond.” He dropped his umbrella into the receptacle and handed over his hat.
The chairs that had lined the walls for as lo
ng as he could recall had been replaced with a walnut table on which there sat a vase he’d not seen since he was a boy too young to have fatally offended his father. The cream porcelain was painted with lemons and at present, filled with yellow peonies and irises. Such memories. The vase had been a favorite of his mother’s.
There were other changes besides the flowers. The entry seemed larger because there was only half the usual number of chairs. Where a painting of a prancing white steed had once been, there now hung a gilt-framed mirror.
He took stock of the transformed space. “I ought to have let you have your way years ago.” If he had, he might have come to feel the Margaret Street house was truly his rather than a place he shared with the memories of his family and the resentments of his father.
Pond practically glowed. “Lady Bracebridge has exceptional taste.”
“Lady Bracebridge?”
“It has been a pleasure carrying out her suggestions.” Pond tugged on the dangling sleeve of Bracebridge’s coat, and Bracebridge realized he’d been staring at nothing for several seconds. He drew his other arm from his sleeve, and Pond draped the coat over his arm.
Bracebridge glanced across the space and, now that he knew to look, saw Emily here. Like her, the entryway was light, cheerful, and elegant. “How much has this cost me?”
“Time and labor.” Pond’s smile faded. “Shall I bring you the ledgers? Her accounts are meticulous, as you’ll see.”
“Yes, please.” He was not ready to accept this. He did not want Emily to be accomplished or sensible when he needed her to be volatile, thoughtless, and frivolous. He’d told her to do as she pleased here, never expecting he would admire what she’d done. She wasn’t supposed to be competent, to uncover a favorite vase of his mother’s, or to arrange a room that made him feel emotions long suppressed.
He missed his mother. He’d give anything to see his brothers again. He’d even consider a reconciliation with his father. He did not want this ache in his heart.
Pond seemed to have learned Emily’s trick of using a smile as a shield. “As you wish, milord.”
Bracebridge touched a fingertip to the top stretcher of one of the remaining chairs. These weren’t the uncomfortable seats his father had put out for guests. These were different chairs entirely.
Childhood memories flooded back. When his father was alive, every chair had been filled with people seeking access to the Earl of Bracebridge. No longer. Anyone who wished to importune him for money or favors knew to find him at Two Fives. “These used to be in the music room.”
“‘A treasure,’ Lady Bracebridge said when she saw them.”
“Where did you find them?” His father, for reasons he’d been too young to understand at the time, had done his best to erase his mother’s impact on the house. By the time he’d been old enough to be of interest to his father, there were no more of the outings his elder brothers had so fondly recalled: rides down the Thames, excursions to the zoo, afternoons spent demonstrating talents and accomplishments to their parents. As the youngest of the children, Bracebridge had known mostly silence and strife between his parents and too many years of his father’s cold regard.
“The second attic, my lord. She has an unerring eye. Even in the dim light and with all the dust, she saw the beauty of these chairs.” Obviously, Pond was completely under Emily’s spell. As were York, the head groom, the head footman, and, if he were to be honest, most all the servants. Mrs. Elliot, too, now that she was here from Bartley Green, which went without saying. “I had my doubts, but she was correct. A cleaning and some vigorous waxing, and you see the result, just as her ladyship predicted.”
She was taking over the house, and him, too, changing him in ways he did not understand or like. He did not love her. He might have a degree of tenderness for her, but nothing more. How could he let go of his love for Anne when it was she who had made him a better person? Anne, not Emily.
He pointed. “That vase used to be in the Lemon Parlor.”
“The Lemon Parlor, my lord?”
“No longer exists.” He shook his head. No one knew that but him. “It’s my father’s smoking room now.” But no. The house was his, and his father lay in his grave. The smoking room was his now and could be whatever he wished to make of it. He could turn it into a billiards room or back into a parlor, or he could have the doors nailed shut.
“I was a boy when he took over the room.” What a memory, and one he’d rather not have. He’d been six or seven at the time and already taller than the shortest of his older brothers. “My mother shed a great many tears over losing its use.” He’d come to his mother’s defense, and that had enraged his father.
He looked around the entryway, hating the reminders. “None of this belongs here.” She wasn’t supposed to do this to him, touch him like this. “Not the chairs, that vase, or the table.”
Pond gave him a sideways look, then snapped his fingers. Instantly, a footman stepped from the shadows of the servants’ door. Pond pointed to the various items. “Take those downstairs.”
“I do not recognize the mirror either. Where did that come from?” These changes stole his ability to walk into the house and see the dark and ugly chairs he hated and say to himself, Here is Devon Carlisle, my lord father, may you rot in hell.
“I’ll have the room returned to its original state within the hour.”
“Thank you.” He heard his father in that curt response, but was he not justified in his objections? His wife, who was so unhappy with the marriage in which she’d not lasted a month before she was begging to be free of him, had run right over the limits he’d set. Within reason, he’d said. He’d told her that, and this was surely not within reason.
He headed upstairs and saw more changes on his way to his rooms. That cobalt blue vase was another possession of his mother’s, long hidden away and now striking in the niche at the top of the stairs. She couldn’t know she was destroying his private revenge on his father. She couldn’t possibly know. He slowed, staring at the vase. How the devil had she known?
But . . . but.
What if he’d married Anne or Clara? Would either of them have stood up to him as directly as Emily did? He thought not. He admitted, as well, that he would not have resented their changes the way he resented Emily’s. He would have allowed either of them to take the Margaret Street house down to the foundation and rebuild it from scratch.
He stopped walking. Why Anne or Clara, but not Emily?
Because Emily wasn’t the wife he wanted. Because, because, because, he resented her changing him. And what did that make him but the same petty tyrant his father had been? In Anne and Clara, he’d chosen women of quiet reflection who would have found other ways, quieter ways, to confront him were he to behave badly or unfairly. Emily was direct. She always had been. Not better. Not worse. Merely different.
He picked up the cobalt vase, running a hand over the smooth surface. Emily spoke to the very worst parts of his nature, and that fact explained too well why they were incendiary in bed. There was no restraint or decorum with her. He did not have to hold anything back.
How odd that Emily had chosen so many of his mother’s favorite possessions from among the centuries of items stored in the attics. In his head, he saw himself smashing the vase to pieces. He could lift it overhead and dash it against the wall and then, without explanation, tell Pond to take care of the mess. No one would question him if he did.
Emily had plucked this vase from some attic crate and, seeing its beauty, had put it here so that one took in its presence almost without noticing, and yet he had been struck by the shape, the pulse of color, and a sense of calmness.
“My lord?”
Mrs. Elliot stood on the stairs below. For an instant, he was convinced she knew he’d been about to hurl the vase against the wall. He replaced it in the niche. “Yes?”
The woman hurried up the stairs and, at the landing where he waited, put a hand over her heart. “My lord, may I have a word in priva
te?”
“You may.” He hoped she did not intend to give notice. She’d only just arrived, and Emily would be beyond unhappy at her leaving. Admittedly, their almost immediate departure for London had been disruptive, but there was no help for that. It was absolutely necessary that they leave Corth Abbey. “My office, then.” She nodded. Once they were inside, he gestured to a chair. “Please.”
She did not sit. “My lord. Thank you for agreeing to see me.”
“I am glad to have you on staff.” Anne had never had anything but high praise for Mrs. Elliot, and from all that he had observed, the praise was well deserved. He sat at his desk, leaning back in his chair. “What may I do for you?”
Her mouth firmed and he was immediately put in mind of the last time he’d seen her at the Cooperage: resolute in the face of Thomas Sinclair’s rage. Had the man behaved so with his daughter? “I won’t abandon that poor girl. I won’t. No matter who pays my wages.” She touched the key chain dangling from her waist. “I’ll go to her sisters and beg their assistance if I must.”
He was taken aback and thoroughly confused. “May I ask why you think such a choice is before you?”
Mrs. Elliot narrowed her eyes. Since she’d joined his staff, their relations had undergone a distinct chill, and he was not quite willing to put that down to his being her employer now. “Your lawyer called on me this morning. Maggie, too, I soon learned.”
“If you spoke with a lawyer today, it was not mine.” He folded his arms across his chest but found himself unable to remain still. He walked away from his desk and paced the distance between the window and the fireplace. A lawyer had called at Margaret Street, and the man had not left a card for the head of the damned household? “He came to the back door, did he?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Did he tell you he was my lawyer? That I’d engaged him? I assure you, I did not.”
“I assumed he was, milord.” She fished a card from her pocket and handed it to him.
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