by Aileen Fish
“To begin courting you?” he repeated, his beautiful mouth tipping up into the boyish smile she loved so well. “Just what do you think I’ve been doing the last week?”
“Oh, is that what you’ve been about, pulling me into every dark corner in this great mausoleum? Courting me?”
“Emily, love,” he murmured.
“You’ll have to do better than that to win me, Mr. Avery. I’ve a fortune and a treasure trove of useless knowledge to bestow upon you. What are you offering to make this a fair trade?”
“A fair trade?” he asked around a bark of laughter.
“Just so. How am I to praise you if I don’t know what talents you bring to market?”
“You’ve a saucy mouth on you, Emily Ann Calvert.”
“You like my saucy mouth, Nicholas Avery,” she purred.
“Ah, what you do to me, Em,” he replied on a groan.
“It’s the same for me,” she whispered as heat raced through her blood from the fierce look of desire on his face that he did not attempt to hide from her.
“Enough of that,” Margaret admonished as she joined them, giving Nicholas a gentle shove that had him stepping back. It was only then that Emily realized how close they’d been standing, how near his lips had been to hers, how she’d been wishing he would kiss her right there in the crowded front parlor. “The two of you are likely to start a fire over here.”
“Your niece is going to marry me,” Nicholas stated, his gaze fixed on Emily.
“Is that so?” Margaret asked with a sly grin.
“I didn’t say that,” Emily replied quickly. “I only said I’ll consider it.”
“Oh, you’ll marry me, Emily,” he replied, his voice dark and throaty, sinful.
“Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.”
Nicholas tossed his head back and laughed and Emily heard not only happiness in his great booming laughter, she heard relief as well.
Chapter Nineteen
The remainder of the day was spent indoors as the snow proceeded to fall heavily from the gray sky. The gentlemen drifted off to the billiards room and the library, while the ladies congregated in the front parlor to play cards and gossip.
Emily was soon bored by the endless talk of fashion and London entertainments and wandered out into the hall in search of amusement. She heard male laughter spilling out from the billiards room and poked her head around the open door.
“Em, my girl,” Da boomed across the room. “Come and give me a bit of Irish luck.”
Emily entered the male domain, the rustle of her skirts loud in the suddenly silent room. She searched the sea of faces until she found Nicholas smiling at her from the sideboard where he was pouring Margaret’s good Irish whiskey into tumblers.
“Three fingers for my girl,” her father ordered as he led her to an overstuffed chair by the fire.
“Three fingers it is,” Nicholas agreed.
“Do you play, Miss Calvert?” Lord Jamison stood leaning elegantly against the billiards table, his coat removed and his shirt sleeves rolled back almost to his elbows, a cue in his hand.
“Ladies do not play billiards, Lord Jamison,” Emily responded.
Jamison quirked a brow in question as Nicholas handed a glass of whiskey to her, his fingers lightly brushing hers.
“Whiskey notwithstanding, Miss Calvert is a lady.” Nicholas winked down at her.
“So she is,” Jamison agreed with the slightest lift of one corner of his mouth that Emily guessed must pass for a smile. She wondered why the vivacious Lady Bernice had set her heart on marrying the cool, sardonic gentleman. They seemed a mismatched pair in every way.
“I hope you gentlemen don’t mind if I watch the play?” Emily asked.
“Not at all, we are quite thrilled to provide you an afternoon’s entertainment,” Lord Jamison replied in such a way that Emily decided he meant just the opposite.
“We’ll even endeavor to remember we are gentlemen,” Parker One stated with a bow in her direction. Emily had learned to distinguish between the Parker twins simply by virtue of her small stature. Parker One had a small scar on the underside of his chin and, as he was in the habit of lifting his head in imitation of his cousin’s arrogant manner, Emily noticed it straightaway.
Emily watched quietly as Lord Jamison made short work of Da’s efforts and proceeded to trounce both Parkers and Mr. Kildare. Mr. Boone ambled off to join Lord Carmichael and Viscount Talbot in the library where those gentlemen were wagering deep over cards.
As the sun began to set outside the tall windows in the billiards room, Mr. Kildare and the Parkers drifted away grumbling good naturedly over their losses.
“I’ve a mind to go raid the larder,” Da announced after losing to Nicholas. “I’ve worked up an appetite watching my money disappear.” He kissed his daughter’s cheek, winked and was gone.
Nicholas took a seat on the settee across from Emily’s chair, kicked his booted feet onto the low table and leaned back with a sigh.
“What has your aunt planned for this evening?” Jamison asked as he sat beside his friend.
“I heard talk of dancing after dinner.” Emily had watched the two men together all afternoon and was surprised by the obvious friendship they shared. As with Lady Bernice, Nicholas and Lord Jamison were a mismatched pair, the former warm and smiling, the latter cool and aloof.
“I suppose our numbers are great enough for dancing, more’s the pity,” Jamison drawled.
“You do not like to dance?” she asked, not at all surprised. As far as she could tell, Lord Jamison was not overly fond of human contact. There had been much back slapping and shoving during the matches, yet no one had so much as touched the man.
“I do not appreciate being forced to pair off and converse with ladies with whom I have nothing in common,” he replied.
“Ah, so it is not the actual dancing you mind, but the small talk that must accompany it,” Emily said.
“Precisely,” he agreed.
“I would imagine that most young ladies are a bit tongue tied around you, so their conversation would be limited,” Emily pointed out.
“One could only wish,” he replied. “Alas, it seems that ladies are taught from the cradle to fill silence with incessant chatter.”
Emily laughed, for she’d found the same to be true of most of the English ladies she had met.
“There was a time, when you enjoyed the chatter of young ladies,” Nicholas said.
“Yes, when I was myself young, and foolishly thought that someday one of those young misses would open up her mouth and have something worthwhile to say.”
“You are quite harsh on my sex, my lord,” Emily admonished. “Surely not all of us are as empty-headed as that.”
“Perhaps if I were interested in the cut of this year’s hemline or the goings on of my neighbors, I would find something of interest in their conversation,” he answered.
“I might say the same for your sex, my lord,” Emily replied. “I have noticed that most gentlemen are wont to talk of horses and wagers and hunting. Not that I mind those particular topics myself, but I do not believe most young ladies know any more of horses than how to mount and ride them, nor do they wager at cards beyond a half penny here and there. And, to them, the hunt is little more than an excuse to ride about in a scarlet habit.”
“What topics would you have us discuss?” he asked with that cynical lift of his brow.
“I admit, I know not what topic would amuse both a jaded aristocrat and an innocent young lady,” Emily replied, her tone as dry as his had been. “My point is simply that perhaps the young ladies you are forced to partner are as decidedly bored by your conversation as you are by theirs.”
Her words were met with silence as both gentlemen stared at her, Nicholas with obvious amused surprise, Jamison with no discernible expression upon his face whatsoever.
“Well, I believe I’ll have a wee nap before dinner,” Emily said as she rose to her feet. She drained her whiskey in one
long swallow, tossed her glass into the air, caught it nimbly, and placed it upside down on the low table. She smiled at Nicholas, nodded to Jamison and walked away.
Nick turned to watch the sway of her hips until she disappeared into the dark hallway.
“So, that is the lady you intend to take to wife?” Jamison’s words, uttered around soft laughter, brought Nick’s head back around. He found his friend looking at him with a slight smile.
“We’ll be married by the first of the year,” he agreed.
“Leave it to you to find the one tolerable lady in all of England,” Jamison groused.
“She’s American,” Nick reminded him with a grin.
“Perhaps I should pay the country a visit.”
“What are you doing here? The last I heard you were planning a trip abroad.”
“Hell if I know,” Jamison replied with a shake of his head. “I heard rumblings that you were days from choosing a wife and thought I’d better come make sure you hadn’t grown desperate enough to ask for the wool merchant’s daughter.”
“I could never be that desperate.”
“She cornered me after luncheon and brushed her bosom against my arm in greeting. I deduced from her attentions that you had managed to avoid that particular trap.”
“It’s been a near thing. The damn lady’s been loitering in the hall outside my bed chamber for days.”
“And the lovely Lady Bernice?” Jamison asked, an indifferent expression on his face, one which Nicholas could see right through.
“She made a pretense of joining the hunt.”
“Did she?”
“To spite Miss Ogilvie, it seems,” he admitted. “Alas, Emily warned her away before things became too awkward.”
“So you did finally learn the lady’s name.”
Nick laughed and shared the tale of the mess he had made of things with the lady.
“And yet she has agreed to marry you anyway,” Jamie murmured when Nick concluded his story.
“She hasn’t actually.”
“She hasn’t agreed to marry you?”
“Emily has agreed to allow me to court her.”
“What in blazes does she think you’ve been doing?” Jamie demanded.
“My thoughts exactly.”
“I was under the impression your family hadn’t time for a lengthy courtship.”
“We’ll be married by January, one way or the other.”
“Another one fallen by the wayside.” Jamison sounded almost wistful.
“Buck up old friend, you still have One and Two to carouse with,” Nick replied.
“Two is thinking of offering for Miss Davis. That is the other reason we accepted Lady Morris’ invitation.”
“Two and Lucinda Davis?”
“He’s a second son of a second son to an Earl,” Jamison replied. “She could do worse.”
“She could do better,” Nick contradicted. Once Miss Davis had realized her fate did not lie in his hands, she had relaxed around him. He’d come to enjoy the lady’s surprising humor and effervescent personality in the preceding week. A rake like Thomas Parker was the very last thing the poor girl deserved.
“He’s determined to have her, thinks she’ll make a comfortable wife, whatever that means.”
Nick suspected that meant a quiet wife who would not object to his philandering ways.
“Well, I’d wish him luck, but really I doubt very much she’ll have him.”
“She’d be a fool if she did.”
“What are you two doing sitting here in the dark?” Lady Margaret asked as she marched into the room.
“Plotting the demise of your proper little house party,” Jamison replied, rising to his feet. Nick waited a beat, and sure enough the lady waived his friend back into his seat.
“I’d consider it a favor if you simply enlivened the event rather than demolishing it,” Margaret answered as she grasped the whiskey decanter and a glass from the sideboard and took the seat her niece had recently vacated.
“I don’t know that anyone has ever accused me of enlivening a party,” Jamison responded as she poured whiskey into all three glasses.
She eyed the upside down tumbler on the table. “I see my niece has been here.”
“How proficient is she?” Nicholas asked.
“At billiards?” Margaret asked.
“I thought she didn’t play.” Jamison said.
“She never said she didn’t play,” Nick pointed out.
“Let me guess,” Margaret said. “My niece said that a lady doesn’t play billiards.”
“So she did,” Jamison murmured.
“She also told the head groom that a lady doesn’t throw dice, just before she cleaned all but the lint out of his pockets.”
Chapter Twenty
There was, in fact, dancing after dinner that evening. And the following evening, as well. For all that Lord Jamison said he did not enjoy dancing, Emily found him to be a surprisingly graceful dancer and a talented conversationalist.
“So, you believe more men should be given the vote,” Emily asked in amusement as they circled the small dance floor while Parker Two and Lucinda Davis played a duet on the pianoforte. “But you do not believe that all men, or any women, should have that right?”
“Not all men are capable of making a rational decision as to the leadership of the nation,” he replied.
“And none of the women?” she demanded in exasperation. “No wonder you are single, sir, as you clearly hold my gender in little regard.”
“I hold most of the world’s population in little regard,” he replied and there was that tiny tilt to his lips that masqueraded as a smile.
“Why is that?” she asked curiously.
“I’ve seen a lot of the world, and met a great many of its people,” he answered promptly.
“And found the lot of them lacking?”
“Most, anyway,” he agreed.
“I wonder that you can be bothered to go out at all, that you don’t simply barricade yourself in your home with only your own exalted person for company.”
“I do attempt it, Miss Calvert, I assure you. But alas, someone or other is always dragging me out into society.”
Emily laughed up into his almost smiling face and caught Nicholas watching her from across the room where he stood with Oliver and Joan.
The dance came to an end and Lord Jamison led her over to join them.
“Miss Calvert,” Nicholas bowed over her hand, his lips brushing her knuckles sending heat racing up her arm.
“Mr. Avery,” she replied before turning to Joan. “I hope you are feeling better, my lady.” Joan and Oliver had been noticeably absent from the festivities for two days. Word had been passed around that the lady was suffering from a slight head cold, but Emily believed they simply wished to be alone together to bask in the miracle of their coming child.
“I am, thank you,” Joan replied with a shy smile.
“Mr. Avery, how kindly you have cared for your lady.”
“Alas, I do what I can,” Oliver replied with a chuckle.
“Good Lord, the two of you act as if you’re the only two people in the world to make a baby,” Parker Two exclaimed as he joined their group.
“Behave yourself, Two,” Emily admonished. “Just because you’ve a cold heart doesn’t mean the rest of the male population must follow suit.”
“You wound me, Miss Calvert,” he replied
“And while we’re on the subject,” Emily went on. “Quit following Miss Davis about. It’s quite embarrassing for the rest of us to watch you chase after the lady.”
“How is that any relation to the subject of my cold heart?” Two demanded in confusion.
“It’s quite unsporting of you to thwart her burgeoning friendship with a certain other gentleman by constantly demanding her attention,” Emily replied, warming to the subject. “And furthermore, you might explain to your wayward brother that if he manages to get under the Nasty Baggage’s skirts, he’ll h
ave to marry her.”
They all turned to where Parker One was sitting beside Miss Ogilvie in the window alcove, his eyes riveted to her bosom in a low cut gown of pale blue while the lady prattled on and on about God knows what.
“Quite right,” Two exclaimed as he turned to stride across the room to rescue his foolish brother.
Lady Dillon began a waltz on the pianoforte, her brother standing beside her turning the music pages.
“Miss Calvert, I believe this is my dance.” Nicholas held his hand out to her.
“Why yes, Mr. Avery, I believe it is,” she agreed with an exaggerated curtsy.
“I have barely seen you the last two days,” he said as he whirled her around the small dance floor, deftly maneuvering around Emily’s father and the duchess.
“I seem to recall you pulling me into a linen closet not two hours ago,” she replied with a laugh.
“Well, yes, apart from that.”
“And last evening I danced two waltzes with you.”
“And refused a third.”
“You know perfectly well what three waltzes would suggest.”
“Yes, I do.”
“I’m thinking you intend to skip the courtship and move right on to a hasty wedding,” she replied in mock dismay.
“If I had my way, we’d be married by special license before this house party ends,” he agreed and while his lips smiled his eyes were serious.
“I realize you are in a rush to replenish the Avery family fortunes,” Emily replied with a teasing lilt in her voice.
“Hang the family fortunes,” Nicholas retorted. “I’m in a rush to get you into my bed.”
“Oh,” Emily whispered on a fractured breath. Delicious tingles raced up her spine and she could feel her face flush.
“Allow me to come to your room tonight,” Nicholas said, his voice low and dark. “There is a connecting door through the dressing rooms.”
“There is?” she asked before the full import of his words penetrated. “You know I cannot.”
“I will not take your virtue,” he whispered. “There are other ways I could pleasure you.”
“There are?” she asked, intrigued by the notion, though not truly surprise. He’d had her writhing in his arms more than once, after all.