Frail Blood

by Jo Robertson

  Her father's voice was a great icy canyon that echoed with a northern coldness. "Sit down, Emma. We haven't yet discussed the intended topic which was the purpose of this dinner tonight."

  Malachi stood abruptly and stared at her across the table, but she couldn't read his expression. "Emma, would you like me to take you home?" His voice was even and uninflected.

  "Sir, you may leave." Her father's voice raised a notch, an indication that his cruel frigidity would soon erupt into molten lava. "However, my daughter will remain. Stephen will accompany her when we are finished."

  "Emma?" The force of Malachi's will permeated throughout the room. "I won't leave without you unless you agree."

  She blinked furiously several times. How humiliating to be dealt with like a child in front of a man she wanted respect from. How could Malachi trust her investigative skills if she crumbled so easily beneath her father's will? Yet, how could she turn tail and run from her father like a coward?

  She glanced down at her uncle, whose face was a complex mass of sorrow and wisdom. Why hadn't he intervened? Defended her? But Stephen's eyes were riveted to the proud, tight form of Malachi Rivers who stood like a soldier across from her.

  "Emma?" Malachi asked again, his voice neither cajoling nor condemning her. She wondered if she could trust a man like him.

  "I'll return with my uncle," she answered at length. "Thank you so much for joining us tonight, Mr. Rivers."

  Silence hung ugly and ponderous for several long moments.

  Emma didn't miss the hard determined look of Malachi as he retrieved his overcoat and gloves, and with a nod Stephen's way swept from the house. She'd disappointed him.

  With a great sense of abandonment, she turned to face her father.

  #

  After Malachi left, silence descended on the dining room as heavy as a death knell. But Emma knew the quiet was only a lull before the storm.

  Stephen looked at her with kind, but piteous eyes. He would not help her now, however much he wished. Perhaps he could not. She must fight her own battles.

  "Let us step into the parlor for tea," Mama suggested.

  Emma jerked her head. "I'd prefer a good strong cup of coffee if I'm to be led to the butcher's block."

  Her father choked on his water. He disapproved of her developing taste for coffee because he had the notion that well-bred ladies drank that most tepid of drinks – tea. Coffee-drinking ought to be reserved for the male of the species. But he nodded toward Jenny, apparently reserving his best ammunition for larger issues.

  The four of them settled in the small parlor mere minutes before Jenny brought in the service tray. This room, lighter in décor than the rest of the house, soothed Emma's wrought nerves with its bright yellow and blue hues and floral prints.

  Her mother sat on the sofa to perform the serving tasks, but her father loomed over Emma's chair. Her uncle lounged by the arched entry. At the sight of the service tray, prepared with both tea and a coffee carafe, Emma lifted her chin, feeling she'd won a victory, however small.

  But Papa's next words removed all thought of triumph. "Your mother and I have decided to send you to Switzerland for the winter," he said without preliminary.

  She couldn't have been more shocked if he'd turned into a two-headed goat.

  "Switzerland!" her uncle exclaimed, taking a step toward her. "What in damnation would you do that for? She's got a business to run."

  "No, Stephen," Father contradicted, sipping his coffee as calmly as if Emma's world weren't tottering before her. "You have a business to run. Emma does not belong there."

  "I'm part-owner, Father. I can't abandon the newspaper. We've just begun to turn The Gazette around."

  "You can and you will, Emma," her mother said calmly.

  Emma's laugh sounded harsh and brittle to her ears. What game were her parents up to now? Why did they think they could control her when they'd failed to do so for the last four years? "You can't make me."

  She immediately regretted the childish words.

  "But we can," her father said, the coldness of his voice like sharpened icicles. "Your grandmother's legacy to you has a clause. A codicil if you will."

  "Codicil? What are you talking about," Stephen thundered. "Mother left the money to Emma unattached, Frank. What have you done?"

  "Nothing a prudent father wouldn't do. I invoked my right of veto until Emma is twenty-three." Her father's face glowed with self-satisfaction. "She cannot touch the money until then."

  "But I turn twenty-three in six months!" Emma exclaimed.

  "Yes, and six months in Switzerland will give you time to think about your proper place in society," her mother said.

  Emma rose, a tight ball hardening in her chest. "By then I will have defaulted on my property loan."

  "Yes," Papa answered, looking at her over the rim of his coffee cup. "And given up this nonsense about publishing."

  "And returned to live with us as you should," her mother said, the success of victory in her eyes.

  "What if she marries within that time?" Stephen asked, his eyes trained on Emma.

  "Why then, of course," her father answered with grim satisfaction, "the funds will be released directly to her."

  Chapter 9

  "Is whispering nothing? Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses?" – The Winter's Tale

  The temperature had dropped nearly ten degrees by the time Malachi abandoned his carriage at his cabin and set off on foot to cover the distance back to Emma Knight's home.

  Plunging his hands into his overcoat pockets, he worried at his reasons for going there instead of relaxing in his own warm cabin. But, welcome or not, he wanted to be waiting for her when she returned from what looked to be an explosive confrontation with her parents.

  He should leave the woman alone. What did he care if her father and mother hounded her about the newspaper business? In truth, if she abandoned it, he and his client would be better off. No meddling Emma Knight. No danger of damaging accounts splashed across the news page.

  He'd offered her a job, an investigative opportunity, mostly to keep her out of his affairs, but Emma might be quite good at ferreting out information for him. Stephen Knight seemed to be sure of that. She had a certain way about her, brazenness and innocence mixed together, that was charming and lulled a person into confidence.

  When he arrived, Malachi first walked the perimeter of the house, assuring himself that no one was about. Silence outside and darkness within. The help must spend their nights elsewhere.

  Did Emma sleep alone here at night, then? Lonely business, that, with the woods menacingly close and deep and the lake nearby.

  Around to the side of the landing he discovered a swing that had been fashioned into the overhang so that a person could rest there on a cool summer's day and watch the mysterious lure of the forest. He slouched down in the white-slatted seat and rested his head on the back.

  Why had a woman like Emma Knight – stubborn, even bullheaded beyond normal reason – given in so easily under the censure of her parents? He knew she was stronger than that.

  Perhaps she chose her battles carefully, for he knew he would not have capitulated, not at the same tender age of twenty-two. But he was a man and she was little more than a girl.

  By the time he was fourteen, he'd been twenty pounds heavier and half a head taller than his father. The last time his father raised his fist in anger was the day Malachi left home. But not before he'd broken his father's forearm and bloodied his face.

  In the dark Malachi smiled in satisfaction, but the feeling evaporated when he thought of his mother. He'd known even at fourteen that he should've taken her with him. But how? And where?

  For all his great size, he was still a boy. So he'd left her behind, too callow to understand how effectively his drunken, violent father would punish his mother for her son's transgression.

  He heard the sounds of the Curved Dash before he saw the motorcar putter up the dirt road and pull into the turnabout.
Doors opened and slammed shut again, and quiet murmurings wafted to him around the corner. He couldn't make out the words, but he knew it was Knight, bringing his niece home from the family ordeal.

  Their relationship seemed one of mutual affection and respect. Malachi would never have left her alone with her parents if Stephen hadn't been there, although clearly Emma was a woman who could hold her own in any argument.

  He wondered what leverage her parents had used against her after he'd left.

  Suddenly he realized Emma might not thank him for appearing unexpectedly at her doorstep. Interfering, meddling in her personal affairs. She didn't need him. She had her uncle to comfort her.

  If Stephen remained, Malachi would slip away without seeing her. No need for Emma to know he'd been here at all.

  Moments passed and finally he heard the wheels of the motorcar grind on the gravel as it turned around and followed the bumpy trail to the main road. The clear night scattered jewels across the swath of black sky, and Malachi's breath puffed in the frosty air.

  So, he checked briefly on her. That was all.

  He rapped lightly on the door and then gazed up to the second floor where a dim light burned in what might be Emma's bedroom. No answer.

  After knocking again with no response, he swung around to leave when the door creaked slowly open and the light from the inside silhouetted her slender form. She hadn't yet removed her suit jacket and gloves, but her head was bare, the auburn strands curling around her ears and sweeping across her forehead.

  "I knew you'd come," she said without preamble, her pale face even paler against her dark clothing.

  He glanced behind her to the empty foyer. The solitariness of their situation hit him like a sudden blast. The risk of compromising her rooted him to the spot. "Come outside and talk with me a while."

  She followed him around the porch and sat beside him while he gently moved the swing back and forth with one foot. She placed her hands beneath her thighs in a charming gesture that reminded him how very young she was – at least from his vantage of thirty-one years and far more experience.

  After several silent, but not uncomfortable minutes, she whispered, "It was awful. They've schemed to rob me of my home and eventually the newspaper."

  He'd known this was coming. Emma was foolish to believe she was powerful enough to thwart the combined resolve of her parents, two wealthy and influential community members. He placed his gloved hand on the back of her neck, kneaded softly and murmured quiet, soothing nonsense.

  When she finally turned to him, great fat tears spiked her lashes and her nose, red from the cold, began to run. "Why do they hate me so?"

  He removed his handkerchief and handed it to her, sighing heavily. "They don't hate you, Emma. They're afraid of you."

  She blew her nose and snorted. "As long as I can remember, they've disapproved of me."

  "They don't understand you. You want so much more than any woman they've ever known. You unsettle them."

  Her chocolate eyes flickered and he detected a glimmer of warmth in their black centers. A warning crawled up his spine as she smiled wryly at him. "But you do," she murmured, shifting infinitesimally closer.

  Her arm and thigh brushed against his and a jolt of desire shot straight to his groin.

  "You understand me," she said.

  He laughed and rose smoothly, turned to lean against the low wall of the wraparound porch, his legs crossed at the ankles. Distance was prudent. Distance protected both of them.

  A mocking tone entered his voice. "I doubt anyone understands you fully, Miss Knight."

  "Emma," she whispered as the faint scent of her perfume, mixed with the headiness of her closeness, overwhelmed his senses.

  He could not afford involvement with a woman now. And she? – well, Emma was far better off without the stench of his reputation tainting her.

  But she apparently had no such reservations. Biting her lower lip, she moved toward him, standing so close he could feel the warm moisture of her breath and the slight trembling of her body. She smiled and gazed up at him rather naughtily. "Are you afraid of me, Malachi?"

  Jesus Christ!

  "Why should I be afraid of a young, inexperienced girl?" he countered, controlling the primitive impulse to take her harshly here and now, without preliminaries or finesse.

  She jutted out that bottom lip. "I'm nearly twenty-three, hardly a girl."

  "If you say so."

  "I do. And I'm not untutored at all." As if to prove this fact, she reached up to draw a gloved finger down the line of his jaw and over his lips, all the while never removing her eyes from his face.

  This was shaky ground, dangerous ground. He'd ascertained she was none the less for wear from her parents' verbal thrashing, and now he should leave. But he remained motionless, inflamed by the look and smell of her, lemon and oranges and some spice he couldn't identify emanating from her hair and her skin.

  One brush of his fingers against the soft smoothness of her cheek, clear as porcelain. One press of her parted lips against his. One touch of her round, perfect breasts.

  What harm there?

  She'd already claimed she was no innocent, and she spoke and moved her body like a woman familiar with the many ways to entice a man. Likely, she'd experimented with a score of young men at Wellesley, led them on until they were hot and eager for her.

  Slowly, one finger at a time, he removed his gloves, all the while watching those clear brown eyes widen. How far would she let him go and still consider herself a lady?

  How far would he go and remain a gentleman, his conscience countered?

  Emma was a lady. And he a gentleman even though he'd never claimed more than a thin veneer of gentility. Still, even ladies and gentlemen succumbed to the occasional enticements of the flesh.

  His gloves dropped to the redwood flooring. He reached for her, traced his bare finger down the straight slope of her nose and over the curve of her bottom lip, tugged gently until she opened her mouth to him and he felt the soft moistness of her inner lip.

  With his other hand, he reached behind her and removed the remaining pins from her hair's loose knot, let the spiral hairpins join his gloves on the floor's planks with a soft plink. The rich hue of her hair glistened in the moonlight like molten lava as it tumbled around her shoulders in violent disarray.

  He pulled her toward him. The swell of her breasts beneath her jacket pressed against his chest as she wrapped her arms around his waist and spread her palms up his back. She dug her fingers into his body as if she'd score his bare flesh if it were handy to her nails.

  Desire raced through him like jolts of lightning. Emma was no innocent. She knew exactly how to inflame him.

  His cock pushed hard against her belly, her body quivering at the jutting insistence. He lowered his mouth to hers even as she opened her lips and his tongue began to trace the curve of her bottom lip. Deepening the kiss, he sensed her ragged intake of breath and her heart pattering to the pounding roar of his own.

  Her hands dropped from his waist to linger on his hips and, taking the cue, he grasped the gently rounded curve of her buttocks, holding her firmly against him, letting her experience the hard line of him through his trousers. As he trailed kisses down the long column of her neck, she moaned and arched closer, inviting him to taste her. His blood roared in his temples like a fiery conflagration.

  He obliged for a few sweet moments before pulling back. God, she was an intoxication more heady than liquor.

  "More." Her breath fanned across his jaw, hot from his assault, her fists clenched tightly around his hips.

  He complied by gazing at her closed eyes, unbuttoning several fastenings of the jacket and shirt waist beneath. "Is this what you want, Emma?"

  Her eyes fluttered open, glazed over with passion.

  "Yes," he murmured and ran his finger along the swell of full breasts jutting above the corset. "Yes, you do."

  His voice sounded harsh to his ears, ragged and out of control. Sh
e'd bewitched him and he wanted nothing more than to take her here, on the hard porch, in the cold night.

  "Say it," he urged, moving his mouth downward to cover the fiery path his fingers had just traced. "Say you want this."

  He felt the pulse at her neck race wildly against his lips. He tugged at her chemise until one small pink nipple opened to his sight. "Ah," he whispered and set to work there.

  Emma caught his head between her hands, her fingers curling in his hair, and drew him closer to her breast. Another jolt of desire shot through him.

  "Yes," she cried. "Yes, harder." She squirmed against him as if in pain and he bit back a gentle laugh.

  He tugged and nipped at her nipple, then turned to the other one. God, he was hot for her. And she was ready for him. He fancied he could smell her arousal through the layers of clothing that separated them.

  When he spoke, his voice shook. He wanted her badly, but common sense prevailed for a brief moment. She didn't deserve being taken like a common trollop.

  "Inside?" he muttered.

  "Yes, please," she begged, and at that moment opened her eyes again so his gaze fixed with hers in the light from the moon. Passion and sexual need filled her face like a brilliant light. He wanted nothing more than to sweep her in his arms and find the nearest bedroom.

  But the realization of the consequences shocked him like a plunge into the icy winter lake. Christ, Emma Knight was a lady! Even though they clearly panted for one another, the complications that could arise from making wanton use of her body would surely come back to plague him.

  He dropped his hands from her hips. "Ah, Emma," he breathed on a regretful sigh.

  "What? Wh – ?"

  He placed a chaste kiss on her smooth forehead and inhaled a deep, ragged breath. With inept fingers, he pulled the jacket around her exposed body and fumbled with the buttons.

  "What are you doing?" Her voice was a mixture of protest and passion, mirroring his regret.

  "Nothing. I'm – we're doing nothing."