“You could save her from having to marry him.”
“How? Why would you say such a thing? I know about the contract. I know Emily. She will never see her father’s money go to Nicholas. Not ever. There is little either of us can do to change our circumstances.”
“You’re wrong.” He turned around and paced a distance away from her lest his growing frustration spill over and drown Katherine in its depths. “Milne not only shares his time between you and Emily but also with a prostitute.”
Silence.
He stopped pacing and turned.
Katherine had paled and her lips turned white.
He returned to the counter. “Katherine?”
She shook her head and lifted a hand to her mouth. “Don’t be absurd.”
“I’m telling the truth.”
“Nicholas would never lower himself to visit a prostitute. To even suggest he does and then comes to my bed is disgusting. You should be ashamed. Now get out of my shop.”
Will glared. “I am telling you the truth. If you can’t help yourself, then for God’s sake, think of your daughter.”
She flinched, her eyes brimming with tears. “Get out.”
Heat pinched his cheeks and anger smoldered like burning coal in his gut. “I have just left the woman Milne pays to spend time with. A woman who has never felt the thrust of his fists but gave me the names of two other prostitutes who have. I am not lying about this, Katherine. I am telling you the honest truth and intend to tell the same truth to Miss Darson as soon as possible.”
Her eyes widened. “You can’t. The shame will kill her.”
Will shook his head. “Emily can handle whatever is thrown at her. That is the one thing I am absolutely sure of in this entire mess. My revelation will further fuel her desire to be rid of him and the absurd contract she is bound in.”
She stared. “Even if what you say is true, I have no idea what you expect of me. Nicholas is not a man to cross. I know it, as does Emily . . . and maybe even these other women you speak of. He is strong and powerful with a reputation that precedes him.”
“These women are willing to testify against him in a court of law. They will stand before a judge and tell him what Milne has done to them . . . and what of you? What are you willing to do to ensure Aimee’s safety?”
“This is madness. Whatever you feel for Emily, it cannot be such that you would risk your life, having only known her three or four weeks.”
“My life?”
“If Nicholas finds out what you are doing . . .” She shook her head.
“My motivation originally had nothing to do with Emily. When I came to Bath in search of Milne, I didn’t even know of her existence.”
“So what has Nicholas done to deserve your vengeance?”
Will tipped his head back, closed his eyes, and told her about his mother. When he opened them several minutes later, he stared at her, pleading with her to join him in battle.
“I hate him. I hate him with every fiber of my body.” He pulled his hat from his head and pushed his hand into his hair. He held it there. “But I am tired of that hatred digging its claws deeper and deeper into my soul. I want to cut it out of me. The only way to do that is to see Milne locked away and unable to hurt anyone else.”
Their gazes locked. The curtain behind her swished back and little Aimee came running out, holding a wooden doll by its leg. Hastily swiping at her eyes, Katherine lifted the curly-haired little girl into her arms and pulled her close. She pressed a kiss to Aimee’s temple, her eyes closed.
“I’ll help you, Mr. Samson.” She met Will’s eyes over Aimee’s head. “I’ll do whatever I can to stop Nicholas from ever coming near my little girl again.”
Chapter Thirteen
Emily’s heart beat faster and faster as her hand trembled on the drawing room door. Annie had rushed upstairs ten minutes earlier saying Will had returned and as Mr. Darson was sleeping, could Emily receive him? Emily closed her eyes and pressed her hand to her chest. Could she receive him? She could barely breathe.
Excitement fluttered in her stomach, relief in her heart. He had returned. She should be afraid, wanting to banish him out of the house, to leave her in peace to face her destiny. Yet nothing but happiness that he was on the other side of the door reigned supreme. Opening her eyes, she inhaled a deep breath. It was time to face him—see what he had to say about his altercation with Nicholas.
She opened the door. “Will.”
He turned from the window.
Emily walked farther into the room, not stopping until barely three feet separated them.
“You’re back.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
He nodded and then his gaze darted over her face before coming to rest on her lips. “I told you I would not leave you open to Milne’s harm. I meant it.” His jaw tightened.
Heat flushed her cheeks and then her entire body as desire lit his eyes. “I don’t . . . know what to say to you, Will. This can’t go on.”
“What can’t?”
Why had she said that? “I mean . . . I don’t know what I mean, but this is wrong. It isn’t what is supposed to be happening.”
“I won’t leave you open to his mistreatment. I can’t.”
She closed her eyes. “I’m strong. You know that. Whatever Nicholas thinks he can do to me, he can’t.” She opened her eyes. “I will survive.”
He shook his head. “My fear that you won’t means I can’t stay away. My passion that the man is not fit to lick your boots or even look at you burns right here.” He pushed a fist into his stomach. “I can’t ignore that.”
Emily fought the urge to close the space that lingered like a chasm between them. She tilted her chin against her attraction to him, her need for him. “I will marry him, Will. I have to. My father’s legacy means too much to me.”
Color stained his cheeks and he whirled away from her to stare through the window. Her heart ached to go to him, to steal her hands over his back and shoulders. To whisper promises she could not keep. If only things were different. She blinked the tears from her eyes and clamped her hands together in front of her. “I’m sorry.”
He huffed out a laugh. “You are the last person who needs to be sorry. It is I who has brought this trouble to your door. If I wasn’t here, you would have married him in blissful ignorance. At least for a while until the son of a bitch showed you his true colors.”
“Will, look at me.”
He turned and their gazes locked. His eyes shone with fervor, with a passion she longed to have in her life every single day. “This is madness.”
She forced a smile. “But it’s my madness. You need to move on, forget you ever met me. Whatever it is you think Nicholas capable of—”
“It’s not what I think, it’s what I know.” He blew out a breath through pursed lips and gestured to the settee. “Sit, please. I have something to tell you. Something I think will change your mind and make you see that no one needs to sacrifice their life in the name of loyalty and duty. Especially you.”
The sincerity in his gaze alerted Emily’s intuition. Whatever Will was about to tell her was about to turn her life upside down. On trembling legs, she moved to the settee and sat. He moved silently across the carpet, lowered beside her, and took her cold hand in his.
He stared deep into her eyes. “I’ve been busy these past two days. Very busy.”
Emily swallowed. “And?”
“What I have to tell you is not pleasant for me to repeat nor for you to hear.”
She drew in a strengthening breath. “Just tell me.”
“Milne is Aimee’s father.”
For a long moment, Emily stared and then slumped her shoulders, a defeated smile curving her lips. “I suspected as much. I have for a while.” She looked away from his penetrating gaze. “His infidelity doesn’t surprise me . . . but Katherine’s betrayal hurts more than you will ever know.” Tears smarted her eyes.
He reached up and cupped his hand to her jaw and br
ushed away her fallen tear with his thumb. “Emily, look at me.”
With her heart breaking for the friend she lost a long time ago, she turned.
He shook his head. “Don’t blame her. He forced her. She was little more than a child the first time.”
Revulsion dropped into her stomach and she tasted nausea bitter in her throat. His face blurred in her tears. “God, no. Please don’t tell me that.”
He closed his eyes. “There’s more.”
“More?” She stared, a beat aching at her temple. “What else could there possibly be?”
“There are other women.” He took her hand and grasped it. “There are prostitutes.”
“Pros . . .” Emily’s gaze locked on his and the remainder of her words extinguished in the flames of her anger. “You tell me everything you know about him. Everything.”
“I have found two other prostitutes so far. I’m sure there are more. He is a womanizer, Emily. A violent and malicious womanizer. I have tracked down a young woman he visits regularly and managed to persuade her to talk to others. I have asked them to testify against him. I want him in court—ultimately prison.”
She stared and clutched her free hand to her throat. “He sees this woman regularly? Is she his mistress? I thought Katherine—”
He shook his head. “The man is evil. I have much to tell you that I learned from these women.”
Emily’s inner tenacity rose up inside her. She tilted her chin. “Then tell me. Tell me everything.”
Her loyalty to everything and everyone apart from the man sitting in front of her, closed on her previous intention like a slamming door. Will’s voice filtered through her brain and each despicable word he spoke changed who Emily was forever.
The following morning, Emily glanced at her father as he spooned the last morsel of boiled egg into his mouth. Never before had their breakfast taken such a painfully slow time. Having placed her knife and fork side by side on her plate at least twenty minutes before, she now realized her nerves were stretched to breaking.
“Emily?”
She started. “Yes?”
“Will you stop tapping your foot up and down beneath the table? Otherwise I will be forced to call for Doctor Marshall and request it be surgically removed.”
“Sorry.”
“What has you in such a state of impatience?” He touched his napkin to his mouth and reached for his wineglass.
“I am not impatient for anything.”
He frowned. “I know you better than anyone. What is it?”
She forced a smile. “Fine. You do know me. I am itching to get outside. It’s such a beautiful day.”
He met her smile. “Well, I think that’s a splendid idea, my dear. What did you have in mind?”
Emily turned her gaze to her napkin and folded and refolded it. “I thought I might ask Will if he would escort me for a visit to Aunt Edith and Cousin Isabelle. I know they get dreadfully lonely being away from town.” She met his gaze.
He drained his glass. His eyes shone above its rim. “Is that so?”
The knowing glint in his eye brought a searing heat to Emily’s cheeks. “Do you not think it a good idea?”
He put his glass on the table. “Well, indeed. I’m sure they would love a visit from you, my dear . . . although, I have never known you to take such a task upon yourself without my encouragement before.”
She laughed. “I have too. Didn’t I take those muffins to them as a gift in the spring?”
“You did. What was it you said of my sister upon your return?” He glanced to the ceiling before meeting her eyes once more. “Oh, yes. If she deigned to smile, her face would splinter or something to that effect.”
Emily widened her eyes in mock innocence. “I said that but a single time. I was in an unforgivably bad mood after Aunt Edith spent the entirety of my visit suggesting I was obtuse for not getting my marriage to Nicholas over and done with.”
“She had a valid point. How has Nicholas been treating you these last few days? I have not heard you utter a single word against him, so I assume things are improving between you two? Is he treating you with the respect you deserve?”
A lump lodged in her throat to see him look without pain for a blessed moment. If she were to share with him what she now knew of Nicholas, it would surely bring his death closer. Her stomach knotted with the pain it brought her to keep things from him but she would not lay any further burden on his already stooping shoulders.
She forced a smile and laid her napkin on the table. “Nicholas has shown moderately more consideration toward me and my feelings over the last few days, I admit. He even apologized for his recent behavior.”
Her father gave an inelegant snort. “Apologize? Nicholas? I daren’t believe it. Sleep becomes more and more of an impossibility to me as the days to your wedding lessen. Nicholas is becoming worse with age rather than better.” He curled his hand into a fist on the table as he inhaled a wheezing breath. “Damn this disease I have growing inside me. I should be here for you, not leaving you in the hands of a man who is as capable of real love as a . . . a . . . oh, damnation!”
Emily leapt from her seat as a barrage of racking stole the breath from his blackened lungs. “Oh, Papa.”
She rushed toward him and laid her cheek to his head. She closed her eyes as the coughing jerked them time after time together as one. Emily held fast, absorbing the pain from his body. When the coughing abated enough for her to reach for a glass of water from the table, she held it to his lips.
After he’d swallowed a few sips, she set the glass down on the table and dropped to her haunches in front of him, taking his hands in hers. He looked into her eyes. “I have something I want to say to you. Something I’m sure you will not want to consider, but I think it for the best. For all of us.”
Emily frowned. “What is it?”
“I think we should release Nicholas’s hold on you and let him have the inheritance in its entirety.”
Emily’s breath caught. “Papa, no. Everything will be—”
“Everything will not be all right. But you will be free of him. You can go to Aunt Edith’s in the country and live there.”
“What? No.” Dread formed a tight knot in her stomach. She could not think of anything worse—apart from becoming Nicholas’s wife, of course. “I do not wish to live in the country any more than you would. We are city people, Bath people. We must not give up hope Nicholas will mellow in time.” She swallowed as further shame flooded her heart. The need for her father to only know what he did of Nicholas in that moment was paramount. “In fact . . .” She looked at him from beneath lowered lashes. “I believe the key to unlocking this confinement is right in front of us.”
Her father frowned. “Whatever do you mean?”
She met his gaze and grasped his hand, willing him to trust her to forge her future, her destiny. “Couldn’t the key quite possibly be in the form of a stranger who happened to make our acquaintance?”
“Whatever do you . . .” Comprehension emerged in his dark brown gaze and the soft lift of his lips. “You think Mr. Samson can do something about the contract? My dear, whatever would make you think such a thing? He is here for his nephew. With God’s good grace, he will soon find the boy and together they will return to Dorston.”
“I know but there’s something about him, Papa. As you’ve felt, he is to be trusted. I feel safe when he’s around, even though I have no idea why.” Emily grinned as her growing feelings for Will surfaced.
Her father’s brow creased with concern. “How could he possibly help with a marriage contract? An inheritance? It makes no sense to me why you would think such a thing.”
She took a shaky breath and exhaled. “He knew Nicholas before he knew us. Of that much I am certain, even though he has yet to admit it. They have a connection from the past and I will find out what it is if it’s the last thing I do.”
Their gazes locked and Emily’s heart swelled to see the light in her father’s eyes grow
brighter. To catch even a glimpse of the man he was before his illness made her want to sing and dance, fight and never surrender. She took his hand.
“Well?”
He lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a firm kiss to her knuckles. “We will talk to Samson, find out what he knows.”
Smiling, Emily stood. “That is exactly my intention. If you are happy for me to visit Aunt Edith, Will can accompany me and I will find a way to raise the subject with him.”
Her father smiled. “Excellent. The Darson father and daughter are a formidable team, are they not?”
Emily laughed as the blood binding them together pumped through her veins. She hurried to the fireplace and pulled the bell. Will had told her much of Nicholas’s infidelities, of his attitude and lust for violence, but still he had not told her of their connection before he arrived in Bath. Unable to press him when her stomach convulsed with the knowledge of Nicholas’s betrayals, Emily now felt ready to learn what Will knew of Nicholas’s past . . . for she was sure Will carried more knowledge than the insufferable news he had brought back with him yesterday, and she’d discover more of Will, too. Within seconds, Annie appeared in the doorway.
“Annie, my dear.” Emily’s father lifted his arm in greeting. “What a wonderful day it is! Could you ask Malcolm to prepare the driving gig for Miss Darson?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Have you any idea where Mr. Samson is this morning? Do you know if he has left for the day?”
“I believe not, sir. He was in the kitchen not twenty minutes ago. Would you like me to bring him to you?”
“No, no. Emily will find him. I would like him to accompany her on a little day trip. Just the two of them. Yes, indeed. Alone and unattended.”
Emily’s face heated. “Father, do not say it like that. Whatever will Annie think of me?”
Annie’s gaze lingered questioningly on Emily’s before her eyes bulged and her face erupted with a smile of girlish glee. Emily rolled her eyes. If she didn’t know better, Annie had more than likely already planned her mistress’s marriage to Will. Right down to the place settings and what tins to tie on the carriage as the guests bid them farewell when they set off on their honeymoon.
The Seduction of Emily Page 17