by Jo Goodman
“You must promise that you will keep what I shall tell you in the strictest confidence.”
“A tryst, then,” he said in bored accents. “That is frequently the way of it. Why did she ask you to go in her place?”
“To end it, of course. Marisol is engaged, you see.”
“And when was that done exactly? Before or after she agreed to an assignation with Mr. Kincaid?”
“Before.”
“You will have to speak up, Miss Hathaway. Your reluctance to speak ill of your cousin is telling of your character but deuced annoying. Now, I believe you said before. Is that correct?”
“Yes. She was betrothed before she arranged to meet Mr. Kincaid.”
“This was not the first time she agreed to it. You said she meant to break it off. From that I can infer that there were previous appointments with the man. She kept those, I presume.”
“Yes.”
“Your cousin’s definition of what it means to be betrothed is rather different from what I understand is acceptable in society.”
“She is very young.”
“Is she not eighteen? Bloody hell, Miss Hathaway, if she doesn’t understand the meaning of engagement, she’s a foolish chit for agreeing to one. What sort of man is her fiancé? An ogre? Someone ready to turn up his toes? A widower with seven children of his own?”
“He is none of those things. Mr. Neven Charters is altogether an accomplished gentleman, and there are those who say he is handsome as well. He has had some business dealings with my uncle and has since become a patron. That is how he came to know us. Once he met Marisol…well, I think it is fair to say that he is besotted with her.”
Restell was silent a moment, taking into account what he believed she wasn’t saying. He didn’t fail to notice that she was worrying her lip again. “And your cousin? Is she similarly addled?”
“Her behavior to the contrary, it appears to be a love match. I believe it is the prospect of marriage that frightens her—and what comes afterward.”
Restell did not think his visitor’s mottled complexion could make allowance for another hue, so it surprised him to see a hint of pink rise above the high collar at her throat and slip under her swollen jaw and bruised cheeks. The violet stains under her eyes deepened to indigo, and then the color took the path upward past her temples and spread across her forehead until it finally disappeared into her hairline and under her bonnet.
“Afterward?” Restell said, because he could not help himself. Goading females was the prerogative of someone with four sisters, at least he had always thought so.
“Children, Mr. Gardner. My aunt died in childbirth when Marisol was not yet five. She remembers it well enough.”
Restell promised himself that he would not forget that when Miss Hathaway was pushed, she pushed back, almost always in unexpected ways. “Then you believe her flirtations are innocent?”
“Most assuredly. She is silly at times—some would say foolish—but she is not unintelligent. She realized what she was risking, thought better of it, and determined she must stop seeing Mr. Kincaid.”
“Have there been other flirtations?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Do you say that because you hope she’s shown that much sense?”
“I say it because Marisol does not regularly confide in me.”
“How did you learn about Kincaid? Did she tell you?”
“We attended a party at the Newbolts together. In January, I think it was. I observed the overtures made by Mr. Kincaid and saw that Marisol did not rebuff them.”
“Others must have observed the same.”
“They were rather more discreet than I have made them seem. Mr. Charters was not present, so Marisol was partnered in the sets by many different gentlemen.”
Restell considered this for some time before he rose from his chair and crossed in front of the desk to the fireplace. He poked at the small fire that had been laid there. The morning had begun unusually chilly and the temperature had not improved greatly. In deference to his visitor’s comfort, he added a small log and pushed it over the embers until it was captured by tongues of fire.
When he turned around it was to find Miss Hathaway perched on the edge of her chair like some fledgling bird anxious to take flight. It occurred to him that if he had given her more time, she would have seized the opportunity to escape.
“Have you changed your mind?” he asked.
“Pardon?”
“You look as though you wish yourself anywhere but here, Miss Hathaway. I wondered if you’ve thought better of your decision. Mayhap you’d like to leave.”
“I’m not…no…that is…”
Restell required a coherent sentence to follow the bent of her mind. Waiting for her to gather her thoughts, he absently tapped the tip of the poker against the marble apron. Her response to the sound was nothing short of galvanic. Her head jerked back as if struck and her hands finally released the reticule as she raised them defensively, protecting her face as though from another blow. Restell dropped the poker. She was already turning away from him by the time it clattered to the floor. She burrowed into the armchair, drawing her legs up under her skirt so her feet rested on the leather seat, hunching her shoulders, and pulling in her elbows, all of it in aid of making her as small a target as was possible.
Restell quelled his urge to cross the room and go to her. It seemed self-serving to attempt to offer reassurance when his very presence at her side was likely to provoke further agitation. He might derive some comfort from trying to assist her, but she was unlikely to find any relief from it.
“Miss Hathaway?” He held his ground and kept his arms loosely at his side, palms outward, showing her he had no weapons, that even his hands were not to be feared. He maintained this posture even when she did not look in his direction, knowing that she would eventually risk a glance at him. “I mean you no harm,” he said calmly. “Was it the poker that startled you? Were you struck with such a thing?”
Except for a shudder, she made no response.
“Will you not look at me, Miss Hathaway? Assure yourself that I will not lift a hand against you.”
He watched her lower her gloved hands a fraction, but she did not turn her head toward him. “I admit to profound inadequacy in this situation,” he said. “And I do not thank you for making me say so.” He thought her hands lowered again, but it might have been a tremble in them that made it seem so. “I cannot decide what will give you the greatest ease. Should I offer refreshment? Perhaps you would like time alone to compose yourself and make your escape if that is your desire. Would cajolery work or should I remain silent?” For a long minute he did just that. He could observe that it made no appreciable change in the way she held herself. “I am going to step outside,” he told her at last. “There is a matter I must attend to. You are free to remain or go as you will.”
Restell reached the door by a route that maintained the most distance between himself and Miss Hathaway. He did not look back once he crossed the threshold but closed the paneled door quietly behind him.
Emma unfolded herself slowly, finding that she had become remarkably stiff during the time she’d spent curled so tightly in the chair. She touched one hand to her cheek where embarrassment had made her face go hot. She would have liked to indulge in a bout of tears but that release was denied her. There had been no tears since she’d escaped her abductors, nor many that she recalled while they held her. She’d been afraid to cry then and even more afraid since. She dreamed of drowning in tears or sometimes imagined being scarred by them, her face etched permanently as if by acid. Tears meant exposing that part of herself that she kept inviolate, that private, secret self where she still pretended that what had happened had in fact happened to someone else.
Uncle Arthur looked at her differently these days. She glimpsed disappointment in his sideways glance, even faint disapproval, as though because of her failure to protect herself she had failed him. Her in
ability to fend off her attackers reminded him that she was no stalwart son but a woman after all, with every one of a woman’s vulnerabilities.
Marisol, in contrast, looked at her often. Her cousin was at once curious and repelled by what she saw and wholly unable to suppress that play of feeling in her features. In the first days of returning home, Emma had been helpless to keep Marisol from attending her. At first she believed it was guilt that brought Marisol so often to her side, but she now suspected that she had given her cousin credit for more tender sensibilities than she in truth possessed. The expression of relief on Marisol’s fine features was perhaps a more accurate reflection of what she was thinking: relief that she had not been the victim here.
Emma could not find it in herself to blame her. Had their positions been reversed she might very well feel the same, and there had not yet come a moment when she wished their positions had been reversed. Emma could not imagine wishing what she had endured to be the experience of another person.
Hadn’t she come here to avoid just that end?
Restell Gardner was not at all what she expected and the very least of it was his age. At first glance one could be forgiven for thinking they were in the presence of a god. His pale hair, so light that it might have been gilt with sunshine made Apollo come immediately to mind. Sitting or standing, he had a careless, casual way of holding himself that lent him an air of supreme indifference. That impression faded when one was held still by his eyes. If he willed it so, he could hold a glance for an interminable length and never blink. The intensity of feeling that was not expressed in his loose and lean frame was captured in eyes that could be as warm and clear a blue as a halcyon sky or as opaque and cold as frost on a pond in winter.
His patience, not his Viking warrior looks, made him a force to be reckoned with. Although she had been made to wait in his drawing room for what seemed an unbearably long time, she had not been able to use that opportunity to formulate any sense of what she meant to tell him. Snippets of thought simply tumbled through her mind so that no coherent whole was possible, yet he had been able to draw almost the sum of it all from her.
She never once felt pitied or pitiable, even when she raised her veil and showed him what had become of her face. He had regarded her openly, without revulsion, and made it impossible for her to duck her head or retreat behind the gauzy black curtain of lace. In that moment she became stronger because he expected her strength, as if he knew how to tap more deeply into the well of her resolve even as she would have sworn there never existed such a well.
So she had remained strong…up until the moment he began tapping the poker. If the banging of the letter opener against his desk had given rise to a timpani in her head, the sharp staccato of the poker against the marble apron was like a pair of cymbals crashing together on either side of her skull.
Her reaction—to curl hedgehog-like into the relative safety of the leather armchair—had been accomplished without any conscious thought. She’d just done it. There’d been no help for it and that terrified her. What if Mr. Gardner suspected she was a candidate for an asylum? Would he agree to help someone on so short a tether? He might very well suggest confining her to a madhouse, and how could she trust that her uncle would not approve of such a measure? There existed evidence that he could be convinced it was in her best interest, and if she failed to make herself useful, certainly he could be convinced that it was in his.
Emma stood abruptly. Her legs were steadier than she would have credited. Opening her reticule, she withdrew the cheque she had drawn on her quarterly allowance and savings and made out to Mr. Restell Gardner. She placed it on the blotter on his desk and laid the letter opener over it to serve as a paperweight, then she tugged on her veil and started toward the door.
Several sharp raps from the other side stopped Emma in her tracks. She opened her mouth to say something, to say anything, but discovered she had no voice to call out. The insistent knocking came again, harder this time, more urgent, as though someone thought she’d missed it the first time.
Emma couldn’t say how long she stood there, only that she never saw the door opening. The darkness encroaching on the periphery of her vision had engulfed her by then.
Chapter 2
“Did I not say she is a female of the inconvenient variety?” Restell studied Emmalyn’s awkwardly positioned body as he posed the question. He had had occasion to observe that some women were able to manage a graceful faint. Miss Hathaway was not one of them. Judging by the sound he heard just prior to opening the doors, her impact with the floor had all the resonance of a two-hundred-year-old oak being felled. The arrangement of her limbs suggested she had been overcome quickly, with no opportunity to break her fall. He glanced over at Hobbes who had wisely chosen not to answer what was essentially a rhetorical poser. The man looked decidedly uncomfortable. “Never say this is the first time you’ve been confronted with a lady’s swoon, Hobbes.”
The valet cleared his throat. “Mary Stubbs used to fall on her face when the gin was better than she was used to. Never felt compelled to do more than turn her on her side, so she could sleep it off without choking on her vomit.”
“And you with no reputation for gallantry. There’s a puzzler.” Restell hunkered down beside Emma and laid his hand near the back of her neck. “Miss Hathaway?” When she did not respond, he glanced over his shoulder at Nelson who was hovering in the doorway. “Fetch whatever is at the ready to bring her around. Consult Mrs. Peach if you must. She will know” He broke off because he felt a slight stirring under his palm. “Wait. She is with us, I think.” He carefully turned her over. The veil fell across her face, and he chose not to sweep it aside. “Hobbes, you will slip your hands under her legs. I will lift her shoulders. Then we shall place her on the chaise.”
This transport was accomplished with rather more delicacy than Restell had imagined when he gave the order, but Hobbes was all for preserving Miss Hathaway’s modesty and his own sensibilities. Clearly the sergeant made a social distinction between the gin-soaked Mary Stubbs and their deuced inconvenient guest.
“It occurs to me that you’re a snob,” Restell informed his valet as they eased Emmalyn onto the chaise. “Leaving poor Miss Stubbs to sleep off good gin in the gutter while demonstrating all manner of concern for a young lady you do not even know.”
“I don’t believe I mentioned a gutter, sir, and Mary, well, she would have accused me of trying to have my way with her if I’d done more.”
“And you don’t think this woman will do the same?”
This was a question Hobbes had not considered before. He could not step away from the chaise quickly enough.
“Make yourself easy, Hobbes. No accusation will be made here—even if there were cause for it. I think Miss Hathaway would sooner eat nails for breakfast than admit some terrible wrong had been done to her.” Restell glanced back at the door. Nelson remained at his post awaiting further instruction. “Some tea, Nelson. A bit of whiskey would not be amiss, either.” When the butler was gone, Restell addressed his valet. “You will want to absent yourself for the time being. I will make the introductions when I have determined she is all of a piece and prepared to depart. Have the carriage made ready. I will not permit her to walk and renting a hack is out of the question. You will ride with Whittier, won’t you? Or has her faint given you pause?”
“I’ll ride with him,” Hobbes said. “He wouldn’t know what to do if there’s dustup.”
“My thought also.” Restell did not trust anyone so much as the sergeant to act on what must be done should the occasion arise. “I should like to be confident that she will be returned to her home safely.”
Hobbes bobbed his head once, acknowledging his employer’s confidence was not misplaced, then left the room.
As soon as Restell heard the doors close behind him, he raised Emmalyn’s veil. He was not surprised to find her staring back at him, although her mottled features made it challenging to determine the nature of her express
ion. It seemed that she was more out of patience than she was chagrined. When she started to rise, he placed a restraining hand on her shoulder.
“Allow yourself another moment’s respite,” Restell said. He saw her eyes dart to his hand and immediately lifted it. He straightened and took a step toward the foot of the chaise. “You took your fall on your face. I expect you will have another bruise to show for it.”
Emma raised her gloved fingers and gingerly explored the length of her jaw, working it back and forth slowly as she did so. She winced when she happened upon the injury. “Am I bleeding?”
“No. It is merely a carpet burn.”
She turned her head so she might see the Aubusson rug.
“Do not give it a thought,” Restell said. “It appears none the worse for all that you attempted to plow it with your chin.”
“It is good of you to evince so much concern for my person,” she said wryly.
“Yes, well, the carpet is new.”
“That explains it, then.”
“And this is my brother’s home.”
“Of course.”
“My mother had a hand in choosing it.”
“I quite understand.”
“You couldn’t possibly, but it is good of you to evince so much concern for my person.”
Emma was mildly astonished to hear herself laugh. The sound of it was not in the least robust, nor even particularly joyful, but as a first attempt she thought it was well done of her.
Restell watched Emma suck in her breath on a whimper of sound and what might have been an inkling of a smile was transformed into a wince. He inched closer to the chaise. “Are you certain you are recovered?”
Her response was to arch one eyebrow at him and raise herself on her elbows. “You will do me a great kindness by not encouraging me to laugh.”
“Your lip is bleeding again.”
Emma touched the small split in her lip with the tip of her tongue. She pushed herself upright, took out the handkerchief he had given her earlier, and pressed it to her mouth. After a moment she held it away long enough to tell him, “I blame you for it.”