by Anna Bradley
“And you gave her one.” Emma’s voice wasn’t quite steady.
The minute the words left her mouth Emma wished them back, but it was as if a dam had burst, and all the misery and confusion and fear that had been pushing against Emma’s chest since she’d escaped the Pink Pearl at age fifteen were determined to have their way at last.
After five long years, they refused to be silenced any longer.
Helena made a sound that was perhaps meant to be a laugh, but it was sharp, cutting, like the sound of glass being ground under a boot heel. “What would you have had me do, Emma? Let Lord Peabody beat me bloody? He got what he deserved.”
What he deserved? No, he’d gotten far better than that. He deserved to be put down like the rabid animal he was before he got a chance to hurt someone else.
“I warned you to stay away from him, Helena!” Emma cried, knowing how unfair her words were, but unable to make herself stop. “I told you not to—”
“You’re right, of course. I should have declined his attentions, shouldn’t I? Why, I should have simply told Madame Marchand I preferred to lounge in my bed all evening instead of entertaining the gentlemen. You know I didn’t have any choice, Emma. Or perhaps you don’t know.” A bitter smile crossed Helena’s lips. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten.”
Helena turned away, but Emma snatched Helena’s cold hand in hers, stopping her. “Wait, Helena.”
Helena waited, her throat working.
“I…haven’t forgotten.” How could she? She’d tried to forget those years, to bury the memories so deeply they’d never see the light of consciousness again, but they were like the wraiths floating through Covent Garden. Silent, but haunting. “I’m sorry. I know there was nothing you could do.”
Helena face softened then, and incredibly she made a valiant attempt at a smile. “Well, not nothing. Lord Peabody came away from it with neat rows of scratches on his cheeks. He was furious when he saw his pretty, ruined face in the glass. Why are the ugliest men always the vainest?”
“And the handsomest gentlemen always the kindest?” Emma murmured, turning her gaze back to Samuel.
He wasn’t the handsomest man she’d ever seen, yet to Emma, no gentleman’s face could ever compare to Samuel’s.
The realization stunned her.
When had she stopped thinking of his face as too harsh, too cold? Was it the first time she’d seen a flash of heat in those cool gray eyes, the first restrained twitch at the corner of those hard lips? His wasn’t a kind face at first glance, but the hint of his smile…did it mean more than Lovell’s easy grins because it so infrequently graced his lips?
It felt like a gift, that smile, like a reward she’d earned, and then just as quickly squandered, because he wasn’t smiling at her now. His expression was dark, his face set into hard, uncompromising lines. He didn’t return her gaze, but turned away, as if he couldn’t bear to look at her.
Unconsciously, Emma pressed a hand to her chest, right over her heart, as if she could stop it from shattering with a simple touch. An unfamiliar sob rose in her throat, but she choked it back and took Helena’s hand. “Come along, dearest. Daniel will be looking for us.”
Emma led Helena from Bennets Court back to Drury Lane. Samuel followed without a word, a bedraggled, dejected little band of three.
They met Daniel coming from the other direction down Drury Lane, his eyes wild, and moving at a speed that should have been impossible for a man of his massive size. “That the lass?” he called to Emma, when he caught sight of them.
“Yes, we found her. She’s all right.” Mostly, and even that had been a near thing.
Some of the tension drained from Daniel’s big shoulders, but when he was close enough to see Helena’s face, the livid finger marks on her neck, he stiffened again. “Skin of her teeth, by the looks of it. What’s his lordship doing here?”
“He, ah…he followed us from Vauxhall Gardens.”
Daniel’s brows lowered. “Did he, now? What’s he want?”
Whatever answer she gave to that question wouldn’t sit well with Daniel, so Emma thought it best to ignore it. “You’ll see to it Helena is taken care of?” Emma didn’t mention Lady Clifford, but she didn’t have to, with Daniel. He knew what she wanted.
“Aye. Where are ye going, lass?” Daniel’s question was for Emma, but his grim gaze remained fixed on Samuel.
“Lady Emma is coming with me.” Samuel wrapped a possessive hand around Emma’s wrist. “I’ll see she’s returned to Lady Crosby.”
Daniel’s eyebrows shot up, but something in Samuel’s face silenced his protest. “Come on then, lass,” he said to Helena, his huge hand gentle on her shoulder. “We’ll see ye put back to rights again. I’ll be waiting for you, Miss Emma,” Daniel added, casting a dark look at Samuel over his shoulder as he helped Helena down the street toward Lady Crosby’s carriage.
By the time Samuel handed Emma into his carriage, she was trembling with exhaustion. Between her chase through the Dark Walk, Samuel’s dizzying kisses in the alcove, the frantic search in Drury Lane, and Helena’s attack, she was ready to collapse.
But one glimpse into Samuel’s cold, shuttered eyes made her heart shrink inside her chest, and she knew, without him saying a word, that the miseries of this evening were far from over.
* * * *
Since their first meeting at Almack’s, Lady Emma had been lying to him. Dozens, tens of dozens of lies, the web pulling tighter around him with every word out of her pretty mouth.
One some level, perhaps Samuel had known it all along. Somewhere, deep inside himself, hadn’t he been waiting for the truth to come out? He simply hadn’t wanted to believe it could be as bad as this.
But tonight, the truth had slammed into him with brutal clarity.
“Is your name even Emma?”
It wasn’t what he’d meant to ask. Given the mountain of lies she’d told him, what did her name matter? It seemed a ludicrous place to start. Her past as a courtesan, her relationship to Lady Crosby, her friendship with Helena Reeves, her flirtation with Lovell, her very identity…
What was a name, when taken against all that?
There was a long pause, then she whispered, “Yes. My name is Emma.”
“I don’t believe you.” Samuel’s throat tried to close around the words, but they clawed their way from his throat to his lips. How pathetic was it that he doubted her even in this? That he could no longer trust she wouldn’t lie about something as simple as her name?
“Even if it is Emma, it isn’t Lady Emma Crosby, is it? Lady Crosby isn’t your grandmother, and Helena Reeves was never your lady’s maid. You were a courtesan at the Pink Pearl. That’s how you know Helena. Caroline too, I suppose.”
Strange, that there wasn’t any accusation in his voice. There was nothing at all in it—it was flat, inflectionless.
“I don’t know Caroline.” She looked down at her hands. “She’s Helena’s friend. I never met her.”
It might be the truth, the one small, insignificant truth amid an avalanche of much bigger lies. It hardly mattered. “Your flirtation with Lovell, your interest in him, it was never real, was it?”
“No.” Low, nearly inaudible.
For the first time since they’d entered the carriage, he turned and looked at her. She’d crammed herself into the darkest corner, and she looked so small and pale, so lost, nothing at all like the blue-eyed temptress who’d charmed and flirted her way into the dreams of every gentleman in London.
No longer the belle. But then she never had been. Not really.
Samuel’s heart gave a miserable thump at how broken she looked, like a discarded doll, but at the same time he was furious that he could still care for her—could feel anything for her—after what she’d done to him, to his family.
“You feigned your regard for Lovell in order to draw him in, because you thought he’d
hurt Amy and Kitty and…what? That he seduced Caroline, then abandoned her? How could you think…why? Why would you suspect Lovell?” Samuel’s voice cracked on the last words.
“I—” she began, but fell silent again, shaking her head.
Some of Samuel’s numbness fled in the face of her silence, disintegrated in a hot flash of anger and hurt. He thought of Lovell as he’d been at fifteen, right before Samuel had left England, with his sweet smile, his disheveled mop of dark hair and his eagerness, and it felt as if a knife had been plunged into his chest.
Lovell wasn’t a perfect man, no more than any man was, but a kidnapper, a murderer?
The unfairness of it stunned him, stopped his breath.
“Why should it have fallen to you to determine Lovell’s innocence or guilt? Who are you, to decide?” Even as the words left his mouth, there was a part of Samuel that hoped she wouldn’t answer. Knowing would only draw him deeper into her web.
“I took an interest in Lord Lovell at the request of Lady Clifford.” Emma’s gaze was on her hands, clenched tightly in her lap.
Samuel stared at her. “Lady Amanda Clifford?”
“Two young housemaids went missing from your country estate, Samuel. Vanished, never to be seen again. They—”
“I know that, Emma! I made it my business to discover what became of Amy and Kitty as soon as I returned to England. What I don’t understand is why Lady Clifford should think Lovell is involved in it.”
Emma’s lips parted, but no words emerged.
“Lovell couldn’t have committed the crimes you suspect him of. He fought a duel in January, and was nearly killed by a pistol ball to the leg. He’s done nothing for weeks but lie in his bed.”
“I know that, now.”
“If you’d asked me, you might have known it at once, and spared us all of this!” Samuel shouted, gripping his hair in his hands.
Emma flinched at his raised voice. “If I had asked, would you have told me?”
No. Samuel couldn’t deny it, not even to himself. He’d been suspicious of Emma from the start.
For good reason, as it turned out.
He forced himself to take a deep breath until the ache in his chest loosened enough for him to speak calmly. He wanted this over, but there was one question he had to ask, one thing he had to know before this would ever be over for him.
If Emma had feigned her regard for Lovell, then couldn’t she do the same for any man? When she realized she wouldn’t get anywhere with Lovell, had she put Samuel in his cousin’s place, traded one of them for the other as if they were no more significant than discarded cards tossed carelessly aside after a lost wager?
Samuel swallowed. “Our kiss in Lady Tremaine’s garden, my carriage, tonight at Vauxhall. Was that…were you pretending then, too? Was I part of your scheme all along?”
“No.” She didn’t hesitate, her voice strong and clear.
Her blue eyes were fierce, flashing with conviction, and hope sparked in Samuel’s chest. “There’s more to this than you’ve told me. If you truly do care for me, then tell me the truth, Emma. All of it.”
Silence stretched between them, thick with anguish. Samuel already knew what her answer would be before she spoke it.
“I-I can’t do that, Samuel.”
Just like that, the spark was snuffed out, reducing his heart to a drift of hot cinders in his chest. After that, there was nothing more to say.
“I’m leaving London tomorrow, and taking my family back to Kent.” Samuel drew in a harsh breath. “Whoever hurt Amy and Kitty will face justice. I’ll make sure of it, but I don’t…I don’t want to see you ever again, Emma.”
He didn’t look at her after that, nor did he move when the carriage stopped in front of Lady Crosby’s townhouse. His coachman jumped down from the box and opened the carriage door, but Emma didn’t get out—not right away.
Samuel could feel her gaze on him, but he couldn’t bear to look at her.
After a moment he heard a faint rustle of silk, and felt a slight shift in the carriage as she turned away to accept his coachman’s hand, and stepped onto the pavement.
His eyes slid shut as the door closed with a quiet click behind her.
Chapter Seventeen
Emma dragged herself through the front door of Lady Crosby’s townhouse in a daze, hardly able to believe she’d passed through this same door mere hours earlier.
It should take more time than that, shouldn’t it, for a dream to fall apart?
She closed the door and stood there, eyes closed, unsure what to do next. Helena was safe, but Caroline was still missing. Lord Lovell was innocent, but someone at Lymington House was guilty, and she was no closer to knowing who it was than she had been when this started.
I’m leaving London tomorrow.…I never want to see you again.
Emma bowed her head, her eyes stinging as Samuel’s words came back to her on a rush of pain, and with it, the crushing realization that she was unsure what to do next, because there was nothing left to do.
It was over. By this time tomorrow Samuel would be on his way to Kent, his family with him. She’d remain in London, left to try and puzzle out the tragedy that had unfolded at Lymington House with the few fragments she held in her hands, and little hope of success.
Amy, Kitty, and Caroline, Lady Clifford, Daniel and Lady Crosby, Flora and Lord Lovell, and even Helena, who’d come so close to dying alone in a filthy alley—Emma could hardly bear to think of it.
She’d failed them all, and she’d failed Samuel.
But most of all, she’d failed herself. She’d had one chance to offer something to all the lost young girls—a chance to do something good, to prove to herself she was more than just a whore and a murderess. One chance to carry a torch and stride triumphantly through the flames like Thaïs, and she’d let it slip through her fingers.
And for what? Some childish dream she’d long since given up on.
She’d been a fool to believe even for a moment the fragile tenderness between her and Samuel would flourish, when it was destined from the start to wither on the vine. She should have known it would end the same way it had started—with him wishing he’d never laid eyes on her.
One way or another, it would always end that way.
“Emma?”
Emma looked up to see Lady Crosby hovering by the door to the drawing room, her face drawn with worry. “I’m sorry, my lady. Am I very late?”
“It’s all right, dear.” Some emotion flickered in Lady Crosby’s eyes, but the hallway was too dim, and Emma too exhausted to decipher what it was. “Did you find Helena?”
“I did, and not a moment too soon.” Emma swallowed at the memory of Helena’s torn gown and bruised neck. “Daniel’s taken her to Lady Clifford.”
Lady Crosby sagged against the door frame in relief. “Thank goodness. But you look done in, you poor thing. Come to the drawing room, and sit with me for a bit.”
Emma took the hand Lady Crosby offered, and allowed herself to be led to the drawing room as if she were a child, and seated on a comfortable settee by the fire. Lady Crosby called for refreshments, then proceeded to fuss over Emma like a mother hen until a footman arrived with a silver tray bearing a bottle of sherry and two glasses.
“Sherry, my lady? At…” Emma glanced at the mantel clock. “Six o’clock in the morning?”
“I’m a great lover of tea, as you know, Emma, but there are occasions when it isn’t quite sufficient.” Lady Crosby poured a hearty measure of sherry into each glass, and handed one to Emma. “This feels like one of those times.”
Emma couldn’t argue with that. She raised the glass to her lips and took a grateful sip, but Lady Crosby’s next remark had her choking on the sherry.
“You’ve been with Lord Lymington all night, haven’t you, dear?” Lady Crosby took a calm sip from her own glass.
“He followed you from Vauxhall, and I imagine he caught up with you. He’s not the sort of gentleman one easily escapes, is he?”
It wasn’t a question, despite Lady Crosby’s enquiring air.
From the start, Emma hadn’t kept any secrets from Lady Crosby. Emma’s questionable origins, her memorable year at the Pink Pearl, and her history with Lady Clifford—Lady Crosby knew it all, as indeed she must if she and Emma were to work effectively together.
But even so, an unaccountable shyness overtook Emma at mention of Samuel’s name, and she found herself stumbling over her reply. “He, ah…we weren’t—”
“Now, don’t get flustered, dear. Lord Lymington returned to the supper box to deliver your message to me, but he hardly managed to get one sentence out before he shot off again as if his heels were on fire. Of course, I knew he was going after you.”
He’d gone after her to help her, and what had he got for his trouble?
Lies, and betrayal.
Emma flushed with shame.
Lady Crosby seized her hand. “There’s no need to look so chagrined, my love. I was young once too, you know. We’d hardly embarked on the season before I realized the way that particular wind was blowing.”
“Wind?” Emma echoed. “I don’t—”
“It’s a figure of speech, dear. But it’s curious, isn’t it, how things come to pass? You’d chosen Lord Lovell for this scheme, but then fate chose Lord Lymington for you, and so it goes.”
Emma let out a bleak laugh. “Fate has her way in the end, doesn’t she?” Fate, or divine justice. They could call it whatever they liked, but in the end, the result was the same.
Fate hadn’t chosen Samuel to reward Emma. She’d chosen him to punish her.
Samuel wasn’t under any illusions about her any longer. What better way to castigate her for her sins than for her to be cursed to tell one lie after another to a man destined from the start to despise her, a man she’d fallen hopelessly in love with—
Love? No, that wasn’t…she wasn’t in love with Samuel. She’d made mistakes these past weeks—a shocking number of them—but surely she couldn’t have been such a monumental fool as to fall in love with the Marquess of Lymington?