Rogue Grooms

by Amanda McCabe

  Now, she gave Emily a bright smile. “Your own clothes are so pretty, Lady Emily, that I know you will be able to say whether it is fashionable or not. My great-grandmother will want only the very latest styles.”

  Emily could not help but smile back at her; the girl’s open, pretty face had the attraction of sunlight on a cold, gray day. She obviously possessed her father’s easy charm, when she chose to display it.

  Emily knelt down beside Anjali to examine the silk. She longed to kiss the child’s pretty cheek in absurd gratitude for her sudden show of friendship—and for postponing the inevitable conversation Emily must have with Anjali’s father.

  “It is very lovely, Lady Anjali,” she answered. “This blue is very à la mode this Season. I am sure your great-grandmother could make a fine gown or pelisse from it.”

  “She would not make a gown or pelisse, Lady Emily. She will make a sari,” said Anjali.

  “A sari? My, that sounds terribly grand. What does one look like, pray tell?” Emily asked, as if she had never seen so much as a sketch of an Indian lady in her costume before. She had even tried to make one herself, from a length of pink satin, to no avail. The intricate folds were beyond her skills.

  But she liked hearing the little girl speak, her tones lilting and sweet. And the solemn expression on Anjali’s face as she proceeded to explain the garment was priceless.

  Before the horrified gaze of the shopgirl, Anjali unrolled the entire bolt and proceeded to wind the cloth around herself. “First, Lady Emily, you must hold it like this, and turn like this . . .”

  Later, when the fabric used for Anjali’s sari had been put back on its bolt and the chosen purchases were being wrapped, Emily walked with Anjali among a display for hat trimmings of feathers and flowers. She stopped to examine a basket of silk roses, wondering how a yellow blossom would look on a new white bonnet.

  “Lady Emily?” Anjali said softly, leaning against her ever so slightly.

  Emily smiled down at her. “Yes, Lady Anjali?”

  “You knew my father when you were children?”

  “Yes, I did. Many years ago.”

  The child’s pretty green eyes shifted away, as if she was uncertain about something. “Was he—happy here in England? Then?”

  Emily thought she understood. After all, she had once been an uncertain child herself. She knelt down beside Anjali, her skirts spreading about her on the wooden floor. “Is there something troubling you about your papa, my dear?”

  Anjali shook her head. “It is just that—he seemed unhappy while we were in Calcutta, even though he always laughed and smiled with me. I hoped he would be happy here, maybe like when you were children.”

  Emily felt such a sharp pang at the thought of David ever being unhappy about anything at all, and that it would cause such worry in this child’s wide green eyes. “I hope he will be happy here. And you, too. Your papa tells me you enjoy English history, and seeing all the sights here.”

  “I do enjoy that. But it is not as sunny here as it is in India, and . . .” Her soft voice trailed away.

  “But, what?” Emily reached out to clasp Anjali’s small hand in hers. “What is amiss, my dear?”

  Anjali stared at her intently, her brow wrinkled. “I see the way some people look at me when Papa takes me out, as if I was—strange, odd. My hair is dark, not like yours. Is something wrong with me? With Papa? Is that why he is unhappy?”

  Emily’s stomach cramped with a sudden, fiery bolt of anger that someone—anyone—could so much as look sideways at this sweet girl. Unable to stop herself, she put her arms around Anjali and drew her close. At first, the child held herself stiff, uncertain. But then she melted against Emily, her arms going about her neck. “Lady Anjali, it is true that there are some foolish people who believe everyone should look and think alike. But you must pay them no attention at all, for they are mistaken. You should pity them for being so stupid.”

  Anjali giggled against Emily’s shoulder. “Stupid, Lady Emily?”

  “Yes. Stupid. For you are perfectly beautiful just as you are, and you must always remember that. If anyone says differently, I will jab them with my parasol.”

  Anjali laughed again, the sound sweet as springtime birdsong. Her small hands tightened around Emily—and Emily felt her own heart laugh in light reply.

  Chapter Nine

  The British Museum was quiet in the afternoon—so quiet that the soles of Emily’s half-boots echoed hollowly on the floor as she moved between the graceful arcs of the pale marble statues, the long stretches of the friezes. That last time she had come here, with Georgina and Alex to see the new rooms for the Elgin Marbles, the crowds had been so thick she could scarcely see without trodding on someone’s foot. But at this hour everyone was at the Park, seeing and being seen along Rotten Row. Only a few people, artists with sketchbooks or seekers of beauty and solitude like herself, wandered in the dim spaces like flitting ghosts.

  Even with those masses pressing around her on that last visit, Emily had adored these sculptures. The graceful flow of the carvings, as if they were made of silk and muslin—warm flesh, rather than chilled marble. The transcendence of the twisting, reaching figures beckoned to her. When she gazed at them, or even reached out to touch them with the very tips of her fingers, they told her that there was beauty in the world. There was truth and grace, and a life to be had beyond the superficial meanderings of London Society.

  She saw that same revelation in David Huntington’s dark eyes, in the tender way he spoke to his little daughter, the way his laughter echoed with warmth and humor. His life could not have been easy, caught between two worlds, two vastly different cultures and ways of life, yet there seemed no bitterness in him, as she had in herself. The way he looked at Emily, the way he touched her hand, as if she was some priceless, lovely piece of porcelain, coaxed her to be honest with him, to let go of her own anger and move into a future of endless possibility.

  She wished, more than anything, that she could do that. She was weary of carrying that hard, cold stone in her heart, a stone made out of anger toward her long-dead brother and her own guilt. If she could, she would drop it right now, leave it at the feet of this statue of Hestia, and never look back.

  Yet how could she when Damien’s actions of so long ago, her own actions, were forcing her now to tell David the difficult truth? Emily’s mother always said that the truth will always come out, no matter how hard a person works to conceal it—and a lie would always come back to slap you in the face.

  Now Emily had to let the one lie she had ever held onto fly free—and probably slap her in the face.

  She found a quiet bench behind the massive Hestia, a dim corner where surely no one could see her in her dark red walking gown and veiled bonnet. Only now, as she prepared herself to be completely and totally honest, did she realize that, in only the few days since she met David again, she had come to depend on his smiles. They had the power to make all else vanish—Georgina’s worry over Emily’s lack of betrothal, all her unsatisfactory suitors, her mother’s chair-bound state in her dower house, her own restlessness at life in London. None of it mattered one jot when she was with David, just driving in the park or eating an ice or dancing. In that shop, laughing together at his daughter’s antics and choosing gifts to send to his family, she had forgotten everything but the three of them in a golden circle—she, David, and little Anjali. Even the jewel tucked into her reticule disappeared.

  With David, she was no longer restless. No longer bored or angry. She felt only—peace. A sense of some belonging.

  She owed him so much, for that if for nothing else. She could never repay him for all that his friendship meant to her. But she could at least give him the truth.

  Even if that meant he would never speak to her again, and she lost both him and his delightful daughter.

  Emily stared up at Hestia, as if she could read some encouragement, some acknowledgment of the rightness of what she did, in the hard curves of marble drapery.
But there was nothing. Only cold, still beauty.

  She closed her eyes and imagined what it must be like to be imprisoned inside that chilly stone, to struggle to burst forth into the warmth of the sun and be free . . .

  Her wild fancies were ended by the sound of footfalls—booted footfalls that ended right next to her secluded bench. Her eyes flew open, and she stared up into David’s face.

  His expression was veiled by the shadow falling from Hestia; the curves of his dark blue greatcoat almost made him appear to be cloaked in marble drapery himself. A beam of dusty light touched his hair and brow, and a smile whispered over his beautiful lips.

  “Is this seat occupied, my lady?” he said, a teasing note lurking in his voice.

  Emily laughed, and teased back, “I was enjoying my solitary reverie, but I might be persuaded to give it up for you, sirrah, if you care to bide with me for a moment.”

  “I can ‘bide with you’ happily all afternoon,” he said, dropping down to sit beside her. The bench was small and narrow, forcing them into close proximity. Their sleeves brushed, silk catching on wool, and Emily was very aware of his sandalwood scent, the shadowed dark skin of his jaw. “I am quite exhausted after fending off Anjali’s entreaties to come along this afternoon. She was more excited than I have ever seen her after our shopping expedition!”

  “She is a lovely child,” Emily said warmly. She would never have imagined she would say that after their strained hour at Gunter’s, but the morning of wrapping saris and being drawn around the shop by Anjali’s small hand erased that utterly.

  “She is an unruly monkey,” David answered, but the proud gleam in his eyes gave the lie to those stem words. “I thought the poor shopgirl would have an apoplexy when Anjali began unrolling that bolt. But Anjali is very pretty, I grant you—entirely due to her mother, I am sure. I sometimes think she is a magical elf-child, left in my house by mistake.”

  Anjali’s mother. David’s wife. Of course. They had fallen so easily into their old friendship that Emily sometimes forgot that years had separated them. Years which, for David, involved marriage and a new family.

  “Were you married very long?” she asked quietly.

  David glanced down at where their arms touched, his smile fading away into solemnity. “Almost five years. We were married when we were very young—I was eighteen, Rupasri only fifteen, though that was considered old in her family. She was the granddaughter of a friend of my grandmother; they hoped that stronger ties between the old Bengali families would give us a greater united front against the English.”

  “So, you did not—love her?” Emily knew she should not ask such things. They were none of her business, and, really, she was not so very sure she wanted to know the answers. But it was already out there, escaped from her own mouth into the cool air of the museum.

  And she needed to know.

  David glanced at her, his dark gaze opaque. She could read no answers in that at all. “Love her? I never met her before we were married. But I did come to care for her. She had a gentleness and a sweetness about her. I see those same qualities in Anjali, but I also hope that she will grow up with an independence and self-will her mother could never have hoped for. That is the only way she will be strong enough to make her way in this difficult world.”

  “Does Anjali miss her mother a great deal?” Emily asked gently. She remembered how she had felt when her father died—so scared and confused, so very alone. Her heart ached for the poor child—even if it twinged with jealousy for her “gentle and sweet” mother.

  Those were two words no one had ever used to describe Emily.

  “I am not sure if she does any longer. Rupasri died when Anjali was very young, still in leading strings. I try to tell her stories about her mother, so that she will not forget. Stories about our life in India.”

  “What was your life like in India, David? I have wondered so often since we parted. I read many books about the land, talked to people who had been there, but it still seems strange to me. Like another world.”

  “Yes.” David turned his head to give her an intent glance, his expression unreadable. “You did tell me you read about India.”

  “Your stories when we were children always intrigued me. I could never imagine then that there could be a world outside Fair Oak, let alone one so full of heat and light and noise.”

  He nodded, and his gaze turned away from her toward one of the long friezes on the wall. “There is certainly plenty of all three of those in India. And scents! When we first landed in England, Anjali said the air smelled of—nothing. That was before we came into London proper, of course, but there were no spices, no perfumes, no smoke. And our townhouse is not very much like our house in Calcutta, though I tried to make Anjali’s rooms as similar as I could.”

  Emily braced her chin on her hand, watching him with fascination. He seemed a million miles away from her at that moment, his dark eyes seeing something beyond the Marbles, beyond even herself. “Tell me about your house there,” she urged.

  His voice was quiet and deep as he spoke of that home, pale stucco drowsing behind a garden heavy with red and orange and white flowers, lotus and marigolds and jasmine, rich greenery heavy with the humidity hanging over all. Anjali collected pets there—a gazelle and a squirrel, as well as two little dogs the governor-general’s wife gave her—and they gamboled about under the draping pipal trees. In the mornings, servants hurried along the galleries, bearing trays of sweetmeats and tea, hanging out laundry, chasing the pets away from blossoms left on homemade shrines in the garden.

  In the hot afternoons, when the light bore down like a bright white-yellow pall and spirits turned heavy, everything slowed down. Carved wooden shutters were closed, canvas shelters lowered over the galleries. Anjali would drowse there with her dogs, lying against the silk cushions while her ayah sang soft songs to her. David would sit close to her with his portable desk and his work, shooing the flying insects away from his documents with the quills of his pens.

  In the evenings, the shutters opened again, letting night breezes and starlight sweep through the long, low rooms. Music would drift up over the walls, chanting and the rich strains of sitars. Even when he went out to a party at the home of one of the Anglo gentry, that music would trail after him, sweet and seductive.

  Emily closed her eyes as he spoke, seeing all of this in her mind. The flowers, the heavy air, the music, even the pet gazelle—it all came to vivid, colorful life for her. Only very gradually did she realize that David had ceased speaking, his voice trailing away into the cool marble around them.

  She opened her eyes, half-surprised to find herself not in an Indian gallery but in the dim environs of the British Museum. And to find David watching her.

  She summoned up a small, strained smile for him. “It sounds—amazing. I imagine I will never see it, though.”

  “And why is that?”

  “A lady—a duke’s sister—could never hope to travel so very far alone. Alex and my mother might allow me to go to Brighton or maybe even France or Italy, but hardly Calcutta! Your words took me there, though. It must be just as I imagine it—strange and unearthly beautiful. How glorious your life must have been there! I always thought it must be.”

  “I thought of you over all those years, too, Emily. Every day, I think.” He leaned closer to her, their arms and shoulders pressed together, warm and intimate even through layers of silk and wool and blasted propriety. “I wondered what your life was like, how you were growing up. What you would be like as a lady.”

  Emily stared at him, mesmerized. She had always thought about him, of course, but she had imagined he forgot about her in that new life of his. She was just the silly, tomboyish girl who followed him all about, and in Calcutta he was surely surrounded by kohl-eyed beauties.

  The thought that he had remembered her, speculated on her growing-up, was intoxicating.

  “And how did I grow up?” she whispered.

  He grinned at her, his dimples flashing
enticingly. “Extraordinarily well, I would say. You are beautiful, Emily. And so kind to everyone, especially my daughter. You have not been hardened by London Society, as so many are. The years have been good to you.”

  At this reminder of the past, of what she had truly come here to tell him, Emily turned away from the glow in his eyes. She stared at Hestia’s draperies, suddenly deeply chilled. She wrapped her arms about herself, and murmured, “They were not always so fine as they are now—the years, I mean.”

  “What are you talking about, Emily? Your family is obviously happy, and no lady of the ton could have a lovelier smile than you do.”

  “I lost my smile for a long time. Before Alex came back from Spain and met Georgina, many things happened to my family. Things I would want to never think of again.”

  “Then do not think of them!” David seized her hand in his, his gloved fingers strong around her own. “Emily, the last thing I would want to do is make you unhappy, make you speak of unpleasant matters you would rather forget. I would be a poor friend to bring even a speck of unhappiness into your life.”

  Emily folded her free hand around their clasped fingers, holding them together. She stared hard at their embrace, unable to look into his eyes, his beautiful face. If she even glimpsed him, she could never tell him this.

  “No, David, I must say these things to you. I must tell you the truth; it is why I met you here today. But please, please don’t utter a word until I am finished.”

  “Very well, Emily,” he answered softly. “Tell me anything you like. I will listen.”

  Still clinging to his hand, Emily took a deep breath and launched into her old tale. She told him all about her mother’s riding accident soon after David and his father left England—the accident that left her still confined to her chair. She spoke of her father’s death, and Damien’s disastrous reign as duke. Of how their sudden lack of fortune left her to make ends meet at Fair Oak, to take care of their mother and maintain their good name.