by Regina Scott
At least she had the good grace to blush. “And yours short-sighted. Wakenoak is dead. You could apply to the family for compensation, raise yourself above these circumstances. It is only your due.”
His hand was fisting at his side, despite his best efforts. “I prefer to make my own way.”
She shook her head. “Stubborn. Just like your father.”
“I am nothing like my father,” Jamie grit out.
For once, her face softened. “Forgive me. I know everything you have you earned yourself. There are those who respect such effort.”
And those who never would. Suddenly, the opulence around him was choking, suffocating, reminding him of all that would never be his. He snapped her a nod.
“Thank you for releasing me from my obligation to you, your ladyship. I won’t trouble you further.” He headed for the door, which Warburton threw open for him. For a moment, their gazes met, and Jamie was surprised to see compassion looking back at him.
“Allow me to see you out, Mr. Cropper,” the butler said.
“I can find my own way, Mr. Warburton,” Jamie replied. “But thank you.” He clapped his hat on his head and started across the entry hall, boot heels loud against the black and white marble tiles. He couldn’t wait to reach the front door.
And then the footman opened it to admit Lady Emily.
Jamie jerked to a stop even as she drew up just inside the threshold.
“Mr. Cropper,” she said, and her cheeks turned the lovely rosy color that so became her.
He gathered his emotions, shoved them down as deep as he could, and inclined his head. “Your ladyship.”
Cool air brushed him as the footman closed the door behind her. She was dressed in a fine gown and spencer his mother would have reserved for church, striped in shades of gray that made her hair look all the more alive and glossy. He found himself simply gazing at her.
She cocked her head as if she wasn’t sure of him. “Why are you here?”
Always to the point. She never resorted to roundaboutation; he didn’t have to guess what she was thinking. If she didn’t say them outright, her thoughts whispered on her face, murmured from her eyes. He only wished he could be as forthright with her.
“Your aunt can explain,” he said instead. “I should go.”
Yet he couldn’t seem to make himself move as she approached him.
*
Emily stopped a few feet from James Cropper. Having happily left Lord Robert and his cryptic remarks at his pretentious carriage, she could not help noticing the contrast between the two men. Lord Robert had been completely confident both in himself and all he planned, his prestige as loud as if he shouted it from the rooftops. James was quieter, his brown coat and trousers less showy, but the tall-ceilinged entry hall felt smaller with him in it.
And she would never forget that smile. It seemed to promise her something quite grand if she’d just forget herself and . . . do what?
“Certainly I could ask my aunt,” she told him. “But I would prefer that you explain your presence here. I know it must have something to do with Lord Robert.”
He shrugged. “If it is, I couldn’t say.”
Emily puffed out a sigh. “If you tell me that it is a matter between gentlemen I will likely scream.”
“Can’t have that now, can we?” he said, smile inching higher. “But as you seem to expect me to behave in my official role as an officer of the court, perhaps I should ask you whether you’ve been behaving since we last met.”
He could be the most vexing man! Did he think her an infant that he must watch over her? His Grace certainly trusted her more than that. Even her aunt let her leave the house unescorted on occasion!
“I assure you,” Emily replied with a toss of her curls nearly as good as one of Priscilla’s, “I can take care of myself.”
“Oh, aye.” She could hear the amusement in his drawl. “You and your three friends were doing quite well when we met on Bond Street the other day.”
He would bring that up. She made herself gaze at the mirror on the far wall rather that at his smug smile. “I already thanked you for that service, sir.”
“Indeed you did, though rather grudgingly, I thought.” In the mirror, she saw him glance at the footman, standing against the pale blue wall as straight as a statue in his black livery. As if deciding the servant posed no problem, James took a step closer as well. The scent of sandalwood drifted up, whispering of warm summer nights in exotic places. Despite herself, Emily turned her gaze to his, blinking as she tried to reconcile the cologne with the man who wore it.
“Tell me you finally heeded my warning,” he murmured, gaze on hers. “You’ve stayed away from the worst parts of London, kept yourself from peeking into strange rooms?”
Those gray eyes were fathomless, like looking up into the morning mist. “Yes,” she allowed. “Though I’d like to think I don’t need a nursemaid.”
“Oh, no,” he replied, smile widening once more. “You’ve obviously outgrown the nursery.”
She wished she had a fan. Priscilla said it was best used to rap insolent fellows across the knuckles. Emily would have preferred to wave it frantically in front of her heated face.
As if he sensed her discomfort, he straightened away from her. “And what has your fiancé been up to recently?”
The question should have been casual, simply polite conversation, but Emily heard more behind it. He wasn’t sure what Lord Robert was about. Well, neither was she. She did think, however, that Mr. Cropper sounded just the wee bit vexed that she might have spent time with his quarry.
“I just returned from an outing with him,” she admitted. “I mentioned your name. He didn’t seem pleased to have made your acquaintance.”
“No doubt,” he said. “The feeling is mutual, I assure you.”
“Why?” she demanded. “You both are so sure I should avoid the other, yet neither of you will explain.”
“Perhaps it’s not our place to tell,” he said, but his gaze drifted upward, as if the chandelier was suddenly much more fascinating.
Emily threw up her hands. “Can you say nothing of any use to me?”
“Only that you look very fetching in that gray gown.”
The gown felt entirely too warm and tight. She shook her finger at him, forcing his gaze back down again. “Charm will not save you, sir. I am immune to it. I swear that you and Lord Robert are a pair of coxcombs, entirely too full of yourselves to listen.”
He laughed, a deep chuckle she was certain she’d find warming under other circumstances. “Well, I’ve been accused of that often enough.” He touched two fingers to his brow. “I’m sure you won’t mind if I say my goodbyes, then.”
Perhaps it was her outing with Lord Robert still troubling her, perhaps she found Mr. Cropper’s company as invigorating as it was frustrating, perhaps she was merely being whimsical, but she didn’t want him to walk out the door. “Tell me something before you go.”
He eyed her as if not trusting the direction of her thoughts. “What would that be?”
She imitated the salute he’d given her. “Why do you do this?”
He glanced down at his hand as if surprised she’d noticed. “It’s an Irish gesture of respect.”
“Are you Irish, Mr. Cropper?”
He looked up and grinned. “Sure-n I learnt the movement at me mother’s knee, yer laidyship. Me mam is right proud of her Jamie, she is. Course the gesture gets a bit messy if I’ve been eat-n bread and jam. Can’t figure how to keep them strawberries out of me hair.”
Emily couldn’t help her laugh. “You’d better stick with roasted chestnuts then. You could hide any sign of them quite nicely.”
“So long as they didn’t singe me scalp.”
“Oh, you needn’t go so deep,” she assured him. “You could put several of them right here, and no one would know.” She wasn’t sure what possessed her, but she reached up to touch the wave of hair over his forehead. The chestnut curl was warm and silky.
The laughter faded from his eyes to be replaced by an intensity that took her breath away. Emily let her hand fall even as she heard the unmistakable sound of Warburton’s cough from the sitting room door beside her.
“And you,” Jamie murmured softly, finger coming up to stroke the curls beside her ear, “you’d best not hide anything in that silk. It would slide right through.”
Emily couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Warburton seemed to have developed consumption, he coughed so hard.
Jamie leaned closer, and for an insane moment she thought he intended to kiss her. Even more insane was her reaction. She closed her eyes and wished Warburton to perdition.
“You’re a fine woman, Lady Emily Southwell,” Jamie murmured, his breath a caress against her cheek. “You should find yourself a fine man for a husband.”
Something brushed against her temple, so soft she feared she had imagined it. It sent a tremor through her nonetheless. She opened her eyes, but Jamie was already striding for the door, which the footman was holding wide for him.
“Wait!” She took a step after him, to do what, she wasn’t sure.
Jamie turned, and his smile was sad. “There’s not much else can be said between us, my dear. But if you need me, you have only to look.” He gave her his salute one last time and left.
Emily stood in the middle of the entry hall, feeling as if the space had grown cold without Jamie Cropper in it. Would he let her be so familiar as to call him Jamie? Did she want to ask?
She rubbed her hands up and down her arms, the gown crinkling under her fingers. The footman regarded her as if afraid Emily would turn into a goose and fly out the window. Warburton came from the sitting room to regard her with more concern, and she could see her aunt staring at her open mouthed.
Emily felt just as bemused. Who was she to behave like that? She wasn’t interested in courting; she was going to spend her Season establishing herself as an artist. And if she were interested in courting, she certainly shouldn’t be making eyes at a fellow like James Cropper. One moment he was enforcing protection where she didn’t need it, the next trying to steal a kiss. One moment she wanted to shout at him, the next to kiss him back. All while she was engaged to Lord Robert!
Did anyone on earth understand gentlemen?
Chapter Eleven
“The first thing you must know about boys,” Priscilla said, “is that they are all mad.”
Emily could easily believe that as she sat across from Priscilla the next day in the withdrawing room of the tiny house in a forgotten corner of Mayfair, the only house Priscilla’s father had been able to afford. The little room was far less opulent than any at His Grace’s townhouse. The furniture looked as if it had been picked from a number of places and thrown all together, with less than pleasing results. Still, Emily could only consider it a refuge after the scolding she’d endured from her aunt yesterday following Jamie’s exit.
“Your behavior is completely beyond the pale,” Lady Minerva had insisted, pacing in front of Emily right there in the entry hall, with Warburton standing along one wall and the footman, who very much looked as if he wanted to cringe, along the other. Even the movement of her aunt’s blue wool skirts had sounded angry. “First running off with Lord Robert like that...”
“Running off!” Emily protested. “It was a scheduled outing, and you gave your blessing!”
Her aunt jerked up a finger. “Do not interrupt me when I am speaking! I quite lose my place. Where was I? Running off with Lord Robert . . . failing to comb your hair when leaving Barnsley . . . not folding your napkin properly after dinner last night . . .”
“Who knew I had such faults?” Emily said.
Her aunt glared her into silence. “And now taking up with a street urchin of all people! You will be the death of your poor sainted father!”
Emily took a deep breath, tried to keep her tone measured, logical. “In the first place, I haven’t taken up with anyone. In the second, I hardly think it appropriate to compare a Bow Street Runner to a street urchin. And finally, my father is hardly a saint. Saints, as I understand them, actually care.”
She knew she’d gone too far, for her aunt drew up her slender frame, one finger pointing imperiously toward the stairs. “To your room, young lady. I cannot abide the sight of you right now.”
“The feeling is mutual,” Emily replied, but she marched up the stairs anyway.
But not to her room. It was lovely, it was sophisticated, but it felt as if it belonged to another girl, someone who preferred the social whirl, someone who obeyed without questioning, someone her father and aunt expected her to be.
Someone she very much feared she would never be.
Instead, she went to the studio, pulled on her apron, and stirred up her paints. That wasn’t difficult, the way her hands were shaking. She slammed her brush into the mixture and stabbed at the canvas. She wanted blood, fire, shouting, the clash of metal on metal. She wanted to lose herself in power, might. She wanted good to triumph, evil to be vanquished, the world set to rights once again. That’s what her paintings meant, even if no one else ever noticed.
“Why do you persist in painting such ugly things?” her aunt demanded from the doorway.
“Why won’t you leave me alone?” Emily countered. Then she took a deep breath, set her brush down carefully. “Forgive me, Aunt. But I am not the woman you think me. I prefer a dirge to a country reel, a Shakespearean drama to a modern farce. I feel as if everyone is trying to force me into a mold that I cannot fill.”
“Will not fill, you mean,” Lady Minerva said, coming into the room and shutting the door. “And you are still behaving like an idiot. I told you I would deny any involvement with bad behavior on your part. You saw through my acting before. Your faculties have not failed you. Why would I think you would believe me now?”
Emily reached for her rag to clean the scarlet from her fingers, hands still shaking. “Are you telling me you staged all that?”
“What else? Your father expects me to honor his wishes. He will not stomach me honoring yours above his. I must put on a good face if I am to eat.” She wandered closer and grimaced at Emily’s battle scene.
“My father would hardly starve you,” Emily replied, setting down her rag.
“You didn’t seem so sure of that a few minutes ago,” her aunt replied. She sucked her lower lip a moment, then nodded. “This is rather good, in a dismal, disturbed sort of way.”
Emily could not find it in her to thank Lady Minera. “So am I in your good graces or not?”
Her aunt turned to eye her. “Why do you care what I think? Why do you care what your father thinks?”
Emily blinked. “You are my family. I rather thought I owed you a duty.”
“Duty and love are two different things. It appears you prefer the latter.”
Emily turned away, busied herself in tidying up her paints. “Did you have something else you wished to discuss? If not, I would prefer to paint.”
“So you have said,” her aunt had replied, moving toward the door. “But perhaps you should think about whether the two are connected.”
She refused to think on it. She knew she’d only go mad. She’d simply been grateful her aunt had been willing to accompany her on a call to Priscilla’s house today, so she could at least talk to someone she had confidence actually cared about her wellbeing.
“All boys cannot be mad,” she told her friend now, settling back in her seat and keeping an eye on her aunt, who was conversing with Priscilla’s mother as they sat on a Egyptian-styled sofa nearby.
“They are completely illogical,” Priscilla insisted, long fingers curling around the worn gilt ends of her chair’s armrests, which were shaped like lion’s heads. “You’ve heard about how Byron alternately chased and pushed aside Lady Caroline Lamb.”
“Poets are expected to be a bit mad,” Emily pointed out.
“What of the way the Prince Regent treats his wife?” Priscilla said. “She’s all but banish
ed to the Continent!”
Her mother paused in her conversation to give Priscilla a look in warning.
Emily shook her head. “I hardly count His Highness as an example of good decorum. He wears a corset!”
Priscilla shuddered at that. But she obviously refused to be swayed. “Look at Lord Brentfield, then,” she said, keeping her voice low to avoid a further scold from her mother. “He is no poet, and you cannot claim he was anything less than charming. What on earth would possess him to marry Miss Alexander of all people?”
Emily knew Priscilla still smarted over the fact that the Earl of Brentfield had preferred their art teacher over her or her Aunt Sylvia.
“I like to think it was her art that impressed him,” Emily said, fingers anchored to her navy gown. She refused to give in to the temptation to stroke the arms of her own chair, which was covered in scarlet ostrich plumes. “She’s very good, you know.”
Priscilla rolled her eyes. “A gentleman is seldom as impressed by a lady’s accomplishments as he is by her anatomy.”
Emily sighed. “I certainly hope you’re wrong, or I’m doomed, Pris.”
“No, you’re not,” Priscilla said immediately, straightening so quickly the pink satin ribbons decorating the front of her gown fluttered like birds. “Because the only thing more impressive than a lady’s anatomy to a gentleman is her connections. You are the daughter of a duke, you know.”
“So you think that’s what Lord Robert finds attractive?” Emily shook her head. “Perhaps your father can adopt me in time for me to attend the ball.”
Instead of laughing, Priscilla’s look darkened. “You do not wish to be a member of my family right now. Trust me on that score.”
Emily glanced toward Mrs. Tate and her aunt, then lowered her voice even further. “Are things still so bad?”
“Impossible,” Priscilla whispered back. “Mother keeps insisting that only the attendance of the Prince Regent at the Ball will save us from disaster.”